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 | | From: | Albretch | | Subject: | Corpora of language syntactic markers | | Date: | Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:04:39 -0500 (EST) |
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Is there such thing as a corpus of all syntactic elements of languages
and a comparison of how they relate to each other?
Just the syntax of words and word combinations. Semantic issues aren't
really important.
E.g., most languages (I would say all) have a 'singular' and/or 'plural'
indicator that for example in Eng and Spanish could be also combined with
a 'closeness' indicator to form 4 cases.
(this/that, these/those), (esto/eso, estos/esos/aquellos
(aquellos:= those other ones))
Things aren't that straight forward when comparative analysis are made
among languages.
In English, they use 'girls' and 'boys' to mean groups of (non adults from)
both es when in Spanish there is the neutral 'nignos' used for box es
and specifically (unless the context demands a distinction) also used for
non adults but meaning more like 'children'
Also the 's' in girls would represent something different from the 's'
in plays . . .
Where do you find such vertical analysis within a language and comparison
among different languages?
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| | From: | Laurence Finston | | Subject: | Re: Corpora of language syntactic markers | | Date: | Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:56:49 +0100 |
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| On Tue, 14 Dec 2004, Albretch wrote:
> Is there such thing as a corpus of all syntactic elements of languages
> and a comparison of how they relate to each other?
If you mean natural languages, I don't believe such a thing would be
possible. One reason is that defining the syntactic elements of
languages is a matter of interpretation. Also, there are too many
languages to make this practicable.
>
> Just the syntax of words and word combinations. Semantic issues aren't
> really important.
>
> E.g., most languages (I would say all) have a 'singular' and/or 'plural'
> indicator that for example in Eng and Spanish could be also combined with
> a 'closeness' indicator to form 4 cases.
>
> (this/that, these/those), (esto/eso, estos/esos/aquellos
> (aquellos:= those other ones))
>
Case and number are topics in the field of morphology, rather than
syntax. It is, of course, difficult or perhaps even impossible to keep
the different branches of grammar separate.
> Things aren't that straight forward when comparative analysis are made
> among languages.
>
> In English, they use 'girls' and 'boys' to mean groups of (non adults from)
> both es when in Spanish there is the neutral 'nignos' used for box es
> and specifically (unless the context demands a distinction) also used for
> non adults but meaning more like 'children'
>
> Also the 's' in girls would represent something different from the 's'
> in plays . . .
>
> Where do you find such vertical analysis within a language and comparison
> among different languages?
>
You might want to look into the literature of the field of Comparative
Historical Linguistics.
Laurence Finston
http://www.gnu.org/software/3dldf/LDF.html
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