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"And Rosta" <a-rosta@a...> wrote: > Mike: > > Fair enough. But avoidance of vagueness should be distinct > from precision, given that you could give the lg the > capability both of being vague and being precise -- which > is the ideal, IMO. So, to take your colour ex, besides having > 11 basic terms, one could also have 3, which carve up colour > space into more general areas (warm colour, cool colour, etc.) That's a good point: the capability to be precise and the capability to be vague don't have to be at odds. > > However, what I really had in mind were specific situations > > regarding syntax. My idea is that if a modifier is connected > > to a head, and the relationship is not only crystal clear > > semantically (a case role for example) but also the most > > frequent construction form, then it makes sense to prescribe > > this minimal level of precision for the briefest/simplest > > construction. Another construction can and should be made > > available in the event that the default case is too preceise, > > but this should be the positively marked construction, > > insofar as it is the less frequent construction. > > Okay, but this is too mired in specifics to be elevated to a > general principle. The designer must select the degree of precision that will be assigned to each of the simplest constructions, in each area where there is a simplest constrution. I am not sure if this rewording truly rises to the level of a general principle, but considering the effect that the decisions here will have on the language, it can be so argued, I think. > And if a putative modifier-head construction always expressed > a certain case-role relation, why should it be called a modifier- > head construction rather than an argument-predicate one? That's a good question. As a matter of fact, part of what concerns me about relying on overly vague constructions as a matter of course, is my speculation that such constructions will diachronically acquire much more specific meanings with certain classes of words, despite whatever the original intentions of the designers might have been, which may in turn have unpredictable and chaotic ramifications for both the syntax and semantics. This is only a hunch of mine, though. > > Mulling my comments about the lexicon, perhaps I should have > > called this category "Semantic Precision & Expressiveness". > > Would that be different from what I called Compendiousness > -- having extra words to express rare or highly nuanced > concepts that could not easily be as precisely expressed > periphrastically? What would you say if I suggested that Compendiousness is subsumed by Expressiveness, as is a well-developed Derivational Morphology? > For me, part of the interest of engelanging is to ignore > Naturalness and then see how (un)natural the results turn > out to be. (E.g. Livagian to my eyes has been getting > spontaneously/emergently more natural in recent phases of > development, as the basic structures have been augmented by > others to add concision and flexibility.) > > Even if you don't exclude Naturalness as a goal, then if the > other goals take priority, I don't think there's much room > left for Naturalness. So for Naturalness to be a meaningful > goal, it has to outrank some of the others. Particularly, it seems, when you place logicality ahead of naturalness. If this has to be, then so be it. However, I should state, OTOH, that only part of my motivation for favoring universality and naturalness, at least for my own creation, stems from the desire to make things easier for humans--although I do maintain that this in itself is a worthwhile goal. The other part of my motivation stems from the observation that, for all their irregularity and lack of rigor, it cannot be denied that natlangs work. Even the most subtle of logical meanings can ultimately be expressed using natlangs, given sufficient care on the part of the speaker. I suspect that insofar as they work (and usually quite well), they must be doing something right; when we start to discard language universals to any significant degree, I can't help but wonder if we are going astray. This, again, is just a feeling on my part. > Once I have other professional commitments out of the way > by the end of July, I hope to be able to go some way to > satisfying your curiosity. I look forward to that! > However, as I've said elsewhere, uncompromising logicality is > not so hard to achieve if that is your starting point in the > design process. Just take a logical formula, put it in > Polish notation, lexicalize it, and hey presto you have > something syntactically and logically unambiguous. The > challenge is to make the result flexible, concise and > user-friendly. I am reading quite a bit on the topic, and I am already brewing some ideas in this department. Incidentally, have you ever done programming in LISP or Scheme? Regards --- Mike