Re: isolation vs inflection & other features

From: ebera <ebera@...> wrote:
>>>
Chinese is said to be purely structured on word order, but this is false.
Chinese uses postpositions.
<<<
verbs as prepositions and nouns as postpositions.

>>>
What makes it look strange for Occidentals is that the genitive case is always
left unmarked, as a side-effect to the prohibition of compounds ('book man'
doesn't mean 'librarian' but 'the book related to the man').
<<<
"the man related to the book." unless you refer to khmer or indonesian rather.
not tagging genitive is very natural to me. it was in medieval french to: "Bois
Le Roi" = "Bois du Roi".

>>>
Anyway, compounding is an implementation of genitive.
<<<
not always. hebrew makes a difference between genitive and construct noun. note
also french "machine à écrire" and "salle à manger" (not "d'écrire" or "de
manger".)

>>>
We could say 'a bikini girl on the beach' or like Chinese 'girl bikini beach
shang' shang being a locative marker.
<<<
i'd thought it'd be: "beach shang da bikini girl." i think you're mixing chinese
and khmer syntaxes.

>>>
In the soft version of compounding, which should be named 'unmarked
genitive', there are two nouns with two definitions linked by syntax;
whereas in the hard version, which is 'compounding', there is one
two-word noun with only one definition. English uses the latter, so
'a bikini girl' must be predefined to be understood. Unmarked genitive
belongs to syntax and compounding belongs to semantics, since it's a
form of agglutination (keep reading).
<<<
i kind of agree, but you're "ramming open doors" here as we say in french. :-)
that's why conlangs and auxlangs usually tag either, usually the genitive, to
tell the difference between them.
indonesian and my own conlang optionally tag genitive as a subclause when it
could be mistaken for a compound.

>>>
As I know, case-marking applies to all human languages, at least on Earth.
<<<
what to you mean by "case-marking"? if you mean "tagging", then learn some
modern khmer: a big surprise awaits you. unless you consider serial verbs are
case tags.

>>>
The only exception is lojban, in which cases are given by the
semantics of each verb in the likes of computer languages. This is why
lojban still have to prove to be humanly speakable.
<<<
i incerely doubt Lojban is not speakable.

>>>
For the ease : what would make the learning of 10 affixes harder than
the learning of 10 prepositions?
<<<
head-tail vs. tail-head automatisms: just the abyssal linguistic gap between
japanese and french, i can tell you that much.

>>>
For the expressivity : natlangs I know use not 10 but rather a hundred
prepositions. This, of course, is hard to learn. And does it increase
precision? I don't think so. Possible meaning is given by the context,
usually the verb. See the examples with 'at' as the only locative mark,
'the kid is at the table' - near the table
'the kid is dancing at the table' - on the table
'the kid is hidden at the table' - under the table
'the kid is walking at the table' - toward the table
<<<
langs i know use half a dozen adpositions combined with plenty of nouns and
verbs:
at-vicinity table - near the table
at-upper_part table - on the table
at-under_part table - under the table
to-table - guess what

>>>
Is there a more recognized name than 'empirical'?
<<<
"empirical" means to me that i would have learned and mastered many natlangs.

>>>
Why should my conlang implement adjectives if it has a genitive case?
It sounds messy. With genitive being 'undefined relation with noun',
I should not need a defined relation like quality (adjective) or
ownership (possessive).
<<<
depends on what you mean by "genitive": attributive? possessive? relative? if
you mix all of those unaspective relations in a messy way--like my conlang
does--then you're maybe right. but you say you don't like messy stuff so forget
about it.

>>>
Context should provide this information (the noun for 'blue color' is rarely an
owner and 'John' isn't a quality).
If not, paraphrase would be enough. Any argument to make me implement
adjectives?
<<<
you're basically advocating the famous "white horse" chinese aphorism.
adjectives "freeze" a predicate into a "permanent" attribute of a noun. in other
words, adjectivization un-aspectivizes a predicate: an animal "that eats meat"
in a permanent way is "carnivorous". you may use "genitive" to express that. but
that would not be more logical than using a specific adjectivizing affix. note
that i cannot be considered biased since my own lang doesn't make a difference
between genitive and adjective either. :-)
Mathias
http://takatunu.free.fr/tunugram.htm

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