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Opacity: Difference between revisions
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(Created page with "Grammatical structures are called '''opaque'''<ref>This is Toaq or loglang jargon, not linguistics jargon.</ref> when they block inner quantifiers from moving up to the front of the outer clause like normal. For example, object-incorporating verbs are said to be opaque: quantifications in phrases like {{t|po tu poq}} are restricted to a ficticious small "{{t|po}} + object clause", rather than the encompassing clause. Another way to think about this is that the {{t|...") |
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'''Opaque''' is used in two senses: | |||
# Grammatical opacity, which has to do with [[scope]]. | |||
# Lexical opacity, meaning "you can't reliably analyze the parts of a compound". | |||
== Grammatical opacity == | |||
Grammatical structures are called '''opaque'''<ref>This is Toaq or [[loglang]] jargon, not linguistics jargon.</ref> when they block inner quantifiers from moving up to the front of the outer clause like normal. | Grammatical structures are called '''opaque'''<ref>This is Toaq or [[loglang]] jargon, not linguistics jargon.</ref> when they block inner quantifiers from moving up to the front of the outer clause like normal. | ||
For example, object-incorporating verbs are said to be opaque | For example, object-incorporating verbs like {{t|po}} are said to be opaque. Quantifications in phrases like {{t|po tu poq}} are restricted to a ficticious small "{{t|po}} + object clause", rather than the encompassing clause. | ||
Another way to think about this is that the {{t|tu}} doesn't leave the ''definition'' of the new verb created by {{t|po tu X}}. | Another way to think about this is that the {{t|tu}} doesn't leave the ''definition'' of the new verb created by {{t|po tu X}}. | ||
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And thus {{t|<u>po tu pỏq</u> sa kủa}} means "some rooms <u>are everyone's</u>", regardless of the other quantifiers in the sentence, and not something like "∀[P: poq(P)] ∃[K: kua(K)] K is P's." | And thus {{t|<u>po tu pỏq</u> sa kủa}} means "some rooms <u>are everyone's</u>", regardless of the other quantifiers in the sentence, and not something like "∀[P: poq(P)] ∃[K: kua(K)] K is P's." | ||
== Lexical opacity == | |||
In some [[loglang]]s, compound words are "transparent", meaning you can analyze their parts. For example, in Loglan, ''trigru'' is necessarily a compound of ''tri'' (tree) + ''gru'' (group). A listener who doesn't know this word can still deduce that it refers to groups related to trees. (The word means "forest".) | |||
Toaq does not have this property: its compounds are '''opaque'''. This means that even though {{t|muaome}} is ''etymologically'' formed as {{t|muao}} plus {{t|me}} (which may be a useful mnemonic), there is no way to infer the meaning or structure of an unfamiliar word in general, or to even tell that it ''is'' a compound. | |||
This gives wordsmiths much more freedom: we can freely make new multi-syllable [[root]]s, or "exocentric compounds" like {{t|tıqshoaı}} (which is not a kind of {{t|shoaı}}). | |||
The philosophy is that not much is lost, in other words, transparent compounds aren't very useful: even if you can "reliably" analyze Lojban ''mencti'' into "mind + eat", you can ''still'' not fully infer its meaning or place structure with any certainty without looking it up in the dictionary. | |||
== Notes == | == Notes == | ||
<references /> | <references /> | ||