Re: Re : Malat

Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:

> > > Garrett :
> > > Well, over here, i'm going to make drink and eat the same word. Is there a
> > > necessary distinction? The equivalent in english is implied by what is
> > > actually consumed (food or liquid).
> > > Mathias :
> > > Your verb would not be a Malat translation of *to drink* but another concept.
> >
> > Not an exact translation, but a perfectly usable word in the situation.
>
> No doubt. But I regard the fact you have nice precise verbs like *to cut into
> twigs* and *to slurp* also. I'm myself an ex-all-noun-root-ing-language-er
> ;-) of an all-noun-root-ifi-ed(/ee?)-ex-language with only 12 operating
> verbs. *Let's have a seat and have a few words about the soup we had
> tonight*. 't was appalling.
actually, "to cut into twigs" isn't translated as one word in malat. The word used for
cut would be usable in "cut paper up" among other things. The "into twigs" part
is a seperate verb. Did i say slurp anywhere? i don't remember doing so... On
the subject of drinking vs. eating, I think what one person said before was
logical: one word would mean "consume without chewing", the other would be
"consume with chewing". Or, actually, now that I think about it, I can come up
with a totally different way of expressing it:

tc-g : chew; k-ns = be consumed/be ingested; f-d = food; s-L = swallow
(keep in mind these are all temporary words off the top of my head...)
aL tceg ioL kensed = I chew it, consuming it (i eat it)
aL ioL kensed = I consume it (I eat it/i drink it)
aL seL ioL kensed = I swallow it, consuming it (i drink it)
In these, the final state of the thing consumed is the same (consumed); the
action the agent (me) takes is different in each case (chew, unspecified, and
swallow).

> > > Garrett :
> > There's an example of some illogical natlang derivation...
> >
> You dare hint my ancesters could not derive words properly (you b... ! ;-) I
> believe otherwise - even after taking into account that the meaning of words
> drift at a dramatic speed. I think my ancesters were no less logical than you
> (and much more than me). Just not your logics nor mine.
Well, I think they logically derived it back then, but the meanings of the
individual words has changed so much that on the surface they are not logically
derived.

> > Were the derivations illogical or what? why were they hard to remember?
> >
> I can understand that you remember *logical* derivations quite well. I'm no
> good at that beyond derivation from cases. I know I'll have to learn each
> derived noun as a new root and with even more difficulty since they all will
> sound alike.
>
> Let's take Indonesian. Very easy and very logical noun-deriving language, but
> within a narrow range :
> patient : -an
> quality : ke-an
> agent/instrument : pe-
> process : pe-an
> result : per-an
> You would add your *focus* (*-ee*).
> Further derivations are skipped because that's where compound words' realm opens. I
> personally think that beyond the borferline of cases, compound words should
> relay derived words. Concepts are no equations and the meaning of a word is
> not tinkered from a lot of this with a bit of that.
verbs can be made pretty close to logical; nouns can't. The nouns that I've been
deriving are ones based on verbal concepts; I haven't touched the purely noun
concepts (such as dog, house, street, etc).

> I've not heard that the barycenter of a single word was calculated yet. The only
> way to achieve that goal is to take a root, reset the scale to zero and stick
> *derivators* on that root that have a fixed weigh. Then you pretend that each
> additional Oz points the scalehand to another human concept. I imagine that
> it's what RM does every single day in his life :-).
yep... You have to figure out how many basic roots you want. More derivation = less
roots, and less roots that have similar meanings.

> And to stray still more off-side (:-) I do believe that wrapping our human,
> linear language with mathematics does make it more... mathematically logical,
> indeed. But I'm sure you know that a more radical shift would be to switch to
> non-linear language like UNL instead.
>
> Did you read Chinese grammarians ? They're now derided because - to make it
> short - they believed that in *white horse*, white and horse have the same
> status.
> How couldn't they make a difference between adjectives/verbs and nouns for thousand years ?
> Just because they looked at degrees of integration reversely from us : we go from
> sentence to compound words, from least to most integrated ; they go reversely
> from most to least integrated. So we always tell the predicate from the
> argument inside a clause and inside a noun too. It's OK with derived nouns
> which are made like an argument incorporating the predicate (that's an image)
> and existing therefore. But in these Chinese grammarians' minds, there is no
> such syntax within a compound word, so you can't tell which one of *white*
> and *horse* is the other's argument or predicate. Actually they are mutually
> and simulteanously each other's argument and predicate, each other's actor
> and verb.
> snip (was interesting but nothing to add to your neat description)
They're arguing over futile matters, as are we :)

> > Oh, the antipassive that you're talking about is what i think Rick morneau
> > called 'middle voice'. That's where the subject is de-topicized and made
> > unable to be expressed. Another example: "the mouse kills easily". For
> > examples one and three above, in malat the first verb would be between agent
> > and patient (as the action), and in the third the verb would be after the
> > patient (the result of whatever action I performed). Same with 2 and 4.
>
> Right. *Middle voice*, *reflexive (middle) voice* and *deponent verbs* are the
> *antipassive* forms of nominative languages. *Antipassive* is used in some
> ergative languages where the absolutive already translates as a *passive*.
> But in DEL and TUNU antipassive swaps active subject and object :
> I buy the car (active) > the car is sold by me (passive) > *the car sells (to)
> me (antipassive). I see it > it is seen by me > it appears (to) me. etc. Same
> in TOMATO. That's how many Japanese verbs inflect (except that *subject* tag
> -ga becomes *indirect object* -ni) and that saves loads of voc-roots IMHO.
> What in Malat if the agent misses ? Is there a default agent pronoun ?
> Your fellow conlanger
> Mathias
If he misses, a connector word would be put between his action and his intended result.
aL kekuc (ce) ioL nejed = I kicked, trying to make him injured.

--
-Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.

-Garrett Jones aka Alkaline
Rising Sun - C&C2: Tiberian Sun - http://www.cnc2.com/
Malat - http://www.metro.net/3jones/malat/