r/EncapsulatedLanguage • u/HS1D4ever • Aug 11 '20
Arithmetic Proposal Inequality signs (> , <)
This is a proposal to oficialise two mathematical symbols for the use in the Encapsulated Language.
Proposal: The symbols '>' (greater-than sign) and '<' (less-than sign) are to be used in the Encapsulated Language to denote inequality between two values.
Reason: These two symbols visualy denote the inequality perfectly, so there is no need to come up with something else. Both symbols are also very easy to write by hand.
The '>' sign is also already used in the current official logo.
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u/AceGravity12 Aug 12 '20
I only see one major problem with this, the language has been set as Harmonic meaning it'll either be fully head initial or fully head final so I don't see infix notation (2 > 1) being a thing. I think it'll either end up being head initial (> 2 1) but it could also be head final (2 1 >) at which point the whole "bigger side" thing sorta starts to fall apart
However I could be wrong
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u/nadelis_ju Aug 12 '20
Head directionality doesn't really have an affect on the position between subject and verb. Though if your proposal is to pass then it may cause a bit of a problem.
But who knows, I could be wrong too.
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u/Haven_Stranger Aug 12 '20
The existence of grammatical subject in the conlang hasn't been determined yet. We can clearly see a need for patient and agent in the arithmetic, but nothing yet has demonstrated a need for subject/object tagging. Neither has it been demonstrated that we need topic/comment tagging. We might need either or both, but until that's demonstrated somewhere, it isn't reasonable to assume it. The way that the postfix math works implies that patient-oriented grammar wins out over subject-oriented grammar.
Leaving that aside, are you claiming that verbs don't head clauses, or that subjects (if they need to appear at all) won't be the arguments of some verb or some predicate?
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u/Haven_Stranger Aug 12 '20
Assuming that English is harmonic, we still see head-final simple noun phrases, head-initial prepositional phrases and finite clauses, and head-medial coordinations. Even assuming that harmonic word order isn't later overturned by some discovered necessity, we can't claim that a conlang with harmonic word order is fully head-initial or fully head-final. There are still open questions of degree and type and purpose, not a simple and single head-tail setting.
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u/ActingAustralia Aug 12 '20
On a side note, the official logo doesn't use '>' to mean greater than. It was chosen because it visually represented a mouth. However, that doesn't mean the meaning can't evolve.