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Breaking down the sentence (Part II)

Part II

When reading a sentence, next to words you also read structure. The structure can be expressed by sequence or punctuation marks, but there is also something called ‘roles’. This simply gives a word a role. With other words: it tells how the word relates to the action described by the verb. Very often the roles are not identified, so you have to use context or habit to detect them. When roles do are identified, we speak of grammatical cases. There are an infinite number of different roles, and quite a lot of defined cases, though in English and a lot of other language four cases seem to be enough. Still we can access the infinite number of roles needed with these languages; this because roles are distributed over the cases; and the rest is defined with prepositions and word order.

For completion’s sake I will treat the four cases as present in English.

Nominative
This is the subject in the sentence. The action described by the verb will directly correlate with this word. The object is usually also the instigator of the action.

“Pete threw the ball.”

Accusative
This is the direct object in the sentence. The action described by the verb will be subjected upon this object.

“He tripped Pete.”

Genitive
This indicates a possessor. Other words linked to a genitive are identified as a possession.

“Pete’s ball”

Dative
This is the indirect object in the sentence. The action described by the verb will be pointed toward this object in most situations.

“He gave it to Pete.”

Dative is also a garbage collector for all roles not described by the other cases: for instance a word which accompanies the subject.

“She went with Pete.”

Ok, now, where are de identifications? Yes I know, modern English has dropped the whole lot of conjugations.  Old English had for each noun and adjective a series of conjugations to indicate its case. Now all we have to separate the subject from the direct object is word order.

“Dave tripped Pete” means something complete different then “Pete tripped Dave”
Ah! But we still have a conjugation to indicate a possessor: < ‘s >

All cases not treated are indicated by the preposition and thus are called indirect objects.

Now I’ve told you about cases. This is also the last thing I will tell about them. O-lingu does not need cases, but in order to explain how O-lingu expresses roles I need to explain cases and more important: how cases evolved.  But I’ll save that for the next time.

Have a nice day!
Ferry Timmers

Breaking down the sentence (Part I)

 

Part I
Before I’m going to tell you about my language – O-lingu – I first need to clear out the structure of language further. In my last article I told about the existence of commandlets that make up thoughts called eidos. I now need to refine this theory a little bit more in order to explain the inner working of O-lingu.

If you look at a sentence you see a couple of words, but the information provided is always bigger then just a bunch of words. We always add context, even is it is a sentence completely on its own. In that case we invent a context, using things that are currently in our mind. This in fact is exactly what context is: the things that are currently in our mind. When you read a novel, you gradually fill your head with information. A sentence at one point provides information in the form of words, but then the context of all previously read sentences, and the images in your mind add to it. It is at this point the words converted into eidos meet the rest, and at this point you grasp the meaning of sentence. Ok, I admit, this was very vague, let’s try to make it more concrete:
First of all, the process of converting words into eidos is not absolute; last time I told it is very much different from person to person, but also for a single person it differs every time. The amount of things that have influence on this process is immensely big. Location, time, people around you, ambience, even a scent you barely smell could have huge impact. This is best described by the chaos theory, one could not predict it.
Secondly, a word could carry more information than its definition. This means that somehow also the sequence of word matter, or there seems to be little identifiers at work. The latter case is what I want to discuss today.

Because words are constantly interpreted differently by your mind, a way is needed to make sure the conception is as unambiguous as possible. With other words, to make sure the receiver gets the same meaning as the sender. One of the things we can be pretty sure the receiver gets them right are meta-eidos. Most commonly they are nouns: A chair for instance. Every body knows what a chair is, it has in its most recognizable form four legs and a back, its purpose is to sit on. When I said Chair you probably already had an image of one in your mind, it will not be the same as mine, but it will be the same idea. In a way it will link all things you ever called ‘chair’ together in one theme, and this will pop into your head the second you read “chair” thus introducing context: a meta-eidos.

Now I have ensured there are word we can use without worrying the receiving party will get them wrong, it is time to find a way to use them in a sentence. Simply putting the words next to each other could do the trick, but makes it a very context sensitive language: A sentence could be read in various ways and it is matter for the receiver to find the right one. There are languages – like Chinese – which thrive on this, but a lot of languages – including English – provide a little bit of help.

Tomorrow part II
Have a nice day!
Ferry Timmers

Introduction

Let me introduce myself:
I’m Ferry and born and still living in the Netherlands. I’m a first year Computer engineering student and I’m interested in linguistics and philosophy. In this blog I will discuss languages in general or I will tell you about ‘O-lingu’, the con-language I’m working on.

Why would a computer engineer be interested in human languages? Computer languages and human languages have more in common then one may think. I don’t know what the official definition of ‘language’ is but for me it means: “A way to decipher code so it can be understood by separate receivers.” The definition of ‘code’ for computer systems means commandlets a processor needs to execute. There are different types of processors with different placed commandlets. In order to make a computer program that will works with each of these processors a language is needed. A language needs to be compiled back into code for each of these processors separately.

A language makes it possible for completely different kind of computers to communicate with each other, called a protocol. Languages make it possible for humans and computer systems to interact. A language makes it possible for a completely different kind of people to communicate with each other, called a human language. Yes I know, it is a bit corny, but important to state.

Processor commandlets are stated in operation code, and languages can describe them singularly, but at most time a whole group of operation codes are described with a single word. This is exactly the same with human languages. A single word can describe very complex things, without actually loosing its complexity. We still know what codes were meant. Did I just say code!? Yes! I did!
Languages describe code, Human languages describe human code. What the hell is human code?? Well, every thing we think is all about human code. We can’t actually put our finger on it, or maybe if we try really hard, but when you come to think of it, every thing what we think exists out of commandlets; at least, that is my theory. I will call them emotions, but it’s not only about what we feel, but also about what we see, hear, smell, what we know and imagine. A commandlet we do can put our finger on I will call an eidos (1). Eidos can be personal, describe a thing only known to one person, or be so general there is a language which has a word for it. In the latter case I will speak of a meta-eidos.

Because the human codes are very different from one person to another, you actually need a language to communicate. Since I was a child, I was fascinated by language, and I wanted to know what makes them work, and how they evolved. About the latter one I’ve gotten to know a lot because my good friend Marijn, a comparative linguist. If you’re into languages, you should basically check his blog.
Looking at all the different languages that exist today or their precedents that have existed, I started to believe there is a system to all of them, and this system, although it may seem otherwise, is logical. My goal is to resolve this system in terms of logic. To help me with this, I started construction my own language: O-lingu.

I’m happy to have you, and your comments are very welcome. Most of the things on this blog are my own theories. You are free to use them, but don’t forget to include where you have got them.

Have a nice day!
Ferry Timmers

P.S. I try to update my blog every Sunday, but I can’t promise anything. :(

 

Footnotes:

(1) The term eidos was coined by Plato and is Greek for ‘Idea’, before I used the term Emotic. You might notice I still call it accidentally Emotic sometime.