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Re: Functions of Classifiers (in a conlang)

From:Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
Date:Monday, May 15, 2006, 18:47
> This avoidance-of-ambiguity-at-all-costs is a conlanger thing, not > something inherent in language. There's nothing wrong with *deciding* > to make your language unambiguous across the board, of course, but > there's nothing unnatural about ambiguity; having ambiguous sentences > isn't a design flaw unless you want it to be. >
I guess you're right... I'll give it some more thought.
> > "see I CLS.MAN and walk I and go I" isn't ambiguous, and it's not even > ambiguous (between i and ii, at least) if we allow null arguments: > "see I CLS.MAN and walk and go".
This solution wouldn't work in my case because (for another design purpose) I need serial verb like constructions, which generally entails have sequences of verbs without explicit conjunction. But I may just live with the ambiguity... either that or break the general tendency of serial verb constructions by having some explicit marker of dependence (as in, for example, Lahu IIRC, which adds -le to nonfinal verb in serial like constructions. Or I think it was Lahu... I'll have to check).

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Patrick Littell <puchitao@...>