Tiny lexicon languages

On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Jim Henry wrote:

> On 14 Jun 99, at 19:40, Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> > Boudewijn Rempt wrote:
> > > The description in Dutch runs to twelve pages
> > > of double-column text.
> >
> > I thought there were only 24 words?  How would that take up twelve
> > pages?
>
> With 24 words you might have a lot of polysemy.  I suspect any of
> many people could write a whole essay on each of the 24 most
> frequent/important words in their native language.
>
I'm currently in the process of preparing an English description
of Old Hyksos. I've done the phonology and the first three suffixes,
and I've alread got 8kb of handcrafted html - I haven't defined
a single word yet! And I've got a descriptive problem: in Old Hyksos,
some words are used to refer to categories, not to distinct entities.
For instance, _quot_ is almost a pronoun in that it can refer to
any object the mage is seeing or has seen. When uttering the spell,
he has to think of the object _quot_ refers to. Where in the name
of Panini can I find an exact and precise terminology to apply to
this kind of words!

> This reminds me: in re-reading the old conlang archives (1991-
> 1993) I found an intriguing message about a challenge to create the
> most expressive isolating language with only 20 words.  Would
> anyone care to try this in the list now?  (Perhaps we should wait till
> the translation relay is over.)
>
Personally, I far prefer languages like Sanskrit with a truly enormous
lexicon! The more words, the merrier I am, so I don't think I'd take up
this challenge, but I'd be very interesting in the results - was this
challenge also about ritual or magical languages?.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt