Re: lexicon

Garrett Jones sikyal:

> > At 00:57 29.5.2003 -0700, Garrett Jones wrote:
> > >It is a good
> > >thing i do the English to Minyeva side, because this update i discovered
> > >that i had made up several words that i had already created. It's a good
> > >thing i caught them now before i started using them more or something.
> >
> > Why? Synonyms isn't a Bad Thing.  Especially not for poets!
>
> i'm not a poet and i'm not big on reading poetry either. Real language is
> created first for communication, and secondly for arts, and that's the way
> i'm creating Minyeva. Minyeva kind of has some auxlang qualities, one of
> them being the lack of synonyms/homophones. It's a lablang, vs. being an
> artlang.
I think that synonyms are a very valuable thing, even for a
lablang/auxlang. To begin with, very few words are *exact* synonyms, even
though they may appear as such. It greatly aids communication to be able
to utilize the subtle connotations that having lots of synonyms provide,
even for normal use. "Steal" and "rob" are synonyms, but the connotation
and argument structure of "rob" makes it possible to say 'I was robbed',
which is more convenient and clearer than 'I was stolen from.' Lack of
synonyms denies you this possibility.

Most of the synonyms in Yivrian have been derived in just this
way--inadvertendly adding items to the lexicon that already existed.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"