[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
And Rosta scripsit:
> You know guaspi far better than I do, but if it does quantifiers as
> predicates (and has a way of indicating variables bound by the
> quantifier-predicate), then it ought to be able to handle it.
I should rather have said that Gua\spi doesn't have any analogues of
da, de, di.
> For me too. The thought-experiment involved extrapolating from the
> cases that make sense for English to the cases that don't.
That's what I can't do, but I could probably do it if English uses of
"any" were paraphrased away. The question is how to do that.
> So he is a terrible lesson to the community: "do not shun your most
> talented members merely because they see things that you with
> your narrower horizons do not!" Or maybe not; probably the community
> is happy to have a language very different from guaspi.
Well, there are lots of lessons. "Don't stray too far away from the
community language, or you will produce something that no one can
understand." Or more usefully "Beware of assuming that two concepts
are indistinct just because you can't see the difference; others may
have more insight than you, even if they can't translate their
understandings into something you can follow."
--
John Cowan jcowan@hidden.email www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarves."
--Murray Gell-Mann