Re: THEORY: Natural language change (was Re: Charlie and I)

Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> > > even putting verbs strictly last ...
> > > but maybe that is really a major advantage of SOV typology.
Now, carefully excising Tom's reply's punctuation ...

> i dont think sytntax or morphology have much to do
> with orthographical conventions spoken speech rarely
> has highly marked punctuations anyways its just a
> string of phonemes operating according to particular
> rules the orthographic conventions are quite
> separate if you think about it
... and you can see how it starts to melt.
What started me on this was the example where
punctuation made a very critical difference,
and both Nik and I had trouble deciphering
the simple idiomatic expression of a child.

"fe me sempre plu sagi e precipue effortia memorar"

It looked something like:
"make me more wise and especially strong to memorize"

But it means more like:
"make me more wise, but YOU be sure to remember"

So, I'm talking about attachment ambiguities.
Punctuation and intonation help a whole lot.