Re: Tiny lexicon languages

On 16 Jun 99, at 17:56, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Jun 1999, Jim Henry wrote:
> > 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?.
No, I think the context suggested a tiny loglan.  I think such a
language might be of interest if one developed it for a narrow
semantic domain or social context.

Personally I prefer a relatively small lexicon with creative use of
derivation, but 20 roots is probably too small to be useful...  it will
be interesting to try, though.

Jim Henry III
Jim.Henry@pobox.com
http://www.pobox.com/~jim.henry/gzb/gzb.htm
*gjax zaxnq-box baxm-box goq.