Re: OT: free word-order conlangs (was: Re: OT: THEORY Fusion Grammar

Hi And,

On Sun, 16 Jul 2006, And Rosta wrote:
>
> The discussion of Warlpiri prompts me to solicit information
> about conlangs in which word-order is in some sense very free but
> without ambiguity resulting from the freedom.
>
> 1. How free is free? Is freedom limited to within some
> subsentential domain such as the clause? Within the domain of
> freedom are all orders permissible, or just very many/most?
>
> 2. What mechanism allows the freedom (without ambiguity)? Rampant
> concord? Or something else?
I *think* it will be "something else".   See below.


> 3. Is the freedom structural or just 'informational'? By
> 'structural freedom' I mean that linear precedence is of little
> importance to syntax. By 'informational freedom', I mean that
> even if syntax is highly sensitive to linear precedence, the
> grammar nevertheless has resources such that for any combination
> of a meaning and an order of content words, some syntactic
> structure is available to express that combination. (An example
> of 'informational freedom' would be "The farmer killed the
> duckling" vs "The duckling was killed by the farmer", allowing
> both F-K-D and D-K-F orders, but with structural changes.)
>
> The Latin & Warlpiri natlang examples of freedom strike me as
> comparatively uninteresting, because they can be analysed in
> terms of flat clause structures without internal ordering --
> nothing that looks like thoroughgoing scrambling. But conlangs
> very possibly have more of interest to offer here...
>
> (To start the ball rolling: my Livagian has no structural freedom
> but lots of informational freedom, using a mechanism other than
> rampant concord, and no limitation to certain subsentential domains.)

To extend your example of informational freedom, with three
content words, using simple transformations and auxiliaries:
 F=farmer, Agent; D=duckling, Patient; K=killed, Verb

 F-K-D: "The farmer killed the duckling"
 F-K-D: "What the farmer killed was the duckling"
 F-K-D: "It was the farmer who killed the duckling"
 F-D-K: "The farmer was the duckling's killer"
 K-D-F: "The killer of the duckling was the farmer"
 K-D-F: "Who killed the duckling?  It was the farmer"
 K-D-F: "Who killed the duckling was the farmer"
 D-K-F: "The duckling was killed by the farmer"
 D-K-F: "The duckling's killer was the farmer"
 D-F-K: "It was the duckling the farmer killed"
 D-F-K: "The duckling was what the farmer killed"
and even
 K-F-D: "Killed by the farmer was the duckling"

The information content of these sentences is arguably
the same, though the focus and emphasis changes.

At this stage, I don't know whether any of my (currently
only 5) conlangs can match the ability of English to so
thoroughly reorder content words in an utterance, while
still conveying the same content.  However, one is almost
certain to be able to; that one is Shilgna, whose basic
premise is that its word order is the reverse of the English
word order for the same utterance, and whose vocabulary
(for convenience) is exactly that of English!  I will try to
post some examples of this soon at:
http://conlang.pbwiki.com/

When I've created some more texts in Uiama and Ye Yugi
Ga-ba Bu, I'll have a better feeling for the different ways
the words can combine to express the same content.  Right
now, I don't have a large enough corpus to be able to
describe their grammars with any precision; I just have a
"feel" for what is right in each of them.  From the existing
corpus, it seems that Uiama does not have strict word order,
but does have some precedence rules; eg a sentence in SVO
order could as readily be in SOV or even VSO order, and the
various particles (including pronouns and prepositions) need
to appear in a relatively strict order with respect to each of
S, V and O.  I will attempt the kind of permutation game I
played above with your farmer and duckling, on a couple of
the existing sentences, and see which forms are practicable,
then report back.  (Sometime!)

As for Patera, alas!  All I have, basically, is the sound of
the language, as recorded in a couple pof childrens' verses
and a brief transcript of part of an ancient conversation
by a young student, who probably didn't understand it all
at the time, and who has since (he claims) forgotten the
language entirely.  So since there is only fragmentary
internal evidence available to us, I fear I may be staring
at another Phaistos Disk ...

Finally, all that remains of the language of the people who
named "Hel Vôcre" is the name of the village itself, which
suggests a bastard ancestry of a Germanic tribe fathered
on a raped and dying alternate Rome in which electronic
computers had been the mainstay of civil records for at
least two or three lustra.  I am, sadly, confident that
*this* particular language will be of no help in your search
for Freedom of Information[al expression]!

Regards,
Yahya

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