Re: [SEARCH]: Srikanth's Lin

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.