an example of the need for simpler rules: the apostrophe

D: I have the seventh sense. I see dead punctuation everywhere. Nobody else can see it. And the punctuation doesn't know it's dead. <:

I never quite figured out why most folks find the apostrophe so difficult. I mastered it in primary school. Yet many of my liberal arts grad friends have yet to figure it out.

Punctuation is not set in stone. What is considered appropriate usage has varied by time and place. There is still disputes even among the most learned of us.
Having said that, consider the following passage:

• My sister's friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of my sister)
• My sister's friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of my sister)
• My sisters' friend's investments (the investments belonging to a friend of several of my sisters)
• My sisters' friends' investments (the investments belonging to several friends of several of my sisters)

I will review the most common errors.

1) "dog's" This could mean the possessive "the dog's bone" but no plural.
2) "it's" This can only mean a short form of "it is". Perhaps "'tis" was clearer.
I think I know why people screw that up. My, your, his, its. BUT Henry's, Mary's ...
They know sometimes there is an apostrophe. The English system is clear as mud.

Aside - the US rule suggests using an apostrophe for the plural of an acronym. For example, RRSP's. In Canada we don't ( I corrected the Royal Bank for the GIC's).
I much prefer our system. It allows more information. For example, how does one clearly indicate the possessive of GIC? It resembles plural with the US rule.

D: what to do?
Well ... if I ever get around to completing Hioxian, I plan to allow an optional overt indicator of what role a piece of punctuation is playing.
I read "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation ".
It was a fun read. Each punctuation symbol typically had only a handful of uses. This allows me to use Hioxian with a "subset usage indicator" mark on each symbol.

Dion in interview with CTV encounters problems with disambiguation.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081010.wliberals1010/BNStory/politics/home

Sitting for a taped interview with Steve Murphy, the anchor for CTV Halifax, Mr. Dion was asked: "If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper hasn't done?"

Mr. Dion replied: "If I had been prime minister 2½ years ago?"

Mr. Murphy replied: "If you were the prime minister right now."

...

Mr. Murphy repeated the question again. Mr. Dion asked: "If I was prime minister starting when? Today?"

D: Sure, Dion could have handled his response better.
But the question was ambiguous.
Verb tense for hypothetical situations is tricky!

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/conditional.htm

For present unreal events, we put the verb in the condition clause one step back — into the past:

• If the Bulls won another championship, Roberto would drive into Chicago for the celebration.
• I wish I had tickets.
• If they were available anywhere, I would pay any price for them.
• If he were a good friend, he would buy them for me....

For past unreal events — things that didn't happen, but we can imagine — we put the verb in the condition clause a further step back — into the past perfect:

• If the Pacers had won, Aunt Glad would have been rich.
• If she had bet that much money on the Bulls, she and Uncle Chester could have retired.
• I wish I had lived in Los Angeles when the Lakers had Magic Johnson.
• If I had known you were coming, I would have baked a cake.

D: very confusing to an ESLer! (English as Second Language)

D: I assume Dion understood the rule that generally verb tenses must agree.
Typically, if one begins in past tense then one stays in past tense.
Easy, right? [=

Bad English (or: when I read your lyrics)

This is my pitch for received grammar and syntax lessons.
Yes, yes, subcultures have viable and legitimate ways to express concepts.
Having said that, a single standard prevents groups from remaining isolated solitudes.

Mandarin and Cantonese are largely mutually incomprehensible.
Apparently their written forms are much more similar.

Without proper central instruction in English, kids are forced to learn from pop culture.
Sure, there is the occasional TV show writer that uses whom correctly. Sadly, usually even when the educational background of the character does not warrant it (Bones...).

And then... there are lyrics.
I understand one must sometimes shoehorn a word to fit the beat of a song.
However, often a simple rephrasing would have sufficed.

http://www.amiright.com/names/bad-grammar/abba.shtml
Haha! A site by pedants, for pedants. And I could have been the president! <:

Justin Timberlake's, "What goes around"

The Lyrics:

When you cheated girl, my heart bleeded girl.

Why:

It should be my heart "bled."

Gwen Stefani's, "Rich Girl"

The Lyrics:

If I was a rich girl.

Why:

That's wrong. It's supposed to be "If I WERE a rich girl".

Submitted by: G. Mag
D: Gwen can do whatever she wants... mmmm.

Kid Rock's, "All Summer Long"

The Lyrics:

"We didn't have no internet"

Why:

Double negative - yes he did have no internet, it was 1989!
D: I hear this at work. English has so many places to place a negative indicator.

The Killers', "When You Were Young"

The Lyrics:

"every once and a while"

Why:

it should be "every once IN a while"

Nickelback's, "Believe it Or Not"

The Lyrics:

Believe it or not everyone have things that they hide

Why:

everyone HAS things that they hide. It does that the entire song and annoys me SOOO much!!
D: this resembles confusion over whether a noun is collective or not.
Seagulls would be plural. A flock of seagulls is not.
(Note the weakness in my own writing - I tend to shift verb tenses too much!)

Savage Garden's, "Truly, Madly, Deeply"

The Lyrics:

I want to lay like this forever
Until the sky falls down on me

Why:

It's LIE, not LAY!
D: here is how I remember this one. Lay is something I do to somebody else, LOL!

English quirk of the day:
http://www.learnenglish.de/mistakes/CommonMistakes.htm

A:
advice vs advise | accept vs except | affect vs effect | a lot/alot/allot
all ready vs already | all right vs alright | alone vs lonely
altogether vs all together | any vs some | apart vs a part
And the list goes on and on and on and...
P.S.: vs., not vs or v.s..

economical use of pixels in fonts

http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/PHOTOALBUM/daniel_pelavin_test_1996.jpg (pic)

http://www.gwywyr.com/articles/scimaths/3x3.html (pic)

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/software/elixir/page_01.htm

D: the third web site shows how we have been spoiled with post-SVGA very high resolution monitors. We assume we can indefinitely scale a Truetype font, and the pixel count will support it. But this places a cap on how small a legible symbol can be.
I show above examples of a 3x3 font that is *just* legible.
Early computer fonts were only 5x8 - see Atari stuff.
Then we went to 8x12.

http://www.geocities.com/dinosnider666/anatomical_phonetic_font.html

Because my Hioxian system uses an alphanumeric display layout, it doesn't work below a certain pixel resolution. In my case, I think 5x8 was *just* sufficient. It would be incredibly chunky.
At the size of a computer monitor pixel, the details would blur together.
Still, it is interesting to ponder just how minimal and spartan a font can be and still function.

Aside: I was talking to buddy Rick H., a computing prof at WLU, about 3D displays. I started thinking about that movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster. OK, I started thinking about Foster first, LOL! Anyway, I read the book too - I thought the movie was more concise and focused. The alien font is difficult for the protagonists to decipher. They finally realize that aliens use a 3D layout v.s. 2D like ourselves. I have to assume they have sweet 3D displays using circular polarization, like our latest ZScreen technology. It would seem that those aliens are related to that freaky mutant of our world, the Mantis Shrimp. It is the only living thing we know that can see and meaningfully use circular polarized light.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320120732.htm
I thought it would be fun to turn that alien alphabet part of that movie into real 3D.
I admit I am intrigued by the potential of using 3D info to increase data density in a font.
The high end circular polarized 3D tech is only now coming onto the market, and a decent display runs 5000bux. But we could be on the very cusp of a dramatic change in the way we present computer information. It is pretty cool to think of that!
Thoughts?
Cheers.
D.

computer translation interlingua, problem with natural languages

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080918091618.htm

"So far all approaches to solve the multilingual component have run into serious difficulties...Other approaches set out to use one language (almost always English) as a pivot. Again the results were held back, this time because the use of a natural language as an interlanguage occasions ambiguity. As the researchers note, early attempts at using a natural reference language to build machine translation systems go back 20 years ago, and the results were no good."

D: the con-lang (controlled natural language) approach has shown some promise.
Attempto is a good example, and one I've studied.

http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/

Attempto Controlled English (ACE) is a controlled natural language, i.e. a rich subset of standard English designed to serve as specification and knowledge representation language. ACE allows users to express professional texts precisely, and in the terms of their respective application domain. As any language, ACE must be learned to be used competently, but this amounts to learning the differences between ACE and full English, formulated as a small set of ACE construction and interpretation rules. Once written, ACE texts can be read and understood by anybody.

ACE appears perfectly natural, but — being a controlled subset of English — is in fact a formal language. ACE texts are computer-processable and can be unambiguously translated into discourse representation structures, a syntactic variant of first-order logic.

D: this removes some of the impressiveness of Lojban, which makes a similar claim (wiki source).

Lojban (pronounced [ˈloʒban]) is a constructed, syntactically unambiguous human language based on predicate logic. Its predecessor is Loglan, the original logical language by James Cooke Brown.

D: finally, as an aside, I'll note A++, which is a learning tool to understand computer programming. One deals in the most rudimentary concepts, and composite concepts are clearly indicated as such.

A++ stands for abstraction plus reference plus synthesis which is used as a name for the minimalistic programming language that is built on ARS.

ARS is an abstraction from the Lambda Calculus, taking its three basic operations, and giving them a more general meaning, thus providing a foundation for the three major programming paradigms: functional programming, object-oriented programming and imperative programming.

ARS Based Programming is used as a name for programming which consists mainly of applying patterns derived from ARS to programming in any language.

D: the book is online.

http://www.aplusplus.net/bookonl/index.html

humour of english word boundaries, phrasing

http://humour.200ok.com.au/bad-domain-names.html

1. Who Represents is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is
   www.whorepresents.com/
   
   
2. Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange Advice and views at
   www.expertsexchange.com/
   
   
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at
   www.penisland.net/
   
   
4. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at
   www.therapistfinder.com/
   
   
5. There's the Italian Power Generator company,
   www.powergenitalia.com/
   
   
6. And don't forget the Mole Station Native Nursery in New South Wales,
   www.molestationnursery.com/
   
   
7. If you're looking for IP computer software, there?s always
   www.ipanywhere.com/
   
   
8. The First Cumming Methodist Church Web site is
   www.cummingfirst.com/
   
   
9. And the designers at Speed of Art await you at their wacky Web site,
   www.speedofart.com/

----
http://funnies.paco.to/Headlines.html

• Grandmother of eight makes hole in one
• Deaf mute gets new hearing in killing
• Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers
• House passes gas tax onto senate
• Stiff opposition expected to casketless funeral plan
• Two convicts evade noose, jury hung
• William Kelly was fed secretary
• Milk drinkers are turning to powder
• Safety experts say school bus passengers should be belted
• Quarter of a million Chinese live on water
• Farmer bill dies in house
• Iraqi head seeks arms

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/w.html
D: similar Esperanto ambiguous words...

Esperanto	Meaning A	Meaning B
	"a purchase"	"a contemptible little thing"
	"to alternate"	"to sneeze at"
	"avarice"	"a group of grandfathers"
	"a diet"	"a minor deity"
	"age of dignity"	"a swim in a dike"
	"an exterior"	"a former world"
	"an accomplishment"	"a group of elves"
	"a daughter"	"dirty linen"
	"a galley"	"a drop of bile"
	"a colleague"	"a big neck"
	"a pumpkin"	"a city of cakes"
	"lavendery"	"in need of cleaning"
	"an oxeye daisy"	"someone licking"
	"a casserole"	"a sea-tale"
	"a modulation"	"a fashionable guy"
	"a ream of paper"	"a papal mistake"
	"a person"	"a sounding-out"
	"pretend"	"needing to be ready"
	"speed"	"a turnip-sprout"
	"regular"	"aristocratic"
	"re-seeing"	"child of a daydream"
	"a sardine"	"a Sardinian woman"
	"sensitive"	"without theme"
	"sugar"	"a drop of juice"
	"urine"	"an aurochs cow"

Then there is the English ambiguity in such statements such as the one that follows, due to imprecise use word ordering.

"Men don't like to talk about their relationships with each other."
as opposed to
"Men don't like to talk to each other about their relationships."

D: I'd like to contrast this with the (soon to be released!) Decimese.
Syllable construction: for most vocabulary, exempting function words, consonant-vowel (CV).
Increasing levels of detail: consonant1-(vowel), consonant2-(vowel) etc. (C1VC2V...)
Verbal and written shorthand (this is 'informal slang' for when the full word in understood by context apparent in a situation, or from introducing the word earlier. Much like we might say "George" and then use "he" for the rest of the conversation.)
Function words have 'free-hanging end vowels'. That is to say, they use a variable form of vowels to indicate they are not embedded within the middle of a standard vocabulary word.
Similarly, voiced/voiceless consonant pairs denote the start of middle of a word.
Finally the termination of the word is a nasal consonant 'cap'. N, NG, or M.
Ergo standard vocabulary has the form CVCV....CV(nasal).
Word order indicates noun, verb and adjective/adverb.

I'd like to share a funny personal anecdote. A few years ago I experimented with online dating.
I agreed to meet this local goth girl. The night before she sends me a link to her website.
She was a pagan and her site was called Freak's Haven.
However she did not use capitals or punctuation or spacing.
So what I saw was freakshaven.
It could be "freak's haven".
Or... freak ... shaven?!
I had no idea what I was getting into, LOL!

What would that have looked like in Decimese?
First of all the word order would have indicated either
1) shaven freak or
2) freak who shaves/did shave etc.
I.e.
1) adjective- noun or
2) subject- verb.

I expect there will still be plays on words.
Using a shortened slang term normally reserved for another word can still be used for humour, for insults, for double entendres.
So subcultures will still be able to define themselves from mainstream culture by not using received-truncation forms taught in school.
E.g. Instead of C1VC8V(nasal) for a certain word, they could resort to C3VC8V(nasal).

Trivia: 95% of languages use either post or preposition in clauses, despite other theoretically available options.
I may end up treating prefixes/suffixes word modifiers in the same grammatical class in this fashion.
It is unusual to effectively allocate such concepts to essentially 'closed class function word' categories, but for many generic concepts, it might be desirable.
For example, quasi- para- pseudo- demi-...

I am still pondering embedding clause/phrase heads in a word.
I *could* use consonant clusters, limited to (C plus L/R or W/Y), with the LRWY + vowel being a permutation generator) but this would preclude using those 2 pairs in consonant clusters for 2 simple binary states such as is /isn't and such.

brain studies and an optimized language

http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8766

"(fMRI) to see which parts of the brain were active when volunteers memorized pairs of words such as "motor/bear" or "liver/tree." In this experiment, the volunteers either learned the pairs as separate words that could be fitted into a sentence, or as a new compound word, for example "motorbear," defined as a motorized stuffed toy."

D: other studies:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/uoa-iit092107.php
D: you gotta explain the details of referent-objects and whatnot to kids.
I have 2 nieces, an infant and toddler, so follow this stuff for my sister.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-03/AAft-Dsih-1503101.php

"This research proves the existence of a universal neurological basis for dyslexia. It also highlights the impact that the complexity of orthography can have on reading proficiency of dyslexics and therefore the severity of the disease and the ease of diagnosis. This means that in the Italian population there may be hidden cases of dyslexia. On the other hand, otherwise mild cases of dyslexia may appear far worse in irregular orthographies like that of English or French."

In English, there are 1,120 ways of representing 40 sounds (phonemes) using different letter combinations (graphemes).
D: !!!

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1997-04/CUNS-KNAD-290497.php
D: loud background noise impairs language acquisition.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-07/aps-cc071105.php

The researchers discovered that the representations guide when and how the statistical computations are carried out by listeners. Specifically, the study shows that consonants serve mainly to distinguish among words, whereas vowels tend to carry grammatical information. According to researchers, listeners are sensitive to this difference.

D: a summary of brain studies might result in the following principles of design:
1) SOV word order.
2) vowels for grammar, but consonants for vocabulary
3) a simple and regular spelling orthography.

Is anyone aware of a language that uses 2)? It sounds complicated to design.

I gotta make a working sample of that Hioxian phonemic alphabet.
Every time I see the subdivided bike symbol in the bike lane spray-painted on, or the alphanumeric display on the vending machine at work, I think of it.
A result of a phonemic v.s. phonetic system, and by that I mean showing multiple ways to articulate the same sound, is there unfortunately will be multiple ways to show some phonemes. As a matter of convention, one could default to the most common one.
After all, does it matter if one place the tongue tip on the top teeth or the front palate?

http://people.csail.mit.edu/jrb/Projects/jack-font-paper.htm
(Neat website, pic is from it.)