Re: Comparison of philosophical languages

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 11:22:56AM +0800, Florian Rivoal wrote:
[snip]
> Or maybe an other way to be hard, is to make a language missing the
> features most people consider as essential. (this list is not just a
> list of "no" i try to keep in mind something that is still possible.)
[snip]

How about no verbs?  A verbless, tenseless language that expresses events
and actions from a timeless, outside view, as simply features in the
geography of space-time, identical to geographical features in space.
You'd describe, say, a landmark that existed as a long (in terms of time)
and tall object, truncated before the point which is here & now, to mean
that it was removed at some past time. Whereas a linear (in terms of time)
object would be one that lasted forever.

OTOH, I believe Gladilation is a verbless conlang already, so there's more
than one way to skin a verb. :-P

Or perhaps a *noun-less* conlang, where everything is a verb, alive and
active. Red objects would be red 'cos they're actively redding themselves;
if they stopped redding themselves, they'd cease being red. A person would
be an instance of living out the human life (and would be inseparable from
human life itself). Inanimate objects would be actively falling into the
floor (but since they can't they aren't moving), or actively falling from
the ceiling (but since they can't while they're suspended from the
ceiling, they aren't moving). Perfect explanation for gravity: inanimates
are either gravitating or levitating. Their static state is only
temporary, being prevented by various restrainings. Things like 'sky'
would be something like 'dusking' or 'dawning', depending on the time of
the day.  Abstract concepts would be inseparable from the action: e.g.,
love is identical to the act of loving, joy is identical to rejoicing,
anger is identical to tantrum, etc. I could go on, but you get the idea.

> i think the "No" language could be fun to make. find out ways of saying
> things without using what we consider essential.
Nah. Being contrarian only lasts a while, then you're compelled to be
contrary to being a contrarian. :-P


T

--
Real Programmers use "cat > a.out".

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