From phm@A2E.DE Wed May 10 15:05:49 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 31608 invoked from network); 10 May 2000 21:45:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 10 May 2000 21:45:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.camelot.de) (195.30.224.3) by mta3 with SMTP; 10 May 2000 21:45:08 -0000 Received: from robin.camelot.de (uucp@robin.camelot.de [195.30.224.3]) by mail.camelot.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA93974; Wed, 10 May 2000 23:44:41 +0200 (CEST) Received: from oas.a2e.de (uucp@localhost) by robin.camelot.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) with UUCP id XAA93970; Wed, 10 May 2000 23:44:41 +0200 (CEST) Received: from localhost by wtao97 via sendmail with esmtp id for ; Wed, 10 May 2000 21:39:40 +0000 (/etc/localtime) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #1 built 1999-Nov-8) Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 21:39:40 +0000 (/etc/localtime) X-Sender: phm@wtao97.oas.a2e.de To: pycyn@aol.com Cc: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Centripetal-centrifugal, little-endian--big-endian, subsets-contents, etc. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: PILCH Hartmut X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 2643 > I am inclined to think that the fact that human languages fairly regularly > offer centrifugal constructions is itself evidence that the centripetal-only > thought pattern is not in fact the rule. The European languages are a tiny minority on the planet, but they have, not through language design merits, marginalised most of the others. > And, of course, none of this decides the structure of dates, since it is > equally possible (and, to me, more natural) to take the year as the name of a > set and a month as specifying a subset within that set and the day as > specifying a unit subset within that and thus get dmy again but as a > centripetal structure. You mean something like the year 2001 . which year 20001 ? the year 2001 of the 5th month . of which month 5 ? the year 2001 of the 5th month of the 20th day . but I fail to assign this any meaning. > Of course if you label the units (as the Chinese fairly regularly do) then > you can use any order, since there is no ambiguity about what the numbers > mean. the short form originates from the long one. One can only elide in a meaningful way, when one has a well constructed long form. > One final item on centripetal -- left expanding -- strings. My memory of > Language Theory (admittedly often 40 years old) is that there was an > empirical law to the effect that there was an upper limit (probably the > classic 5+/- 2) on the length of left-branching structures that a human mind > could process. Insofar as centripetal structures are left-branching (and > that may vary with the kind of structure) this would mean that they could not > handle all situations, that some centrifugal forms are necessary. Does > anyone know whether that rule has been repudiated? Can anyone work out the > branching structure of various types of centripetal constructions? I don't think so. Chinese state agencies at all levels are always named with a centripetal pattern based on leftward expansion, i.e. with the outermost / uppermost hierarchy level on the left. This is very easy to handle for the human mind. Anything else wouldn't be, because languages usually don't offer enough brace structures that could tell the listener when to switch back and forth between the directions. -phm