Re: Futurese

On Wednesday 01 May 2002 13:45, Javier BF wrote:
> "Weird convoluted sentences to express a simple action"?
> What do you mean? To me, the way German builts its
> sentences seems "weird" and "convoluted", but it doesn't
> mean that they're so in absolute terms; to a German
> speaker that's the "normal" and "easy" way while the
> Spanish way would be the "weird" and "convoluted" one.
        First, a little free advice. Your blood pressure has been visibly rising in
your most recent posts. Calm down. :) You asked for your auxlang to be picked
apart, and that's what you are getting.
        Ok, let's see if I can define some simple and unconvoluted sentences that
communicate, "A horse distrubs me."
        1. Horse disturb I.
        2. Horse wa disturb I o.
Ok, the first sentence depends upon sentence ordering in order to make it
clear that the horse, not I, am the one doing the disturbing. The second
sentence, by marking actor/patient, topic/focus, (however you want to do it),
allows you freer word order. Implicitly encoded into "disturb" is the notion
that disruption is being imposed upon me by the horse. (Which takes care of
your usage of "by" and "upon".)
        You may be asking yourself, what's the difference between sentence 2 and
your example? Well, using "by" and "upon" is extrenuous; it's not that they
are wrong to use, but that it tells too much information for a simple
sentence. More complex sentences, of course, will need these words, but at a
base level for an auxlang, simplicity reigns supreme. The first sentence is
dead simple; all one needs to know is that word order is significant and
three words. The second is slightly more complex, but not significantly so:
the speaker only needs to know that the actor/topic/whatever is _always_
followed by "wa," and that the patient/focus/whatever is _always_ followed by
"o." Then upon that foundation, you can start building more complex rules.
For example, involving word order:
        1. Horse wa disturb I o.
        2. I o disturb (horse wa).
The first could be glossed as "A horse disturbs me," while the second (here
I've chosen to emphasize agentivity) as "I am disturbed (by a horse)."
        Now, let's contrast that with "By a horse pred. disturb I upon." For one,
you've got an article, which a significant portion of the world has trouble
with. Next, there's nothing that indicates what preposition should be used;
prepositions are notoriously language-specific and their usage varies. For
instance, one language might say "I fly ON a plane" while another might say
"I fly IN a plane." Finally, as I already pointed out, prepositions are not
necessary in such a simple sentence. Hence, it is excessively convoluted.


> >        I'm also wondering why it is necessary to express "upon", since
>
> you already
>
> >have marked the actor with "by". My guess is that this is some form of
> >accusative marking.
> > If such is the case, what prompts you to dictate both
> >articles and accusative particles for an auxlang?
>
> Because that frees word order from the task of determining
> those grammatical relationships.
        Then why are you using prepositions, instead of something along the lines of
what I proposed above?

> About the articles, the "problem" with them is not that
> there's something "difficult" about its conceptual part
> but that the use natural languages make of them is fully
> idiomatic and thus illogic and unpredictable. Articles
> can be very useful, and even make THE difference in some
> contexts, if they're used consistently according to their
> exact meaning.
        Ok, care to enlighten us as to how you are going to make articles
predictable? You seem to be assuming that we should instinctively know all
the stuff you've been telling us. I agree that articles can be useful, but I
am also aware that sometimes they are overused. Indirect articles expecially
could be ditched to no great loss.
        :Peter