Re: my proposals for a philosophical language

En réponse à Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...>:


>
> p t k
> m n
> f s h
> w l y
> a i u
>
Well, Classical Arabic (and many dialects as well) lacks the /p/ and borrow it
as /b/. It would probably not be too difficult for them to get it, but it's only
for principle that I'm saying that ;))) . But at least it's not true that all
Arabic speakers have the /p/.


>
> a i u
> ai au
> ia iu
> ua ui
>
The Maori must be happy ;))) .

>
> chat
> mum
> mai
> chuk
> yus
> tin
> su
> hach
> yap
> chin
>
OK, not much to say against it, although final consonants may be difficult for
some (Mandarin or Japanese speakers as first). Japanese speakers, for instance,
will invariably pronounce |chuk| as [tSMkkM] which may create a confusion with
|chuk ku|. And I know by experience that it takes long and difficult years for
Japanese to learn to master final consonants other than /n/ (not that I am
Japanese, but I've had to cope with a series of presentations by a Japanese
professor and Japanese students, and none was able to pronounce English without
making a mess of the final consonants. I can tell you it made the whole thing
ununderstandable).

I am not arguing against your choice, it's quite reasonable. But it does put
quite a few people in difficulty. At the same time, I cannot see any way around
it though, if you want so many one-syllable roots without adding too many
sounds. Maybe instruct that the simple vowels should be pronounced long.
Japanese people have a long-short distinction which is quite easy to hear, even
for people who don't have that distinction in their speech, and their dummy
syllables always have short vowels. By having the meaningful single vowels long,
you may help prevent misunderstandings. Also, it would make for a nice symmetry,
since the single vowels would suddenly be pronounced as long as diphtongues.

> And these would all be relatively easy to pronounce by the majority of
> the
> people in the world.  More importantly, none of the sounds would be
> readily
> confusable with others.
>
Indeed, and according to those principles I quite agree (although you will have
problems with coda consonants with quite a lot of people, as I said).


> unmarked one, so that if a word has no part of speech marker, it is a
> noun
> by default.
>
Good idea. That will bring some variety in endings and beginnings, exactly the
points people use to differentiate words.

> fan  hand
> su  joint, pivoting like the wrist, neck, shoulder
> laut  hinge, pivoting like the elbow, knee
> chuk  appendage, arm/leg
> li  upper
> pa  lower
> tian  head, chief
You may have to be careful that some languages (like, once again, Japanese) have
difficulties with diphtongues and replace them with syllables in hiatus. For
those people |tian| would be pronounced as |ti an|, and |laut| as |la ut|. Once
again, if you adopt the convention that single vowels must be pronounced long,
the problem can be solved (|tian| and |ti an| will be different again: [ti.an]
and [ti:.a:n]). Of course, this is not a perfect solution, but seen the problem,
I dare say it's an optimal one.

> yak  center, main body
> nal  outer
> kis  inner
> mai  finger
> nun  foot
>
> Also remember that a term can have different meanings, so long as they
> are
> in different fields.  Consider the English word "head".  You can speak
> of
> the head of an animal, of a bed, of a table, of an organization, and
> it's
> always clear.  "Head" means the top and most important part,
> specifically
> that of the body, but generally that of the specified thing.  Each of
> the
> words here has a specific meaning that can be more generally applied.
>
Be careful with this part. Often secondary meanings are strongly culturally
related, and may cause problems of understanding if they are not exactly
defined. And even when they *are* well defined, they may sound silly for other
cultures. Now it's not a problem with an artlang, but if the language has to
become an IAL, silliness is one of the things that would kill it. People in
general are quite skeptic concerning IALs, and if the one you propose sounds
silly to them, they will just refuse to learn it. Attractiveness doesn't lie
only on technical features...

> tian  head
> tiansu  neck  (head-joint)
> lisu  shoulder  (upper-joint)
> lichuk  arm  (upper-appendage)
> kis lichuk  upper arm  (inner-upper-appendage)
> lilaut  elbow  (upper-hinge)
> nal lichuk  lower arm  (outer-upper-appendage)
> fansu  wrist  (hand-joint)
> fan  hand
> mai  finger
> yak  torso
> yaksu  waist  (torso-joint)
> pasu  hip  (lower-joint)
> pachuk  leg  (lower-appendage)
> kis pachuk  upper leg  (inner-lower-appendage)
> palaut  knee  (lower-hinge)
> nal pachuk  lower leg  (outer-lower-appendage)
> nunsu  ankle  (foot-joint)
> nun  foot
> pamai  toe  (lower-finger)
>
I must say I like the sound of it. It has the phonetic aesthetics of Indonesian,
a language which I don't dislike at all ;)))) .


> tif  hair, anything shaped like hair - long, thin, flexible, plentiful
> lin  leaf, anything shaped like a leaf - flat, somewhat small, thin,
If "secondary meanings" are restricted to such as those, then I agree heartily
with your idea. It sounds reasonable and somewhat (I tend to be careful with
those ;)) ) cross-cultural.

> plentiful
> han  land
> chun  horse
> tak  sheep
> fai  bird
> mau  house
>
> hantif  grass  (land-hair)
> chuntif  horsehair  (horse-hair)
> taktif  wool  (sheep-hair)
> failin  feather  (bird-leaf)
> maulin  roof-shingle  (house-leaf)
>
> Now, the single syllable roots we're defining are for words commonly
> used.
> Less common roots would have two syllables.  But with 1,679,616
> possible
> two-root compounds, using only one-syllable roots, I'd say we've got
> plenty
> for most any word we'll need.  After all, who cares if a rarely used
> technical term is a real mouthful, so long as the words needed most
> often
> are simple and short.
>
Indeed. Common words should be short, uncommon ones long. So far your ideas make
a lot of sense, and your implementation is probably nearly as good as it can get
:) .


>
> Now for a bit of grammar.  As you've noticed, adjectives would obviously
> go
> before their nouns.  Nouns used as adjectives in compounds go this way,
> so
> would everything else.  Numbers, being adjectives of a sort, would
> come
> first.  A nice feature, something like in Russian, would be to allow
> numbers
> to go after nouns, meaning around that many or more.  That would allow
> a
> simple, yet efficient way of expressing plurals in varied and easy to
> use
> forms.  People whose languages don't have plurals would find this
> simple, as
> it is never required, and is always transparently derived from a
> number.
>
Agreed.

> So we could have the following:
>
> - tak  sheep
> - ich tak  one sheep
> - ni tak  two sheep
> - tas tak  three sheep
> - tak ni  a few sheep, two or more
> - tak is  many sheep, probably at least ten
>
Nice feature indeed!

Now I have only one problem with your idea: how are you going to disambiguate
adjectives from nouns? The way your scheme is right now, a sequence
adjective-noun could very well be taken to be a compound noun. You could
artificially say that a certain root is an adjective, and another a noun, but
you would fall in the same trap as Esperanto with its "verbal" and "nominal"
roots. What you'd need, I think, is an affix (because using tone, stress or
pitch to convey grammatical information is not a good idea, seen how diverse
that may be among languages, and how difficult it is to hear it when you aren't
a L1 speaker of the language). A vocalic suffix would do (it would also open
closed syllables, thus making them easier to pronounce for some people). Of
course, in such a system where redundancy is quasi-absent, the effect of the
affix can be awful (take it that you choose -u. Suddenly, the adjective made
from |lis| becomes indistinguishable from |lisu|: shoulder). You could follow
another route which is to use a pidgin-like grammar. The "easiness" of learning
would be assured, but it implies that you reserve some roots for grammatical
purposes (without that they lose completely their full meaning), and it may not
be the most optimal structure to prevent ambiguities (and will give to your
language a reputation of simpleness that may work against it). Nevertheless,
it's one of the best route to follow, since pidgins appear in cases where people
of unintelligible languages must talk to each other, and thus show very well
what features are primary for communication, and how an international community
finds an interlanguage for them.


>
> Anyway, this whole long list is just what I think might make a more
> widely
> accepted language made on a philosophical basis.
>
Agreed. Your proposal sounds much more reasonable (and devoid of any propaganda)
than what I've read so far.


Well, you see Andrew, it *is* possible to talk about IALs on this list, as long
as you restrict yourself on discussing grammatical features and stop advocating
your own language as "the best" of all. The subject is not forbidden. It's the
way you talk about it which is important.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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