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Hey, I was wondering if anyone knew of real world examples of coordinating conjunctions preceding the phrases they join. That is to say, instead of:

"Take the gloves or shoes."
Or
"He gave me the papers, ink, books, and brushes."

One would say:

"Take (or) the gloves, shoes."
Or
"He gave me (and) the papers, ink, books, brushes."

I'm think of using this syntax in my current project, which features an entirely head-initial grammar so far, and was curious if it was present in any natlangs.

Latin had the opposite, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus

I think you should also add an "-" to the title so it becomes "pre-positional" because otherwise one think like I did that it has to do with adpositions

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Title edited, thanks for the suggestion. :)

Welcome, I don't know of a language with it but there are those that do the opposite, as said latin did.

Some languages go "Gloves and shoes and" when they want "Gloves and shoes" so having it infront is perfectly reasonable

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I got the idea from polish notation in mathematics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_notation

It's completely unambiguous, without using parentheses. I thought that in a completely head initial language, the concept might be useful.

I prefer RPN over PN as it seems more logical to me to know the numbers before the operation.

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If it really emulated Polish notation,
"hat, gloves, and shoes"
would gloss as
"and [(*)and hat gloves] shoes"
or as
"and hat [and gloves shoes]".

Emulating RPN would be
"hat gloves shoes and and"
or
"hat gloves and shoes and".

That's because Polish-notation's "and" is strictly a binary operator.

"spectacles, testicles, watch, and wallet" could be
"and [and [and spectacles testicles] watch] wallet"
or
"and [and spectacles [and testicles watch]] wallet"
or
"and spectacles [and [and testicles watch] wallet]"
or
"and spectacles [and testicles [and watch wallet]]"
or
"and [and spectacles testicles] [and watch wallet](*)"
in "Polish notation"; and you can work out for yourself what it would be in RPN.

(* the square-brackets are not necessary; I just put them in to make the grouping easier to understand for someone not used to Polish notation. As Orion113 says, it's completely unambiguous without using parentheses.)

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If there are only two conjugands, I think (but I no longer remember on what evidence) that all five of the following patterns are attested in natlangs;

• and X Y
• X and Y
• X Y and
• and X and Y
• X and Y and

OTOH if there are three conjugands, I do not know whether all of the following are attested in natlangs;

• and X, Y, Z
• X and Y, Z
• X, Y, and Z
• X, Y, Z and
• and X and Y, Z
• X and Y and Z
• X, Y and Z and
• and X and Y and Z
• X and Y and Z and

Probably only certain (perhaps up to two patterns) three-conjugand patterns can go with each two-conjugand pattern. And probably if you know the patterns for two conjugands and for three conjugands, you can work out the patterns for four or any higher number of conjugands (though if there are more than seven I think the speaker will want to go to some other means, or the addressee will want the speaker to go to some other means).

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Well, I never intended for it to be a perfect emulation. I had thought it would be just as unambiguous if "and" and "or" took unlimited arguments, am I incorrect in that?


Both have their advantages, but my intended language uses particles to mark arguments of of a verb, and I liked having those come before their phrases, it felt cleaner to me. So I went with head initial-syntax.

Thats fine =) I agree they have their advantages but atleast in computers RPN > PN.

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That's fine. (I kind of thought that anyway.)

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For me there's the possibility of a problem if the addressee can't tell where the argument-string begins and where it ends.
A somewhat less helpful solution (when the argument-string might be arbitrarily long) would be to tell how many arguments there are and where the string begins,
or how many arguments there are and where the string ends.
(If there are always exactly two arguments in the operand-string, then it's clear where the operand-string begins and where it ends, no matter whether the operator is always preposed to the first operand, or always postposed to the last operand, or always in-posed between the operands.)

If you only tell where the string begins, or only tell where the string ends, then IMO the addressee may have trouble telling what exactly the scope of the "and" or "or" "operator" is, and hence exactly what you mean.

You could tell where the string begins by always putting a conjunction just before or just after the first conjugand; and you could tell where the string ends by always putting a conjunction just before or just after the last conjugand.

The problem may be minimized, if not absent, when you have fewer than four conjugands, if the addressee knows the list is not long.

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Another source for ambiguity, when you allow "and" and "or" to have arbitrarily-long argument-strings, is conjunction-within-conjunction.
That is, suppose several of the arguments of an "and"-string, happen to be "or"-strings? Or, vice-versa?

Like, how does the addressee know that
AND Abe OR Bob Charlie Dave Eddy OR Frank George Harry Ike OR John Ken Larry Mike
means
AND(Abe, OR(Bob, Charlie, Dave), Eddy, OR(Frank, George, Harry), Ike, OR(John, Ken, Larry), Mike)
?

How does s/he know it doesn't mean
AND( Abe, OR( Bob, Charlie), Dave, Eddy, OR( Frank, George), Harry, Ike, OR( John, Ken), Larry, Mike)
?

Or that it doesn't mean
AND( Abe, OR( Bob, Charlie, Dave, Eddy), OR( Frank, George, Harry, Ike), OR( John, Ken, Larry, Mike)
?

In other words, if you have an AND-list inside an OR-list, or an OR-list inside an AND-list, it's important to let the addressee know where the conjugand-string (or "disjugand"-string) ends and begins. (If you always have the operator just before the first operand, that makes it clear where the operand-string begins, but you still need to know where it ends; not a problem if you know there are always exactly two operands, but still a problem if there may be any number >1 of operands.)

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So, to make a long answer short:

Yes, you were incorrect in that. (Though FAIK the amiguity may be usually not much of a problem.)

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It gets even more confusing in my language. It's analytic and may even end up being isolating, and all words are by default verbs. I wasn't sure I'd ever come up with a way to use conjunctions, but that's why I'm gunning for pre-positional conjunctions.

Let me explain a bit. I mentioned earlier that this language marks arguments with particles, it could be seen as a less scripted relative of Lojban.

Instead of "X1 Goes to X2 from X3 by X4 by route X5", you would have a verb for "Go" and then particles for Agent, Origin, Goal and such.

"Goes (Agt) I (Goal) Home (Origin) School (Means) Car (Loc) Highway"

It could also be viewed, in light of above, like an inverted version of Japanese.

Anyway, since every argument is marked by a particle, including noun-phrases, any list of items would follow the particle.

"Goes (Agt) I (Goal) (And) Library Store Restaurant (Origin) School."

And be cut off by the particle beginning a new noun-phrase, or the end of the sentence.



Alright, now that is definitely ambiguous.

But yeah you're probably right about it not mattering much. I doubt many real sentences would need to nest that many times. And, for the ones that do, I think there will be ways to tell what people mean, English seems to get by okay. :

"Bob, Jill, Steve, Larry, or Simon, James, and Marcus."

But not because that's unambiguous. It's either because nobody minds that it's ambiguous, or because:


namely, ask them to clarify or elaborate or explicate or specify.

You need to make sure that it can be re-worded so as to be unambiguous. If you don't have such a re-wording available in your conlang, it will be un-disambiguat-able. "Sometimes ambiguous" is OK; "no way to repair the ambiguity" is not OK.

For instance,
AND OR Bob Carol Ted Alice
might mean
AND( OR( Bob, Carol, Ted), Alice)
or it might mean
AND( OR( Bob, Carol), Ted, Alice).

The first is also equivalent to
OR( AND( Bob, Alice), AND( Carol, Alice), AND( Ted, Alice))
which might be said as
OR AND Bob Alice AND Carol Alice AND Ted Alice
which is, itself, ambiguous.

The second is also equivalent to
OR (AND( Bob, Ted, Alice), AND( Carol, Ted, Alice))
which might be said as
OR AND Bob Ted Alice AND Carol Ted Alice
which is, itself, ambiguous.

One way you could fix it is to have a special "emphatic" (? Is that the best term?) affix or particle that can be applied to a conjunction to mean "this conjunction has exactly two conjugands; it's strictly binary".
Thus
OR AND2 Bob Alice AND2 Carol Alice AND2 Ted Alice
can only mean
OR( AND( Bob, Alice), AND( Carol, Alice), AND( Ted, Alice));

and
OR2 AND Bob Ted Alice AND Carol Ted Alice
can only mean
OR( AND( Bob, Ted, Alice), AND( Carol, Ted, Alice)).

For that matter
AND OR2 Bob Carol Ted Alice
can only mean
AND( OR( Bob, Carol), Ted, Alice)

and
AND2 OR Bob Carol Ted Alice
can only mean
AND( OR( Bob, Carol, Ted), Alice).

Or you could go the other way and have unmarked conjunctions always be strictly binary, and conjunctions with arbitrarily-long argument-strings be marked.

Or you could mark AND one way and OR the other way.

Or come up with any other idea of your own, as long as it works.

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Keep us informed?
I'd like to see how you solve this problem.

(BTW:
AND Bob OR Carol Ted Alice
has the same problem.
Is it
AND( Bob, OR( Carol, Ted), Alice)
or is it
AND( Bob, OR( Carol, Ted, Alice))?)

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One solution I had thought of came out of the asymmetry of other kinds of conjunctions. I intended to base all conjunctions in this language off of logical operators, particularly binary Boolean operators. So far we've been working with "And" and "Or", logical conjunction and disjunction, respectively, but there will also be conditional, exclusive or, and negative operators. I may or may not have the inverse of each operation act seperately, or created by combining each with the negative operator.

Anyway, using the Polish Notation format, I ran into trouble with the conditional.

IF Red Blue Green

Unlike the other operators, the conditional is not symmetric, or rather, is not commutative. One of the members in that list is the cause, and the phrase means nothing until you know which one.

I had thought that it would make sense for the first member to automatically be the condition, and all followers to be consequences, but I disliked the rigidity of that. For the sake of emphasis, I wanted to make it possible for one to say the same thing in reverse, as in English.

I will take out the garbage if you do the dishes.

The only solution I could come up with was another particle to mark the other half of the operation.

IF Red THEN Blue Green

THEN Blue Green IF Red

Perhaps something similar could be done with the other conjunction? Each particle paired with another?

If you mark the protasis as the protasis, and mark the apodosis as the apodosis, you can put them in any order. It would be as if you were coding a macro in IBM Assembler language, and you wrote
IF (PROTASIS=something, APODOSIS=anotherthing)
or
IF (APODOSIS=anotherthing, PROTASIS=something).
Or if you know PL/1 there's a similar idea.
The one operator "IF", could be "overloaded" (that is, polysemous).

OTOH, another thing you could do is have two different operations, IF and "FI"; IF's first operand is the protasis (so it's second operand is the apodosis), but FI's first operand is the apodosis (so it's second operand is the protasis).

So, the first option, you might have
IF PROTASIS "you do the dishes" APODOSIS "I will take out the garbage"
or
IF APODOSIS "I will take out the garbage" PROTASIS "you do the dishes"

The second option, you could have
IF you do the dishes I will take out the garbage
or
FI I will take out the garbage you do the dishes

And, yes: I think something similar could be applied to pretty much any operation, no matter its arity.

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My conlang Frixàð offers the choice of A and B and C or andand A B C endlist-particle. Works for or too.

Conceivably that could disambiguate complex lists, e.g. andand A B oror C D endlist-particle E endlist-particle

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Yes; it is as good as parentheses. The endlist-particle is the closing or "right" paren, while the andand or oror is the opening or "left" paren, as well as the operation-specifier.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

That, in all truth, is probably the simplest solution. But, I find I don't very much care for "enclosing" particles, such as used in your Conlang or in Lojban. It's not that I find anything particularly wrong with them, I guess that it's just a personal preference. If I can, I'd like to find a solution that works without them.

On that note, I think I like your idea, Eldin, for two separate conditionals with inverted arities. I see it as simply creating another conjunction, one for converse implication; best of all, this would not require me to over-complicate the other conjunctions.

Running with that, here's my current list of conjunctions. (Note that, as logical operators, my language treats true and false as conjunctions that are capable of taking single arguments. That sort of defeats the purpose in calling them "conjunctions" I suppose, but I can't think of a good name for this word class otherwise.)

True (Unary, arguments are true.)
False (Unary, arguments are not true.)
Not (Unary, arguments are the inverse of their stated truthfulness.)
And (All arguments may be true.)
Or (Any arguments may be true.)
If (Conditional, If first argument is true, all others are true.)
Then (Converse conditional, first argument is true if all others are true.)
Either (One, but not any other of the arguments may be true.)

"Not" may be combined with any other conjunction to create its complement, such constructions include, most significantly, the bi-conditional operation.


Anyone see any problems or possible improvements?

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I know of electronic logic gates that correspond to most of these. (Although, 'false' and 'true' are more statments about whether a gate's output is off or on.)

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I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

You could say that true is simply a constant "on" signal source for a gate, and false is simply a constant "off" signal.

I based all of these off of logical connectives, or logical operators, which are essentially synonymous with logic gates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_operator

This stuff is awesome. :D

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.