Re: minimalistic grammar

At 10:29 pm -0400 7/4/02, Karapcik, Mike wrote:
[snip]
>While there seem to be a few distinct adverbs, many also seem to work this
>like adjectives
Like Welsh or German, or many varieties of modern colloquial English?

(simply dropped in after the verb).
>
>I have not seen any verb conjugations. There are a few articles for
>nominative, vocative, locative (two: general and specific), and indirect
>object.
>
>   Anyway, it's a very simple gramatical structure. You may find it
>inspriational.
Methinks there's a confusion here between 'grammar' and 'morphology'.
Chinese has often in the past (and probably by some is still in the
present) quoted as a language "with no grammar".  What was meant was "a
language with no morphology" - and even that is incorrect if we're talking
about modern Chinese.  All natlangs must have grammar.

If a language cuts down on morphology, as e.g. Hawaian, Chinese & English
do, it has to compensate, so to speak, with fairly strict rules of syntax -
after all meaning has to be communicated.  You can't have the 'free and
easy' word order of, say, ancient Greek or Latin.

IME no natlang is going to have anything like 'minimalistic grammar'; nor,
for that matter, will (most) conlangs.  Zamenhof's attempt to define
Esperanto in the (in)famous "16 rules" was woefully inadequate.  The only
langs I know with truly minimalistic grammar are computer programming
languages.

Some who like the experimental approach to conlanging have attempted this.
Tom Breton's 'AllNoun' comes immediately to mind.

Andrew might like to have a look at AllNoun for ideas (if only to discard
them  ;)

If I was challenged to produce a conlang with minimalistic grammar, I think
I's start with a computer programming language (I'd probably choose Prolog
- but that's purely a personal choice) and then try to do some translation
from natlangs and thereby gradually adapt it to be expressive for human
communication.

Ray.

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