Re: [engelang] Re: [jboske] LoCCan3 development ideas. - engelang messages

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 9:33 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> xfr: Ax transfers Px
> kl: Pk passes to Tk
>
> so prna xfrai so mlti kliu ro vrbu.
> Some person (Ax) gave a cat (Px=Pk) to every child (Tk).

Do you really mean:
ExPx: EzMz: AyVy: Xaz & Kzy
?
There's some person and some cat such that the person gives it to every child?

Your English sounds more like:
ExPx: AyVy: EzMz: Xaz & Kzy

or perhaps:
AyVy: ExPx: EzMz: Xaz & Kzy

I meant ExPx: AyVy: EzMz: Xaz & Kzy. I should have written "so prna xfrais lo mlti kliu ro vrbu" to suppress quantification over mlti.

In my version it would be sorted by the order of the quantifiers:

sa prna re vrbe si mlti je xfraki klike
ExPx: AyVy: EzMz: Xaz & Kzy

re vrbe sa prna si mlti je xfraki klike
AyVy: ExPx: EzMz: Xaz & Kzy

sa prna si mlti re vrbe je xfraki klike
ExPx: EzMz: AyVy: Xaz & Kzy

I'm not sure how you want to handle quantifier scope.

To minimize errors like the one I just made, in the past I have tinkered with language with basic VSO(O...) order in which, by convention, the most general interpretation/weakest claim prevails. Therefore, logically, instead of NA being idiotically fronted, all sumti with "ro" would be fronted. Thus "cu prami fa pa nanmu ro ninmu" would assert that every woman has at least one man who loves her, not that there is one man who loves every woman.

In order to escape this convention and be more precise and make a stronger claim, the speaker would move a term in front of the verb, in the process changing the sentence to SVO(O...), as in "pa nanmu cu prami ro ninmu". My hope is that by shifting to a marked order, you effectively _topicalize_ the fronted term and you make the term's quantification more salient in the speaker's (and listener's) mind. This can be done for as many terms as desired (SOVO..., SOOVO..., etc. ), or for all of them if you are confident (SOO...OV). Everything in front of the verb incl. NA has scope over everything after it, post-verb terms being interpreted under the weakest-claim rule.

Other than that, I don't have any bright ideas.

> I think the best way to link the place structures of syntactically
> combined predicates is by simply adopting Richard Morneau's system of three
> archetypical thematic relations called agent (A), patient (P), and theme (T)
> (the last Morneau calls "focus"). These can represented by vowels a/i/u.
> Clauses can be composed of serial predicates as in the example above, or you
> can derive case tags like Morneau if you prefer; there is only one agent-
> and/or one patient-arguments per clause,

But what if the same argument is the agent in one clause and the
patient or theme in another within the same quantifier's scope?

I guess we'll have to scrap the a/i/u idea. By the way, do you have any more information on the design you are working on?

> each of which is governed by any
> number of co-predicates of the correct types; there are any number of
> theme-arguments, each governed by exactly one co-predicate. In my tinkering
> I have found that there are only four open-class predicate types needed:
> (A,P) "A does something to P", (A,T) "A does something using T", (P) "P is
> something", and (P,T) "P has something to do with T". There is also a need
> for a closed class of coordinating particles with arbitrary valency (P, T1,
> T2, T3,... ) but I'll leave that out for now.

The (AP) predicates are derived from the (P)? As in "x1 moves" when x1
is agent as well as patient.
_,_._,___