Re: NonVerbal Conlang?

On 6/26/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> I realized afterwards that Medusan probably is not such a language. On
> reading Chris' description more carefully, it appears that of the three
> components, small/scent is suprasegmental ("the aliens used it for
> emphasis only"); it seems to me also probable that sound & gesture
> communication is parallel. That is we do not have a _fully_
> multi-dimensional language (in the sense Sai meant with 'fully 2D
> non-linear writing'), but rather two serial modes of communication
> running in parallel. If this is so, then an oralization is possible if
> only for inter-human representation of the Medusan language (the words
> would need to encompass both the Medusan sound and gesture components -
> if you see what I mean.
*nod*

What I would love to see is a language that has as its default mode
oral+sign, neither easily droppable. You could still design it as a
purely normal linear language in terms of syntax, but break out the
morphology or even semantics over the two modes.

(Sorry, David, for not learning your SLIPA well enough to make this
hypothetical transcription clearer...)

E.g. "I ate" could be /ej/+[thumb out, back motion at shoulder]
... then other conjugations would be done through different signs.

Or vice versa.

Or for that matter, break up some particular WORD itself over the two
modes - somewhat like how Chinese hanzi have multiple components (eg
phonological + semantic). So, e.g.,:
"dog" = /w@/ + [handshape A]
"cat" = /w@/ + [handshape B]
"wolf" = /dz@/ + [handshape A]

etc.

Either way, what I'd like to see is the two modes working together to
create the whole.

More complex versions of course could do other things, e.g. have some
sort of graceful degredation into oral-only or sign-only (perhaps
intentional, so that O, S, and O+S are three distinct and intended
messages; O+S obviously denser?). Or etc...

 - Sai