Re: Circumfixes?

hi !
well your partly right.
every odd language produces no problems for their native speakers and
if it is one with  OSV syntax.
but is this really true ?
"problems" is a big word. i know from german, that when you read a
newspaper, you have not seldom to read up to 40 words until you can
finally understand which is actually meant, memorizing them and
reading becomes more dificult.
e.g. the verb can reveal a negtation or not, until you have read it you cant
be sure if all the sentence means something or the complete opposite of
it.
so to say "all natives master their own (odd) language" is ok
but we also know that averagely e.g. communication-in-english is a third shorter
than communication-in-german with the same content. so we better talk
of "disadvantages" than of "problems"
--
anyway i think the most interesting part in developing  a conlang is
to have new open space for neologisms , for terms which are only hard
to describe in a natural language.

and i think too that the most tricky part in designing is to
wipe out the ambiguity of  compound-words, whereas i see no other
solution than to force the use of prepositions. e.g. instead of
"spiderfear": a) "fear-of-spiders" or b) "fear-about-spiders",
the problem is to make the prepositions short enough , and i think
1 syllable is still too long. because the human mind has the
principle "simplicity over accuracy" so it rather cuts out a meaning
and causes ambiguity if the accuracy is a matter of longer words.

my question is : how do you solve this in your conlang ?
regards,
c.s.





CG> En réponse à claudio <claudio.soboll@...>:

>> hi when im allowed to freely answer to your mail , which i read with
>> interest.
>> i think as well that VSO is a more natural syntax, since the verb is
>> the most important part usually. i know that pushing the verb to the
>> end of a sentence will make it less readable.
>> however i hear that some linguists think of SVO as most natural
>> syntax.
>> also placing the adjectives behind a noun i think is more natural way,
>> following the rule again: the most important words come first, and in
>> this case nouns are more important than adjectives.
>>
>> regards,
>> c.s.
>>
CG> Well, probably the Japanese would disagree completely with you. Japanese is
CG> strictly SOV (very strictly) and head-last, and the Japanese don't have any
CG> trouble talking to each other, nor do they have any problem learning to talk
CG> their language. The problem with those explanations about one feature being more
CG> natural than the other, is that since languages have evolved for millenia now,
CG> if there were really features that are more natural than others, why do modern
CG> languages still show them. If those features were really that unnatural, they
CG> should have disappeared of all languages by now.

CG> Still, I agree that SVO, and specially VSO orders are more _practical_ than SOV
CG> orders, because in SOV the last slot has to be taken by the verb, and obliges
CG> the sentence to go to an end quite fast, so that you don't forget the beginning.
CG> VSO and SVO orders are freeer to add things and make long sentences, full of
CG> afterthoughts, without losing track too easily. In fact, my personal experience
CG> in conlanging (I've tried nearly everything: SVO, SOV, VSO, VOS - still have to
CG> try OVS and OSV -, head-first and head-last, as well as incredible mixings and
CG> mismatches of all those :)) ) says that at the end, when the system is well
CG> balanced, the practicality of every system is quite the same and no system is
CG> more difficult to handle than the other.

CG> Christophe.

CG> http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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