Re: Tong-cho-la, a philosophical language

On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 03:09:55PM -0700, Joe Fatula wrote:
> From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
> Subject: Re: Tong-cho-la, a philosophical language
>
>
> > I *like* this idea. Suddenly, I realize that my objection to taxonomic
> > languages is because once you've uttered a word the first time, subsequent
> > utterances of it seem like a restatement of the obvious. Our brains (or at
> > least mine) tend to mask on repetitive things that carry no new
> > information; that's why two very similar-sounding words are easily
> > confused -- the brain ignores what it incorrectly assumes as redundant
> > information, and so has trouble catching that one little difference.
>
> Then there's the opposite situation, where you end up needing more
> specificity than was originally used.  In Tong-cho-la, you simply add on
> more classifiers.  Which is really all that English (or any other language)
> would do.
Exactly. Which is why I said, you've hit the nail upon the head on this
point.

> > Your approach is an elegant solution to this: specify the taxonomy once,
> > and then use what is effectively a more memorable shorthand for it
> > thereafter. Reminds me a lot of the "counters" (or whatever they are
> > called) in the Chinese languages. With this approach, you could even have
> > a easily-learned taxonomic language.
>
> The counting words like "ge" in "liang ge yue" for "two months"?  It's
> something like that, but used all the time.
Yes, that's what I'm referring to. Although "ge" is really too generic to
be of much use. Some of the other counters like "zhi" (in "i zhi kou" -
one dog) are more useful: after mentioning "i zhi kou", you can refer to
"na zhi" (that dog), "ling wai i zhi" (another dog), etc..

> > Suppose A,B,C,D,X,Y are taxonomic roots, then if we have two words ABXCD
> > and ABYCD, normally it would be very easy to confuse them, because
> > everytime you said them, the listeners have to listen carefully to every
> > syllable. However, if we introduce a shorthand specifier Z, we can use ZX
> > to refer to ABXCD and ZY to refer to ABYCD. It is effectively behaving
> > like a pronoun of some sort.
>
> Actually, it's more like AX and AY, because the first part of the word (the
> article) tells us which class it belongs to, and can be used as a pronoun in
> its own right.
Right, OK.

> > Then if ABXCE comes up in the conversation, we'd use ZXD to refer to ABXCD
> > and ZXE to refer to ABXCE. Basically, the Z constructions pick up the
> > *differences* between similar-sounding words and bring it to the fore
> > front of attention. This way, we eliminate the comprehension fatigue that
> > comes with a multitude of very similar-sounding words occurring near each
> > other.
>
> We could do this.  Or we could restate the whole word until everyone's
> familiar with the three different concepts.  But soon enough, we'd just be
> using the shortest part of each that differentiates them from each other.
Exactly.

> > A programmer is a device for turning computer programs into spaghetti. A
> > *good* programmer is a device for turning spaghetti into computer
> programs.
>
> Then you could say that having a programmer and a good programmer has a net
> result of zero...
But that would be a false statement (if you're a C programmer). Not that
it matters one bit, though. :-P


T

--
Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we would
behave very differently from those who now hold it---when, in truth, in order
to get power we would have to become very much like them. -- Unknown