Re: The Language Code

On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 04:46:53PM -0600, Dirk Elzinga wrote:
> Hey there.
>
> Here is the Language Code. The goal of the code is to provide a quick
> typological profile of a language.
Nice :-) Let me try this on Ebisedian and see what I get ...

[snip]
> -=[ The Language Code ]=-
>
> T       type
>        f       fictional
>        l       logical
>        x       auxiliary
>        p       personal
>        n       natural
Tf

> P       phonology
>        t       tonal
>                c       contour tones
>                        r       register
>                        #       number of tones
>                l       level tones
>                        !       downstep/downdrift
>                        #       number of tones
>        p       phonemes
>                +/-     allophony
>                #       consonant phonemes
>                #       vowel phonemes
>        s       syllable template {c,v}
Ptl2p30,36scv(c)

Hmm, this doesn't seem adequate to express what happens in Ebisedian...
although there are only two phonemic pitches, they are variously realized
as low, high, low rising, high falling, or even rising-falling.

> M       morphology
>        a       agglutinating (+/-)
>        i       isolating (+/-)
>        f       inflecting (+/-)
>        h       head-marking (+/-)
>        d       dependent-marking (+/-)
>        t#      number of distinct tenses
>        a#      number of distinct aspects
>        m#      number of distinct moods
>        t/a#    number of distinct tense/aspect combinations (where a
>                meaningful distinction between tense and aspect cannot be
>                made) (also t/m, a/m, etc)
>        c#      number of distinct cases
Ma+i-f++h-d+t0a/m9c9

How about number of noun numbers and genders?

> S       syntax
>        b       basic word order {v,s,o} (may substitute dots when the
>                terms s = 'subject' and o = 'object' are not meaningful)
>        arg     argument alignment
>                n       nominative/accusative
>                e       ergative/absolutive
>                a       active/stative
>                h       hierarchical
>                t       topic/focus
>                s       split/mixed system
Hmm, how to indicate free word order?

Also, I have NO idea how to describe Ebisedian's case system within this
framework... based on previous discussion, it might make sense to have a
'semantic alignment' category?

> L       lexicon
>        c       compounding/incorporation (+/-)
>        d       derivation (+/-)
>        #       number of words so far
[snip]

Lc++d++#461

Maybe we need a corpus field as well? (Remember the LeGraTeC ratings?)


T

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