Re: [engelang] Xorban Development - engelang messages

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote:

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I hope no one minds me branching this off into a new thread. The Loccan3 thread is scattered, and I think (what I hope no one minds me tentatively dubbing) Xorban deserves to be focused on.

The only thing with that name is that it's not a valid name in the
language itself. Before coming up with a proper name though it would
be better to have a more clear idea of how to form predicates. I'm
thinking names will be predicates like almost all other words of the
language. Here's the grammar we have so far again for reference:

Of course, "Xorban" is just a temporary place holder.

All names N could be predicates defined as "x is [known by/called] [name/transliteration] N [to/by] y" e.g. "He's 'Johnny' to his friends".

sentence := predicate | operator sentence

operator := unary-operator | binary-operator

binary-operator:= SV('V)* sentence

unary-operator := NV('V)*

predicate := CCC*V('V)*(KV('V)*)*

V := a | e | i | o | u

C:= b | c | d | f | g | j | k | l | m | n | p | r | s | t | v | w | x | y | z

S:= l | m | r | s | ...

N:= n | ...

K:= k | f | ...

I assume add "j" to S.

What is the status of /ai ei oi au/? I was thinking that if these are gone, or if they can be covered by <ay ey oy aw>, then we can drop the apostrophe, or reuse it for the glottal stop. You didn't add the glottal stop to the phoneme inventory; maybe we can use that to enclose names and transliterations. Then Johnny(x, y) could be something like " '(a)djani'oakoe" = "He is known as 'Johnny' to them"

> Okay, what you're basically saying here is that "l-" doesn't encode specificity nor does it quantify, in which case I'd say it doesn't mean anything, nor does it do anything other than perhaps occasionally introduce a variable that one is just going to repeat later in the predicate. Why not just drop "l-" and let predicates introduce their own throw-away variables when the need arises? What's wrong with:
>
> - nnla rzge nxli dndakeki
> = A/the boy gives a/the rose to a/the girl.

That parses as four sentences: (nnla) (rzge) (nxli) (dndakeki)

I was brainstorming a bit last night. Observing that "l-" was simply a structure-word, and reasoning that the binary-operator "lX CCCX" was going to get used a whole lot, I was thinking that maybe CCCX by itself under certain conditions could be interpreted as an equivalent unary-operator. Naturally that would necessitate some sort of sentence separator, among other changes in the production rules. I see now that my idea would introduce some unwelcome complexity at this stage, so I put it back in my pocket.

The obvious rule is that disconnected sentences are assumed to be
connected with je (order doesn't matter here) so that would be
equivalent to:

je nnla je rzge je nxli dndakeki

or equivalently:

je je je nnla rzge nxli dndakeki

But this would only work at the highest level. It wouldn't work for
example if we want to apply an operator to that whole thing, then we
need the explicit "je"s.

We also could have some rule about how unbound variables are bound,
and binding with "l- sm-", where "sm" is a predicate that is true of
anything is an obvious choice.

That would work, and conserve "C-" space.

> - nnla nxli dndakeki
> = A/the boy gives [something] to a/the girl.
>
> - sa nnla rzge ri nxli dndakeki
> = Some boy gives a/the rose to every girl.

Here it's getting odd though. That's two sentences: (sa nnla rzge) (ri
nxli dndakeki), and the "a" of the second sentence is outside the
scope of "sa nnla". To keep it within scope we need:

sa nnla je rzge ri nxli dndakeki

which is now a single sentence with an unbound "e".

> - sa nnla ri nxli dndakeki
> = Some boy gives [something] to every girl.
>
> If a variable has to be introduced early for some scope-related reason, use a generic predicate like perhaps {zst}.

As a minor side issue, I would want to keep the charged predicate "...
exists" well distinct from the empty predicate true of anything "...
is something".

Right, I knew that wasn't the best choice.

> If we can safely drop "l-" for constant, maybe we can recycle it to allow specificity to be marked optionally, which is something I often find useful (I may be biased due to being English-L1 though):
>
> - la nnla rzge nxli dndakeki
> = The[=a specific one, it should be clear which] boy gives a/the rose to a/the girl.

That parses as three sentences:

(la nnla rzge) (nxli) (dndakeki)

again with "a" outside the scope of "la nnla".

>> > Are there situations in which variables like {a} "stick"
>> > and become essentially anaphora, and if so when?
>>
>> I don't know. We could have some of the reserved variables behave this
>> way, but that would mean you have to plan in advance which argumants
>> you would want to keep around.
>
> It seems natural to suggest a series of V'V-space e.g. {o'V} that automatically declare anaphora, at least now for experimental purposes.

Maybe we could just say that an unbound variable already used before
is assumed to be bound by "l-" and with the same restriction it was
last bound. So for example:

na sa xrja vfla ... na se nlceka
It is not the case that for some x which is a pig, x flies ... It is
not the case that for some y, y is a wing of x (=pigs).
No pig flies. They have no wings.

Okay, it took me a while to get this. Yes, that seems to work the way we want.

The only question is about using the commonly used variables of shape "V" - if we are also doing things like using free variables to create the passive voice so to speak, we have to be careful about that. The sentence "na la xrja nlceka" intended as "pigs aren't liked", under a certain context might mean "the woman with the red hat doesn't like pigs". So maybe we should set aside or some "V'V" or "Vy"or "aw" for the purpose of an explicitly unbound variable indicating something like "zo'e".

In any case, discourse topics should probably get a more marked variable than "V".

Here I note I've already used "nlc" both for "x1 likes x2" and for "x1
is a wing of x2". We will need some vocabulary construction if we
don't want this kind of homonymy.

It's probably not expected or acceptable for an engelang of this sort to have a sentence that means both "they have no wings" and "no one likes them". We have plenty of room for roots. I assume that epenthetic schwas are permitted and that we are not being asked to master Georgian phonotactics...(?) I am unsure about the phonotactics of /y w/ so I will leave those out:

CC: 17^2 = 289
CCC: 17^3 = 4913*
CCCC: 17^4 = 83521*

*minus "nmC(C)" and similar series. I assume CC for special things like generics and case tags. CCC for regular vocab and CCCC for jargon. No compounding or derivation. Some effort should be made so that changing one phoneme doesn't result in a valid root within a similar semantic category.

Depending on how many variables we need, I almost want to suggest "e" for roots where needed and "o" for compounding. That would leave a, i, u and all 25 V'V for variables, and eliminate the schwa phoneme. /y w/ could be used in root onsets, but I would reserve /ay/ etc. as variables. Compounds can be both dictionary entries and nonce expressions. Compounds are not particularly logical, but they can be helpful in constructing vocab.

All of this is totally your call.

I'm going to stop here and mull adverbs.