Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Soaloa evolves, and a small challenge

From:Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
Date:Friday, April 29, 2005, 19:04
In addressing the challenge sentences and translating
them to Soaloa, it's only the meaning that needs to be
translated, not the structure of the sentence as it
was in English, so disambiguation has to be done
before translation since Soaloa structure makes
ambiguity impossible.

(I think the back story might have something to do
with a swarm of semi-intelligent robots sent to search
for inhabitable worlds, but the parent civilization of
biological creatures dies off and the robots, being
self-replicating, continue to evolve for millions of
years and eventually evolve self-awareness and true
consciousness.  Then their original machine-like
language evolves to become more "organic" and natural,
while still retaining the imprint of it's original
database style rigid structure.)


As to whether the English verbs are transitive or
intransitive, Soaloa has no such distinction.  In fact
it doesn't actually have verbs as such, but uses
O-class words (which are sometimes verb-like and
sometimes not) to establish a relationship between two
SA-class words, so regardless of whether transitive or
intransitive verbs might be used to express the idea
in English, in Soaloa it will always have the same
elemental structure: SOA+L+SOA+L+SOA+... with some
"S"s, "O"s and "L"s possibly omitted.

Think of an O-class word as analogous to an arithmetic
Operator like the "+" in A+B.

"I'm in charge of finding myself, and I make sure it
never happens."
-Methos.

     S - I          (ku)
     O - supervise  (sibero) control, be in charge of,
oversee, guide, pilot, ...
     A - ...        (done) (DOE-nay) P-class forward
reference to total meaning of next clause.
                     No equivalent English word.

     S - I          (ku)
     O - find       (desko) discover, uncover, locate,
...
     A - I          (ku)

     L - and        (sena)

     S - I          (ku)
     O - insure     (meko) cause to happen
     A - ...        (done)

     S - I          (ku)
     0 - not-find   (nadesko) na+desko
     A - I          (ku)

"I'm in charge of finding myself, and I make sure it
never happens."
"I supervise that I find me and I insure that I
not-find me."
"Ku sibero done ku desko ku sena ku meko done ku
nadesko kum."


"It's the kind of game that you just want to go home,
sit down and play right away."

     S - game         (famu)
     O - is type      (membero) to belong to class
     A - "such that"  (kode) Class P word refers to
all that follows (see also "de")

     S - you          (tu)
     O - desire       (teziro)
     A - "that"       (de)

     S - you          (tu)
     O - go to        (mutio)
     A - home, house  (devu)

     L - and then     (dezha)

     S - you          (tu)
     O - to seat      (sereso)
     A - yourself     (tu)

     L - and then     (dezha)

     S - you          (tu)
     O - play         (fameo)
     A - "the former" (ete) Class P word refers to
"former" or first S word of the sentence.

"It's the kind of game that you just want to go home,
sit down and play right away."
"Game is-of-type such-that you desire that you go home
and-then you seat yourself and-then you play
said-game."
"Famu membero kode tu teziro de tu mutio devu dezha tu
sereso tu dezha tu fameo etam."

--gary shannon