Andrew Janssen wrote: > Jefferson wrote: > > As far as the Tarot goes, no comments as yet. For the glyphica, VOS word > order is *very* uncommon in human languages (which does add to the > 'alienness' of a language)[1]. It's a clever idea and fills a gap in our > world-building. My thought was to use the glyphs primarily for magic. Thus the importance is: 1) what's happening, 2) what is it affecting, 3) who's doing it. That's what determined the word order. Thus, a mage can take a standard glyph and just add on to the end. > The only other comment is that some of the images don't > seem to display properly. For the individual marker glyphs I haven't uploaded them yet. Since they don't fill the entire symbol "box" I can't just convert my vector graphics to gifs like I can with the rest of the symbols. If something else is broken, let me know and I'll fix it. > > > [1] As an aside, the most common word order patterns are SOV(~40%), > SVO(~40%) and VSO(~15%). The remaining possibilities, VOS, OVS, and OSV > account for the remaining 5%. > > Some sample sentences: > > SOV: John fish ate. > SVO: John ate fish. > VSO: Ate John fish. > OVS: Fish ate John. > VOS: Ate fish John. > OSV: Fish John ate. > > OSV is perhaps better known as Yoda-speak. > > Since the Glyphica is a rather special purpose language, the next bit > might not be totally relevant, but here it is. Besides the ordering of > verbs, subjects, and objects, the other ordering that grammarians are > concerned with is that of adjectives, nouns, and relative clauses. Some > samples: > > NAR: men big who eat quiche > ANR: big men who eat quiche > ARN: big quiche who eat men* > NRA: men who eat quiche big* > RNA: quiche eat who men big > RAN: quiche eat who big men. Right now I'm thinking that the glyphica uses Noun-Adjective (or Verb-Adverb) order, with relative clauses depending _below_ the main sentence line. So: | Men | Big | | eat | | quiche | (See verse six in the Babel text where an adverbial "behold" depends below the verb "reason." The actual quote will fall below that.) > ARN and NRA are starred because *no* human language uses those > orderings. If you're really keen on languages, check out > > http://www.zompist.com/kit.html > > I've had it in my bookmarks for 10 years, at least. Thanks. I'm familiar with the site, but I lost my bookmarks not too long ago and now I won't have to go digging when I need it. Jefferson http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/myths/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
