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1
From: Nicholas Hempshall <nick_hempshall@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 5:38am
Subject: Target Group & Vocabulary Size
nick_hempshall
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It would be good to consider at the start of this
list, who the target group for the use of this
eurocreole language would be.

Who they are, and what they will be doing with it,
then has impact on the size of vocabulary needed.

Possible target groups include

1. The Monoglot on the Clapham Omnibus
2. Third World Villagers
3. Travellers/Tourists
4. Journalists
5. International Business & Trade
6. Scientists & Researchers
7. EU, International Government, Administration, Law &

Justice

Regards
Nick


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2
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 6:14am
Subject: Re: Target Group & Vocabulary Size
idojc
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Nick:

>It would be good to consider at the start of this
>list, who the target group for the use of this
>eurocreole language would be.

This is a good topic for discussion, Nick, and i have some clear views on
it. However, i would prefer to wait till we have a few more members before
responding to it in full. I wouldnt want any of the initial wave of members
to miss it.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=5OyCIMFxoS99LowyvLaDZMNr0GYlBxrtN2yM71e9g2GY-5fVGmrQFsvc0PdAHeZVCfVID5dNvGPd
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3
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 0:01pm
Subject: Some initial thoughts
idojc
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Welcome to the list, those few who have already joined. Hopefully there
will be a lot more of us soon. My mind is brimming with ideas, and I think
this is going to be an exciting project.

First of all, I would like to state two ideals that i have for this project:

1. That the grammar be completely isolating, ie. morphology-free.
2. That we conform to the IAL Basis, as identified by the recent Basis
Project.

These are ideals i would like to attain, but i will not be dogmatic if here
and there it can be shown that it is better to deviate from them.

The first thing i would like to discuss is word order. We need to consider
the relative order of SVO, and the relative order of ANR. Without going
into the strong theoretical arguments in favor of SVO, we know that it is
the predominant order in creoles, and also in the romanic languages and
English. My vote is definitely for SVO.

I think there is a strong argument for the Relative clause being after the
Noun, since it is often long. In that case, the Adjective may precede the
Noun, giving ANR. This will also allow adjs to be stative verbs:

li kasa mikro - the house is small
li mikro kasa - the small house


Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=h6mkD3yWbUb1-3Skl-W5jpvdNAZfT9eKrzjVJMK_ofV-0TWZmQXknC9iUAuhIifpj5mA2EHDC0LwVZzF
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4
From: "Viktoro" <vixcafe@yahoo.ca>
Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 0:20pm
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts / Toki Pona
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--- In eurocreole@y..., "James Chandler" <idojc@h...> wrote:

> 1. That the grammar be completely isolating, ie. morphology-free.

I just would like to call attention to what I consider a good pidgin
design, that of Toki Pona: See http://www.tokipona.org/

Quoted from the website:

BEGIN QUOTE

Simple and Natural

Modern languages are cluttered with complex methods to express the
simplest things.

What is a geologist but a person who studies the earth? Is there any
useful difference between the words talk, speak, and say? Toki Pona
breaks down all advanced ideas to their most basic elements. If you
are hungry, you want eat. To teach is give knowledge.

This allows us to drastically reduce the vocabulary and grammatical
structures needed to say what we have to say. Less is more.



Philosophy

A number of philosophies or principles have inspired me to create a
language such as Toki Pona.

Toki Pona is semantically, lexically, and phonetically minimal. The
simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.

In many ways, Toki Pona resembles a pidgin. When people from
different cultures need to communicate, they must focus on the
concrete, simple things that are most universal to humanity.

Toki Pona follows the principles of Taoism, which advocates a simple,
honest life and noninterference with the course of natural events.

I have also been inspired by anthropological primitivists such as
Sahlins and John Zerzan, whose writings critique the totality of
modern civilization, recognising the superiority of natural,
primitive cultures.

Toki Pona can lead to an interesting game of semantic decomposition.
Just as one can decompose a mathematical fraction such as 4/8 to 1/2,
we can break down language to its most basic and tangible units of
meaning and discover what things really mean.

According to reductionism, complex ideas and systems can be
completely understood in terms of their simpler parts or components.

Since Toki Pona expresses things in their most natural and simple
way, an inherent idea of goodness is transparent throughout the
language. Health is good body. Happiness is feel good. Toki Pona
itself means good language.

Above all, Toki Pona must be fun and cute. As everything seems to be
oversimplified and ideas focus on the good, one could almost imagine
a race of little cartoon creatures speaking in Toki Pona.

END QUOTE
5
From: "kevinbsmith" <yahoogroups@qualitycode.com>
Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts
kevinbsmith
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--- In eurocreole@y..., "James Chandler" <idojc@h...> wrote:
> My vote is definitely for SVO.
>
> I think there is a strong argument for the Relative clause
> being after the Noun, since it is often long. In that
> case, the Adjective may precede the Noun, giving ANR.

I support both of those choices.

> This will also allow adjs to be stative verbs:
>
> li kasa mikro - the house is small
> li mikro kasa - the small house

How do you know that 'mikro' in the first case is a verb? Couldn't
'kasa' be an adjective, and 'mikro' be the noun? In many or most cases
you can figure out the parts of speech by context (assuming you know
the definitions of the words). But I believe that is too difficult.
You should not have to guess about such things.

This is exactly the problem I had with Glosa. My own solution was to
always include a verb tense marker at the start of the verb phrase
(VP). And, also, to require an article at the beginning of a direct
object phrase, to indicate the end of the VP.

Do you have a more elegant solution to this?

Kevin
6
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 0:56am
Subject: Re: Target Group & Vocabulary Size
idojc
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Nick:

>It would be good to consider at the start of this
>list, who the target group for the use of this
>eurocreole language would be.

As far as i am concerned, both European vocabulary and isolating grammar
have global reach. As i have said on Auxlang, the reason i would like to
move away from European-style grammar towards a more isolating structure, is
precisely to reach out to the wider world outside the WENSA area: speakes of
Chinese, Vietnamese, creoles, and everyone else, since isolating grammar is
the common denominator and the simplest type of grammar in some sense
'contained in' all other types.

The language should be simple enough to be used by everybody, and precise
and carefully elaborated enough to be used in science and industry.

>Who they are, and what they will be doing with it,
>then has impact on the size of vocabulary needed.

I am not interested in a minimal vocab per se (as in Basic English or
Glosa1000), but what i do like is the idea of a Basic subset of the grammar
of perhaps 1000 words for use by learners of the language; then perhaps
further successive spheres of vocab, to enable staged learning. What i do
not see the need for is any absolute limit to the number of words. New
words are being added constantly to the scientific-technological lexicon,
and we need to be able to keep up with that.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=XjERjM1OIc_p1bUy4NWLlpIefuuwsCU5_Wm90BxyNbcFP73_9yCaPEm-kK_0bxesMMhRtqHjfEE
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7
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 1:54am
Subject: Re: Re: Some initial thoughts
idojc
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Kevin:

> > li kasa mikro - the house is small
> > li mikro kasa - the small house
>
>How do you know that 'mikro' in the first case is a verb? Couldn't
>'kasa' be an adjective, and 'mikro' be the noun? In many or most cases
>you can figure out the parts of speech by context (assuming you know
>the definitions of the words). But I believe that is too difficult.
>You should not have to guess about such things.

It depends whether you are assuming that the learner already knows the
meanings of the words 'mikro' and 'kasa'. If they do, there should be no
need to indicate which is the noun and which the adjective-verb.
You are right that 'kasa' can be used to qualify other nouns, eg.

kasa kate - house cat (ie. one that is not let outdoors)

but there is no way that an adj can be used as a noun without some other
particle, viz.

mikro om - small person
mikro kos - small thing
mikro so - smallness (state of being small, or size)

so as long as the learner knows the meaning of 'mikro', and they will not
get very far if they dont!, there should be no ambiguity here.

>This is exactly the problem I had with Glosa. My own solution was to
>always include a verb tense marker at the start of the verb phrase
>(VP). And, also, to require an article at the beginning of a direct
>object phrase, to indicate the end of the VP.
>
>Do you have a more elegant solution to this?

With all due respect, I am not Zamenhof and we are not here to invent
another Esp. In fact another one of my mottos is:

Lasciate ogni Esperanto ch'entrate!
(with apologies to Dante)

The way we are going to do things here is by using particles with specific
functions to mark out the sentence landscape. We will use TMA markers and
articles, but not obligatorily just to mark verb or noun phrases. We will
ideally use them as creoles use them.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=akeyFRIZ8mYOkWwDO417u76vI80fSBooJDp4WGKp2ihVNSRLjP0MG8aksJFfwcV2gZpdeYky4RXPZf8
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8
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 3:57am
Subject: Stative verbs and a Chinese construction
idojc
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Unifying the classes of adjectives and verbs by making adjs stative verbs,
means that we can not only dispense with the copula ('es') with adjs,
allowing us to be as concise as Jamaican Creole:

di pikni sik - the child is ill

It also allows us to logically use verbs in adj position in AN, as is
possible in Chinese, eg.

konstrukta om - builder (VN)
konstrukta kasa om - house-builder (VON)
studia siense om - science student (VON)

cp. many Chinese examples with 'ren'.

This makes redundant relative clauses in which the S is relativized. Using
'ti' as an open-bracket and 'kel' as relative particle, it means we need not
use constructions like:

om ti kel konstrukta - a person who builds
om ti kel konstrukta kasa - a person who builds houses
om ti kel studia siense - a person who studies science

since for these we can delete the 'ti kel' and move the relative phrase to
before the noun, as above.

I hope it is becoming clear now how this whole system fits together
beautifully, with only two major word classes: nouns and (stative and
nonstative) verbs.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=uiyIFMQFAi3UXEjrSFiooTHIUxFxFqQH4SeCCgs8emjWxRxOeSCtt9I-Y1H7K8_vVw_LFvFOMzPkaQ
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9
From: Nicholas Hempshall <nick_hempshall@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 4:57am
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts
nick_hempshall
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--- James Chandler <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=1GTSp7NjOTPS-0PslKrahpgQfTwt7GdrUfbvuRaAefbLiqs1i87RnPhJJi5DW4jDIjFOwi2KXaUV> wrote:

<> The first thing i would like to discuss is word
order. We need to consider
> the relative order of SVO, and the relative order of
ANR. Without going
> into the strong theoretical arguments in favor of
SVO, we know that it is
> the predominant order in creoles, and also in the
romanic languages and
> English. My vote is definitely for SVO.

Agreed.

> I think there is a strong argument for the Relative
clause being after the
> Noun, since it is often long. In that case, the
Adjective may precede the
> Noun, giving ANR. This will also allow adjs to be
stative verbs:

I would think it is worth considering NAR.

casa poco a little house

es or sta as copula

casa sta poco the house is little
sta casa poco there is a little house

In practice sta could be elided in a clause of this
kind without ambiguity.

Casa poco. The house is small OR There is a small
house.

Then poco casa a few (small number of) houses
elided from poco di casa

casa di om a houseful of people
casa de om a person’s house
casa om human house (a for people to live in)
om casa person who looks after/builds houses.

Pretty little girls’ school

Scola de enfante femina beleta poco
Scola beleta de enfante femina poco
Scola beleta poco de enfante femina

Enfante poco ce larma pro cade in campo de jua.
A small child crying due to falling in the
play ground.

Nick


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10
From: Nicholas Hempshall <nick_hempshall@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 6:33am
Subject: Re: Target Group & Vocabulary Size
nick_hempshall
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--- James Chandler <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=T7D8oA5UL5JfcwA8GzOdCb-mojCX-BDoxHTzMvzs6mIsA6sgrUfcLuyMFGIu-6Od8xzKNQzRP-U_5WbR> wrote:

> I am not interested in a minimal vocab per se (as in
Basic English or
> Glosa1000), but what i do like is the idea of a
Basic subset of the grammar
> of perhaps 1000 words for use by learners of the
language; then perhaps
> further successive spheres of vocab, to enable
staged learning. What i do
> not see the need for is any absolute limit to the
number of words. New
> words are being added constantly to the
scientific-technological lexicon,
> and we need to be able to keep up with that.

Yes. Seems fine to me to allow in extra words as
shortcuts to things that you might otherwise need to
keep repeating a cumbersome phrase to refer to and for
new concepts/inventions. Viktoro, in an earlier post
talked, about Toki Pona. This has a great basic
vocabulary. Did you envision a Basic Subset that fully
coverd the semantic field like this? Or one that had
only high frequency and highly productive words?

Toki Pona syntax seems to be very unambiguous. Your
comments on this would be interesting.

Nick


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11
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 8:53am
Subject: Copula and the fundamental break
idojc
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My proposal is that adjectives are stative verbs, and consequently no copula
is used with adjs, eg.

li puere malade - the child is ill

A copula, 'es', would be used in both attributive and locative sentences:

Siore Smith es medike - Mr Smith is a doctor
Mi fem amike es in li auto - My female friend is in the car

For the other use of the copula in Eng, the progressive tenses, we can use
instead a preverbal marker of [+nonpunctual] Aspect, 'sta':

Mi sta vada a li stasion - I am going to the station

Depending on how we handle Tense (I will treat this separately), the zero
form with nonstative verbs would either be past or present [-nonpunctual] by
default:

Mi vada a li stasion - I go/went to the station

The fundamental break I propose with all previous IALs is therefore that
adjs are stative verbs, and therefore no copula is used with them.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=6jEVssLcldc9w3jtMQLNaIupK2rE4AfaO_Blk1V_lCPbmEBji3MTCn_F3gU0oWrvPZLsBnHAwkTyeFo
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12
From: Nicholas Hempshall <nick_hempshall@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 11:15am
Subject: Re: Copula and the fundamental break
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Seems like a good idea.

I would consequently be inclined to a "RAN" noun
phrase pattern.

The tall person who lives in this house is old.

Abita in esa casa ec alta om vea.

Is in my opinion better than

Li alta om ce abita in esa casa vea.

Nick

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13
From: "jjbowks" <jjbowks@adam.cheshire.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 1:32pm
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts
jjbowks
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In eurocreole@y..., "James Chandler" <idojc@h...> wrote:
> li kasa mikro - the house is small
> li mikro kasa - the small house

Coolbeans!

I also would like svo order
in sentences. But the issue
of ANR isn't so clear.

Lessee... first I'd change
the "li" - I don't like it
it reminds me of Bob P.

I'd change that to el
since it is found in Romance
languages, specially in
Spanish and it's Iberian
sisters, and it is the
definite article used
in Northern African Arabic.
Now there's an untapped
resource, eh?

So we'd have ...
el casa micro
(the small house)

el casa el micro
(the house is small)
(lit. "the house" "the small" one)

el Casa Micro
(Micro's House, The House of Micro)

el casa de el micro
(Micro's house)

el casa es micro
(the house IS small)

Micro el casa, no es?
(The house is small, isnt' it?)

el casa multi es micro
(the houses are small)

el casa es multi micro
(the house is very small)

el casa multi es multi micro
the houses are very small)

(I'd rather use "ta" for to be
a la Papiamento but es would
be well accepted, I think, by
most Romance and English
speakers.)

w/regards
Jay B.
14
From: "jjbowks" <jjbowks@adam.cheshire.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 1:35pm
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts / Toki Pona
jjbowks
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In eurocreole@y..., "Viktoro" <vixcafe@y...> wrote:

> Above all, Toki Pona must be fun and cute. As everything seems to
be
> oversimplified and ideas focus on the good, one could almost
imagine
> a race of little cartoon creatures speaking in Toki Pona.
> END QUOTE


Toki Pona is soooo sweet it's
giving me a tooth ache.

No, really, very cool language
and I love it's minimalist
approach to language design.
Definitely something to be
looked at when considering
simple yet expressive communication.

Since,
Jay B.
15
From: "jjbowks" <jjbowks@adam.cheshire.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 1:54pm
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts
jjbowks
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> Do you have a more elegant solution to this?
> Kevin

Well, I dunno about
elegant. But I do
know that people don't
really want to have
to think of everything
they say, ponder and
devise the most elegant
way of expressing their
thoughts.

Actually, thanks to
the internet people
are free to express
their brutish thoughts
as quickly and easily
as their send button
can handle or their
chat line accepts text.

So considering that
what people need is
a fast moving easy to
use and decipher language,
elegance need not be
the priority for now.

Lessee...

"el popul ta konsidera
el desi du artikul de derekt
garanti"

The people are considering
the twelve guaranteed
articles of rights

vs.

el desi du konsidera
garanti el artikul de
derekt pro popul

The twelve considerations
gurarantee the articulation
of rights to populate

Does the context give away
the meaning of the phrase
or is the meaning hidden
by the "unacquainted" feel
of the thought. If one knows
the background of a sample
text or speech then the
recognition should be higher.

In regards to elegance I'd
call Wahl's Regul quite
elegant, but would there
be a better way of doing
things? I think that in
regards to elegance what
pidgins may lack is certainly
compensated by the ease of
use and the economy of
vocabulary needed to function
as a language.

Since,
Jay B.
16
From: "jjbowks" <jjbowks@adam.cheshire.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 2:01pm
Subject: Re: Target Group & Vocabulary Size
jjbowks
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In eurocreole@y..., "James Chandler" <idojc@h...> wrote:
> Chinese, Vietnamese, creoles, and everyone else, since isolating
grammar is
> the common denominator and the simplest type of grammar in some
sense
> 'contained in' all other types.
>

This has happened
to me more than once,
in writing simple
Chinese phrases friends
of mine from Taiwan
have told me "I can
understand what you
mean to say but your
grammar is wrong, it
should be..." And then
they proceed to change
the word order using
the same signs.


It seems to me that
it is well established
that the more isolating
the grammar becomes,
the more important the
word order is. If this
is the case then the need
for affixed markers for
parts of speech isn't
real. In other words.
If the grammar is so
simple and clear and
there is only one meaning
that could be gathered
from a certain phrase
then the pegged words
speak without needing
to be decorated with
affixes.

This is something that
Chinese does well. To
the point that the terms
grammar and word order
seem the same to native
users of the Chinese
language.

Since,
Jay B.
17
From: "Paul O. BARTLETT" <bartlett@smart.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 2:04pm
Subject: Re: Re: Some initial thoughts
bartlett@smart.net
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On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, kevinbsmith wrote:

> [cut]

> This is exactly the problem I had with Glosa. My own solution was to
> always include a verb tense marker at the start of the verb phrase
> (VP). And, also, to require an article at the beginning of a direct
> object phrase, to indicate the end of the VP.
>
> Do you have a more elegant solution to this?

Hogben's original Interglossa had exactly twenty verbs, so there
was no problem there knowing where the predicate started. I read
somewhere (if I recall correctly) that there was/is a "natural"
language with only three real verbs (don't recall the details). I am
not aware that there is anything Writ Large In The Nature Of The Cosmos
that says that the set of verbs has to be infinite.

--
Paul Bartlett
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=3p0ZHkm2iScEHi1djX-u-GWz67wyXIXbYOJ0jqHPqcO2m6mqwwvsHju6eYRnN_rIaHsu6pAmXDJOUjI
PGP key info in message headers
18
From: "jjbowks" <jjbowks@adam.cheshire.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 2:21pm
Subject: "The way we are going to do things here"
jjbowks
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In eurocreole@y..., "James Chandler" <idojc@h...> wrote:
The way we are going to do things here is by using particles with
specific
> functions to mark out the sentence landscape. We will use TMA
markers and
> articles, but not obligatorily just to mark verb or noun phrases.
We will
> ideally use them as creoles use them.

Awsome!

Com dice on "Awsome!" in
creole? "Mirabil!", no es?

But the risk of over using
markers is that were just
detaching the appendages
from the end of a word and
letting them roam, although,
within strict bounds, around
the front end of the terms
they seek to hang on.

Which one is better?

Meas manos haben las controlos.
or...
'em Hand belong me have 'em control 'em.

Perhaps an optimal mixture can
be found where there's a certain
amount of freedom in the sentence
with the minimal imposition of
grammatical garb that forces words
into uniforms a la Esperante.

Now that would trully be "awsomer!"

;-)

Jay B.
19
From: "jjbowks" <jjbowks@adam.cheshire.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 2:29pm
Subject: Re: Stative verbs and a Chinese construction
jjbowks
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In eurocreole@y..., "James Chandler" <idojc@h...> wrote:
> di pikni sik - the child is ill
> konstrukta om - builder (VN)
> konstrukta kasa om - house-builder (VON)
> studia siense om - science student (VON)
> om ti kel konstrukta - a person who builds
> om ti kel konstrukta kasa - a person who builds houses
> om ti kel studia siense - a person who studies science


Di pikni sik
is brilliant

it has that je ne sais quoi
that makes it very natural.

the other sentences with
all their k's and the om's
instead of person sounds
more like robot speak.

In a pidgin/creole you gotta
have the oily sandy feel that
makes them like they're used
in some tropical beach to
order a cool beer! I say! ;-)

w/regards always,
Jay B.
20
From: "jjbowks" <jjbowks@adam.cheshire.net>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 2:31pm
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts
jjbowks
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In eurocreole@y..., Nicholas Hempshall <nick_hempshall@y...> wrote:
> casa poco a little house
>

No, poco is little in
quantity and not size
in most romance langs.
Maybe James's pikni
which is quite neat!

casa micro
or
casa pikni

With regards,
Jay B.
21
From: Kevin Smith <yahoogroups@qualitycode.com>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 10:37pm
Subject: Re: Target Group & Vocabulary Size
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On Wed, 2002-09-18 at 00:56, James Chandler wrote:
> I am not interested in a minimal vocab per se
> (as in Basic English or Glosa1000), but what i
> do like is the idea of a Basic subset of the
> grammar of perhaps 1000 words for use by learners
> of the language; then perhaps further successive
> spheres of vocab, to enable staged learning.

Personally, I am only interested in the most core 500-1000 words of such
a language. I don't mind if there are more words available, but the core
set should be fully functional.

I'm not sure if that's compatible with where this group is going, but I
thought I'd share my thoughts.

Kevin
22
From: Kevin Smith <yahoogroups@qualitycode.com>
Date: Wed Sep 18, 2002 10:41pm
Subject: Re: Re: Some initial thoughts
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On Wed, 2002-09-18 at 01:54, James Chandler wrote:
> It depends whether you are assuming that the learner
> already knows the meanings of the words 'mikro' and
> 'kasa'. If they do, there should be no need to
> indicate which is the noun and which the adjective-verb.

Thank you for clarifying this important point. I now realize that as a
reader of an unfamiliar language, I want to be able to see the structure
of the sentence whether or not I know all the words. Then, from context,
I can guess at the meanings.

I find it unreasonable to expect someone learning a language to have
already memorized all 500 or 5000 words in the language. So requiring
them to already know (or look up) every word just to figure out where
the verb is seems like too much of a burden.

> The way we are going to do things here is by using particles
> with specific functions to mark out the sentence landscape.

Excellent.

> We will use TMA markers and articles, but not obligatorily
> just to mark verb or noun phrases. We will ideally use them
> as creoles use them.

I'm not sure how "creoles" use them, but I fear that if they are too
optional, it will be difficult to parse. But I'll wait for more concrete
rules and examples before I lose hope.

Kevin
23
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 2:19am
Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts
idojc
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Nick:

>I would think it is worth considering NAR.
>
>casa poco a little house

I would rather use 'poki' as the antonym of 'multi', rather than the antonym
of 'grande'. For that i think 'mikro' is the ideal form (microchip,
microscope, micro hi-fi etc.)

>es or sta as copula
>casa sta poco the house is little

I would think 'es' is the canonical choice of copula form.

>sta casa poco there is a little house

Yes, we could use the copula for existentials, eg.

Es tri kos ti mi non prisa kel - There are three things I dont like

But part of the creole prototype is that the verb 'have' tends to be used
for existentials:

Ave tri kos ti mi non prisa kel

>casa di om a houseful of people

I would have thought the adj 'plen' could be used for the Eng suffix -ful
(Ido -edo):

kasa plen de om - a houseful of people

>casa de om a person’s house
>casa om human house (a for people to live in)

As i say, I would prefer 'om kasa', as in Eng/Chin.

>om casa person who looks after/builds houses.

kasa om

>Pretty little girls’ school
>
>Scola de enfante femina beleta poco
>Scola beleta de enfante femina poco
>Scola beleta poco de enfante femina

Joli mikro skola de fem infante or,
Skola de joli mikro fem infante

>Enfante poco ce larma pro cade in campo de jua.
> A small child crying due to falling in the
> play ground.

Mikro sta plora infante pro fala in li luda loka
Small Asp cry infant because-of fall in Art play place

Comments welcome.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=k0UtcoAxiS5L6cUekc7EOYv0EANx6KEupUQGOUT2avT9e2_iODDrrrX1eW-igfLR0Fj0dDIiDmuj299H
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24
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 2:36am
Subject: Re: Target Group & Vocabulary Size
idojc
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Nick:

>Toki Pona syntax seems to be very unambiguous. Your
>comments on this would be interesting.

I think this is an example of cutting back too much on vocabulary.
Obviously, the best language in terms of ease of learning would have one
noun and one verb, but if the noun can mean any of 'sun, boot, regret' and
the verb any of 'have, walk, disapprove', it will not be much of a vehicle
for precision.

In Toki Pona, the same word can mean now 'sun', now 'day', and another means
now 'big', now 'important'. We dont want to get into the whole Tok Pisin
'face grass' for 'beard' business.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=i_K7jAJBl4fP7fCoFivbLVhppgjrSdWCe_pLum-Toydwvp5Hvy9vz9YSCrPDyPETe0h7FBgPujh_
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25
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 2:59am
Subject: Re: Re: Some initial thoughts
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Jay:

>No, poco is little in
>quantity and not size
>in most romance langs.
>Maybe James's pikni
>which is quite neat!

'pikni' and its cognates are very prominent in pidgins and creoles. They
derive from Port. pequen~o, and some related form is present in nearly all
WENSA-lexifier pidgins and creoles. It is one of those forms that the
monogeneticists seize on to suggest that all such creoles can be traced back
to an original West African Port. proto-pidgin, or even to Sabir.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=EMMfg-V1Qqy8orBfpkmJE41p7Fhw3jV0eXnOuGgKViU0PW6KoItdDP1NPiSKjRugVWU-kjc27QU
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26
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 3:29am
Subject: Re: Copula and the fundamental break
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Nick:

>I would consequently be inclined to a "RAN" noun
>phrase pattern.
>
>The tall person who lives in this house is old.
>
>Abita in esa casa ec alta om vea.
>
>Is in my opinion better than
>
>Li alta om ce abita in esa casa vea.

But with RAN order, the R can separate the V and O, just as the R separates
the S and V in your second example.

In terms of demarcating the R clause, we can use both an open-bracket (for
which i have suggested 'ti'), and an optional close-bracket (which might as
well also be 'ti'):

Li veste ti vu pa kompra kel (ti) non fita vu
Art clothes Br you Tns buy Rel (Br) Neg suit you
The clothes you bought dont suit you

In an ideal world i would prefer NAR order, since this allows the topic of
the phrase to be clarified first, then gradually qualified, which must be
preferable from a pragmatic point of view. But I would like to unify the
Chinese style VN phrases with AN phrases, so we can say:

dosa om - teacher

etc. and use short particles as equivalents of suffixes like -ulo, -ero etc.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=M8-tUUzDbK-R0a4lFy0UtZxSQ8DbtVPLi274CLRczODbM9ImKy13Xx-YiDqXmeGv_azkVGYcVos
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27
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 3:59am
Subject: Re: Re: Some initial thoughts
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Jay:

>Lessee... first I'd change
>the "li" - I don't like it
>it reminds me of Bob P.

I dont think we can select forms on that basis, Jay! I think there is a
good case for not only a CV monosyllable, but also an lV form. 'la' would
be useful for 'there', eg.

ta ci kamise or,
ta kamise ci
this shirt (this one here)

ta la kamise or,
ta kamise la
that shirt (that one there)

'le' is ideal for a general 3rd person pronoun. 'lo' may be needed for a
monosyllabic locative particle. So that leaves Nov-Occ 'li'.

>(I'd rather use "ta" for to be
>a la Papiamento but es would
>be well accepted, I think, by
>most Romance and English
>speakers.)

'ta' has a lot less justification from noncreoles than 'es'. And 'es' has
such a good pedigree in IALs.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=n-vwzlTQyVlsTvko9ouXRY0Mr0rYtK5zeaarm_ukCb2uv8BXeJ0M3wYd9LuR1Cj45esT7RgtuA4
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28
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 6:13am
Subject: Re: "The way we are going to do things here"
idojc
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Jay:

>Perhaps an optimal mixture can
>be found where there's a certain
>amount of freedom in the sentence
>with the minimal imposition of
>grammatical garb that forces words
>into uniforms a la Esperante.

One of the great advantages of isolating grammar is that we are free to
select the most international form for each word, without needing to bend,
stretch or deform it in any way. We can also do as J did in Novial, and use
different final vowels to distinguish similar natlang forms, viz.

libro - book
libre - free ('Kuba Libre')

and we have no need for pleonastic vowel endings in words like

tabu - taboo
manu - hand
anu - year (or 'yare'?)

We will keep particles short, monosyllabic as far as possible, eg.

tem - time (also 'tempo'?)
lo - place (also 'loka'?)
pa - past/anterior Tense
va - future/posterior Tense

etc.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=UEpoEUqpkzNmaZ-g_IGWeiSRYhGe2Jn0gJQWYd3heYlfTepBvuF4i22YmzlJnw2erYo4nYxTNqbTyg
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29
From: Nicholas Hempshall <nick_hempshall@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 6:44am
Subject: Re: Copula and the fundamental break
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> But with RAN order, the R can separate the V and O,
> just as the R separates the S and V in your second
> example.

I visited the tall person who lives in this house.
Me pa visita li ce abita in ta casa ti alta om.

I still think that is better than ANR.

> In terms of demarcating the R clause, we can use
> both an open-bracket (for which i have
> suggested 'ti'),
> and an optional close-bracket (which might as well
> also be 'ti'):
>
> Li veste ti vu pa kompra kel (ti) non fita vu
> Art clothes Br you Tns buy Rel (Br) Neg suit you
> The clothes you bought dont suit you
>
> In an ideal world i would prefer NAR order,
> since this allows the topic of the phrase to be
> clarified first,
> then gradually qualified, which must be preferable
> from a pragmatic point of view.

My preference too.

> But I would like to unify the Chinese style VN
> phrases with AN phrases

Isn’t Chinese RAN ordered?

Nick

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30
From: "James Chandler" <idojc@hotmail.com>
Date: Thu Sep 19, 2002 6:54am
Subject: Re: Re: Stative verbs and a Chinese construction
idojc
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Jay:

>the other sentences with
>all their k's and the om's
>instead of person sounds
>more like robot speak.

Now this is an odd sentence, because whether /k/ is written 'k' or 'c' makes
no difference to how the examples sound. I prefer to use 'c' roughly as in
Glosa, so it is parallel with 'j':

{c} = /S/ = [tS ~ S]
{j} = /Z/ = [dZ ~ Z]

This eliminates the need for any digraphs sh, ch etc.

If 'om' is robot speak, then what does that say about Fr., where 'om' is the
phonetic form of 'homme'; cp. It. 'uomo'. Ido has 'homo', Nov has 'home'.
I would prefer to drop 'h', as Fr. and It. speakers cant say it anyway, and
Sp. speakers will tend to substitute [x]. Easier just to do without 'h'.

Kordiale, James Chandler
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eurocreole/post?postID=Ggv6A99GqjfOzBK6vQrkK5ONpFhc6bnF8biqDCCq3EvM984ZYuuC3su1qASemUr_4ToP9ktBV9uH
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