[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Mike S., On 30/08/2012 19:19:
On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 12:51 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email <mailto:and.rosta@hidden.email>> wrote: Mike S., On 30/08/2012 16:25:However, I do object to using "dependent" to refer to formulas, i.e. _well formed formulas_, which is exactly what they are. Xorban formulas are *not at all* analogous to natural languages "dependents" -- they are analogous to sentences and the free-standing heads of sentences. Unary operators and BR-expressions (binder-restriction expressions) are the real dependents, precisely because they are not well formed formulas. Unlike formulas, but like like natlang adverbs and noun phrases, they *cannot* stand alone. The notion that formulas are the dependents is simply backwards.I'll explain why I think you can't be right. 1. Semantic composition. A dependent's meaning is complete in itself. A head's meaning is incomplete until the dependents are added. Ergo "ja" is head with two dependents, "na" is head with one dependent, "r-" is head with two dependents. 2. A head may have multiple dependents but a dependent may not have multiple heads. Ergo in "ja/ra X Y", ja/ra is head of X and Y, not dependent. With all due respect, I think I can be right because there are more than one way of looking at it, and it's trivial to show an alternative to your way. In Ba Ra Pa, formula Ra is the head of unary operator (Ba Ra), Ba something like a determiner. Pa is the head of ((Ba Ra) Pa). The J-series can be looked at in the exact same way.
I tried to acknowledge that there is more than one way of looking at it, but noting also that not all ways make equally good sense. You're suggesting that in "& P Q", "&" depends on "P" and "P" depends on "Q". That's crazy in numerous ways. It misses the symmetry of the relations between & and P and between & and Q. It creates a dependency between P and Q that is licit only when P has a certain dependent, which is needlessly and gratuitously unnatural. For rV and lV, I can see a case for saying that in "la Ra Pa" "la" depends on "Pa" and "Ra" on "la" (tho your idea of having "la" depend on "Ra" and "Ra" on "Pa" creates the headache of specifying when a predicate's dependent is another predicate and when it is a lV) -- but it seems a weaker case than the one for seeing the head as always initial (as I'm saying must be the case for je), since that is more regular and simple.
I think that you are using wooly and inappropriate criteria for distinguishing heads and modifiers,
I think I'm using standard criteria (of those that generalize to Xorban) that are appropriate and robust, tho that doesn't mean they're not woolly.
unless you think {fgro'e} is not its own head--it seems to me that
its meaning is complete.
It's a one-word macrosyntagm, so the head--dependent relation doesn't arise.
If you have two words, e.g. {na fgro'e}, the completeness of meaning is one of the diagnostics of dependenthood, so fgro'e wd probably be dependent of na.
In fact, the formal semantic rules will give all WFFs an interpretation with respect to a model but it will not generally speaking have rules for interpreting modifiers by themselves. Without a WFF, modifiers are syntactically incomplete utterances and will be semantically incomplete as well by the formal rules.
I'm not sure if "modifier" is being used as a synonym of "dependent" or not. It sounds like you're thinking that, say, you have a WFF {fgro'e}, and then you modify it by adding {na}, {na fgro'e} -- which is completely fine, except in that case "modifier" isn't a synonym of "dependent".
But I won't say more, because I was only fumbling to grasp your meaning and likely I misunderstood.
To the extent that it patterns like a natural language, it very clearly patterns like a rigid SOV language in which the S and the O are BR-expressions and the V is a formula.There is no S and O. That is, the verbs/predicates have inflections marking subject and object, but there are no separate subject and object phrases. Using "S", "O" and other terms *informally*, Xorban BR-expressions pattern much like "S/O", and "clauses" pattern as in an "SOV" language in what I anticipate will be the normal human usage;
I can see how if you tried to analyse it as if it were a natlang, i.e. apply to the analytical apparatus applied to natlangs, then this is the analysis one would come up with. But I think that's misleading and occludes the more natural analysis. When you hit, say, lV, you know that two formulas follow, so you set up two dependencies. For the first dependency, lV has got to be the head. For the second dependency, the head could be lV or the root of the second formula, but principles of simplicity (consistent head-initiality) and symmetry (lV--formula dependency) favour taking lV to be the head. (There are other criteria too, such as whether it is possible for there to be a dependency between the second formula and something previous to lV -- if there can be, then lV must be the dependent; if there can't be, then that implies lV is the head.
"case tags" with their preceding BR-dependents can either be nested, or the "case tag" can be promoted to become part of the main predication -- Xorban allows a wonderful amount of flexibility due to its double-marking grammar (I have several examples on these variations, which I will provide later). These observations are not diminished by the fact that the formal rules allow one to transform any sentence into, say, prenex normal form, simply because no one is going to speak in (non-trivial) PNF.
I thinkI'd better wait for examples before commenting.
Well, I can see how you could see it your way. You could see "la xrma mrsa" as having the structure of "[[the [horse]] died]", "[[la [xrma]] mrsa]", rather than "[la [xrma] [mrsa]]". But I can't see a rationale for that, and I can see obvious problems with it. What problems do you see? I am just making a general and informal observation about how this language will likely pattern when used by humans.
I think I need to see examples of what you have in mind before saying much on this. I do think we need to make a distinction between patterns caused by L1 interference and patterns caused by the language faculty more generally, even though the distinction may often be hard to draw. For example, L1 interference might well make Xorban-users wish to impose upon Xorban an analytical framework of nouns, verbs, subjects, objects. --And.