New auxlang: Atlas

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Rodiniye
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby Rodiniye » Tue Jul 18, 2017 6:54 am

crush wrote:
Rodiniye wrote:Wi nai vules de zaie wei di - I do not want to be far from you
Wi nai vules de zaie z di - I do not want to be without you.

I would've thought "vai" was more appropriate to mean "far from"?

Any ideas? Would you combine "across" or "along" with one of the ones already established? Or should I include separate prepositions for them? Same for "through".

For through, you could maybe use "tra" or "li": wi tra-veset al-direbzue - we among-went the forest

And the preposition "zu" and the word root "zu" (group) are the same. i/u and li also seem similar, though i guess you could use i-li and u-li to clarify which meaning you want. And is there a difference between say "Walk inside the house" and "Walk into the house"?


1) Yes sorry, it was "vai" in that example. What was I thinking about? :oops:

2) "zu" can mean "group" too but there is no confussion, since "zu" alone is the preposition only and in order to mean "group" it needs a morpheme ("zu-e", group). During word formation, "zu" as preposition will not be used.

3) the use of "tra" seems quite logical to me. Your example ressembles Spanish, where "go through" is "atravesar". However, this "tra" and Atlas "tra" are not related.

What about combining prepositions? maybe: li-tra: through, der-tra: along.... etc?
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby crush » Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:36 am

Yeah, i was thinking you could probably combine them somehow, though i was thinking of something like zu-tra, which's where my concern about group/direction came in:
Wien veset zu-tra al-direbzue
It might be unclear which meaning 'zu' had. But now that i think of it, tra-zu (among-direction, sorta resembles through) and der-zu (near-direction, kinda like along) might be better fits. Another option for 'along' might be der-wei (near-outside).
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby Rodiniye » Wed Jul 19, 2017 12:05 am

Sounds good to me... Very busy at work but I will have another look in a couple of days.

Thanks!

Any other ideas... feel free :D
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby tommus » Fri Jul 21, 2017 11:24 pm

OK. I have had a partial look at the Grammar revisions. With quite a few changes, and quite a few versions, it is difficult to sort out just what has changed, in the Grammar, in the Vocabulary, and on the Website. I suggest using version numbers and dates for all three of these. Also, I suggest that internal changed from the previous version of Grammar and Vocabulary be highlighted.

A couple of small observations:

1. Top of page 6 (first 3 examples): Since adjectives always follow nouns, it should be "direbo alzi – tall tree".
2. Page 11 example: "She-he was in Milan in the party". In English, people are normally "at" a party (eating, drinking, etc.) whereas "in a party" usually implies "in a group of people".

Prepositions: I find it difficult to learn a word such as "o", which is a preposition of quantity, which does not have an actual word in English. The example: "Ze axtet o 8kg – She-he bought 8kg." I think it is OK to say something like "o" is a preposition of quantity, but I think it is also important to have an actual word translation, which could be "quantity" or "amount", and show that in the sample English sentence. The learner then has something more positive to hold onto, rather that hang out on the abstract meaning of "preposition of quantity". The user can then choose to omit that word in the English translation if she-he desires. This observation also applies to other prepositions such as "v" whose translation could be 'against". I know these translations often show up in the example sentences, but I think they also should be in the translation space, not just the abstract notion of "quantity".

A general comment about prepositions (which I think also applies to other Atlas words and structures): In English, you very often have small words that can serve very many purposes, such as "on" or "in", and the specific meaning is derived from context. In Atlas, it seems to be the reverse. Small words like "u" and "i" have built-in detail that removes much of the need for context. That is the reason that Atlas seems to be begging to have 52 or more prepositions to cover every possibility. By reducing the number of prepositions by about half, much of the built-in context is lost, without the necessary context being in the text. I think the Atlas prepositions try to do too much. They try to make things very clear to the user but I think they are very narrowly limiting the places they can be used properly.

Suggestion: In addition to the Grammar with all its embedded prepositions, conjunctions, etc, often only to be found within sentences and examples, it is time for additional separate word lists for each (prepositions, conjunctions, etc). They could be annexes in the Grammar. Same comment goes for the derived words in the Vocabulary. They should be on separate Excel sheets as columns that can be copied.

I have mentally processed the new prepositions and took some poetic licence in interpreting their nature and their translations. Here is my list:

i in, at [preposition: location, place]
u in, on [preposition: time]
o amount [preposition: quantity]
e in, at [preposition: situation, event, activity]
w as, in the process [preposition: manner, way, role, profession]
vo in front, before [preposition: order]
hou behind, after [preposition: order]
sei on, on top, above [preposition: reference]
qu under, below [preposition: reference]
von in front, before [preposition: touching]
houn behind, after [preposition: touching]
sein on, on top, above [preposition: touching]
qun under, below [preposition: touching]
v against [preposition: opposition, confrontation]
zu to [preposition: direction, benefactor, indirect object]
ot from, by [preposition: origin]
der close, near, around [preposition: proximity]
vai far, far away [preposition: distance]
s around [preposition: vicinity]
tra between, amongst [preposition: cooperation]
li inside, during, while [preposition: inclusion]
wei outside, except [preposition: exclusion]
em with [preposition: accompanied]
z without [preposition: unaccompanied]
ki because [preposition: cause]
cin n order to [preposition: reason]
ei until [preposition: result]
an on, active [preposition: state]
za off, inactive [preposition: state]
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby Rodiniye » Sat Jul 22, 2017 4:46 pm

Thanks Tommus. I will update the blog as soon as possible with the changes. Thanks or the corrections too.

Prepositions: I find it difficult to learn a word such as "o", which is a preposition of quantity, which does not have an actual word in English. The example: "Ze axtet o 8kg – She-he bought 8kg." I think it is OK to say something like "o" is a preposition of quantity, but I think it is also important to have an actual word translation, which could be "quantity" or "amount", and show that in the sample English sentence. The learner then has something more positive to hold onto, rather that hang out on the abstract meaning of "preposition of quantity". The user can then choose to omit that word in the English translation if she-he desires. This observation also applies to other prepositions such as "v" whose translation could be 'against". I know these translations often show up in the example sentences, but I think they also should be in the translation space, not just the abstract notion of "quantity".


It is impossible to have a 1-to-1 translation to English in every case. I am a translator myself and it just does not work in any pair of languages I can work on. However, I do understand that, for clarification purposes, it would be good to give more examples with the "o" preposition.
As I have said before, this preposition is better understood when making questions in English, when you use: "How much does it weight?", instead of "What does it weight?". Atlas has to be consistent, so the answer to question "Ez viktis o ven?", must be "ez viktis o 49kg". If the question uses a preposition of quantity, the answer must do too.

In Atlas, it seems to be the reverse. Small words like "u" and "i" have built-in detail that removes much of the need for context. That is the reason that Atlas seems to be begging to have 52 or more prepositions to cover every possibility.


You mention prepositions "on" and "in", but for foreign learners they are not so much dependant on context. They do have strict rules, although they have many uses. The only preposition I know of that depends only on context is "je" in Esperanto, as far as I am concerned. As for the others, you can say "in" January but not "on" January, or "interested in" but not "interested on", so the rules behind prepositions are normally huge.

Apart from the main prepositions of quantity, time and place (o,u,i), the rest of them have different meanings now, and their meaning is dependant on context but limited to 3,4 different situations.

You could, of course, eliminate some prepositions in certain situations. English does it with, for instance, with the following sentence: "the program lasted three hours", where "three hours" is a complement of time not preceeded by a preposition.

Well, is it really interesting for an auxlang? Having all verb complements (except subject, DO) followed by prepositions gives you:
- easy to recognize verb complements.
- less complex grammar (less or no exceptions).
- easier for (automatic) translation?

I agree the Atlas prepositions are more restrictive than the English ones, but that is not a bad thing. Atlas prepositions are better optimized (it is natural, English has not been created but evolved naturally). "u" in Atlas is "on", "in", "at" etc for time in English. In English you need to learn why you use "on" before days for time, why "in" for years, why "at" for hours... but in Atlas is only one. So yes, more restrictive, a bit less dependent on context...but that adds simplicity. Prepositions are a nightmare to learn when rules are not well set. English is a good example, with beginning-intermediate students having loads of difficulties with them. Esperanto tried to solve this problem partially with "je", saying "if you don't know what to use, just use "je", and context will try to do its thing".

Bfff, I should set a maximum amount of characters for my answers, have I answered any of your questions? :lol:
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby tommus » Sat Jul 22, 2017 6:15 pm

Rodiniye wrote:It is impossible to have a 1-to-1 translation to English in every case.

I am suggesting that an Atlas-English dictionary should not look like this:

u (blank) [time]

but like this:

u in, on [time]

In the Grammar, the only place you find a possible word for "u" is in the example sentences, not in the Atlas word plus its English meaning. So the learner has to somehow associate "u" with the concept of [time] but not with the word "time". I think the learner has to be able to associate a word with a word, not a word with an abstract concept (without a word).

Rodiniye wrote:Apart from the main prepositions of quantity, time and place (o,u,i), the rest of them have different meanings now, and their meaning is dependant on context but limited to 3,4 different situations.


Again, I am suggesting that these words plus their meanings and their abstract concept be represented by something like this:

i in, at [location, place]
o amount [quantity]

rather than just having:

i (blank) [location, place]
o (blank) [quantity]

At least the examples (in, at, amount, on, etc. give examples of what "word" the Atlas word could mean.
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby tommus » Sat Jul 22, 2017 6:34 pm

Comments on adjectives.

The Grammar says: "All adjectives in Atlas are formed by adding “-i” to the appropriate root:"

But then the Grammar shows this:

 Positive comparison (bi) [X+(V)+adj+bi+(de+Y)]
 Negative comparison (men): [X+(V)+adj+men+(de+Y)]
 Equality comparison (dago): [X+(V)+adj+dago+(de+Y)]
 Similarity comparison (gehi): [X+(V)+adj+gehi+(de+Y)]

These comparisons are themselves adjectives, so they also should all end in -i.
meni less [negative comparison adjective]
dagi same [equality comparison adjective]
heni very [intensifier adjective]
siai super [intensifier adjective]

"men" or "meni" means less
"dago" means "same" [similarity]
but in the Vocabulary, "memi" means "same"

Here is the list of adjectives that I have derived from the Vocabulary and from the Grammar. Note than several of the adjectives in the Grammar are not in the Vocabulary. That is one reason that I recommend that there be separate lists (which can be merged when necessary) of nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, etc. That is how I am doing it for the pop-up dictionary and translator. I will also show in that application explanations (when available, such as shown above for the comparison adjectives.

adi normal, ordinary [adjective]
alaini alone [adjective]
alasi lazy [adjective]
alzi tall [adjective]
anzeni safe, secure [adjective]
atsi hot [adjective]
azuri blue [adjective]
baisi white [adjective]
barezi clear, certain [adjective]
bari new [adjective]
bei good [adjective]
beli beautiful [adjective]
bersami joint, together [adjective]
besi big [adjective]
bi more [positive comparison adjective]
bruni brown [adjective]
buruki bad [adjective]
dagi same, equal [equality comparison adjective]
dioxi cheap [adjective]
dobi good [adjective]
droli funny [adjective]
duani short [adjective]
durbali weak [adjective]
duri hard, strong [adjective]
dusi grey [adjective]
eksakti exact [adjective]
eqekani ridiculous [adjective]
gehi similar [similarity comparison adjective]
haixi shy [adjective]
heni very [intensifier adjective]
hesani easy [adjective]
huangi yellow [adjective]
huxi happy [adjective]
imari solid [adjective]
inzuri nice [adjective]
kaki rigid [adjective]
lambi long [adjective]
langi long [adjective]
lemaki fat [adjective]
lenti slow [adjective]
letzi last, past [adjective]
liqi light [adjective]
mali bad [adjective]
memi same [adjective]
meni less [negative comparison adjective]
miskini poor [adjective]
mitti sweet [adjective]
mohi wet [adjective]
neri black [adjective]
nervi nervous [adjective]
nisturi cruel [adjective]
nizi low [adjective]
novi new [adjective]
pieni full, complete [adjective]
praudi proud [adjective]
puli clean [adjective]
qeleki ugly [adjective]
qenzi orange [adjective]
qungi young [adjective]
qusti fair [adjective]
riki reach [adjective]
ruqi red [adjective]
salati narrow [adjective]
sami common, typical [adjective]
sari cold [adjective]
sbaci transparent, neat [adjective]
seqi saint, holly [adjective]
siai super [intensifier adjective]
sloqi difficult [adjective]
spitzi pointy, sharp [adjective]
spoki calm, relaxed [adjective]
stari old [adjective]
strogi strict [adjective]
suabi soft [adjective]
surati pink [adjective]
tadaxi correct, right [adjective]
tonki narrow, thin [adjective]
tristi sad [adjective]
valsi false [adjective]
vamosi famous [adjective]
veri true [adjective]
verti green [adjective]
vidi empty [adjective]
vixti important [adjective]
vlaqi humid, wet [adjective]
vrai free [adjective]
vreski fresh [adjective]
vupi short, brief [adjective]
waqari natural [adjective]
weili next [adjective]
westi tired, fatigued [adjective]
wutxi dry [adjective]
xeri legal [adjective]
xoi small [adjective]
zadi expensive [adjective]
zangi dirty [adjective]
zohi old [adjective]
zui most [intensifier adjective]
zurvi deep [adjective]
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby crush » Sat Jul 22, 2017 11:44 pm

Having a section for example sentences/phrases in the dictionary would be great, too. For many words it's probably not that big of a deal (especially nouns/adjectives), but it'd still be nice to have as a reference, especially for the prepositions and other words which are likely to cause some confusion. Keeping an up-to-date database of the latest list of roots and perhaps an editable online dictionary similar to tommus' might make things easier to keep track of, too.
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby tommus » Sun Jul 23, 2017 1:00 am

AtlasPopupDictionaryV6.0

I have updated the Atlas Popup Dictionary to reflect the changes to the Atlas Grammar and Vocabulary, up to 22 July 2017. I have also updated the functionality to display the Atlas word and its translation in the top field. In the second field, it also displays information about the word such as its part-of-speech, whether it is singular or plural, etc.

The application contains separate text files for each of the following:

Nouns
Roots
Verbs
Adjectives
Articles and Demonstrative Determiners
Attitude Particles
Conjunctions
Connectors
Correlatives
Grammar Particles
Personal Pronouns
Prepositions
Numbers
Derived Words (from the current Vocabulary)

It also contains a default text file of an Atlas story; in this case, about the Ugly Tree. However, this story appears to have been written before the latest changes to the Atlas Grammar and Vocabulary, so some of the words and many of the derived words do not appear. The user can paste in his-her own Atlas text.

The switch to Atlas - Spanish works but the only words it knows there are from the Vocabulary.

Here is the link: AtlasPopupDictionaryV6.0
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Re: New auxlang: Atlas

Postby tommus » Sun Jul 23, 2017 1:29 am

Discussion on separating Atlas derived words by hyphens (-)

We had some discussion about this earlier and Rodiniye agreed to hyphenate all derived words (essentially compound words) longer than two components. My example was:

great white shark: besi-baisi-hazari-pexa (big white hazardous fish)

I expect that Rodiniye had this format in mind: besi-baisi-hazaripexa where only the extra components above 2 would be hyphenated.

I am concerned about 2-component Atlas words which are now planned to not have a hyphen. To grow and attract users, Atlas must live in the world of computers and applications, including popup dictionary translators from Atlas to another language. I have been doing a lot of thinking about how a non-hyphenated Atlas word can be parsed into its components. I believe it is going to be very difficult for a person and for a computer. For many such words, there are many many ways they can be parsed, and a user or a computer basically has to continue with many possibilities until somehow the right parsing is arrived at, and suddenly the component words are recognized. Then further thought or guessing is required to figure out just what the derived word might mean.

As Rodiniye has done, many derived words can be placed in a Derived Words Dictionary. At the moment, there are 631. But one of the big strengths of Atlas is the freedom for the user to derive his-her own words when he-she needs words that are not already in the Dictionary. So imagine an author writing a new book or story. The author will likely have to derive lots of new words. All those with just two components will have the two components merged into one word, to become a challenging puzzle to solve. Imagine a writer composing the daily news for an Atlas-language website; same issue of new words and difficulty parsing them.

Pronunciation of derived words will become a challenge. Where is the parsing for the pronunciation? Very challenging.

I know there is some fear that Atlas will look ugly if there is too many hyphens. However, I feel that all derived words in Atlas need to be hyphenized, including 2-component words. That completely solves the parsing problem. That completely solves the pronunciation problem. That greatly increases to ease of understanding derived words. I would much prefer to see more hyphens knowing that it was making Atlas much easier, and thus making the hyphenated derived words a beautiful sight to see and use.
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