Left, right, numbers and "The Stuff of Thought"
Posted: Fri Aug 13, 2010 12:54 pm
I'm reading "The Stuff of Thought" The sections on numbers and left/right are must-reads for toki pona fans. I can't quote the entire interesting section.
The gist of it is that everyone seems to get for free (without specific training) the ability to approximately ordinally rank small values, and English has this ability too:
none, a few, a couple, a bunch, a lot, a whole lot, a boat load, more than I can imagine.
Adjacent phrases may be equal to each other, the error of the estimate grows as we move from the words meaning small quantities to the words meaning large quantities. This is how the piraha and the Munduruku count. The kicker is that the Mundruku count 1,2,3,4,5, many, but in usage, it *means* about 1, about 2, about 3, about 4, about 5, something about five or more.
What this means for toki pona is that if ala, wan, tu, mute is supposed to work the way it does in primitive societies without widespread exact counting skills, then tu means "some small number close to two, but not necessarily two exactly" ala, wan, tu, mute is not a truncated exact number system. This is somehow freeing, imho, because it means exact numbers in the real world are extra-linguistic and fair game for naming, same as if I decided to come up with all the phrases necessary to describe running a coffee shop or writing C# code.
There is also a fantastic section on Tzeltal, a language with no left-right words. They use strictly geo-spatial orientation words, uphill, downhill. Other languages are almost entirely geo-spatially centered and use south-north-east-west instead of left right.
I'm not sure what the implication is for toki pona. Toki pona doesn't have good single word descriptors for egocentric (left-right) or geocentric (N-S-E-W, upriver-downriver, uphill-downhill). In fact, toki pona can describe up down better than it can describe the other axis.
Geocentric phrases work best when your colocutor knows the lay of the land as well as you do. On a forum, there is no lay of the land, except maybe when referring to the text on the screen. As much as we might prefer the more "primative" geocentric construction, we can't really use it on the internet, where 99% of all toki pona communication happens.
sina pakala e kulupu nimi lon poka pilin pi kulupu nimi sina. You made a mistake at the heart side of your sentence.
mi lape lon poka lete pi tomo mi. I sleep on the side of my house closer to the (north/south) pole. This is confusing unless everyone knows where you live (Australia or California?)
The gist of it is that everyone seems to get for free (without specific training) the ability to approximately ordinally rank small values, and English has this ability too:
none, a few, a couple, a bunch, a lot, a whole lot, a boat load, more than I can imagine.
Adjacent phrases may be equal to each other, the error of the estimate grows as we move from the words meaning small quantities to the words meaning large quantities. This is how the piraha and the Munduruku count. The kicker is that the Mundruku count 1,2,3,4,5, many, but in usage, it *means* about 1, about 2, about 3, about 4, about 5, something about five or more.
What this means for toki pona is that if ala, wan, tu, mute is supposed to work the way it does in primitive societies without widespread exact counting skills, then tu means "some small number close to two, but not necessarily two exactly" ala, wan, tu, mute is not a truncated exact number system. This is somehow freeing, imho, because it means exact numbers in the real world are extra-linguistic and fair game for naming, same as if I decided to come up with all the phrases necessary to describe running a coffee shop or writing C# code.
There is also a fantastic section on Tzeltal, a language with no left-right words. They use strictly geo-spatial orientation words, uphill, downhill. Other languages are almost entirely geo-spatially centered and use south-north-east-west instead of left right.
I'm not sure what the implication is for toki pona. Toki pona doesn't have good single word descriptors for egocentric (left-right) or geocentric (N-S-E-W, upriver-downriver, uphill-downhill). In fact, toki pona can describe up down better than it can describe the other axis.
Geocentric phrases work best when your colocutor knows the lay of the land as well as you do. On a forum, there is no lay of the land, except maybe when referring to the text on the screen. As much as we might prefer the more "primative" geocentric construction, we can't really use it on the internet, where 99% of all toki pona communication happens.
sina pakala e kulupu nimi lon poka pilin pi kulupu nimi sina. You made a mistake at the heart side of your sentence.
mi lape lon poka lete pi tomo mi. I sleep on the side of my house closer to the (north/south) pole. This is confusing unless everyone knows where you live (Australia or California?)