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Rob: > On Sat, Apr 27, 2002 at 01:45:43PM +0100, And Rosta wrote: > > If the grammar is supposed to be unambiguous and if Ceqli > > wants to avoid the complexities and ugliness of Lojban's > > terminators, then the easiest way to effect this is by > > having consistently head-initial or consistently head-final > > word order. (The other necessary principle is that there > > should be no optionality of complements.) > > > > In the present instance, that would make the basic order > > P123 (or else 123P). To get the other orders, different > > initial particles could be used: > > > > ptcl1 1 P 2 3 > > be 2 P 1 3 > > ge 3 P 2 1 > > > > etc. > > How would P123 help? You'd still need a terminator at the end. (Or is > this what you're referring to with 'optionality of complements', that > you would not be allowed to omit places?) Just so; you'd not be allowed to omit places, except by using an initial particle that shows which places are omitted. > I see that 123P could eliminate terminators, but I don't see this > appealing to anyone besides German speakers, Or Japanese, or speakers of the many head-final languages there are. There's a Japanese expert on this list who may have a view on this. > and it goes against the > tendency to convey more basic information at the beginning of the > sentence. I don't see how there is any correlation with basicness. There are different but equally good cognitive justifications for head-initial and head-final orderings. As for the desire to be able to reorder phrases to match such things as focus and basicness, that would be achieved by use of reorderer particles. Note that natlangs simply do not have terminators. For Ceqli, with its aspirations to have a more natural feel than Loglan, terminators are out of the question, except as a brute-force emergency device (for things like quotations). --And.