I came in + the things + OO theories

Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 25/07/99 00:57:44  , vous avez =E9crit :

> Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand what you're point
>  is.  There seems to me to be no actual difference between the English
>  and the Japanese superlatives.
you're not missing much. only a notion of "definition"
as in "definite/indefinite article" or as in "perfective/stative
aspect". and that's because you can also say in english
"it is most interesting" like in japanese.
i tell you the difference between :
"he is the tallest" and "he is most tall".

"ichiban" points to the absolute intensity of segatakai
(to be tall to the highest degree) : he is most tall.

"tallest" points to the tall one relatively to other tall ones
(to be the tallest among tall ones).
in english you refer to the absolute intensity as "very tall",
"most tall". in french you always say "very tall" or
"at THE tallest (point or actor)".

but the result is the same in practice.
i've never heard of "ichiban totemo takai"
("being very high to a first degree").
this is because the reference is from most
to least exactly like in english.

----------------- et Ed a =E9crit :=20
So don't worry yourself about theories that get in the way of
grammars...  If anything, this kind of theory just tries to establish
an explicit groundwork for something resembling the Dixonian "basic
theory" that has captured your heart. :)
----------------

i'm no linguist. reading jargon is very painful,
first because it's obscure, second because it is often
made to obliviate references
one has personally acquired from learning foreign languages.
only by crossing english, japanese and french i could
understand this very basic idea above.
but still i think it very important to bear in mind
these things when making up a theory =E0 la Chomsky
or rejecting the Universals' one.

i must say i'm very interested in references
i.e. direction of process, role vision,
reference for definition, and object of transitive.
"go, stay and come" as i mentioned earlier.

linguists i have read on the web usually cling to
equation and causation, maybe
because that's how you write maths (only a guess)
X =3D Y <=3D> Y =3D X=20
that's just plainly wrong with foreign languages
i've learned although it seems right in linguistics, i
don't know how really.
this only works with de-volitive-ized schemes making trees
a bunch of atoms and dealing with physics rather than
with sentients' meal and dream. that's why they come up=20
with theories deaturing language as an infinity of semantic
connections impossible to understand
or with a pair of syntactic operations impossible to use.

there is a semantic threshold beyond which one should
nomore breakdown concepts. =3D, +, or, <=3D> are a few steps
down too far : mind the gap.
if you cannot eat, wend, smash or sense a concept,=20
then you know it's no language anymore.

------------ and Boudewijn a =E9crit :
To come back on topic: What I like especially about conlangs is that
conlangers are mostly concerned with describing the language, without
other agendas. In fact, the general athmosphere quite reminds me of my
days at the Institute for Comparative Linguistics in Leyden.
-------------

we're a bunch of toiling kids.


mathias