Challenge to David J. Peterson

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HoskhMatriarch
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Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by HoskhMatriarch »

David J. Peterson thinks morphemes don't exist. Therefore, I will pay him a billion dollars if he does this:

Make a highly polysynthetic language of the compositionally polysynthetic type. It has to have about as many root words in open classes, which consist of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, and derivational affixes as English or Latin. It also has productive noun + noun compounding, object incorporation, subject incorporation, locative incorporation, instrument incorporation, adverb incorporation, and root serialization, all of unlimited length. Verbs conjugate for the maximum number of categories that WALS recognizes. Now, make me a big table of word forms of every possible form of a single transitive verb that can incorporate anything, both derivationally and inflectionally. That means you have to not only inflect a verb for all 13 categories (which alone will be millions of verb forms), you have to incorporate every possible object, location, instrument, and adverb into it, which includes all the compound words you can make for the objects and locations, and serialize it with every other verb root, into massive poly-root constructions of 10+ verbs and permutations of those verbs. We're looking at probably more word forms than stars in the Milky Way Galaxy for a single verb; effectively and infinite number of forms for a single verb. Do we have a deal?
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Ahzoh
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Ahzoh »

Pretty sure he doesn't visit this site.
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Thrice Xandvii
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

I'd like to see your half of the deal up front. It'd be fun to see a photo of that much cash.
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Micamo »

I get what you're doing here, but polysynthetic languages aren't even that big of a challenge to a word-and-paradigm analysis: The standard method to deal with such things is you say that a paradigm isn't entirely kept in the brain, but rather is only partially kept there (of the forms you hear most for particular noun and verb roots) and the rest is constructed on-the-fly through a process of analogy with similar paradigms. It's inconvenient and loses much of the elegance and theoretical appeal of word-and-paradigm, but no more so than the gymnastics you have to go through to explain, say, suppletive paradigms in a strict item-and-arrangement analysis.

Also if you want to say "word-and-paradigm analysis is stupid", why not just say that? Why bring Peterson into this?
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Lao Kou »

HoskhMatriarch wrote:David J. Peterson thinks morphemes don't exist. Therefore, I will pay him a billion dollars if he does this: [snip] Do we have a deal?
You might like joining the Conlang Mailing List, challenging him directly, and putting a Master's in Linguistics in his place over there :roll:, rather than setting him up as your straw man here.
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Creyeditor »

Well, if you are brave enough write him a mail, you should be able to find his e-mail address somewhere on the internet. He's a nice guy, especially to fellow conlangers. If you write a friendly request, his answer will be friendly, I guess.
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by masako »

HoskhMatriarch,

I get the feeling that while setting up your straw-man you've also stumbled into a bit of green jelly. I know David, I've talked with David, I get the sense that he would smile at you and say something nice and promptly walk away. In the last 5 years, he's created at least 14 languages for no fewer than 9 projects, and written three books. He's most likely not interested in your hollow challenge and as has been said will likely never see it.

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Lambuzhao
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Lambuzhao »

From all his projects, hasn't he amassed a billion dollars already? [B)]
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by masako »

Lambuzhao wrote:From all his projects, hasn't he amassed a billion dollars already? [B)]
I don't think so. In all seriousness, my guess is that a consultant's fee for a TV program is no more than 1/4 mil p/y. So, give him 4 thousand years or so.
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elemtilas
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by elemtilas »

HoskMatriarch wrote:David J. Peterson thinks morphemes don't exist.
Thrice Xandvii wrote:I'd like to see your half of the deal up front. It'd be fun to see a photo of that much cash.
I see we're still gnawing away at that old bone... I thought this business about morphemes not existing was dealt with in that other thread (about how people are approaching conlanging)?

Anyway, as a matter of interest to all and sundry, our firm (Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, LLC) have just this week end received of our courier from our Harare branch, the requisite sum of front money so that the challenge may now proceed apace.

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Lambuzhao
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Lambuzhao »

masako wrote:
Lambuzhao wrote:From all his projects, hasn't he amassed a billion dollars already? [B)]
I don't think so. In all seriousness, my guess is that a consultant's fee for a TV program is no more than 1/4 mil p/y. So, give him 4 thousand years or so.
You say 'one million', and I say 'one billion'
Billion, million, mother-loving vigintillion
Let's call the morpheme off!

[xP]
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by cromulant »

The reason your challenge is impossible has nothing to do with any problem in Peterson's analysis. The problem is time. He simply won't have enough time in his natural lifespan to coin 100 billion words, or even one billion words. This has nothing to do with whether morphemes exist or not.

(If he does manage to do this, I don't think 1B is nearly enough compensation.)
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Creyeditor »

Well he could write something like a word form generator. I don't know if this counts as morphemes [:D]
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by cromulant »

That's true. This is actually a pretty easy billion for DP!
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

Maybe if you have really strong faith in morphemes, it doesn't matter if people say morphemes don't exist: you know they exist, and that's what matters. Other people have chosen a life without morphemes and you can only hope it's best for them. [;)]
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Keenir »

Lambuzhao wrote:
masako wrote:
Lambuzhao wrote:From all his projects, hasn't he amassed a billion dollars already? [B)]
I don't think so. In all seriousness, my guess is that a consultant's fee for a TV program is no more than 1/4 mil p/y. So, give him 4 thousand years or so.
You say 'one million', and I say 'one billion'
Billion, million, mother-loving vigintillion
Let's call the morpheme off!

[xP]
Second verse, (same as) the first?
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Keenir
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Keenir »

HoskhMatriarch wrote:David J. Peterson thinks morphemes don't exist. Therefore, I will pay him a billion dollars if he does this:
first rule of westerns, hostage films, and other things: never ever issue a reward you can't award right out of the gate.
Do we have a deal?
Is it irony that this challenge is
* coming from someone who has never posted more than whisps of a conlang
* to someone who (as has been stated) has multiple books in bookstores & libraries, and multiple conlangs accessible online and in tv
?
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by cntrational »

this is rather dramatic, isn't it
Thrice Xandvii wrote:I'd like to see your half of the deal up front. It'd be fun to see a photo of that much cash.
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Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

Post by Ossicone »

Modicone: Locking this. It's just at the edge flaming and trolling IMO.
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