Archive for January 31st, 2004

2004.01.31

Categorically Speaking

I’m subscribed to the Blosxom Mailing List and a recent entry mentioned an entries_template plugin that I’d never heard of. I went to Pomin Wu’s website to see what else he’d done. I soon discovered it is in Chinese with a smattering of English so most of it is unintelligible to me. I did see, however, one of the more brilliant schemes for categories I’ve run into yet.

Pomin Wu has created a subject/verb/(object) category system that is clever, simple, and coherent. For example he has a category called “me” where he sometimes talks about “drinking” and in one case specifically about “coffee”. How simple! /me/drinking/coffee! Much simpler and more specific than where I would probably file something like that, such as /journal/life or possibly /private/life/fun or something.

Further examples are /me/eating, computer/blogging/blosxom, /me/fancying, and /realworld/adopting. You can see them all in the popup menu on the right side of his site.

Simple, elegant and linguistic even. Kudos to you, Pomin Wu!

2004.01.31

Tariana Grammar Notes

bOING bOING today pointed me to an interview with linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald, found here. The interview deals with languages that are fading into obscurity and why maintaining at least a record of these languages is important.

Of interest to me, however, in gathering ideas for building a language was this note on the grammar of Tariana.

What’s your favourite example of a big difference between languages?

In English I can tell my son: “Today I talked to Adrian”, and he won’t ask: “How do you know you talked to Adrian?” But in some languages, including Tariana, you always have to put a little suffix onto your verb saying how you know something – we call it “evidentiality”. I would have to say: “I talked to Adrian, non-visual,” if we had talked on the phone. And if my son told someone else, he would say: “She talked to Adrian, visual, reported.” In that language, if you don’t say how you know things, they think you are a liar.

It sounds like some method to employ with the language I’m planning for the Lekthis people.

Best quote in the interview, though, which has nothing to do with actual linguistics is this at the very end when Ms. Aikhenvald is asked what language she dreams in: “If I dream of Tariana, they speak Tariana. Sometimes I dream of Estonia, and they speak Estonian. In my nightmares, people speak to me and I understand, but I can’t answer…”