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Re: [SEARCH]: Srikanth's Lin

From:And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
Date:Monday, March 18, 2002, 17:34
Danny Wier:
> How did Srikanth make his language compact,
By making words as short as possible (I forget the details) and by using the device of polysemy toggles: a word form would have multiple unrelated senses, with the sense determined by the current toggle setting. Different words' senses to do with the same semantic field would be triggered by the same toggle setting, so as to minimize the need to reset toggles. Michael Rouse formerly of this list had some interesting ideas about achieving compression; the details were too complex for me to grasp, but the essence was that the relative length of a word would be proportional to the relative frequency that one would wish to use it. I try to do something similar with Livagian, by intuitive rather than statistical or computational means, but with the complicating factor that abbreviations compete for wordspace with unabbreviated words; for example, if I've got a spare monosyllable, instead of assigning it to a basic meaning, such as "knee", I might assign it to abbreviate a longer form, such as "into my", if I feel that "into my" would be more frequent than "knee".
> and where could I learn about this Lin?
I don't know. I never saved my Lin materials. Hopefully someone else here will have some and not feel it unethical to share them.
> (I remember the postings when Srikanth was here, but where did he go?)
To meditate in the Himalayas. --And.