Wpisy: 65
Język: English
mjdh1957 (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 10:26:53
johmue (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 10:28:18
tommjames:Again you are generalizing that your interpretation is the only sensible one.johmue:Why? Because it shows the advantage of accusative?No. If you're going to demonstrate the disambiguation benefits of the accusative then you need to present an example that actually disambiguates. Your example merely causes confusion, because the idea you're trying to express is unclear and conflicts with a more sensible interpretation.
In an intercultural environment you can't do that.
If you remain in one specific cultural context of which comes some common sense which interpretation is more sensible, then you can get away with a more unprecise language.
Exactly. That's the point. As certain ideas are obvious to certain people and absurd to others depending on the cultural background, a cross cultural language needs a precise grammar.johmue:In your cultural or personal mindset a certain idea might be nebulous, in another cultural context it might be totally clear and evident.Maybe "how kings treat people" means something to you, but I doubt it will be at all obvious to speakers in general.
In any case you still haven't explained what the idea means. Please feel free to do so at any point.To me it is indeed obvious. "La filo traktas sian patron kiel reĝo." menas that the son expects that the father will serve him. For example the son would never clean the table after dinner because he expects the father to do it for him. The son would not use polite words like "please" and "thank you". And so forth.
To me it is totally obvious to express that by "traktas lin kiel reĝo". Not to you. That's why you would interpret this in another way than I meant it if we didn't have the accusative to disambiguate. Fortunatly we do have it.
sudanglo (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 11:23:20
It is true that many sentences would have only one plausible interpretation in the absence of the accusative, but nevertheless the essential function of the accusative is to tie down the meaning.
tommjames (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 11:29:03
johmue:"La filo traktas sian patron kiel reĝo." menas that the son expects that the father will serve himHmmmmmmmm ok fair enough, that's a meaning that didn't occur to me for some reason. I take it all back then, your example is good!
I don't think that was down to intercultural differences though, I was just being absent minded
Lack of sleep perhaps.Still, one clear cut example doesn't prove much, and on the whole I don't feel the ability to disambiguate these types of phrase is an especially great benefit. There are usually other means of making the meaning clear, for those rare cases where it's even necessary to do so.
michaleo (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 13:04:23
tommjames:Still, one clear cut example doesn't prove much, and on the whole I don't feel the ability to disambiguate these types of phrase is an especially great benefit. There are usually other means of making the meaning clear, for those rare cases where it's even necessary to do so.Of course, but there is one problem. To disambiguate the meaning of a sentence it's necessary to be aware of such ambiguities. But many English speakers aren't aware of this because their mother tongue allows to exist such confusion. They are accustomed to it. But very often many questions appear when somebody tries to translate a text from English to other languages when one sentence have many meanings and all of them are equally probable. Maybe it doesn't bother English speakers but a translator has to translate a text properly. Depending on the meaning a sentence would be differently constructed.
Besides, people very often follow patterns from their mother tongues. And it's very probable that without such indicators much more often sentences would be ambiguous. I've just explained it above. Just imagine that English speakers would follow their mother tongue's patterns.
Roberto12 (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 13:55:49
johmue:"La filo traktas la patron kiel reĝo."It's true that the accusative, in principle, takes away the ambiguity surrounding who's "kiel reĝo", but you can create phrases that are similarly ambiguous with a prepositional phrase, where the N suffix can't help. Jen:
"La virino rigardis la viron sub la arekaco."
Is it the woman, the man, or both who is/are beneath the palm tree? As with the accusative example, you can either rely on context/common sense (i.e. the cop-out answer) or expand the phrase to make it clearer.
The point I'm making is that if you explore every facet of the language on a mission to remove all possible ambiguity, you end up with Lojban, which is extremely hard for human beings to use. It is therefore a weak argument by N-defenders to say that it somehow saves the language from ambiguity.
acdibble (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 15:12:35
A pair of sentences we were give when learning German.
Fenris_kcf (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 15:23:45
X amas Y pli ol Z faras.
I don't disagree that an explicit accusative is useful, but arguing that it is essential for a language to work is futile.
EDIT: And like Roberto12 said: Ambiguity also arises from other things.
robbkvasnak (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 16:51:06
Eye drops off the shelf
I like chocolate cake and cookies
He was teaching French trombone players and violinists
The pandas were not mating so the zookeeper stepped in
There was sex between the trucks
Here is a sentence that most native English speakers understand as positive though it is actually very ambiguous - this form is used in American commercials: Our wine stands out from all the rest
michaleo (Pokaż profil) 4 lipca 2013, 17:45:10
Roberto12:A sentence is as clear as a speaker wants it to be. But there is no reason to make understanding difficult. It's beyond doubt that this sentence can be rewritten in order to disambiguate the meaning. I will probably understand that the man is under the tree because of the nearness of words sub la arekaco. There is no information about woman but it isn't always necessary to know all facts. But it can be written in other ways:
"La virino rigardis la viron sub la arekaco."
Is it the woman, the man, or both who is/are beneath the palm tree? As with the accusative example, you can either rely on context/common sense (i.e. the cop-out answer) or expand the phrase to make it clearer.
1) La virino starinta sub la arekaco rigardis la viron.
2) La virino rigardis la viron starintan sub la arekaco.
3) Sube la arekaco, la virino rigardis la viron.
La virino rigardis la viron, sube la arekaco.
La virino rigardis la viron, kiam ili staris sub la arekaco.