Re: Let the listener guess what happened

Gary Shannon wrote:
> I ran across some notes from several years ago about
> an idea for a language where the participants in the
> drama are enumerated, but the actual action is left
> for the reader/listener to infer.  For example:
>
> John the thrower; Fred the catcher; and the ball.
>
> "John threw the ball to Fred" does not specify whether
> Fred succeeded in catching the ball or not. However
> the construction "John the thrower; Fred the catcher;
> and the ball." sort of implies that Fred actually
> caught the ball.
You could solve the ambiguity, I guess, by making a "sentence" like:

John the thrower; Fred the direction; and the ball.

> It seems like one could design a language where each
> sentence has only two words, describing one
> participant in the drama. The complete collection of
> sentences would imply some event that the reader must
> figure out for themselves.
>
> Just a random brain dump.
>
This actually sounds a lot like AllNoun. One example taken from
http://web.archive.org/web/20010819084759/world.std.com/~tob/allnoun8.faq

   ( act-of-throwing:whole Joe:agent ball:patient )
   "In some context, there is an act of throwing, and the agent of
   that act is Joe, and the patient is some ball."
   "Joe throws the ball."

If you haven't looked at AllNoun before, I'd say it is definitely worth
checking out. It gave me a refreshing look on grammar :)


René