Re: Musical conlangs (was: Poetique)

On Saturday, January 10, 2004, at 12:33 AM, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:

> --- Tommie L Powell <tommiepowell@...>
> wrote:
>> Costentin Cornomorus wrote:
>>> Of course, I'm not sure why Solresol is
>>> restricted to three note words either.
>>
>> I know why I would restrict it to 3-note words
>> (plus 1-note and 2-note words).  Here's why:
>>
>> First, 1-note plus 2-note plus 3-note words
>> total 7+49+343=399 words, which is enough
>> for general purposes (as in trade languages).
>
> Quite. And while I have no doubts about the
> maths, I have grave doubts about basing the
> number of letters per words on strictly
> mathematical terms.
But Solresol does _not_ limit words to three notes
at most, nor AFAIK is the number of letters (notes?)
per word based on strictly mathematical terms.

In his grammar, Gajewski does point out that by having
words of up to four syllables/notes long, the language
has 2660 words which he considered to be quite sufficient
for an auxlang.

> This seems to be a problem
> with Solresol to begin with - why reinvent that
> particular square wheel?
I understand this?  What is the "square wheel" that is
alleged to have been reinvented.  It happens in _all_
languages (natlangs & conlangs), surely, that one can
calculated from the phonotactics of the language the maximum
number of possible one syllable, two syllable, three syllable
and four syllables words are possible.  In some like English
the number will be large & in others like Hawaian it will be
considerable smaller.

There is AFAIK no inherent reson why, if it became necessary,
Solresol couldn't have five syllable words; it's just that
those involved with it at the time thought it wouldn't be
necessary.

> I also think that such limitations could only
> lead to an unmusical sounding language like
> Solresol apparently is!
I don't see why this follows. There are, as several have
pointed out, other ways of delimiting words in a language
which uses musical notes other than by having pauses at the
end of each word. (Doesn't the 'non-musical' lojban also make
use of pauses?)

[snip]
> No one said this had to be a logical or auxiliary
> language after all!
What does "this" refer to? If we're talking about Solresol,
then the simple fact is that it was intended to be an
universal auxlang. It's designer and promoters did say it
had to be such.

If "this" simply means any colang which used musical notes as
its mode of expression, then of course it could be an loglang,
auxlang or artlang.

Ray
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