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Science Forum Index » Languages Forum » Properties of a cutting edge language?
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| LEE Sau Dan |
 Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 8:21 am |
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Quote: "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <realemailonsite@rudhar.com.invalid> writes:
Ruud> Not clear to me. Could you give an example of a sentence
Ruud> with wh-words in a well-known IE language, and then reorder
Ruud> that to show how Japanese or Chinese word the same thing?
He means that if you try to turn a statement into a wh-question, you
simply substitute the part to be asked about with the suitable wh-word
(just like "You know what?" in informal English) without having to
move the wh-word to the front, and (c.f. the complication in English)
without introducing auxiliary verbs (e.g. "*What* _do_ you know?").
Ruud> What's the connection between wh-words and personal
Ruud> pronouns?
The wh-words have the same forms as the *relative* pronouns in many IE
languages, and they're moved to the beginning of the relative clause
just like the wh-words in questions.
--
Lee Sau Dan §ő¦u´° ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee |
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| Ruud Harmsen |
| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 10:16 am |
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Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:16:58 +0800: LEE Sau Dan
<danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
Quote: I don't think so. Especially with Esperanto's ugly partial solution.
e.g. Is "tra" an adjective? Is "se" an adverb? Is "ili" a verb? Is
"ho" a noun? Is "unu" a verb in imperative form?
No. There's no reason why they should be. It doesn't make Esperanto
ugly. (It is, but not for that reason.)
It never creates any doubt or confusion, you simply learn those words
and then you know them. Same as with any other language.
--
Ruud Harmsen
http://rudhar.com |
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| António Marques |
| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:29 am |
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Ruud Harmsen wrote:
Quote: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:16:58 +0800: LEE Sau Dan
danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
I don't think so. Especially with Esperanto's ugly partial solution.
e.g. Is "tra" an adjective? Is "se" an adverb? Is "ili" a verb? Is
"ho" a noun? Is "unu" a verb in imperative form?
No. There's no reason why they should be.
There isn't?
Quote: It doesn't make Esperanto
ugly. (It is, but not for that reason.)
It never creates any doubt or confusion, you simply learn those words
and then you know them. Same as with any other language.
But that's another matter.
--
António Marques
* This signature does not include a prefab parting phrase *
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com ** |
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| Jens S. Larsen |
| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:04 pm |
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LEE Sau Dan:
Quote: "Jens" == Jens S Larsen <jens_s_lar...@yahoo.dk> writes:
Jens> Some add articles to express definitness more clearly
Jens> (English, Esperanto), others use inflections
(Scandinavian, Rumanian), some rely more on the word order
alone (Russian, Chinese) -- but all need to express the
difference between definite and indefinite, and there is
only a limited number of possibilities.
Do you mean Chinese uses *word order* to express
definiteness? Dare to give some examples?
Well, Russian uses something like "man came" to express "the man came"
and "came man" for "a man came". I think it's the same in Chinese, but
I might be remembering wrong.
Quote: Wildly importing "international" words being acceptable?
Jens> That does make the vocabulary more similar between more
Jens> people,
No, it doesn't. It only adds regionalism to Esperanto, because
those "international" are not really international (in a
*global* sense). They're at best "regional".
Now you're getting fanatic. Strictly speaking, the words are imperial
rather than international, but even imperialism has an upside in
distributing word forms across cultures. Internationalism and
imperialism only part when derivation enters the picture; for instance
"iniciatinto" and "televidilo" are international, whereas "iniciatoro"
and "televizoro" are imperial.
Quote: Use of pronouns?
Jens> That's a tricky one. Looking at European languages,
you'd assume that personal pronouns gain currency as the
conjugation patterns loose the distinction of person, but
Chinese and Japanese tend to leave out personal pronouns
even if the verbs don't conjugate for person.
You seem to be mixing up Chinese and Japanese. No. Chinese
does not tend to leave out personal pronouns.
It may be more marked for Japanese, but I do believe Chinese also
tends to drop the subject if it's a personal pronoun and the meaning
can be inferred from context. Isn't it true that a conversation
between a shoemaker and a customer could go something like this
(emulating the word order and with the pronouns in parentheses left
out):
- (I) can help you how?
- (You) have a pair of blue running shoes?
- (We) have. (You) want ordinary shoes or something special?
The Wikipedia article "Chinese language" also notes that "Other
notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of
Chinese include the use of serial verb construction, pronoun dropping
and the related subject dropping."
Quote: Jens> At least nouns and verbs are thoroughly universal
classes of words,
And that's all that's universal.
Joseph Greenberg had a few things to say about that.
Quote: Jens> and associating each class with a specific vowel
looks like the perfect solution for a kind of language that
is supposed to be taught and studied more often than acquired
the usual way.
I don't think so. Especially with Esperanto's ugly partial
solution. e.g. Is "tra" an adjective? Is "se" an adverb?
Is "ili" a verb? Is "ho" a noun? Is "unu" a verb in
imperative form?
I'll admit you "ili" and "unu" because they are bisyllabic, but you
really have to think like a computer (i.e. not at all) to get confused
by them.
Jens S. Larsen |
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| Herman Rubin |
| Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2008 3:45 pm |
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In article <87bq40kudl.fsf@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>,
LEE Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
Quote: "Peter" =3D=3D Peter T Daniels <grammatim@verizon.net> writes:
Peter> Have you never noticed that English and Chinese grammar are
Peter> remarkably similar?
But I know too many difference between them in the first place.
Yes, there are differences. But the similarities of
the grammars of the languages outweigh the differences.
It has been stated that human languages have a common
basic grammar, but mutually incomprehensible vocabularies.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558 |
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