Re: Comparison of philosophical languages

In a message dated 1/21/2003 6:42:09 PM Pacific Standard Time,
fatula3@ATTGLOBAL.NET writes:


>
> > Andrew Nowicki wrote:
>
> > Can you improve these definitions, or would you rather
> > define all these words as root words? How many root
> > words do we need to define compound words precisely?
> > I am thinking of flora, fauna, and words like
> > insinuation, overwhelming, and embezzlement.
>
> For the examples I gave, I would use root definitions like the following:
>
> altruist = good-give-er  (-er meaning one who does, like English)
> aluminum = Just borrow the word into Ygyde as closely as possible.
 The elements could be determined by the atomic number of each one (IIRC,
aluminum would be 13). So ten-three-element, or ten-three-metal if you have a
word for that, or something like THAT.


> South America = Borrow America, being a proper noun, and add the root for
> south.
> ampere = electricity-flow-part
> amphibian = land-water-animal
 That's exactly what I would have done for "amphibian". And you're right
about most place names needing to be borrowed. Could you give a distinctive
name for "Alpharetta, GA", for instance, without borrowing?

> antelope = Just borrow the word.
 Maybe deer-goat or jumping-deer or jumping-ruminant or anything like that.
(But depending on the size of your lexicon (i.e. how many roots you can
spare) and how you want to split up the animal and plant kingdoms, antelope
could become of root of its own, as Antilopinae <i>does</i> take up quite a
large part of the class Mammalia and its many members are important in
African cultures.)

> The biggest problem is that the roots of Ygyde are poorly suited for making
> the words people need most often.  If I were you, I'd take a piece of text
> in English (or any other language you know) and break it down into the
> fewest root meanings that could encompass the whole thing.  Then I'd make
> root words for the most common that are simple and easy to use.
 How about roots like . . . earth, water, fire, air, light, sound, life,
death, birth, same, not, opposite, inner, sun, moon . . .

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