Re: Metalanguage query

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:22:39 +0000, Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@...>
wrote:

>Telona is mutating still, but remains true to its allnoun-plus-operators
>syntax and its characteristic binary-tree syntax with obligatory
>topic-comment structure.  Anyone who hasn't seen it and is interested -
>John, certain features are similar to, though much less developed than,
your
>Ithkuil - is welcome to inspect the sadly out-of-date document at
>knibb.free.fr/main.html.
_________
Jonathan:  I definitely see many conceptual similarities to Ithkuil, both
in our purposes and in the actual language components themselves.  However,
the only thing I see about Telona that is "less developed" than Ithkuil is
the fact that you haven't completed it yet.  In reading your Telona
document, what strikes me is that you and I have addressed similar
conceptual issues, but Ithkuil does so almost exclusively at the
morphological and lexico-semantic levels, while Telona does so mostly at
the morpho-syntactical and syntactical levels.  I find your syntax
astoundingly original and elegant, with enough complexity to really give a
fellow conlanger something to chew on.  It gives me ideas on how much more
I could have "compressed" Ithkuil sentences with a hierarchical tree-like
syntax such as yours.  Your idea of co-reference across an entire sentence
adds a whole new layer to what is possible in a grammar.  As for any
critique, it seems to me that 3 operators might be insufficient to handle
non-action type sensarios such as affective states, hypothetical sentences,
counterfactual "what if's", etc. I'll need to read it again to see if I'm
getting it all.  Please continue to post your progress.  I'm quite
intrigued.