Re: NATLANG: Chinese parts of speech (or lack thereof)

On Aug 11, 2004, at 12:54 AM, Philippe Caquant wrote:
> --- cph9fa <cph9fa@...> wrote:
>> If you're reading this on a computer, close or
>> minimize all the
>> windows. See all those pretty little pictures (aka
>> icons)? Viola!
>> Modern pictograms. And they all fit within a perfect
>> square. :-)
> Yes, exactly. I heard somebody called them icons :-)
> (and by the way, what kind of thing is a smiley ?) But
> that looks very much like Chinese characters,
> revisited. The difference is that in the toolbar,
> there is no syntax to join the different icons
> together: every one is an individual one (although
> there are already possibilities for grouping some
> icons together). Is this a new language to be born ?
> Shall we get sentences, or full texts, made out of
> icons ? That's exciting. And even more exciting if you
> take into account the fact that (for the first time ?)
> the written form will not be depending on the
> phonetics. "Speech comes first, then does writing ?"
> Haha ! Not at all.
> =====
> Philippe Caquant
Actually, a friend of mine recently had as an AIM away message a
'story' written entirely in smileys, followed by a translation.


-Stephen (Steg)
  "so pull me under your weather patterns
   the cold fronts and the rain don't matter
   cause a sunburst's what i needed"
      ~ 'hurricane' by something corporate