Re: A Conlang, created by the group?

Charles wrote :

> What I'm looking for is the "metanyms", to avoid
> a large-scale vocabulary; and I was primarily
> referring to the European WordNet project,
> which involves comparison of several languages.
> Most word frequency lists are not so nicely
> broken-down to allow separation of the more
> grammatical/empty words from noun/verb roots,
> hence my interest in this (WN) project.
>
So we should make it clear when coining a new word whether we make a deriving
word or a compound word

and I'm sure that arguments will immediately dispell :-)

I mean : the breaking-down in WN is the one of analytical natlangs.

This very much like deriving unaspective words from the aspective syntactic tags :

to eat = to perform the aspective (impermanent) action of eating

eater = the one unaspectively (permanently) defined as the one who eats

Some natlangs try to keep aspective/unaspective forms in the vocabulary :

eater may have different affixes to show someone who by-nature/usually/sometime eats.

This is different from compound words where each part of the compound modifies the other one :

That's what Herman does with 'blue-jay'

So I suggest we don't argue on that and just say whether this-and-that word is
either derived from a root or compounded.

Of course, people like Rick Morneau argue that they can do both, namely, they can
derive a compound word from, say, two words like Swahili does.

blue_jay = (by-nature-blue_jay)_er

or

blue_jay = blue_(by-nature-jay_er)



Mathias




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