Re: Mapwords

En réponse à Ian Spackman :


>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 :) ).
I agree ;))) . Hence I got the same proposal. It would also help in that
people needn't have all the grammatical relationships in the sentence
already decided before pronouncing it, so that people can add afterthoughts
more easily.

>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.
Not in my opinion. Sentence mapwords would just be impossible. The human
memory has its limits. Moreover, sentence mapwords would mean that function
words at different levels would get mixed up, something which is not really
humanly possible (English has some raising of this kind, like "I want you
to clean the floor" corresponding to "I want that you clean the floor",
with the subject of the subclause raised to object position in the main
clause, but this is about as much as you can do). We can handle a limited
amount of complexity, and mixing clauses and subclauses is next to
impossible for us.

Of course, if you design an alien language, nothing can stop you. In this
case, in the sentence mapword, you could have subclause elements which mark
the function of the subclause at the position it will be, and which are in
two parts, with in between all the grammatical elements corresponding to
the words in the subclause. So that what belongs to the subclause and what
belongs to the same clause is separated in the mapword. I can't see another
easy way to do it unambiguously without having to multiply the number of
elements and limiting the number of levels of subordination you can do.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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