Re: Difficult language ideas

On 9/19/06, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
> On 9/19/06, Leigh Richards <palomaverde@...> wrote:
>
> > 1. As unambiguous as possible, especially in full sentences; it's easy to
> > clarify any ambiguities.
>
> I would suggest studying some existing conlangs intended
> to be unambiguous, such as Lojban.
Thanks, any other suggestions for languages to look at?

> > 2. Hard to learn, and easy to say the wrong thing. Small and subtle changes
> > have a large impact on the meaning, and it's unpredictable in that guessing
> > something new from what you already know will rarely work.
>
> Some things to try:
>
> - a high lexicalization density, so that most of the possible
> words with a given phonological shape are actually instantiated
>
> - a large phoneme inventory, with many actual words distinguished
> by only one distinctive feature
>
> - a large number of verb and noun paradigms, with the appropriate
> one for a given word not predictable from the form or semantics of
> the root
Paradigm here means, for example, conjugation patterns in verbs?

> - a large number of grammatical categories to be marked
> mandatorily in certain circumstances, the exact categories
> required/allowed differing for different paradigms.
>
> - some categories marked in multiple ways; e.g. distant past
> tense might be marked with a prefix, recent past tense
> with an initial consonant mutation, present tense with a
> suffix and future tense with a modal auxiliary.  Direct experience
> evidentiality might be marked with a suffix, hearsay
> evidentiality with an adverb, & inferential evidentiality gets
> null/default marking.
Nice, some things I hadn't thought of there. Thanks! Any references
for unpredictable languages? I thought I'd seen a reference to a
conlang here, but my searches only turned up results about
unpredictable orthography. I may have misremembered.

Leigh

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