Re: [glosalist] Sound "U" in Glosa

  Ron Clark hated grammatical complexity so much that he created a =

  Sadly, most = adults have lost their childhood flexibility, and need to  be told the "rul= es" of a new language, while, of course, they were NEVER  told the rules of=  the language they learnt at mother's knee.  Ron made a  big mistake in ass= uming that people retained the creativity they had when  toddlers.

 I = did, belatedly, acknowledge that a Glosa Grammar must be written,  so, I cr= eated one 'after the fact.'  I looked at written Glosa, deduced the  syntac= tical relationships, and recorded them.  A Glosa Grammar does exist  somewh= ere in the Internet.
 Ron said that "A word is modified by its preceden= t," and he thought  that such wisdom would flow to everyone's understanding=  of how his language  worked.  Basically, within a phrase, the less signifi= cant words are at the  start, the modifiers (etc) are added in logical orde= r, and then the phrase  ends with its most significant word.  The phrase bu= ilds up, with each new  word adding to the meaning, progressively.
 Tec= hnically, Linguists describe this as "head final" structure.  It  works bot= h for NOUN PHRASES and VERB PHRASES in Glosa.  The catch: in  Glosa, a word=  represents a concept, and, within reason, a word can be used  as any 'part=  of speech.'  So, for descriptive purposes, in Glosa, a word -  according t= o its position in the sentence - can be a 'noun' =3D a word  functioning as=  a noun, or a 'verb' =3D a word functioning as a verb.  The  word "modifier= " covers adjectives and adverbs, with modifiers in NOUN  PHRASES doing what=  adjectives do in English, and those in VERB PHRASES  doing what English-la= nguage adverbs do.    ~ridi~ =3D 'laugh'   to laugh - ridi ;  do laugh - ak= ti ridi ; he laughed  - an pa ridi ;
                       give a laug= h - don u ridi ;  the laughing man -  u ridi andro ;
                  =
 she told it laughingly - fe ridi dice id

 Also in the Net there a= re Seminar #1 and Seminar #2, giving more  detail on this.

 Logically,=  if a language has "Syntax-based Grammar," then a set of  guides to good sy= ntax (not to good grammar) should be available to  learners.  I did produce=  a set of non-verbal symbols to reduce language to  a somewhat algebraic fo= rmula --- to analyse the syntax without getting  caught up with the words -= -- but this concept was not in the ordinary  Grammar Books, so it was compl= etely ignored.  Anyone with a strange mind  can find it on the Net as GAS (= Gaskell Analysed Syntax).

  Meanwhile a person can tinker with Glosa and re-= make it in his own  image, but I suspect that Ron is a hard act to follow. =  Presently Glosa  does not appear to be going anywhere, and the idea of fin= ding a language  that is easy for the vast majority of mankind to speak see= ms an altruistic  one, which is quite off the radar of Economic Rationalism= .  On a scale of  one to a hundred, of problems in urgent need of solution,=  Glosa, and the  whole International Auxilliary Language story, rates about=  a one, while  Depleted Uranium scores a ninety-nine.  When, or if, peace e= ver descends on  the land, it will be time for me to dust off the Glosa boo= ks, and resume  where I left off.

 In pure linguistic theory, however,=  there are still a few things to say:

 In its strict form, Glosa appea= rs to be an ideal Meta-language; its  syntax and 'no-nonsense' grammar make=  it very suitable for communication  with intelligent machines.

 There=  is the continuing niggle about the possibility of there being a  "Universa= l Grammar". Chomsky's writing is so dense that a UG might be in his books; = but, reading  through his impenetrable prose to find it is virtually imposs= ible.  I have  learnt from Chomsky, and have dedicated myself to writing ve= ry clear prose,  so that if there is a glimmer of truth within my writing, = then it will be  accessible to those who try to find it.
 The UG will b= e found when we come to terms with the syntactical  elements of language: I=  believe that, of all of the Planned Languages,  Glosa is the one that come= s closest to revealing the nature of a Universal  Grammar -- if one exists.=


 And even more heretically, I imagine that there really is a "languag= e  of thought."  It might be close to the concept of a UG; it could be a  p= icture language; or it might even be an articulation of concepts.  Come to =

  In a stand up fight, = however, everyone know Esperanto wins: it's got  the books, the academy, an= d the armies of speakers.  And it's got the  organisation.  Glosa has none = of this: no contest!

  There are just one or two matters.  Some people=  simply can't stand  all of Esperanto's inflected endings.  For those who l= ove its old-world  feel, and have the capacity to juggle the possibly multi= ple affixes,  Esperanto is fantastic.  Something at the other end of the li= nguistic  spectrum, might, on the other hand, suit the mental gearing of a = larger  fraction of the world's people.  We may never know.