Paul O. Bartlett | Re: [LFN] La gramatica completa

• Autor: Paul O. Bartlett (“bartlett22183”)
• Tema: Re: [LFN] La gramatica completa
• Data: 2005-05-10 20:13
• Mesaje: 1168 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

On Tue, 10 May 2005, George Boeree wrote:

> Hi, Paul.
>
> On May 9, 2005, at 8:52 PM, Paul O. Bartlett wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 9 May 2005, George Boeree wrote:
>>
>> > Me ia pone la gramatica completa, tota en lfn, a la rede:
>> >
>> > http://www.lingua-franca-nova.net/lfngramatica.html
>>
>>       Except that the headings at the top leading to other parts of the
>>  page are still in English.
> Just ran out of time last night!

     I see that it has been adjusted.  Good job!

>>  [...]
> There is no way to write a grammar in any language that would explain
> all the nuances to a nonspeaker.  Even if the Swahili speaker already
> spoke fair LFN, it would take a book-length grammar to communicate the
> nuances.  [...]

     One question is just how nuanced a constructed auxiliary langauge
should be.  The quotation posted yesterday from Otto Jespersen was
excellent on that point.  And I think that structure (grammar) should
be considered as well as lexicon.

>>   Non-IE speakers might need a fuller
>>  description for grammatical features completely unfamiliar to them.
>>  And, to be honest, they might complain that LFN is just another
>> example
>>  of western language imperialism.
> Some might.  People are forever complaining, aren't they?

     Certainly.  It becomes a judgment call as to how justified any given
complaint is.

>                                                            I think LFN,
> using the Romance languages, is a decent compromise:  True, it is based
> on western languages.  But these are languages spoken in countries like
> Brasil and Mexico and many other "third world" countries, not just in
> the US!

     What about Third World countries such as Togo, Burma (Myanmar), and
Mongolia?

>          Nothing is ever just right for everyone.  That is totally out
> of the realm of possibilities!

     The design of any constructed language genuinely intended as an
auxiliary language is an engineering problem, with an aspect of social
considerations.  No one design will satisfy everyone.  One man's
necessary feature is another man's fatal flaw.  The real issue is to
try to optimize as many things as possible, with the recognition that
it may become necessary to give up one optimization for the sake of
another.  I don't recall whether on this list I have ever mentioned my
essay "Thoughts on IAL Success" at
http://www.panix.com/~bartlett/thoughts.html .  It is certainly not the
last word, but it summarizes some of my thinking.

--
Paul O. Bartlett

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