Re: Four things: Was: Comparison of philosophical languages

Bryan Maloney:
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, And Rosta <a.rosta@L...> wrote:
>
> > The unbogus argument in favour of unambiguous word boundaries is not
> > that it assists in real-time comprehension but rather that it is a
> > necessary ingredient in a language free from ambiguity (in the technical
> > sense of that word -- multiple definite and distinct meanings for the
> > same string)
>
> The desirability of said unique precision is another matter
> altogether, I take it
Yes.

The easy option is to let the meaning of strings be vague and partially
indeterminate. The hard option is to design ambiguity out or in. As
for whether you'd prefer to design it in or out - well, poetry is
the obvious prime exploiter of ambiguity & it's impossible to imagine
Shakespeare's sonnets in an unambiguous language, but speaking as a
poet, I think I probably strive to avoid unwanted ambiguity more often
than I deliberately exploit it, though since the former is done less
consciously than the latter, it's hard to to be sure.

But each to their own. The essence of engelanging is that the design
goals are selected to be axiomatic. They are not preordained by any
natural laws of language or conlanging.

--And.