Re: Unilang: the Lexicon

On Sat, 21 Apr 2001 15:45:54 -0400, Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
wrote:

>Hm, while the idea of "a mediori" seems good, I disagree about the last. If
>a word is found in most of the major langs of the world I think it
>definitely should be used in the Unilang too. As for "long nonsense words",
>I don't think that applies to "democracy" - even to English-speakers that
>know squat of Greek, its connection to "autocracy", "theocracy" etc is
quite
>obvious.
>
>BTW, I assume you're intending to keep the "international" scientific
terms?
>I see VERY little point in ditching words like "deoxiribos" ...
The point might be that someone uninitiated (such as me) would have a clue
what the word means; I can't even tell what academic field "deoxiribos"
belongs too! :)

But I see your point, nonetheless. "Nonsense words" may be an overly harsh
judgement on my behalf.

It's difficult to solve this issue, whether "higher thinking" should simply
be expressed in Greek (as some English-speakers seem convinced to be the
only possible way -- no offence!), or in more transparent composed words.

One way might be to artificially assign the common Greek components an
independent meaning, as per their original value: thus /'krase/ might be
selected to mean "control/ruling/governing/management". However, this
tempting solution would call for an extensive Hellenization of the
lexicon: "people/the public" would have to be /'demo/, "self" would have to
be /'auto/, etc. It's simply a quick route to enslaving your
supposed "Universal Language" to a single source.

----

On Sat, 21 Apr 2001 21:35:47 +0000, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
wrote:

>>So that's it then, a posteriori ("same-old-tired")? Not quite. The result
>>would be one of following:
>>
>>* if only one general source of words is taken, that's cultural bias, and
>>probably reduced functionality (due to overly localized concepts).
>>* if we collect words from a selected list of "major languages", we'll end
>>up with a hashed-up, hardly recognizable, lexicon that might as well be a
>>priori.
>>
>>So what to do?
>
>What Leo Moser did with his Acadon project was to look for the widest
>spread of words or related words among as many of the world's languages as
>possible.  I think he spent some seven or so years this - it's not an easy
>undertaking.
During my last month or so on AUXLANG, I exchanged words with Leo Moser,
and familiarized myself with his Acadon project. I was fascinated with his
premises, and his way of thinking, but I remain disappointed with the
actual results; primarily, I find that he does not address adequately the
problems of phonotactics. But Moser's Acadon is definitely a step forward.
I am still affected by some of his rhetoric, especially in what regards
unilang orthography, but also to some degree in lexical matters. His work
should be credited, though I have found myself unwilling to embrace Acadon
as a language :|


>I think a certain amount of a_proriism is not a bad thing in an IAL.  Some
>have criticized Esperanto for having a_priori elements in its 'table of
>correlatives' and having apparently made-up words like _edzo_ "husband".
>But I disagree, as long as these features don't get out of hand.  It gives
>a language a distinctive flavor of its own.
"Flavor" is certainly something worth considering. If we were to design
some sort of garment for all Earthlings, sheer practicalities might not
suffice to make people wear it; clothes must have some flavor to be
fashionable, and I think this applies to language as well, to some degree.

>The idea of a basic a_priori vocab, with a_posteriori borrowing for more
>specific and for local/cultural specific items is certainly an interesting
>idea; it looks like a neat balance between the universal neutrality a
>a_prioriism and a_posteriori familiarity of more specific concepts.  Go for
>it!
Thanks! :) The borrowing part is essentially why I've made room
for "renderability" in the phonological design.

>>But we must also consider the inner
>>structure of the language; words like "democracy" and "philosophy" might
be
>>tempting to borrow, but perhaps some fairly logical constructions from
>>native morphemes would do better.
>
>Doesn't Icelandic favor that?
Well, now you know where those thoughts are coming from :) :) Yes,
Icelandic language-policy has been one of nativizing all terms in various
ingenious ways. It has often been too fanatically pursued by some Icelandic
scholars, but also unfairly criticized by some foreign scholars (primarily
Scandinavians). I generally favor the Icelandic policy, because it has
mostly acted to enrich, instead of impoverish, our vocabulary; the Greco-
Latinates are usually around for some words, thanks to outside influences,
but people are just as ready to use the native words. Some common Greco-
Latinates don't exist at all, though; there is
no "telephone", "television", or "computer". The Icelandic "word-smiths"
(neologists) have mastered the technique of designing the words to be short
and handy, which has succeeded in gaining popularity for them. Thus, we
have "sími", "sjónvarp", and "tölva" for the above three words, all much
shorter and easier words for our Icelandic tongues.

Óskar

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