Re: Degree in Ithkuil vs. S7
| From: | Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, March 29, 2004, 0:59 |
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Hi!
Jonathan Knibb <j_knibb@...> writes:
> I'm flattered you remember. Referring to the table on your
> introduction page, the major features T4 and S7 share seem to be:
>
> - a-priori: not derived from any other language
> - only one open lexical class, called full words or substantives
> - primarily head-first / primarily head-marking
> - agglutinating [maybe - still in flux in T4]
> - underspecified by default / extremely precise on demand
> - some of the substantives exist in a reduced form: the core form
> generalises the meaning [this is still in embryo in T4]
> - only valence and degree infixes are grammar-only [in T4, valence
> only, and the choice of valence is limited to 0 or 1]
Oh, that's indeed even more similarity than between S2 and T4!
> - every word refers to an entity as well as describing it
Same in S7. This is marked by the valence infix. With semantic
valence of 0, it is the entity, patientive or agentive valence 1 makes
the predicate.
> - a word in citation form may refer to any number of its potential
> referents at any time, but not to less than 'one' referent (defined
> as part of the lexical description of each word)
Same in S7: number is optional.
> - strict binary branching syntax
Different for S7, but the same for S2. :-)
S7 is not configurational: there is no rule like S -> NP VP, and then
VP -> V NP, but only S -> V NP NP and S -> V NP and S -> V. This is
due to the valence head-marking. And it is different from S2.
> - strictly head-first
Different: adjuncts are usually prefixed in S7, while the core is VOS.
> - an utterance consists of a single phrase, and is interpreted as the
> assertion of the existence of at least one referent of that phrase
Hmm, I don't know whether I understand that. How to you say: 'Goblins
never sleep?' (assuming that goblins don't exist)
> - the assertion of a sentence entails the assertion of the truth of
> each of its subphrases, when these are interpreted as sentences in
> their own right.
Different: S7 forces the use of an evidence/mood particle to clarify
how to interpret an utterance (and actually more evidence particles
for each subphrase).
> There is a very out-of-date summary of T4 at
>
http://knibb.free.fr/main.html, but this is probably more hindrance
> than help at this stage given how much the
> language has changed in the last eight months. :)