[86936] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: The topic marker -'e'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher Doty)
Mon Nov 23 00:16:42 2009
In-Reply-To: <BC06E2F3-D27A-4044-9020-68B7A646BEE0@alcaco.net>
From: Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:14:36 -0800
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
> That sounds a little strange. You shouldn't be "constructing" a
> grammar, as TKD already provides one. Verbs, nouns, prefixes,
> suffixes, and chuvmey are all detailed.
Unfortunately, computers can't read English; they need a human to act
as intermediary and interpret the grammatical rules into
computer-coded rules.
> I will disagree strongly with this requirement. Nongrammatical
> sentences can still be valid. KGT even has a section on
> intentionally ungrammatical usage.
Non-grammatical, by its very definition, means not valid. If there is
something "non-grammatical" that is "valid," then it isn't actually
ungrammatical, it's dialect or clipped speech or something else. Most
English speakers would say that "ain't" isn't grammatical, even those
who use it. It is, from a linguistic perspective, perfectly
grammatical, if not prescriptively "proper."
Ain't no such thing as a valid ungrammatical sentence.
