Re: Telona grammar, part 2

Jim Grossmann wrote:
>>>
Thanks for your responses;    Telona becomes more interesting by the post.
I don't understand it all, but if I ask more questions, maybe that'll
change.
<<<

I'm glad you like it!  Certainly I'm finding your questions stimulating to
answer - I hope my answers are intelligible and helpful.

>>>
1)    If you've got two word classes, referential words and operators,
should you say that Telona has no parts of speech?
<<<

Hoom, hrm, well, no, not really. :)  Earlier incarnations of Telona admitted
openly to having two word classes - but then I got the idea that I could
limit the number of operators to two (one of which would have an inverse),
and then it all went to my head a bit, and I hid the operators in affixes so
I could claim they weren't really words.  :))

Maybe a better way to put it would be to say that Telona has one open class
of content words, and one closed class consisting of three function words,
one of which is realised as a zero morpheme and the others as affixes.  But
it doesn't roll off the tongue nearly as nicely. :)

>>>
2)    Regarding Telona's head first structure, you write:
"...Even when all the words co-refer, as in 'tyha dene', there are good
pragmatic reasons for considering 'tyha dene' to be a kind of 'tyha' (man),
and 'dene tyha' to be a type of 'dene' (tall thing)."
I think you should specify said pragmatic reasons.   If the referential word
that names the biggest set always comes first, aren't you using syntax to
differentiate types of words analogous to, say, attributive nouns vs. head
nouns?
<<<

Ah - perhaps I used the word 'subset' in haste.  In the phrase X Y, it's not
set Y, but set X Y, which is a subset of set X.  In other words, adding Y to
the phrase causes a restriction of set X to its subset X Y.  Similarly,
adding X to phrase Y causes a restriction of set Y to its subset Y X.  The
relative size of sets X and Y is largely irrelevant (and really meaningless
- is the set 'air' bigger or smaller than the set 'cold'?).

Of course, set Y does sometimes happen to be a subset of set X, in which
case the word X becomes redundant in the phrase.  This may happen when the
listener is unaware of this relationship between the sets, or when both are
aware but the speaker wishes to emphasise the status of Y as a member of set
X, as with the first two words of this utterance:

T:  Nico làsán dybele ehe.
Ti: nico là - né dybele + re
Ei: (((friend you) - gen) (support + I))
E:  You'll support me, won't you, my friend...?

The reasons for considering 'tyha dene' and 'dene tyha' as pragmatically
distinct are quite difficult to describe briefly (and I don't have a good
track record at brevity :) ), but I'll try.  One reason relates to the
information transfer in the discourse, and degrees of 'givenness' of various
concepts.  In a discussion about the members of a football team, one might
want to say, for example, 'The tall one is particularly agile.'  The most
likely translation of the first part would be simply 'dene', or perhaps
'dene'r', where the clitic 're' (clitics are perfectly good words of the
open class, they just have their own phonology :)) ) means something like
'the one we both know, you know the one, although we haven't mentioned him
as such yet'.  However, if the topic of the members of the team had been
dropped for a few sentences, and the speaker wanted to bring it back into
the discourse, he/she might well identify the topic referent as 'tyha dene',
just to bring back the fact that they were talking about 'tyha'.  Now, in a
different discussion, say concerning the relative heights of men and women,
one might want to say something like 'tall *men* are taller than tall
*women*'.  This would certainly be translated using 'dene tyha',
topicalising 'dene', and emphasising 'tyha' as the contrastive element of
the phrase.

But I was going to leave all that until I'd explained sentence structure ...
oh well. :)

>>>
3) Regarding the + & - operators.   Can you indicate reciprocal action by
combining these?   How do you indicate reflexive action?   What kinds of
sentences do the work of structures in more conventional languages with
linking verbs like "become," "resemble," and "be less than"?
<<<

Firstly: no, reciprocal action is translated using the word 'luni', which in
any given interpretation of the phrase (Y + luni)), refers to any of the
referents of Y which are possible in context but to which Y is not actually
referring (deep breath).  So, in:

T:  Tyhas pé tewas kè luini.
Ti: tyha - pé tewe - kè + luni
Ei: ((man - small-group) ((look-at - each) + other-than-self))
E:  The men looked at each other.

...'luni' refers to each of the referents of 'tewas ke', but whichever
referent of 'tewas ke' is being considered, 'luni' refers to another one.

Secondly: reflexive action, if not described by a different word from the
corresponding transitive action, is indicated by the word 'wa', usually
translated as 'self', but actually corresponding rather nicely to the Czech
'se', by referring to the referent of its immediate governor.

T:  Tyhas pé tewas kè wai.
Ti: tyha - pé tewe - kè + wa
Ei: ((man - small-group) ((look-at - each) + self))
E:  Each man looked at himself.

Thirdly: 'become' is described by a number of words which form part of a
group of words indicating aspect and tense.  The exact word used depends
upon the point in the becoming to which you want to refer, and to the
directionality of the becoming (becoming X, or becoming not-X).  For
example:

T:  Týha mapuko ny`tas le.
Ti: týha mapuko ny`ta - le
Ei: (man ((angry red) - become-narrative)))
E:  The man became red with anger.

T:  Be eluha nune maupuko nýta ...
Ti: be + tyha nune + mapuko nýta
Ei: (rel + (man (becoming + (angry red)))))
E:  As the man was becoming angry, ...

'Resemble' I haven't tried to translate yet, but I expect it'll be a
straightforward X resemble + Y construction.  'Be less than' - do you mean
'be less (tall, red, happy) than'?  If so, I'm having a little trouble with
that ... I'll let you know!

>>>
I know it may be premature to ask, but how do you indicate the quantities of
referents when you wish to specify them?   Also, can your language do
without pro-forms?
<<<

Quantity is indicated by [X - quantity-word], like 'tyhas pe' in the
examples above.  The quantity words are not generally used outside of this
construction (although they *do* have referents of their own, dammit, I'm
just not sure what they are!).

Proforms will be an extremely important feature of Telona in its finished
state, and I'm working actively on that aspect of it.  You may be interested
to know that the current model involves two classes, one more pronominal and
one more, yes, pro-verbal ... but any word would have one of each class to
describe it in any given context.  I haven't got very far with that yet, but
I know that when I have a system of proforms it will make Telona much easier
to use and more flexible.

>>>
I've often dreamed of designing a language whose sheer simplicity makes it
exotic.   So far, you've come closer to realizing that vision than I ever
have, and your effort is fascinating.   As a stodgy old cuss, I suspect that
you will eventually need more operators than the 0-form, +, and - if you
want to avoid impractical ambiguities. You may even need another word class.
But we'll see, won't we?
<<<

Another word class?  Never!  Never, I tell you!  <evil laugh>  Telona did
start out with five or six operators, but having battled to keep the number
down, I'm not going to give up easily.  There's plenty of scope for little
disambiguating words here and there instead (which don't have to form
separate classes!).

As soon as I can, I think I'm going to have to get a Telona grammar up on
the web.  It might take some time to get the lexicon up to speed, but I
think it would be worth it.  Do you agree?

Jonathan.

'O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages...'
W. H. Auden, 'Hymn to St. Cecilia'