Re: Tiny lexicon languages

On 17 Jun 99, at 8:59, Sally Caves wrote:

> Twenty-word sparrow language:
>
>         1. food
>         2. eat
>         3. sleep
>         4. mate
>         5. egg
>         6. chick
>         7. fly
>         8. perch
>         9. feather
>         10. danger
>         11. rival
>         12. fight
>         13. hurt
>         14. dead
>         15. ground
>         16. me
>         17. you
>         18. other
>         19. not
>         20. many
>
We can deal with it further in a way that pleases me considerably
by having "of" (although it's stretching the definition a bit).

         1. of
         2. eat
         3. awake
         4. mate
         6. egg
         8. fly
         9. danger
         10. rival
         11. hurt
         12. dead
         13. me
         14. you
         15. other
         16. not
         17. many
         18. thru 20. have stumped me at this point, I need to think
like a sparrow...

We could then tentatively build

         of eat - food
         of egg - chick
         of awake - day
         of not awake - night
         of fly - sky
         not of fly - ground
         not fly - perch (verb)
         of not fly - perch (noun)
         of rival - fight

Those objecting that "of" is not strictly isolating ought to come up
with a better English translation of the word, as it appears to me to
be insertable before any word (just like "not") with meaning entirely
dependant on word order (just like "not).  A possible alternative
might be "concerning" or possibly something like "required for"?

---
Pb

of many you, many of eat many mate not danger...