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Re: OT: PL/I was Re: Please welcome . . .

From:Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
Date:Thursday, December 18, 2003, 20:34
At 01:29 PM 12/18/03 -0500, you wrote:
>On Thu, Dec 18, 2003 at 09:47:56AM -0800, Gary Shannon wrote: > > An interesting idea. I did try, about 3 or 4 years > > ago, to design an RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) > > conlang inspired by the Forth programming language. > >There is an alien conlang that operates on this principle, although >its name escapes me. Interesting cultural notes about politicians >pushing a word and then forgetting about it until the end of their >speech when it changes the whole meaning of what they were saying, etc. >Comments about humans generally being unable to speak the language in >real time because we can't keep a deep enough mental stack.
I doubt that humans are truly unable to keep a deep enough mental stack, but it may take some practice to be able to keep a stack that deep. Both Cicero and his hearers were presumably able to. (And I do mean hearers, because many of his works were originally presented orally as speeches and only later read.) Do any of our Latin experts in the list have a figure for how many verbs Cicero tended to pile at the ends of his periodic sentences? Isidora