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Re: CHAT: what fruit bat?

From:Tristan Alexander McLeay <anstouh@...>
Date:Friday, January 4, 2002, 23:24
On Fri, 4 Jan 2002 kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 04, 2002 at 12:54:54PM +1100, Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote: > > On Fri, 4 Jan 2002 kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET wrote: > > > > > No pyramids in Tsort afaik, the pyramids are in Djelibeybi ... > > > > > Are you saying that Terry is wrong? I was quoting from a book written by > > him. > > What I wrote is based on the novels rather than the commentaries which I > haven't read. I haven't quite read all the novels yet, but afaik none of > them give Tsort more than a passing mention. Although when Djelibeybi > vanishes in Pyramids, due to some kind of dimensional rotation, the armies > of Tsort and Ephebe are brought face to face in a tense stand-off. > > > so some of the > > pyramids originally built in Djelibeybi might've moved into Tsort as it > > grew larger. > > If you mean that they were built on territory formerly part of Dj. which > later became Tsort, then yes, that's quite possible, although I got the > impression that the vast majority were built along the course of the Djel.
I don't know... where talking about the Disc. Anything's possible.
> > > Oh, and he should get the prize for the most minimalist of conlangs, should > > > he not? Ook? Eek! > > > > SQUEAK! SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK! ;P > > Well, we could get very philosophical here, about the nature of language > and communication and so on. Since _SQUEAK_ has only one token there is > no possibility of contrast and thus no information can be transmitted in > the normal sense. [Lemma - there is no doubt a school of thought that > would contrast SQUEAK! and !SQUEAK (not_squeak)]. To my mind, SQUEAK! is > the equivalent of _om_ or the Taoists' "uncarved block". That is it > contains the totality of the universe, everything that has been, is, > will be, might have been, possibly could be etc etc, in every > conceivable and inconceivable universe. Since SQUEAK! thus says it all, > it's the Last Word, the ultimate conversation stopper. Since it conveys > everything, it cannot semantically reference anything in particular. > > With Ook and Eek however, even ignoring possible suprasegmental varients > like Ook?, Ook!, Eek! and so on, or the possibility of compounds like > Ook-ook?, we have a basic binary contrast upon which any degree of > complexity can potentially be built once a set of protocols have been > agreed. In principle the entire corpus of Pratchett, Dickens, > Shakespeare and Didactylos could be coded into Ook-eek and recovered > with no loss of information.
Oh my... The best I can come back with to that is: Death, Albert and the crow are able to understand the rat's squeaks just as easily as any other language. Therefore, while without context, _SQUEAK_ can quite potentially mean anything---just as `right' can either be the opposite of `wrong' or `left', or be a misspelling of `right' or a person's surname---in the correct context---perhaps a number of such squeaks with a picture of Pratchett, Dickens, Shakespeaker and/or Didactylos nearby, anyone able to understand the DoR's language to an acceptible degree would have little ---if any---trouble understanding it, and if they were bilingual, they might be able to translate them back into the originating language with no loss of information. :P Tristan

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Patrick Dunn <tb0pwd1@...>Zhongwen (Chinese) Question