> By having a sufficiently small lexicon that a simple visual scan of
> the root list suffices to check for redundancies? Admittedly, it's
> not a solution that scales well, but since my largest lexicon to date
> is still under 100 roots, it works so far...
>
>
>
> On 8/4/08, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Michael Poxon <mike@...> wrote:
>>> Sometimes this is simply going to be unavoidable, especially if one is
>>> working with a definite phonological area. Indeed, sometimes it will
>>> probably be intentional (witness Tolkien lifting both the word and the
>>> meaning from Finnish, with quenya tie "road" and tul- "to come" for
>>> example). In my case, where there is inherently some causal connection
>>> being
>>
>> I should clarify; I meant, not avoiding new words in one's conlang
>> that sound too similar to existing natlang words, but avoding words
>> that are too similar to words already in the same conlang.
>>
>>> .............. Omina's not
>>> derived from either a conlang or a natlang (some overt Basque influences
>>> though) but what I'm after is an impression of inner consistency. I
>>> wouldn't
>>> dream of using any computer resources for generating words. I have to
>>> feel
>>> them.
>>
>> Indeed, I don't like to use script-generated words for any conlang
>> where beauty is a high-priority design goal. Even when I use
>> script-generated
>> words for an engelang, I tend to generate the list of words in one
>> step, and then match them up with appropriate meanings in
>> another step, not entirely automatically.
>>
>> For gzb all the words were made up by hand, either adapted
>> to gzb phonology from a natlang source or made up a priori
>> -- and yet, before definitely adopting a word form I've thought
>> of that sounds intuitively good, I think it's usually a good idea to
>> use this findsimilar.pl script to make sure I don't already have
>> another word that sounds too similar and is likely to occur in
>> the same contexts. It seems that this would be a good
>> design principle for any engelang, or engelangesque artlang,
>> where unambiguity or ease of learning are design goals
>> at higher priority than euphony. (Euphony is a design goal
>> of gzb, but it's not one of my highest priority goals.)
>>
>> --
>> Jim Henry
>>
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html
>> Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
>> I analyze the results and write the article
>>
>
> --
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>
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>