Subject: Re: thoughts on numerical language

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2001 23:02:37 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., And Rosta <arosta@u...> wrote:
> >>> <thinkit8@l...> 12/03/01 05:23pm >>>
> #When trying to put together a binary-encoded language, I noticed 
> #some interesting things. Lojban serves as a great model, for 
one. 
> #I noticed some things became a lot easier--you don't have to 
worry 
> #about fitting things into human pronunciation. Depending on how 
> #compact you want it to be, there's a lot less compromises to be 
> #made. This becomes even more freeing (perhaps this is an 
extention 
> #of the hypothesis...maybe our vocal cords limit our thought).
> 
> It's an essential feature of human language that the basic 
ingredients
> of phonological structure are independent of meaning and function;
> a language has one set of rules for defining valid phonological 
structures
> and another whooly separate set of rules governing their mapping to
> semanticosyntactic structures. So it should be possible to change 
the
> phonology -- which is what I assume you mean by binary-encoding --
> without affecting syntax/semantics. Our vocal tract limits not what
> we can express, but only how quickly we can express it.
> 
> --And.

True, to an extent. I mentioned the fa-fu as a lojban example where 
it does influence. Viewed numerically, a typical phonology can be 
thought of as a mixed base number perhaps.

I think it will differentiate itself when you start looking at 
things that are just too cumbursome that they are never expressed in 
a human language. For example, in a binary language it's easy to 
imbed something like a bitmap to directly describe a flat picture 
(or indeed any flat bit string, like a DSD sound).

In the end, the quickness of expressions determines what gets 
expressed, too (isn't that Zipf?).