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

• Autor: Paul O. Bartlett (“bartlett22183”)
• Tema: Re: [LFN] La gramatica completa
• Data: 2005-05-12 23:01
• Mesaje: 1178 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

     First, as I have mentioned before, I do think that Lingua Franca
Nova is a perfectly legitimate conIAL proposal, as much so as many of
the other "big" contenders.  There are a number of good things (in my
opinion) about it, such as a simple phonology and relative simple
phonotactics (although some of the syllable-initial consonant clusters
could be difficult for some learners), completely phonemic spelling,
possibility of correct spelling in the Cyrillic alphabet, and the like.
Its vocabulary is somewhat recognizable to speakers of many WENSA*
languages (although this feature may not seem as important to some
people as to others).

On Tue, 10 May 2005, George Boeree wrote:

> On May 10, 2005, at 4:12 PM, Paul O. Bartlett wrote:
>
> >       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.
>
> I am honestly not sure I understand the critique.  How much simpler can
> we get than LFN as it is?

     There are always judgment calls in the engineering design of any
constructed auxiliary language, and not everyone will agree with each
decision.  However, some people might consider some items as actual
simplifications, at the same time that others might consider them as
complications.  The following are a few points that might be addressed.

1)  Remove the four existing inflections and go to a strictly analytic
morphology.

2)  Distinguish inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronouns.
(Some people might feel as strongly about these as some Romance speakers
feel about a subjunctive.)

3)  Distinguish interrogative and relative pronouns.  (This seems to be
a somewhat typical Indo-European conflation that could seem illogical
and confusing to people from other language families.  Distinguishing
them might actually seem simpler to some people.)

4)  Abolish the continuative verb forms.  Many languages get along
perfectly well without such forms.  If there is no perfect-imperfect
distinction, according to the grammar, then why in heaven's name are
there continuative forms, which are often a sort of imperfective?

5)  Clarify the prepositions.  Conflating spatial, relational, and
temporal meanings could be confusing to some people and thus less
simple.  And be aware that some languages scarcely have prepositions
at all, so that some learners would have a hurdle to overcome in using
prepositions to begin with.

6)  What about attributive nouns?  They are so common in English that
many monoglot anglophones can scarcely conceive of a language without
them, whereas the grammars of many languages do not permit them.  Unless
I missed it, I saw neither allowance nor prohibition in the grammar.  (I
presume, then, that attributive nouns are not permitted, and English
speakers will have to live without them, just as Romance speakers will
have to live without a fully developed subjunctive mood.)

     The point is not so much that the grammar must necessarily be this
way or that on the particular points above as that different people have
different ideas of what is "simple" in a language.  We have to be aware
of the possibility of our native language habits skewing our perception
of what is "simple" in a constructed auxlang.  What seems "simple" to
people from one language family may seem "complicated" or confusing to
people from another language family.  Granted, sooner or later someone
must make a decision about this or that.  If the decision is to make LFN
a sort of regularized, schematized, and phonemically spelled
quasi-Romance language, there is nothing wrong with that as such,
provided that the principals are aware of what they are doing and
realize that not everyone may want such a language if they have a
choice.

> > 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 think that is exactly what we have been trying to do.  In what way do
> you see us as not doing this?

     I think you have been.  I'm not saying that you haven't, although
some people might disagree with some decisions, as I have pointed out
above.  Apart from design decisions, however, I think that the biggest
issue to be addressed is the extent to which the language is documented.
The "complete grammar" on the web page is hardly complete as such, being
based on Indo-European (primarily WENSA) usages and assumptions.  Any
documentary (especially didactic) materials for other learners will have
to be considerably expanded.

* WENSA -- a now widely used acronym of Leo Moser:

Western
Europe
North and
South America
Australia and New Zealand

a subset of the Indo-European language family.

--
Paul O. Bartlett