Re: OT: THEORY Fusion Grammar

Gary Shannon wrote:

> Steek - Light
> er    - it
> nu    - now
> mee   - with
> de    - the
> niet-brandende - [ignition device?]
> fakkel - torch
> aan    - up
> om     - in-order
> de     - the
> deur   - door
> te     - to
> openen - open
>
> Light it now  with the [ignition device?]  torch  up
> in-order the door to open.
> Light it now  with (the [ignition device?])  torch  up
>  in-order (the door) to open.
> Light it now  (with (the [ignition device?]))  torch
> up  (in-order (the door) to open).
The problem is that "mee" goes with "er", not with the unlit
("not-burning") torch. (I don't know Dutch all that well, but I'm fluent
in Zelda, and I know that you use Deku sticks to light torches.) You
somehow need to group "it ... with" while excluding "now". (Actually
"there ... with", like the English word "therewith" or Mark Twain's
favorite German word "damit", if that gives you any clues). You could
arbitrarily decide to group "now" with "er" or with "mee" for parsing
purposes, but it would be an artificial grouping. You'd have to do
something like your "bookend adjacency" rule but that's not what I
understood by "adjacent" in your original message. I'd consider "er ...
mee" to be two related elements that aren't immediately adjacent, unless
you can define "element" in such a way that "er ... mee" can be
considered a single "element", and broaden the definition of "adjacency"
to include "surrounding".

You might be able to work something out for verbs with separable
prefixes like "aansteken", but it would be tricky to match the details
of the language (Dutch word order as I've heard can be pretty
intricate). Probably something similar to what you have, with "aan"
being the last thing added to the phrase, would be workable, if you're
not concerned about excluding the possibility of adding "aan" to
arbitrary verbs that it doesn't belong with, adding arbitrary prefixes
to "steken" that don't belong with it, etc.

I may be able to come up with better examples if I have the time to read
through more Dutch game walkthroughs (like having a built-in Rosetta
Stone if you're familiar with the games), but this was just one example
I had handy since I brought it up a couple of years ago on Conlang and
remembered where to look for it.

> (((Light it) now)  (with (the [ignition device?])))
> torch  up  (in-order (the door) to open).
> (((((Light it) now)  (with (the [ignition device?])))
> torch)  up)  (in-order (the door) to open).
>
> Now we have the apparent complete sub-sentence: "Steek
> er nu mee de niet-brandende fakkel aan." parsed, and
> we need only fuse it with the "reason-why" modifier
> ((om (de deur) te) openen).
>
> This is a first draft only, and I'm sure it could be
> improved on. I'll need to give more thought to
> seperable prefixes (alias attachable particles) in
> Dutch and German.
>
> --gary

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