Katav Jan van Steenbergen:
> --- Mike Ellis skrzypszy:
>
> > What would "full" communicability be?
>
> Simple: if you can have reasonably long conversation by e-mail (or
telephone,
> for that matter) without having to create new words. I'm mean, if you want
to
> write: "I just received your letter and found it very interesting", and
have to
> create five new words for that, than a language is clearly not ready for
> communication yet.
Fully agree with you, Jan. The only restriction: the topic of conversation
MUST be everyday activity. To be unable to discuss cavitation in high
viscosity fluids is NOT a sign of incommunicability :-)
> But don't ask me how many words a language must have to be communicable in
this
> way. Some will say 2 000, others will argue 5 000 or even 10 000.
Neither do I know the precise number. But a conditio sine qua non - to have
a stable garmmar covering all the basic structures.
Yitzik
~~~~~~~~~~~~~