Re: Darwinistic or ancient strata?

On 11/21/05, Raivo Seppo <uiracocha@...> wrote:
> Does some conlangs, or even natlangs, reflect Darwinistic views? That is,
> the words designating apes and men, birds and reptiles, could they be
> cognate? I don´t mean figurativeness ("apeman") but really ancient strata in
> language.
It would be silly to have this kind of structure in a naturalistic
conlang that's supposed to be spoken by more or less
human creatures in a world pretty similar to ours; but maybe
in a schematic conlang or engelang it might be nifty.
(I seem to recall Ladekwa, Rick Morneau's engelang,
has some kind of classificational system that might
fit what you're describing.)   Or you might find this kind
of cognate set in a naturalistic conlang as spoken
by very long-lived sentient creatures (for whom a
generation is a few hundred thousand years)
who have been on Earth long enough to see a
significant amount of macroevolution taking place.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
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