Re: CHAT: what fruit bat?

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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