SW0 –  A Constructed Language

SW0 Design Choices

Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, [IPA], -Tags-, and "Glosses".

This chapter presents some of the design choices made.

Format

Circles

Having designated places to join or split lines allows lines to cross freely without having to indicate it; this is useful, given the coreference abilities of a 2-dimensional language. Also, the circles can be used to for various symbols marking the type of join or the type of phrase.

Boxes

Although they make the graph less compact, the boxes decouple the glyphs from their connections, allowing substitution of different glyph models, including text glosses and other non-iconic models. They also make it easier to determine which argument has which semantic role, since these are standardized into a few classes.

Parts of Speech

Having multiple parts of speech manifested as different box shapes is useful since there are multiple argument structure classes. This also allows for some derivation to be accomplished by using basically verbal glyphs in noun boxes and vice-versa (i.e. zero-derivation of deverbal nouns and denominal verbs).

Glyphs

The square glyph system used was chosen primarily for its modularity and because the glyphs fit in the boxes. The individual components were chosen for being drawable both as lines and as bit maps, as well as for aesthetic reasons. Although one must lookup or memorise the meaning rather than guess from the shape, the system is analogous to linear morphology allowing possible derivation by the substitution of a component.

Numbers

It's not clear whether the resemblance to scientific notation is an asset or a liability, but the order of the parts is optimal. It's compact and reuses some of the glyph components, producing sequences of the same height as the non-numeric glyphs.

Other

No Definite/Indefinite

Indefinite phrases tend to be used for the 1st appearance of a reference while definite phrases tend to be used for subsequent appearances. Here, there's only a single appearance of the phrase, with additional lines taking care of coreference, so there's no point in marking a phrase definite or indefinite. Also, it may not matter which connection is the 1st appearance.

page started: 2015.Dec.01 Tue
current date: 2015.Dec.01 Tue
content and form originated by qiihoskeh

Table of Contents