Drop down menus and radio buttons, two new linguistic constructs for the English language

For those of our readers who survived the End of the World : a big Welcome Back to you.

So I was on email with David Peterson, the President of ConLang, an organization that I came to know about just a few days ago, and had invited him here to the Bay Area. I was emailing him after I read about John Quijada in the New Yorker. Here is my email reply to him.

==

Hi David,

Thanks so much for letting us know.

I was just checking with you to see if you wanted to give a talk. Please feel free to refer others such John Quijada via email ids if you think they might {[find our location more convenient|be equally suitable choices|have interested in giving a talk]}.

Best wishes,

Anand

==

I have a typo there ('interested' should be 'interest) but you can something different in my email reply to him. I have used the "{[ ... ]}" construct. This is a new construct for natural languages such as English. Think of it as a radio button choice menu for the English language.

The problem for me was that I was emailing a person I had come to know about only recently. I wanted to tell him to refer other people if they would find the Bay Area more convenient to drive to and/or if other people would be equally suitable choices and/or have interest in giving a talk, but these three choices are a sort of a radio button menu where you can pick one or more of the given choices. Using and/or is unwieldy but more importantly, in mathematical terms, is not isomorphous to the choice set with the radio button menu option. Addressing someone an email like this is totally okay because people receive emails all the time with HTML having embedded links and other GUI artifacts. This sort of a construct is, in my opinion, more elegant.

Another thing I would like to introduce is the drop down menu construct for English. The idea here is to offer greater ability to specify choices. Of course, you can always say - please pick one of the above. But there are advantages to having a drop-down menu such as construct reuse. You could say something along the lines of 'Are you coming for the party?  I just want to know whether it is a{{[ Yes | No | Maybe | Will Decide later ]}}"'.

You could have predefined constructs such as #RE_YNMW which stands for the construct given above. So that email would be abbreviated to:

'Are you coming for the party? I just want to know whether it is a #RE_YNMW'

These two options together form a conlang, a constructed language "built" on English. It would be perfectly understandable to speakers of English, of course, when you use them. That is all for today.

And so finally, before I sign off, people, give yourselves a pat on the back. You guys just survived the Apocalypse.

Update: Fixed some typos. Added penultimate paragraph.

Another Gangnam Style video

Continuing the theme of serendhomophony, here is another misheard lyrics version of the song "Gangnam Style".

 

n-ary variables

One problem with the concept of binary oppositions is that it seems to imply that Western philosophical thought is concerned only with two-valued quantities. For instance, a coin toss X is an event that may be represented as follows.

X = { H, T }.

Other two valued quantities :

X1 = {"good", "evil" }
X2 = {"on",   "off"  }
X3 = {"left", "right" }

Note that these are all the examples from the Wikipedia article on "binary opposition".
However, some variables can take three values.

Y = { +, - , 0 }

Y1 = {"good", "evil", "neither good nor evil"}
Y2 = {"on", "off", "neither on or off"}
Y3 = {"left", "right", "neither left nor right"}

You could have a N valued quantity for many different values of N. Here are two
examples of seven valued quantities.

Z1 = {"M", "T", "W", "R", "F", "S", "N" } --> for the days of the week
Z2 = {"black", "white", "American Indian", "Asian Indian", "Chinese", "Filipino", "Samoan"}

Western philosophical thought has ben concerned with seven valued quantities as well. As, for instance, in any analysis in which days of the week enters the picture. Also, some of the quantities that Western philosophical thought has considered have been continuous variables as well.

Speed of Zeno's arrow = {x | x >= 0 }
Velocity of Zeno's arrow = {x1 | -infinity < x < +infinity}

The problem of continuous quantities  has not been considered by Jacques Derrida. Note that if the example of 'left' and 'right' given in the Wikipedia article on binary oppositions was intended to refer to political preferences, please note that individual political preferences may be considered multi-dimensional (some varying level of authoritarianism on one axis and another varying level of left-versus-right on another axis - as for example in PoliticalCompass.org's PoliticalCompass thing) and so the idea of 'left' and 'right' may be approximations too. The reason I am bringing this stuff up is that it is entirely unclear why Derrida manages to get so much attention when his theory leaves so much out.

Comment : 3QD comment on Derrida

Here are my comments on Derrida posted on "Three Quarks Daily" (slightly edited).

=+=

As recreation while preparing for a graduate program at a certain business school, I was reading a bit of Derrida. I was not impressed.

I, for one, continue to be underwhelmed by virtually all of Derrida's 'theories'. It is unclear to me that his contributions to modern thought, and that of the deconstructionists, amounts to anything more than the following single sentence. "A line of text can be amibiguous in meaning."

Other than that totally trivial observation, it beats me what Derrida has really said or contributed to the world of intellectual thought. Indeed, I would term Derrida's work philosophizing for the lazy intellectual. 'Lazy' because a good analysis based on mathematics and statistics would resolve these 'binary oppositions' that Derrida talks about. If there were "binary opposition"s and they were a construction of the "West", then how could the same sort of analytical tools that are used in the "West" are also effective in the "East" - e.g. in countries like India and China?

n-ary oppositions

I am coining a new term in the field of deconstructionism and in the field of Western philosophical thought. It is the term "n-ary opposition". It is, I believe, a new concept for Western philosophy. Below is an explanation of n-ary opposition. To be honest, it is a bit of a cut-and-paste of the Wikipedia entry for "binary opposition". But I am perfectly serious about all of this.

=+=

N-ary opposition


In critical theory, an n-ary opposition (also n-ary system) is a set of n related terms or concepts which are spread over a 'spectrum' of meaning. The term, introduced by the columnist Anand Manikutty, is also used to refer to the opposition that exists among the n concepts. Binary and ternary oppositions are common types of n-ary oppositions. A binary opposition is a set of two related terms or concepts which are opposite in meaning. A ternary opposition is a set of three related terms or concepts. A ternary opposition may be a set of three related terms of concepts out of which two are opposite in meaning and the third is a null concept. Ternary opposition, also a term introduced by Anand Manikutty, is the system by which, in language and thought, three theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off agsinst one another. It is the contrast between three mutually exclusive terms, such as positive, negative and zero. Another example : up, down and "middle" (although various other terms may be used in place of "middle" such as zero position). A third example is left, right and "middle". Again, various other terms may be used in place of "middle".

N-ary opposition is proposed as an important concept within structuralism which sees such distinctions as fundamental to all language and thought. In this extension of structuralism, a n-ary opposition is seen as a fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture and language.

Serendipity in languages

The three posts ( one , two , three ) below form a set of posts on the topic of serendipity in languages. Please do send me a note if you have thoughts or comments on this.

I really do prefer to use the terms 'pseudoreduplication'/'pseudoreduplicates' although I am proposing the (somewhat less elegant) terminology of 'serendreduplication'/'serendreduplicates'. Also, I would prefer to use the terms 'pseudohomophones'/'psuedohomophony' where I am using the (somewhat less elegant) terminology of 'serendhomophones'/'serendhomophony'. I will be using these terms interchangeably. The use of 'serend-' terminology is there to disambiguate matters if any confusion should arise.

Update: Thanks to my friend Krishna Kunchithapadam for his suggestions, including and particularly the point on retaining the use of the terms 'pseudoreduplication' and 'pseudohomophony'.

Second Update: Note that 'pseudohomophony/'serendhomophony' is a statistical concept. If a significant fraction of speakers of language B think that word XB in language B is a homophone of the word XA in language A, then XB and XA are 'pseudohomophones'/'serendhomophones'.

Third Update (Nov 30, 4:34 pm): Note that my definition of 'serendhomophony' is general enough to cover the case where word XB in language B is a homophone of the word XA in language A for a particular performance, for instance, for a single Youtube video of a song. A different Youtube video of the same song could lead to a different word XB-1A in language B to being a homophone of the word XA in language A.

You could think of the performance of a song performance you listen to on Youtube as a process. It is a process (cf. stochastic process) producing words XA1, XA2, .. XAn in language A. Simultaneously, it is also a process producing the words XB1, XB2, ..., XBn in language B for speakers of language B serendhomophonous with XA1, XA2, ..., XAn. And equally simultaneously, it is also a  process producing the words XC1, XC2, ..., XCn in language C (again serendhomophonously). And so on. (You could cover every language and dialect on earth).

A different performance of the same song on Youtube will be a process  producing words XA1, XA2, .. XAn in language A. But simultaneously, it will also be a process producing the words XB-1A, XB-2A, ..., XB-nA in language B for speakers of language B (serendhomophonously). And equally simultaneously, it is also a  process producing the words XC-1A, XC-2A, ..., XC-nA in language C (again serendhomophonously). And so on.

Note that there are two levels of homophonousness here : per performance and per language.

More on serendhomophones and serendreduplication

So I am coining two new sets of terms in the field of linguistics. The first set is 'serendhomophony'/'serendhomophones' and the second one is 'serendreduplicates'/'serendreduplication'. Perhaps, people have been implicitly aware that this stuff was out there. But bringing something to explicit awareness by codifying it in academic language counts. And I don't think anyone has actually described it in the mathematical language of chance and probability. So here is a very simple but very precise description of these two terms.

First, 'serendhomophone'/'pseudohomophone'. A 'serendhomophone'/'pseudohomophone' is defined as follows. Sometimes, you may have a set of words/phrases in language A that are homophones with words/phrases in language B. This homophony is usually quite apparent for speakers of language B who don't know language A. These word/phrase pairs are called 'serendhomophones'.

Why does this happen? Pure chance. Every sound in language B maps to some sound in language A. So when words in language A are read out in close succession as in speech or song, the words in language A map to some arbitrary words in language B. (This mapping is not fixed. Based on intonation et cetera, the mapping can even change.) So essentially, words and phrases X1, X2 and X3 in language A that happen to map to words and phrases Y1, Y2 and Y3 in language B when they are spoken in a particular way and in a particular sequence. Note that there is a lot of serendipity in terms of what the particular word Y1 will end up meaning in language B. (Sounds have a more or less arbitrary assignment to meaning, generally speaking.) Note also that languages often don't have the same set of sounds, and so the correspondence between pseudohomophones may not really be very exact and often is not.

Here is a 'misheard lyrics' version of the Tamil song "Kalluri vaanil kaayndha nilaavo?" (now often referred to as "Benny Lava") featuring the Tamil dancer Prabhu Deva.



Note that Buffalax does not use actual pseudohomophones, but a subset of the sounds in the 'misheard lyrics' version of the song are pseudohomophones.

The first few pseudohomophones for the words in the song would be the ones below.

'Kalluri' <=> 'Cull lure E'
'vaanil' <=> 'Vaughn nil'
'kaayndha nilaavo' <=> 'coin the nil ah woe''

Now, for 'serendreduplicates'/'pseudoreduplicates'. 'Pseudoreduplicates' are words/stems of different origins that are thrown together to form 'duplication' within a word. (These words are also called 'serendreduplicates' in my terminology). 'Pseudoreduplication' is the phenomenon wherein a word looks like a reduplicate in that there is some apparent duplication within the word but the word is, in fact, not a reduplicate, and the reduplication has, in fact, arisen by chance.

In a nutshell, 'serendreduplicate'/'pseudoreduplicate' words have some 'duplication' in them that has arisen by sheer luck. It is worth emphasizing this point. Why does reduplication arise? Well, by pure chance. Or, you could call it serendipity.

Serendreduplication and serendhomophony

First a note on the terms 'serendreduplication' and 'seredreduplicates'. A Google search for pseudoreduplication returns no less than 44 hits, out of which at least two ( 1, 2 ) point to academic papers in linguistics. So I have decided to avoid the term 'pseudoreduplication' since that term is already being used in linguistics.

Footnote 2 in the paper by Avram has this to say about pseudo-reduplication. 'Also called “quasi-reduplicated forms” (Bakker 2003: 40), “phonological reduplicated base form” (Miller 2003: 290), “fixed forms” or “fossilized forms” (Wellens 2003: 226). The comparative Austronesian dictionary says this about 'Quasi-reduplicates' : "Quasi-reduplicates" are those words that lack the corresponding unreduplicated forms e.g. didi 'pig, swine', nisnis 'beard'. It seems that the original unreduplicated form may have been lost within the language leaving just the reduplicated form as a sort of fossil. Note that this is not at all what serendreduplication is. It is, well, something completely different.

Now, serendreduplication may be used to motivate the idea that many things in languages may have arisen purely out of chance. I can think of so many things like that. For instance, the (Chinese) name Yao (as in Dennis Yao) is the slang word in Tamil for 'sir' or 'man' (and comes from the word 'ayya'). Pure chance that it is the case. (Think of what it would be like if a guy walked up to a Tamil speaker and told him his name is "Yao Yennaya"). And there is also the more unfortunate case involving the firm "Lund International'. The name of the firm has a somewhat funny meaning in Hindi.

But the point is that this sort of serendipity arises. And this sort of serendipity is, in fact, exactly what Buffalax of misheard lyrics fame exploits all the time. So what should we call the pairs of words and phrases that sound the same in the 'misheard lyrics'? I say let us call them 'serendhomophones'. They are words or phrases that similar to each other but it is pure serendipity that it is so. Note that the correspondence is not exact. It is just "close enough". And so, that leaves us with the minor matter of naming the phenomenon. And that is simple. This phenomenon we shall call 'serendhomophony'/'pseudohomophony'.

Update: Another example of 'pseudoreduplication' would be the word 'metametals', a word that I just coined to describe elements which occur next to metals in the Periodic Table. Of course, many metals are also metametals.

The term 'metametals' could also be used to describe artificial 'metals' engineered to have certain types of properties, that is, a metamaterial that is a metal. The word 'metametal' is a good example of 'serendreduplication', and is probably a better example of 'serendreduplication'/'pseudoreduplication' than 'metamathematics'.                          

Second Update: Googling for 'metametals' returns plenty of hits.

Final Update: Here is a 'misheard lyrics' version of someone doing "Gangnam style". It is one funny video. But if you are a speaker of an Indian language as well as English, I absolutely insist that you watch it. That will give you an idea of what is going on in the brains of non-Tamil speakers when they hear the "Benny Lava" song. There is a remarkable correspondence between the lyrics for this version of the song and what you hear in your head if you are an English speaker who doesn't speak Korean. It is exactly the same thing that is going on with the "Benny Lava" song as well. Words that may not seem like homophones to you may, in fact, be homophones inside the brains of English speakers who don't speak Tamil.

     

Serendreduplication, a new term in linguistics

I would like to coin a new term in linguistics called 'Serendreduplication'. (I also sometimes refer to it as 'pseudoreduplication' since that seems to be a more natural way to describe what is going on.) Now, reduplication, as the linguists among you will know, is a morphological process in which, as SIL International's site puts it, "a root or stem or part of it is repeated."

Well, 'serendreduplication'/'pseudoreduplication' is the phenomenon in which although it seems like the root or stem of a word (or part of it) is repeated exactly, it is actually two different words with entirely separate origins that are combined serendipitously (or there is some other type of "happy accident") such that it looks like there is reduplication going on.

Two examples of this are 'metamathematics' and 'abracadabra' in English. First, 'metamathematics'. The prefix 'meta' comes from the Greek preposition μετά = "after", "beyond", "adjacent", "self" whereas the word 'mathematics' comes from the Greek word μάθημα máthēm - "knowledge, study, learning".

Note that the prefix 'meta' is always what is used to describe a concept that is an abstraction from another concept. It is just sheer chance that the prefix finds itself added in front of a word that sounds like it. Not my favorite example (and trust me, there is a far better one coming), but it gets us started on the right track.

Okay, onto the word 'abracadabra'. The word 'abracadabra' is a word that is not only fun to say but interesting in its own right. It is known to have origins in Aramaic. As Wikipedia puts it, 'Although at first glance "Abracadabra" appears to be an English rhyming reduplication it in fact is not; instead, it is derived from the Aramaic formula "Abəra kaDavəra" meaning "I would create as I spoke")" Princeton's Allison Chaney has a helpful introduction to the word on her site.

The first known mention of the word ABRACADABRA was in the 2nd century CE in a book called Liber Medicinalis ^[1] (sometimes known asDe Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima) by Quintus Serenus Sammonicus,physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed thatmalaria^[2] sufferers wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle:^[3]

A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B - R - A
A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B - R
A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A - B
A - B - R - A - C - A - D - A
A - B - R - A - C - A - D
A - B - R - A - C - A
A - B - R - A - C
A - B - R - A
A - B - R
A - B
A

This, he explained, diminishes the hold over the patient of the spirit of the disease. Other Roman emperors, including Geta and Alexander Severus, were followers of the medical teachings of Serenus Sammonicus and are likely to have used the incantation as well.

I came to think about this idea due to a quiz question by my friend Govind Krishamurthi which went as follows :

QUESTION: In Tamil examples of this linguistic construction are:
Mada-Mada (faster)
<stuff deleted>

In Hindi, 
<stuff deleted>
Examples would be

<stuff deleted>
Khaana-Vaana
Shaadi-Vaadi
<stuff deleted>

There are also several examples in Telugu.. but I didn't post all of them.. Some of you can give examples in Telugu, Kannada and other languages too.

So the question is what is this linguistic construction called?

ANSWER : REDUPLICATION.

That gives you a good idea of what reduplication is. It also gives you enough examples to play around with so that you can infer what serendreduplication/pseudoreduplication is as well.

Other transliteration schemes

Three other transliteration schemes are the ITRANS scheme, IAST and Velthuis. Here is what the Devanagari vowels look like in these above schemes (table courtesy Wikipedia).

=+=

Vowels

Devanāgarī	IAST	Harvard-Kyoto	ITRANS	Velthuis
अ	a	a	a	a
आ	ā	A	A/aa	aa
इ	i	i	i	i
ई	ī	I	I/ii	ii
उ	u	u	u	u
ऊ	ū	U	U/uu	uu
ए	e	e	e	e
ऐ	ai	ai	ai	ai
ओ	o	o	o	o
औ	au	au	au	au
ऋ	ṛ	R	RRi/R^i	.r
ॠ	ṝ	RR	RRI/R^I	.rr
ऌ	ḷ	lR	LLi/L^i	.l
ॡ	ḹ	lRR	LLI/L^I	.ll
अं	ṃ	M	M/.n/.m	.m
अः	ḥ	H	H	.h
अँ			.N

Harvard-Kyoto : a very brief note

A follow up to my post on the Tamil writing system. Some people had asked what the Harvard-Kyoto system referenced in the original post was and so, a few words on Harvard-Kyoto.

Harvard-Kyoto is a transliteration scheme for Devanagari. I am making a conscious attempt to keep the learning curve for this system as short as possible, and so, in that spirit, a very brief summary of Harvard-Kyoto is given below.

   a A i I u U R RR lR lRR e ai o au M H
   k kh g gh G c ch j jh J
   T Th D Dh N t th d dh n
   p ph b bh m y r l v z S s h

Anybody who has learnt Hindi would know what I am referring to here. These are the basic Devanagari vowels and consonants written out in ASCII. You can also refer to the Wikipedia entry on Harvard-Kyoto which is available here. That is more or less all the introduction you need to understand Harvard-Kyoto.

The Tamil writing system as an app - a response to some comments

At least a couple of people raised the concern regarding whether the Tamil writing system proposal would require people to learn new sounds. It seems that the concern is about the audience for the writing system - - or as I would like to put it, the concern is regarding the market and any potential requirements placed by this product on the market's population. It would be useful to clarify at this point that the target market for this is people in the United States and Singapore. Furthermore, it is only for specialized users. It is only for people who would want to represent these sounds. It is not intended for elementary and middle school children, for example. Again, I would like to emphasize that this system is only intended for use by specialized users.

The reason for my choosing this population is not that this system would only work for specialized users from the United States and Singapore. The reason is that, first, this subject area is highly political and so I want to basically avoid all the politics around this by simply saying that this system is being made available for those who would like to use it. If you don't like it, don't use it. As simple as that. This also allows me to not worry too much about politics involving people in the Third World, academics in various departments in various universities, et cetera. These people may not have had the best educational opportunities and may therefore have trouble learning entirely new sounds (because they may be from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds). I am referring, of course, to the people in the Third World, the first population referenced. The question of whether this former population of people should be made to learn new sounds and letters arises (given that the educational system in the Third World is uneven in terms of quality) and this is certainly a valid concern. Second, there are many sociological concerns about whether new sounds should be introduced into a language in the first place. However, as I clarify below, I am not proposing to introduce any new sounds into Tamil. This system is intended simply to represent sounds that journalists and writers in Tamil already are required today to represent as part of their jobs.

Indeed, I have kept my system to what  I would like to call an optimal minimum - neither so little is proposed that no significant value is attained nor so much that it creates political problems. When I think back to some results I have seen in the field (based on some work I was doing while at Harvard Business School), it would appear that it would be better for languages to have fewer symbols and sounds, not more, especially since having a very large number of symbols and sounds may impose a heavier burden on poorer children (and note that I am talking about poor children in the Third World) who may already know to speak the language (as native speakers) but do not have family members who can teach them to read. This is indeed a good reason why policy makers would not want to allow new sounds in a language. In fact, I think that this may be the only one good reason why issues around language would acquire a political hue. It is for this reason that I am not proposing to introduce any new sounds into Tamil.

A modest proposal towards modernizing the Tamil writing system

It is June, but May and the theme of language and Talk were not so long ago. Given that, I will post on this here blog a modest proposal that goes towards modernizing the Tamil writing system. This post was occasioned by a comment on a Quizzing forum from earlier today. I have been meaning to talk about this for a while, but never got the chance to do so on my blog or my List.

The point came up on the forum that there is a rule in Tamil against using consonant clusters (like 'Tm'). This was brought up in the context of a controversy around the naming of a road in Tamil Nadu (the 'Mahatma Gandhi Road'). The controversy was around - get this - the use of the word 'mahATma' for a road in Tamil Nadu. The problem apparently is that 'mahATma' is a word that is of Sanskrit origin. Now, Tamil Nadu happens to be a state that is very proud of its language, but at the same time, there is a great deal of politicking on linguistic identity going on out there, especially during election time. All that posturing and politicking over linguistic identity seems utterly pointless, and it is really little more than a cynical ploy on the part of the politicians. However, the threat to Tamil from Hindi seems to be an always popular theme among voters in Tamil Nadu, and this bit of linguistic populism still has popular support. So what is to be done?

I would like to suggest the following : let us modernize the Tamil language to the greatest extent possible. Many of the rules currently governing Tamil come from premodern rules of language. This includes rules from Middle Tamil, et cetera. The solution is simple : copy Hindi. Do whatever Hindi does in terms of the writing system in Tamil as well. This would allow adopting words from Hindi and other Indian languages without change in Tamil. My proposal below includes allowing for aspirated consonants, for consonant clusters, and for better distinguishing of what I like to call the 'soft' consonants (as distinguished from the 'hard' ones.) My proposal would involve the following three simple changes to the Tamil writing system :

1. Consonant clusters: The proposal here is simple : allow for all consonant clusters. Mix and match as you please. Basically, allow the 'sTrI's, the 'zrIs' and the 'sprees'.

2. The soft consonants ('ga' versus 'ka', 'ja' versus 'cha', et cetera): there is a total of 20 consonants (velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and labial) in the primary table in DevanAgari (see table linked here). Tamil could simply use the same set of sounds in its writing system. It does so in any case in practice. It would be relatively simple to introduce a new mark to distinguish the first consonant from the third consonant in each category (velar, palatal, retroflex, dental and labial) (noting that the second and the fourth consonants are aspirated sounds). One could add the horizontal bar on top of the symbol for the third consonant in each category to distinguish that one from the first. This would be a way of acknowledging the role of Sanskrit (and Panini) in the development of this writing system.

3. Aspirated consonants: The proposal here is pretty simple again : allow for aspirated consonants. Aspirated consonants are ones for which you expel a extra bit of puff of air as you pronounce them. (Anyone who knows Hindi can tell you what the aspirated consonants in Hindi are.) I am talking, of course, about the 'kha' consonant (as opposed to the 'ka' consonant), the 'gha' consonant (as opposed to the 'ga' consonant), et cetera. The writing system could easily accomodate this using some symbol to distinguish the aspirated consonants. I would suggest for us to use the 'therefore' symbol (already used in Tamil to distinguish 'fa' from 'pa') following the letter to distinguish aspirated consonants from non-aspirated ones.

Using (2) and (3), you would end up with the same set of consonants as Hindi/Sanskrit. This would make communication using Tamil much, much easier. As regards (1), this requires no changes to the language at all. Even simply allowing all consonant clusters would greatly simplify matters and enable in modernizing the Tamil language. Wikipedia indicates that this process is underway in any case : "Contact with European languages also affected both written and spoken Tamil. Changes in written Tamil include the use of European-style punctuation and the use of consonant clusters that were not permitted in Middle Tamil" but it would be good to take it to a logical/rationalistic conclusion. As I mentioned at the forum, I went through Harold Schiffman's book on Tamil grammar at one point of time. It was an interesting book to read. At the same time, it is not very understandable for the naive user of the Tamil language. This grammar stuff does not have to be complicated. I only wish they modernize the Tamil writing system sooner rather than later.

Note that I have followed the Harvard-Kyoto convention throughout in this post for all italicized words (not that you need to know this to see where I am going with this proposal). Indeed, you could simply use the Harvard-Kyoto system for writing in Tamil and avoid all the problems I mentioned above. Many people use this in any case.

I have ensured that the suggestions in this proposal are as simple as possible to keep things constructive. If you had any comments on this, I would love to hear them. Please feel free to email me at the same email address as before. Enjoy!

Update (July 7th): In order to make things easier for Unicode users, I would like to add that the proposal includes using the Unicode symbol 0955 (which is unmistakably different from any other symbol yet similar to the horizontal bar in Hindi/Sanskrit) as an alternate way to add the horizontal bar for Tamil characters. Furthermore, preferably, the Unicode symbol 0955 ought to be placed on top of the 'therefore' symbol to indicate that this symbol is being used to indicate aspirated consonants. Please see the attached Unicode charts to see what symbols it is that I am referring to in this post. The symbols in question are Unicode characters 0955 and 0B83.

Panini, de Saussure, Chomsky et cetera

A followup on the "Pizza and Panini" piece. The "Pizza and Panini" piece is a sly comment on the Eurocentricity of the way we view contributions to science by the ancient Greeks versus the ancient Indians. Panini was, in my opinion, one of the greatest innovators in the ancient world. His grammar was the world's first formal system of language. Panini's ideas of formal rules in natural languages, in fact, significantly influenced the 19th and 20th century linguists who came after him - de Saussure's work (de Saussure,1894) and Chomsky's (Chomsky, 1957).

I am also poking a bit of fun at the lengthiness of some of the works of the ancient Greek mathematicians, scientists and even philosophers. Many of their dialogues appear unnecessary lengthy when viewed by us today. This is because the ancient Greeks had not yet developed the theories of languages, physics, et cetera that were developed after the European Enlightenment. If Euclid's propositions were analyzed today, we would find that they could have been written far more compactly. Two examples follow. The stuff in italics is all that would have been required for a Proof or Algorithm for the two Propositions of Euclid that I deal with below.