so using a random generator, im going to try make a short hypothetical holistic narrative here. imagine this is being said by someone who has come back to the cave after a bit of scouting, accompanied with gestures:
*waves* HEY! Ooreng (sun-up) Ug, Tug, Urk, Deborah (list of peoples names) Helsat (load up, move out) Woilth (travelling north). Shecef (travelling through grass land), *puts hand to brow and squints* Luimmu! (saw single mammoth) Naktud (specific hunting formation/strategy used when a small group is stalking a single mammoth). :O Throld! (double trouble) AHH !! haha. Einorm (not prepared). Disunde! (abandon ship) Vavuwo (return home in the afternoon) Biojup (make spears) >:D
all that translated into compositional language only might sound more like this:
Good EVENING dear brother, approach me for I cannot wait to tell of my adventures this day! Urk, Tug, Deborah and I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning and quickly formed our scouting party as planned previously. From here we traveled due north and before long we found ourselves marching through a vast expanse of open grassland. Off to the distance we spotted a lone mammoth, what luck! We fanned out and began to sneak closer to our unsuspecting prey. When seemingly out of the mist a second mammoth appeared! Four people may be able to take down a lone mammoth in theory, but we were in no state to take on two. However no one was hurt and we quickly departed from the hopeless situation, arriving back home not long ago. Now we busy ourselves with making more mammoth ready spears, so perhaps we will not be so ill prepared the next time.
obviously the second version can pack in a lot more information in the words alone. in the first one, much of the finer details are simply inferred. for example, our buddy Ug here did not say that no one was hurt, but seeing as he is not distressed and is able to be laughing about it his brother will assume nothing bad has happened. if here were detailing a story that did not take place so close to home this might not come across.
In that case he would have to specify of course, but if the language speaker left that part out the other person would surely ask about it. such is our dependence on speaking, because it is so effective in communicating details that could otherwise be lost. this is what makes compositional language so much more fluid and useful when talking to people that will not know everything that has been going on in your little group for the past 10 years.
