6 ms·

I guess my question is: as you invent new phrases to describe more complex words, aren’t you effectively expanding the size of the language, even if this is “im

by ghayes 3y ago

I guess my question is: as you invent new phrases to describe more complex words, aren’t you effectively expanding the size of the language, even if this is “implicit”? Snowman in English is counted as a word, for instance. The advantage here of compound words is that you can easily get a gist without knowing exactly the meaning, similar to characters in Chinese that have a phonetic and meaning radical both present.

chris_st 3y ago
Just like in English: "Show up" is, ostensibly, two words, but it's a phrase with a different meaning that either "show" or "up". So yes, pretty much. But "Blue Sky" is two words indicating a single thing, but that thing is both "blue" and "sky", so no, you're not really expanding the language. That said, I don't speak Tiki Pona, so I don't know how the language is used by the various communities that actually speak it.
- brabel 3y ago
  This kind of phrase usually has a historical origin. I tried to find out what it is for "show up" but apparently, this is a very recent one and originally meant something else entirely: "verbal phrase, by 1826 as "to disgrace through exposure;" It then changed to the current meaning only in around 1888, just ~135 years ago: "The meaning "to put in an appearance, be (merely) present" is by 1888." Unfortunately, I couldn't find any explanation based on historical use of the phrase (phrasal verb, to be accurate), but given it's a quite recent one, it probably originated from people just trying to emphasize "completion" of the "show" action by adding "up", like with most other phrasal verbs. Source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/show%20up https://www.etymonline.com/word/show%20up
  - chris_st 3y ago
    Thanks! Yes, I remember reading older novels (Austen, maybe?) where the "disgrace through exposure" sense was used... it was obvious what was meant, but surprising.
    - IIsi50MHz 3y ago
      "disgrace through superior performance" is a current meaning. AA does a thing, and then (especially if AA appears to be getting praise for it or appears proud of it), BB either does it better or does something more difficult (usually accompanied by a derisive remark about AA or AA's work).
florianist 3y ago
There are common forms for certains words of course, but no lexicalisation. In Toki Pona, you're not adding words, set phrases, to the language's lexicon. So there are no compound words that would be set in stone and things can and do change depending on the situation. Let's take an example: coffee. The word "telo" is some form liquid or water, so coffee could simply be just telo (if you're in context where it's clear), but you may just add it's the dark/black liquid ("telo pimeja"), or the strong hot drink ("telo wawa seli"), or the liquid of no sleep ("telo pi lape ala"), or there are many other possibilities depending on what's the important aspect you emphasize and how brief or precise you want/need to be (if you need a lot of precision, you'll end up doing several sentences, but you'll get there).
- jprete 3y ago
  Set phrases aren’t consciously created, they’re the accumulated contextual/cultural meaning that people remember for the phrase, until people no longer use it to point at the literal meaning. If some group always drinks coffee and never tea, then eventually “strong hot drink” means “coffee”, and an outsider who asks for their own group’s “strong hot drink” (always meaning tea) is going to get a bitter surprise.
  - Brian_K_White 3y ago
    I don't think they would be surprised, since anyone having used the language enough to get to that point would know how it works, and they would know that they are not in their usual context. It's like leaving out units of measure. We sometimes omit them, but we practically never lose track of when it makes sense to or have to consciously think about it.
    - baq 3y ago
      The first time my ~3 yo daughter saw the sea she exclaimed 'POOL!' Make of this what you wish ;)
      - Brian_K_White 3y ago
jahnu 3y ago
The equi-complexity hypothesis states that all languages are equally complex and just trade off complexity in one area for simplicity in another. However, it is not yet accepted and highly disputed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_complexity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_complexity
- worldsayshi 3y ago
  Languages seem to often have a lot of accidental complexity though, that doesn't seem to add anything and just makes it harder to learn. Like irregularities. Seem to come from a lack of design.
asoneth 3y ago
> aren’t you effectively expanding the size of the language, even if this is “implicit”? Yes, this is how Toki Pona dictionaries work. For example, there is a surprisingly thick two-way English - Toki Pona dictionary, "ku", which includes more than 11k entries such as "tomo tawa" for "car" or "ilo kalama" for a radio. See https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51n8JCdFlQL.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51n8JCdFlQL.jpg or other images from https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978292367/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978292367/ Note that as it is descriptive rather than proscriptive, each translation has a superscript indicating what fraction of English-speaking Toki Pona speakers used that particular translation when the book was written. I don't have my copy on hand but I recall that there was a community survey and Sonia Lang used some kind of scale such as 4 for a universally accepted meaning down to 1 or 1/2 as a highly idiosyncratic/fanciful translation only used by a small number of people. I suspect if the language evolves some people may compress these further so that "tomo tawa" becomes "tomo-tawa" becomes "tomotawa" which may help with parsing written text. Perhaps fluent speakers do not have this problem, but I typically have to read a sentence more than once to parse it correctly.
isykt 3y ago
> Snowman in English is counted as a word, for instance. Note that for linguists, the definition of “word” is so slippery as to not have much use. It boils down to “because it’s written that way,” and even that is a stretch, because this definition is different for other languages. And of course, not every language is written. To use your Chinese / Mandarin example, Mandarin does something very similar to Toki Pona in terms of inventing new phrases to describe more complex concepts (here I avoid using “words” in this context because it’s not a useful concept for our use): chéngyǔ are four character idiom phrases that are not words, but references to much longer cultural stories. They have a distinct meaning, but they are not considered words.

by ghayes 3y ago

chris_st 3y ago

Just like in English: "Show up" is, ostensibly, two words, but it's a phrase with a different meaning that either "show" or "up". So yes, pretty much. But "Blue Sky" is two words indicating a single thing, but that thing is both "blue" and "sky", so no, you're not really expanding the language. That said, I don't speak Tiki Pona, so I don't know how the language is used by the various communities that actually speak it.

brabel 3y ago
This kind of phrase usually has a historical origin. I tried to find out what it is for "show up" but apparently, this is a very recent one and originally meant something else entirely: "verbal phrase, by 1826 as "to disgrace through exposure;" It then changed to the current meaning only in around 1888, just ~135 years ago: "The meaning "to put in an appearance, be (merely) present" is by 1888." Unfortunately, I couldn't find any explanation based on historical use of the phrase (phrasal verb, to be accurate), but given it's a quite recent one, it probably originated from people just trying to emphasize "completion" of the "show" action by adding "up", like with most other phrasal verbs. Source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/show%20up https://www.etymonline.com/word/show%20up
- chris_st 3y ago
  Thanks! Yes, I remember reading older novels (Austen, maybe?) where the "disgrace through exposure" sense was used... it was obvious what was meant, but surprising.
  - IIsi50MHz 3y ago
    "disgrace through superior performance" is a current meaning. AA does a thing, and then (especially if AA appears to be getting praise for it or appears proud of it), BB either does it better or does something more difficult (usually accompanied by a derisive remark about AA or AA's work).

florianist 3y ago

There are common forms for certains words of course, but no lexicalisation. In Toki Pona, you're not adding words, set phrases, to the language's lexicon. So there are no compound words that would be set in stone and things can and do change depending on the situation. Let's take an example: coffee. The word "telo" is some form liquid or water, so coffee could simply be just telo (if you're in context where it's clear), but you may just add it's the dark/black liquid ("telo pimeja"), or the strong hot drink ("telo wawa seli"), or the liquid of no sleep ("telo pi lape ala"), or there are many other possibilities depending on what's the important aspect you emphasize and how brief or precise you want/need to be (if you need a lot of precision, you'll end up doing several sentences, but you'll get there).

jprete 3y ago
Set phrases aren’t consciously created, they’re the accumulated contextual/cultural meaning that people remember for the phrase, until people no longer use it to point at the literal meaning. If some group always drinks coffee and never tea, then eventually “strong hot drink” means “coffee”, and an outsider who asks for their own group’s “strong hot drink” (always meaning tea) is going to get a bitter surprise.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  I don't think they would be surprised, since anyone having used the language enough to get to that point would know how it works, and they would know that they are not in their usual context. It's like leaving out units of measure. We sometimes omit them, but we practically never lose track of when it makes sense to or have to consciously think about it.
  - baq 3y ago
    The first time my ~3 yo daughter saw the sea she exclaimed 'POOL!' Make of this what you wish ;)
    - Brian_K_White 3y ago

jahnu 3y ago

The equi-complexity hypothesis states that all languages are equally complex and just trade off complexity in one area for simplicity in another. However, it is not yet accepted and highly disputed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_complexity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_complexity

worldsayshi 3y ago
Languages seem to often have a lot of accidental complexity though, that doesn't seem to add anything and just makes it harder to learn. Like irregularities. Seem to come from a lack of design.

asoneth 3y ago

> aren’t you effectively expanding the size of the language, even if this is “implicit”? Yes, this is how Toki Pona dictionaries work. For example, there is a surprisingly thick two-way English - Toki Pona dictionary, "ku", which includes more than 11k entries such as "tomo tawa" for "car" or "ilo kalama" for a radio. See https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51n8JCdFlQL.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51n8JCdFlQL.jpg or other images from https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978292367/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978292367/ Note that as it is descriptive rather than proscriptive, each translation has a superscript indicating what fraction of English-speaking Toki Pona speakers used that particular translation when the book was written. I don't have my copy on hand but I recall that there was a community survey and Sonia Lang used some kind of scale such as 4 for a universally accepted meaning down to 1 or 1/2 as a highly idiosyncratic/fanciful translation only used by a small number of people. I suspect if the language evolves some people may compress these further so that "tomo tawa" becomes "tomo-tawa" becomes "tomotawa" which may help with parsing written text. Perhaps fluent speakers do not have this problem, but I typically have to read a sentence more than once to parse it correctly.

isykt 3y ago

> Snowman in English is counted as a word, for instance. Note that for linguists, the definition of “word” is so slippery as to not have much use. It boils down to “because it’s written that way,” and even that is a stretch, because this definition is different for other languages. And of course, not every language is written. To use your Chinese / Mandarin example, Mandarin does something very similar to Toki Pona in terms of inventing new phrases to describe more complex concepts (here I avoid using “words” in this context because it’s not a useful concept for our use): chéngyǔ are four character idiom phrases that are not words, but references to much longer cultural stories. They have a distinct meaning, but they are not considered words.