Re: Comments on Tokana Reference Grammar

On Fri, 11 Dec 1998, John Cowan wrote:

> An astounding work!  Truly remarkable depth of coverage.
> I think Tokana takes the prize for Most Documented Artlang to date.
Thank you!

> A few bits that popped up as I was reading it:
>
> hypertext: some of the "TO NEXT PAGE" links are definitely broken.
Yes, I know.  Some of the broken links are definitely my fault (typos when
typing in the link names).  Some of them seem to have cropped up as 'bugs'
when I sent the html files to David.  I'll fix them all eventually.  For
now you'll have to go back and forth from the Table of Contents page,
I'm afraid.  (*Those* links should work.  I think I checked them all.)

> romanization:  I think it would be less confusing overall if final
> "h" were retained, and it was simply a low-level phonological rule
> that it isn't pronounced (but still affects stress), rather than using
> the grave accent.  Several rules, not just the stress rule, would
> be simplified thereby.
Sorry, but in this case aesthetics wins hands down over orthographic
rationality.  For some obscure reason, I abhor final V + "h"
spellings (I use them on the net only because of the unreliability
of diacritics).

> ilo: I look forward to seeing it.
I look forward to posting it, but as I remarked to Kristian, I have
other mountains to climb first!  :-)

> ellipsis vs. gaps:  I am troubled by the blanket statement that
> noun-phrase ellipsis in Tokana is generally allowed, coupled with
> the use of gaps to indicate coreferencing pronouns in embedded
> clauses.  That could lead to ambiguities like
>
>         Han believes that (gap) saw (ellipsis)
>         Han believes that (ellipsis) saw (gap)
>
> I think that allowing a resumptive pronoun in embedded clauses
> that have ellipsis would be very useful.  In Lojban, the resumptive
> is required for precisely this reason, so as to allow ellipsis
> to do its work.  Lojban uses a unique resumptive, but in Tokana,
> the existing determiners could do the work --- except that they
> have been preempted for precisely the opposite use!
>
> Or is the rule about ellipsis applicable only to main clauses?
I actually used to have a special class of resumptive pronouns, but
I got rid of them because they seemed unnaturalistic - too
loglang-ish!  :-)

As far as empty pronouns, this is a complicated business in Tokana,
and I must confess that I don't understand all the rules yet, although,
as the only native speaker, I can intuit them fairly well.

To answer your question as best I can, the following observations
should be noted:

(1) Gapping to indicate coreference with the topic appears to be
obligatory, whereas ellipsis is optional.

(2) Elided noun phrases are generally coreferential with the topic.
Thus an elided pronoun and a gap would probably never occur within the
same argument-domain.  Your sentence, "Han believes that saw", would
thus be unlikely to occur.

I've gotta go now, but I'll try to answer this question in more detail
when I have more time.  In the meantime, keep reading, and thanks for
taking this so seriously!  :-)

Matt.