Re: Telona grammar, part 1

Hi, Jonathan!

        Your effort to design a language in which every word can be used in
any position in a sentence is interesting.   (I assume that your language is
isolating.)    I have some questions & comments.

1)    Even if every root in your language can fill any slot in a
clause--from verb to argument to modifier to connective--have you really
eliminated word classes?   Even if a given word can't be identified as
belonging to a certain class when considered apart from the sentence,
woudn't the syntax of a given sentence specify what class that word belongs
to in that sentence?

None of the words in these examples can be identified as belonging to one
word class when it is considered apart from a sentence.

a) Remains poison water.
b) Water poison remains.
c) Poison water remains.
d) Water remains poison.

However, this does not change the fact each word in each example belongs to
a specific class, thanks to the syntax of the sentences.

a) & d) noun + verb + noun
b) & c) attributive noun + noun + verb

Of course, "remains" isn't univocal in my example.    But how can there be a
univocal symbol that stands for both an entity and a relationship to
time/events?

2)    I'm skeptical about the prospects of eliminating all distinctions
between word classes even when words are considered apart from sentences,
because I think that semantic constraints would prevent some words from
having the potential to play any grammatical role in a sentence.

Offhand, I think you can make a good case for ignoring the distinction
between adjectives and nouns.   "The tall man" could be rendered "man
tall-one," with the two nouns made coreferential by context.

I can see how you can blur the distinction between nouns and verbs.    If
you allow that Telona equivalents to verbs refer to performers of actions,
you could have sentences like "man eater," mean "The man eats," with "man"
and "eater" made coreferential by context.

But how can a univocal word meaning "apple" function as anything other than
a noun or an adjective/attributive noun?

Conversely, how can univocal words meaning "in," "because of," or "and"
refer to entities?

3)        If the semantic relationships among your words, like
coferentiality, are all implicit, all specified by context, how can you
avoid rampant ambiguity in utterances of three or more terms?

TALL-ONE      MAN        JUMPER.

Does this mean that the tall man is jumping, or that the tall one and the
man are jumping?

TALL-ONE       WOMAN       EATER        JUMPER

Which interpretation does this utterance have?

a) The tall woman, who is eating, is jumping.
b) The tall one and the woman, who are eating, are jumping.
c) The tall woman is eating the one who jumps.
d) The tall one and the woman are eating the one who jumps.

Jim

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