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Re: THEORY: Deriving adjectives from nouns

From:Charles <catty@...>
Date:Friday, June 4, 1999, 19:28
Marcos Franco wrote:

> Particularly on that case ("pretty little girl(s)(') school") you have > an ambiguity, since it's not clear whether the school is "for girls" > or "of the girls".
It is a famous test case. There are many possible meanings. How many can your conlang unambiguously distinguish, and how intuitive are the constructions? Matthias once gratiously provided this other headache: "nice dancer" vs "nicely dancing one". (I cannot bring myself to say "nicely dancer"!) Precision is good, but so is ease of use. It seems every word is an encoded sentence.