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Re: On the design of an ideal language

From:And Rosta <and.rosta@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 3, 2006, 3:28
[re-sent rejected posting:]

> Jim Henry, On 01/05/2006 23:52: >> On 5/1/06, And Rosta <and.rosta@...> wrote: >>> Jim Henry, On 01/05/2006 21:52: >> >>> > Actually, I suspect that even in the least-noisy real-world >>> > conditions you would still need a lot more redundancy >>> > than Sai seems to allow for (he appears to throw out a >>> > ballpark figure of 1% of unused space). >> >>> This sounds like an additional principle, a Principle of Redundancy, >>> which might be split into two, a Principle of Noise Resistance, and a >>> Principle of Lacuna Resistance, the latter having to do with how much >>> can be unambiguously recovered from a fragmentary text. For me, I >>> confine the operations of the Principle of Noise Resistance strictly >>> to the level of phonetic realization, and eschew the Principle of >>> Lacuna Resistance altogether. >> >> Can you elaborate on how your conlang(s) manage >> noise resistance at the level of phonetic realization? > > Simply by making sure that the phonetic realizations of contrasting > phonemes or phonological strings are sufficiently distinct acoustically > in the mouth of an averagely lazy speaker. I base this on personal > judgement here, not on facts about phonetics. > For example, in my strategy I might have /i/ and /E/ but no /e/. In your > strategy, you might have all three, but have a rule that /e/ blocks /i/ > and /E/, and /i/ and /E/ block /e/. Potentially the two strategies end > up with comparable levels of redundancy. > >>>> My engelang is >>> > designed so that no two morphemes differ by >>> > less than two phonemes. I may back off from this extreme >>> > redundancy in a later revision -- for instance, perhaps >>> > no two morphemes *in the same distributional category* >>> > will differ by less than two distinctive features. But in any >>> > case some criterion for a minimum degree of redundancy >>> > will figure in any future phase of this engelang. >> >>> On the matter of redundancy in your conlang, not only does it strike >>> me as odd to seek redundancy at the phonological rather than phonetic >>> level, but it also seems strange to treat all phonemes alike. It >>> seems moderately reasonable that, say, a word BA should block MA, but >>> very strange that BA should block BI. >> >> Yes, it would probably be better to express this criterion in terms >> of distinctive features rather than whole phonemes. But I'm >> tring out the two-phonemes-different criterion in phase 1 >> and probably phase 2. >> >> Another possibility is that all phonemes in the phoneme >> inventory should differ by at least two distinctive features. >> But this reduces the phoneme inventory to such an extent >> that, if combined with redundancy at a higher level as well, >> it reduces the number of monosyllabic words available to a >> tiny handful. If used *instead* of higher-level redundancy >> it's less restrictive, but still a bit problematic. > > I would advocate relying on just the contrast in at least two > distinctive features, and applying it just to consonants. > >>> >> 7. Principle of Semantic Conservation >>> >> "There should be no such thing as a "nonsense" or "incorrect" >>> phrase." >>> > >>> > Paul Bennett has already said plenty about the problems >>> > with this. >>> >>> Paul misunderstood. See my reply to him. >> >> Did you reply to Paul on the list with the same subject line? >> I haven't seen any reply by you to Paul on the list. > > Apparently it went just to him. I have re-sent to the list. > >>> >> 8. Principle of Concision. >>> >> The language should be as concise as possible *on average*. As a >>> >> benchmark, it should be able to achieve the average concision of the >>> >> concisest natlang, without compromising the Principle of Desired >>> > >>> > This seems to suggest a high phonological density -- a large >>> > phoneme inventory and phonotactics that allow a large number >>> > of possible syllables. >>> >>> Yes, but also a design that allows things to be said in the smallest >>> possible number of syllables. >> >> A la Ithkuil, perhaps -- with some of the most frequenly used >> inflectional categories marked by mutation rather than agglutination, >> or fusional rather than separable inflections? > > Yes. And trying to maximize the use of zero marking in contexts where it > is unambiguously recoverable. And generally making sure that high > frequency meanings can be expressed concisely, regardless of their > semantic complexity. > > (I should confess that, rather gallingly, the recent introduction of a > beautiful new syntax in Livagian has resulted in average syllable length > per word increasing drastically -- maybe up to 100% -- due to the > greater need for inflections. So I would not claim that Livagian has > succeeded in being conspicuously concise. But I would hubristically > claim that it is probably fairly concise in comparison to any other > human-speakable conlang that can unambiguously encode any proposition > while still allowing maximally free word order.) > >> I suspect that my current engelang may evolve in that direction >> from its isolating grammar in phase 1. The most common >> two-word phrases being replaced by new monosyllabic >> words in the next phase, the isolated grammatical particles >> would "fuse" with the words they occur most frequently >> in connection with (though still having a stand-alone form >> for use with less common words). > > My conlanging experience is that such 'string substitution' devices are > less effective than alternatives. > > --And.