Re: Mapwords
| From: | Ted E. Saratoga <tedetedet@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, July 21, 2003, 16:03 |
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--- On Mon 07/21, Christophe Grandsire < christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR >
wrote:From: Christophe Grandsire [mailto: christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR]To:
CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDUDate: Mon, 21 Jul 2003 12:37:19 +0200Subject: Re:
Mapwords "En réponse à Peter Bleackley :>The recent discussion of parts of
speech has inspired this idea for a very>weird one.>>A mapword is a
word whose entire purpose is to define the grammatical>structure of a
sentence. It is a polysynthetic compound of particles, each>morpheme
corresponding to the function, role and gramatical relations of>the words
following it. Each sentence begins with such a monstrosity, the>rest of the
sentence consisting of isolating semantic words which are its>arguments.
Here's an example (in English
gloss).>>n-pat.adj-attrib-pat-sup.vb-pt.adj-attrib-agt-comp.n-agt dog big
buy small boy>>The smaller boy bought the biggest dog.>>Word order
is simply mapword : everything else.>
;>Of course, when you start using subclauses things can get
seriously>complicated.>>Any thoughts? "This is an interesting idea,
which is not completely unknown (I think), but"I've never seen it used up to
this extent! I think it's something which is"at the frontier of being humanly
possible (it stretches at the limits of"what the human memory can do. Also, it
obliges you to define the whole"sentence before you pronounce it, since you
have to give the grammatical"relations first There may be species that could
think this way, but not in my opinionHomo sapiens. ~~ Anything below this line
is NOT from me ===> Ted Saratoga ~~
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