Re: Mapwords

At 10:53 21/07/03, Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:
>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?
Only that I've been toying with the same idea for quite a while (though
I've been imagining the map word coming at the end, because it's more
confusing that way :) ).

Though as you say, with subclauses and the like it can get seriously
complicated.  In practice it may be necessary to have subordinate mapwords,
though this detracts from the idea somewhat, I think.  But I've never got
around to trying to make it work, so I can't be sure.

Ian

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