Re: telona (was: Re: Degree in Ithkuil vs. S7

And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:
>>>
> There is a very out-of-date summary of T4 at
> http://knibb.free.fr/main.html [...]
I read it a while ago but found it tantalizing more than enlightening.
<<<

< wry smile >  I apologise.  As I have only very rarely tried to
explain T4 (Telona) to anybody face to face, it's very difficult to
know what to put into a description like that and what to leave out.
If you're curious I'd be more than happy to answer any questions, time
permitting.  In respect of which ...

>>>
> - the assertion of a sentence entails the assertion of the truth of
>   each of its subphrases, when these are interpreted as sentences in
>   their own right.
What about arguments of predicates like "is false", "is imagined",
"is denied", "is believed", and so forth?
I don't see the point of this design principle.
<<<

To call this particular feature a 'design principle' was perhaps an
error - it was never designed, it simply emerged as a fact about the
grammar, and seemed worth hanging on to in view of its elegance.
You're quite right to say it has no point, as such.

Applying moods other than indicative to these entailed phrases does
make things a little difficult, it's true.  In the cases of 'imagines
(that) X', 'believes that/in X' and even I think 'denies (that) X',
one has to suppose that it is sufficient that a referent *could*
exist, although this does go against the spirit of the thing.  As I
said, it's an interesting and IMHO aesthetically pleasing feature of
T4, rather than an immutable law, and I've come down on the side of
accepting these exceptions rather than making things more complicated.

In the case of 'X is false', I actually don't have a way to translate
this in T4 such that X is expressed as a single constituent - and I
don't think there is a need for one.  The discussion of negativity
below should make this clear.

>>>
> - every word refers to an entity as well as describing it
Every *word*? How about words like "every", "some"?
<<<

Well, a large majority of words in any T4 utterance do have an obvious
referent which is relevant to that utterance.  Some quantifier words
co-refer with whatever is quantified - that is to say, in 'every
rabbit', each of the two words refers to every rabbit.

Other words, for example numbers, never have to co-refer with any
other word or phrase.  These words are very much in the minority,
however, and it does not introduce any inconsistency to assert that
they too have referents, and that the identities of these referents
are simply not relevant to the meaning communicated by the utterance.
The simplest way of achieving this is to state that they actually *do*
co-refer with the quantified word, so that 'six rabbits' behaves just
like 'every rabbit' in that each word co-refers with the phrase.
Again, this is in no way inconsistent - it is, so to speak, a cog
which does not mesh with the syntactic gears of the sentence.

>>>
> - a word in citation form may refer to any number of its potential
>   referents at any time, but not to less than 'one' referent
>   (defined as part of the lexical description of each word)
How do you capture the distinctions that other languages would
generally capture by means of determiners or quantifiers?
<<<

Just by means of determiners or quantifiers.  I'm afraid I've missed
the point of your question.

>>>
> - strict binary branching syntax
How do you cope with predicates with more than one argument?
<<<

There aren't any in T4.  So there.  :)

That of course begs the question of how to translate 'X gives Y to Z.'
etc.  This is achieved by having one word for 'gives (something)' and
another for 'gives to (somebody)', and then the syntax goes like:
{ X [ (gives Y) (to Z) ] }
Of course you could equally use a structure of the form:
( X { gives [ Y ( which-goes-to Z ) ] } )
.. or a number of other alternatives.  Actually I don't find that
this situation arises all that often, but it doesn't pose a big
problem when it does.

>>>
> - strictly head-first
Livagian used to be thus too, but has recently introduced head-
finality and head-mediality. The overriding principle is that
the sentence must be parsable with no lookahead and no backtracking.
Within the limits of that principle I try to allow as much freedom
as possible.
<<<

Hmmm, that's interesting.  I wonder whether T4 is parsable in the ways
you specify - I'm not syntactician enough to answer that question.  I
have a gut feeling that it is, but I couldn't swear to it.

>>>
I'm very much inclined to agree with John Q that engelangs with
similar goals will tend to converge on similar solutions. It's
in the very nature of engineering that that will happen. There
is such a thing as a best (or at least a better) solution. And
on the whole, people are likely to choose similar goals, for
functional reasons.
<<<

I agree, of course, that similar goals tend to lead to similar results
in most walks of life.  I wonder though whether any two conlangs'
goals are really sufficiently similar to make this an important
effect.  Goals are 'chosen for functional reasons' in the creation of
computer languages, encodings for long-distance communication, and so
forth ... but surely a language which would merit the term 'conlang'
in our sense would have aesthetic as well as functional goals, and it
is very unlikely in my view that two languages which share one set of
goals would also share the other to a sufficient extent.  I may be
wrong. :)

And continues:
>>>
JK wrote:
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
> > How do you say: 'Goblins never sleep?'
> By creating a referent which means 'the generality of goblins at all
> places and times', modifying it by 'is something other than asleep',
> and then asserting the existence of the resulting modified referent
> - that is, 'there exists a group of all goblins which is other than
> asleep'.  In T4 interlinear notation, {gen góblin not + asleep.}.
I understand how the nonexistent goblins aren't a problem, but the
handling of "never" seems wrong. Just because one does something
other than sleep doesn't mean one does not sleep. [...]
Rather, it seems to me that the 'referent' of the phrase should
be the absence/nonexistence of events of goblins sleeping.
<<<

I've just been contemplating this for half an hour, and I've come to
the conclusion that you're absolutely right - there is something wrong
with the way I've been thinking about this all these years.  I think
however that the flaw is not fatal, and that the syntax comes through
unscathed.

The problem, I think, is that 'not X' in T4 (that is,
{not + X} in T4 interlinear notation) doesn't mean 'something which
can be described as something other than X', but rather 'something
which cannot be described as X'.  That is, {not + X} describes the
inverse set to {X}.  Now I can translate 'Goblins never sleep.' as
'All goblins / cannot be described as asleep', that is, 'All goblins
are {not + asleep}.'  Does that make sense?

Thank you, And, for your careful attention and perceptive comments.

Jonathan.

[reply to jonathan underscore knibb at hotmail dot com]
--
'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
Auden/Britten, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'

Reply