Re: Can your conlang do this?

Note to self: do not post to list late at night.  You may muck up the headers.

On 10/28/05, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...> wrote:
> Punctuation matters.
>
> First letter:
[snip love-letter]
> ==============
>
> Second letter:
[snip same words re-punctuated to form hate letter]
> ==============
>
> Can your conlang do this?
Not yet, as I haven't got far enough with it.  (Still really at the
concept stage :->)  However, I have had an ability *like* this in mind
for a while.  Since my maybe-up-and-coming language will have a
completely explicit tree structure (not suitable for humans), but will
lack puns, I will need some other forms of word-play.  One of these is
to have two sentences which flatten to the same list, but are
different trees.  e.g.:

    *
   / \
  /   \
 *     *
/ \   / \
A  B  C  D

and

  *
 / \
A   *
   / \
  B   *
     / \
    C   D

I am unsure as to the actually punning-possibility of this, but it sounds fun.