Re: THEORY: Re : Universal Translation Language

Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> At 2:58 pm -0700 28/5/99, Charles wrote:
> >I don't feel comfortable without some kind of adjectives, though.
>
> But a lot of natlangs feel quite comfortable :)
Stative verbs as in Japanese, maybe? I'd like to learn how they work.

> >Ido's part-of-speech marking really simplifies the grammar;
>
> It also IMO fossilizes a pattern of language analysis derived from
> traditional grammars of Latin & Greek which are alien to many natlangs.
Yes, and it might be fun to go in the opposite direction,
have some sentences without "verbs", and such.

> >prepositions are more plainly seen as "transitive adverbs",
> >which is unclear in English even though we use them that way:
> >"go up" versus "go up the stairs", rather than "ascend the stairs".
>
> Indeed - which calls into question, surely, the traditional analysis into
> 'adverbs' and 'prepositions'.
Adverbs and particles and trace elements and other miscellaneous things.
A discussion earlier (on sci.lang?) evolved to a consensus that there
are far more than 5 or 10 "parts of speech", depending on how detailed
the analysis ... But an IAL might be easier to learn with only a
simplified few of them. I have argued before that creoles might be
"the" way for a useful IAL; there is the example of the Lingua Franca.
This runs completely counter to the purpose of a loglang, naturally.

> >Might turn out a bit Ent-ish but that's OK ...
>
> Umm - that might be a good thing for an IAL!  If it takes all afternoon to
> utter one sentence & the rest of the evening to get the reply, it might
> give the two speakers time to cool down and think - and we might get less
> conflict & more harmony.  But somehow, I find it this somewhat unlikely.
> As any Ent would point out, if you are patient enough to listen, humans are
> "very hasty" creatures  :)
I wanted to sneak in a comment by one of the AUXLANG people, that
people only really hear and understand about 50% of the words said.
Redundancy may be what gives us time to think during all the talking.