At 11:44 am -0400 23/4/01, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
[snip]
>
>With my current design criteria, Unilang will either be completely without
>flavor, or very spicy :) The question is, will a balance of features make
>for something very bland, or something special?
As a keen cook, I like the metaphore :)
No - don't make it very bland. Who wants to eat bland food? On the other
hand, very spicy food is an acquired taste [I've acquired it - my wife
hasn't]. IMO one needs to add a bit of spiciness to make it appetizing.
>I may need to take special
>action to add to the distinctiveness, though anything drastic would be
>contrary to all the other criteria.
Absolutely - just like in cooking. The spiciness needs to be subtle -
overdo it, and the whole thing gets spoilt.
>---
>
>However, I'm not sure if I'm actually making this language in full. One of
>my initial premises are that Unilang cannot be created by the perspective
>of only one man. By drawing on the council of this list, I am of course
>trying to widen that perspective.
Precisely what I've done over the years with my 'briefscript' project. But
in my case, I make the final decisions. But the group discussions have
been very informative & helpful.
>Well, I'll just continue working out my
>thoughts on the matter, and if I'm still itching to go on, I might make up
>some words and other details;
...don't just stand there itching - go on!
>it's all just for fun, after all.
Absolutely - it's because those guys on that other list lose track of the
fun bit & take themselves far too seriously that they get into the scrapes
they do.
>---
>
>Regarding lexical design:
>
>The Unilang lexicon would not be well designed by simply spurting out a
>bunch of random phonological outputs and assigning them English
>equivalents. That's bad technique in any conlanging.
It has been done, e.g. Mark Line's 'Classical Yiklamu'. But I must confess
when I tried the same for briefscript, I was not happy with the results.
Anyway, I don't want a machine to design my language!
>What needs to be done
>is a careful listing of minimal semantic items. Abstractions must be
>specially handled. A line must be drawn in what earns its own morpheme, and
>what could be expressed with a combination of other morphemes. I should say
>that in this matter I would be generous in the handing out of morphemes;
A very tricky matter IME. I'll be interested myself in seeing what is
suggested.
>I
>don't agree with derivations for simple concepts, as is done in Esperanto,
>for example: "father" is "patro", and thence "mother" is "patrino" (using
>the -in infix of femininity).
No - I think most now would agree that this is a most unfortunate example.
[snip]
>
>I think that the natlang tendency here is to generously assign word stems
>to material items, such as living creatures of all sorts, and visible
>natural phenomena; while abstract concepts are more generally expressed
>through combinations of morphemes, often quite arbitrarily. Anyone agree
>with this impression?
Generally, I think.
Good luck.
Ray.
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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
[J.G. Hamann 1760]
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