Re: New Conlanger

Also check out Umberto Eco's "Search for the Perfect Language," a must fo=
r
artlangers and loglangers.

Jim



<<  there is no way to "logically" name all
the semantic words you need without producing ridiculously long words.
Please give me the logical name for a pizza.  You might think of one, for
instance "round-piece-of-food-with-cheese" but this isn't really
satisfactory
as chances are whatever shortish name you choose will describe a number o=
f
other things just as well (in this case, er... a cheesecake, among other
things
I'm sure).  Logical languages are about unambiguity in the *interrelation=
*
of things, and of course your definitions must be clear as well.

Josh >>

Bob, as an illustration of what Joshua says, you may want to read some pa=
ges
about "universal" languages claimed by their authors to name things in a
perfect way like Ro, for instance.

I had no linguistic knowledge when I started conlanging and nobody could
explain things to me so I was very ennoyed. I know that getting pieces of
advice from conlangers can save you a lot of time, although you should ke=
ep
in mind that your conlang is only yours and that nobody here will ever ju=
dge
it. I'm not very knowledgeable in that stuff and I vocabulary and ideas
about
it may look very simplistic to you. However, these few lines may help you
pick and check again certain issues. I still post it on the list so that
others can correct me or make things clearer.

"Semantic" just refers to the meaning "contained" in a word, like the
definition of that word in a dictionary.This is always an "imperfect"
definition, because a perfect definition of "pizza" is something like "pi=
zza
is what no other word is" ;-) The more you try to be accurate in your
definition of a concept ("word"), the more you say what that word is not.=
 So
in the end you would say "it is what all other words I know are not". The
dictionary defines a word according to its main field of experience, usua=
lly
the function of the item when there is one, then the "physical" or
"intellectual" description, the result of its use, etc. For instance "piz=
za"
would be defined in the field of "food" (function), "made of dough"
(description), "baked", etc. (not "sport" or "politics").  "Cow" may be
defined in the field of "animal" (description), but also "cattle"
(function).

Some "parts of words" are specialized in adding or pointing a specific
meaning to a word, like your "big", "medium" or "small" tags do. But when
you
say "big-animal", do you mean an animal that is big compared to other kin=
ds
of animals ? or bigger than the average of this kind of animals ("giant
cow")
? etc.

In "logical" languages you need sometime to think to which part of the
semantic definition of your word these little parts of words attach. A
"room"
is not simply a "part of house", except if you define a house as a "body =
of
rooms" ;-).
Of course this is not the case in natural languages. For instance in Guay=
aki
"horse" is just "puran-bw=E9" : "the yummy one", jaguar is "the Death", "=
ka"
means "forest, night, shadow", etc. Look at other artlangs and you'll als=
o
see "compound words" : you merge two words together and you give that new
word a specific meaning. There are also "derived words" that you build fr=
om
a
verb (play-er) or nouns (pian-ist).

"Syntactic" : refers to the "interrelations" between the words, like betw=
een
"I" and "eat" and "beef" in "I eat beef". That relation may be shown by a
specific kind of words or part of words, like your "bob" in "bobLAL" show=
s
the verb of the sentence.

So "words" or "parts of words" have a syntactic or a semantic meaning. Or
both : Your "bob" apparently shows at the same time an aspect, a tense=3D=
2