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On Monday 12 October 2009 23:22:29 Grant Edwards wrote: |
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> On 2009-10-12, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote: |
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[snip] |
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> > "The boy kicked the ball." The subject is boy and the only way |
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> > to tell is the it's before the verb. Which is a stupid idea |
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> > actually. |
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> |
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> It's probably just a result of my having grown up with a |
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> positional verses notational language (is notational the right |
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> word?), but the positional syntax seems a lot simpler to me. |
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Let's assume "notational" is a word, I know what you mean. If it's not a word, |
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we just made it one :-) |
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I fully understand where you're coming from, English is my native tongue too, |
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and I deal with positionality (is that a word?) fluently. But I also see it's |
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flaws, some of them are quite gross. You have no way to denote emphasis other |
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than by saying so or using modified font glyphs; in a compound sentence using |
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an unqualified pronoun is usually ambiguous. Example: |
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Joe went to school with Bill and he passed his classes. |
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Joe went to school with Bill, and he passed his classes. |
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Who does "he" refer to in both? I'll bet there's some complex rule that does |
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define the convention, and I'll also bet very few people know what it is. |
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[snip] |
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> > You should be able to modify "ball" to show that it's indeed |
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> > the object. |
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> |
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> That seems to be an entirely "subjective" value judgement. Why |
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> should one be able to do that? [Good pun, eh?] |
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Yup, good pun :-) |
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Change what I said to "I think it would be a good idea to modify "ball"" |
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> > Then you could do this: "ball the boy kicked" which emphasises |
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> > that it's the ball that was kicked. |
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> |
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> I give up, why doesn't "the ball the boy kicked" work? |
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If I tell you "ball" is the objective case and "the boy" is the subjective |
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case, can you see where I'm going? It's still the boy that kicked the ball but |
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the position denotes emphasis, not case. If English could do this (it can't) I |
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would have added information and retained full precision. |
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As a geek, I can see the attraction of this. But as a user of the language, I |
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can see I have zero chance of it ever happening |
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[snip] |
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> > Like I said earlier in this thread, if English were a coding |
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> > language it would be BrainFuck or intercal |
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> |
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> Don't pretty much all programming languages use position to |
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> differente the meanings of references to variables? |
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Hmmm, yes they do. But they have no need to change the order - there's no |
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extra information you could convey by doing that (with current languages at |
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least). Human languages have different needs in this regard. |
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> OK, this is waaay off topic now... |
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yes, you are right about that too :-) |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |