Re: Tlvn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

> Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 14/09/99 20:12:55  , BDW a =E9crit :
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Ed has promised me that once I delve
deeper into cognitive grammar (I've ordered Lakoff's Women, Fire and
Dangerous Things, and am reading van Valin's and LaPolla's Syntax), I'll get=20
closed to knowing what exactly the semantic definitions of 'noun' and 'verb'=20
are - other than 'a thingie you can get, see or think of', and 'an action yo=
u=20
can perform, or get performed to you' ;-). I don't see much use in separatin=
g=20
grammar from semantics - I've never had that enlighten me about a language.
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when you're enlightened, sparkle on us please.

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Oh, come on! Comrie is a good and industrious linguist - his _Tense and
Aspect_ are wonderful, his _Languages of the world_ delectable, and his
_Language Universals and Linguistic Typology_ is very readable and full
of interesting examples. One doesn't need to agree with a book to find
the book a good book (or vice versa). And who knows - perhaps Comrie is
a closet conlanger, who only became a linguist to discover new features
for his secret conlangs!
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sure. i'm just slandering gratuitously because i can't get what
Tom says. attacking is the best defense when ignorant and lazy.

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Besides, what Comrie contends in the pages mentingioned (59-61 - I hope
I have the same edition that Tom does, second), is that there is a
'continuum of control from agent to patient', which is expressed
differently in different languages. I can't find anything that might be
taken to mean that Comrie thinks English doesn't have a category like
indirect object.
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hmmm. Pottier's General Lingistics reads of aspectual continuum
but it seems pretty close to that. action embodies in various
actors (agent, instrument, patient, result, action, etc.) - among whom
prospective and retrospective ones.

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I think, if you make the semantic notions sufficiently atomic, then every
language could be said to express almost all of those semantic notions,
but groups them differently, thereby adding an extra meaning to those
groups of notions.

Let's invent two languages, that express three meanings in two lexemes:
           be       breathe      live
Kuliu           aku           |  liu
Ymur       Ym    |        hisu

So, both Kuliu and Ymur have the notion of be, breathe and live, but
distribute them differently - the same can happen with more abstract
meanings, like 'getting it done to you' or 'going someplace', that are
often expressed by mood or case - this is what Wierzbicka contends.
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exactly. you can't properly map agents and patients of that kind of verbs -=20
yes : verbs - without first referring to semantic categories such as "human;=20
body; alive; function". wordnet is not so dumb as it looks. and i wonder=20
where you got that dummy example because "iki" in jap means "breath" and its=20
chinese reading "soku" means "human existence".


> why not ?
> single blondjes awaited ?
>
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We have a few in stock, yes, but they will not be available for masculine
attention for the next twelve years, useless to insist ;-). The eldes has
just leart to ride a bicycle, and the youngest two still say 'af de stoel',
instead of 'van de stoel af'...
-------
af sta ik ervan af.


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I won't dream of contending! On the other hand, aren't fairy tales supposed
to be full of the received wisdom of the ancients?
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why, you should. these tales are still told to nice
linguistics student all over the world apparently.


> BTW i checked your vocablist. not bad indeed. conlangers who want
> to make their own vocablist should plunder it.
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Why, thank you! One thing I noticed when translating the glosses from
Dutch to English (apart from the fact that while I can write English
without taking recourse to a dictionary, but can't translate a hundred
single words without needing one), that Denden lexemes don't really
occupy the same semantic space that either English or Dutch lexemes
do... I fear that some of the glosses look like they've been lifted out
of Roget's verbatim!
----------------
that's the case for any vocab list unless you give examples
hinting at what boundaries of the word are.

----------------
(I've quite forgotten what exactly this thread was about, but
tangentially to other posts: anyone who wants to neatly divide syntax
and semantics into two separate water-tight compartments might take a
look at Wierzbicka's _The Semantics of Grammar_. If there's a grammatical
distinction in a language, it will in all probability exist to encode a
meaning, is her contention, and the different grammatical distinctions
are not divided equally in different languages. She's Polish/Australian,
by the way.)
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there are not, indeed. gradation of integration from clause to compound via=20
subclause and adjective - to begin with.
i learned that with "growing daikon in 20 days" (the first
japanese text i read - intended for 7 years-old kids) which i warmly=20
recommend to anyone facing problem with growing healthy hatsuka daikon.


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://denden.conlang.org/~bsarempt


mathias