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Re: basic morphemes of a loglang

From:fr-chauvet <fr-chauvet@...>
Date:Thursday, November 27, 2003, 12:25
On Mon, 24 Nov 2003 20:33:56 -0500, Robert Jung > wrote:
>Hi folks, > >I'm stuck. > >I'm making a logical language (not online yet), and I would like to know
how many basic morphemes you > need for a conlang that's actually useable. What are those words? Any suggestions or (preferably online) resources? Almost everybody seems to agree that about 1000 basic morphemes are needed (and enough). The examples of Basic English (ca. 800 words), Esperanto and Volapük (no idea of word count, but probably slightly over 1000) confirm this. The 881 "essential characters" of Japanese also go that way, while not being European-biased. As a loglan, Lojban has about 1400 root words, but allows some redundancy. This is unavoidable, unless you accept to be absurdly analytic. E.g., Lojban has all 16 logical connectors, while it is well known that only one (e.g. NOR) suffices. What about, "neither (neither my sister nor herself) nor (neither me nor myself)", meaning "my sister and I"? :-))) Also, IMHO, the semantic role of derivations is often underestimated. Consider Arabic, with about 400 derivation schemes applied to a quite limited set of three-consonant roots. Of course, this introduces bias. It is not obvious to me that a tree is "something that grows" (kreskajho in Esperanto, IIRC), although it is so in many conlangs; why not focus on "bearing fruits", probably more useful in real life? I profit being here to ask for experienced advice on a few points: (1) How to get enough roots, while keeping a simple syllabic structure? (this is of course related to the above). I wish to keep basic roots monosyllabic, in order to have "final" words with typically two or three syllables. But, to keep things pronunceable, I restrict things to VC, CVC, CCVC or CVCC (some CC pairs are of course forbidden). With 3 vowels and 11 consonants (I have good reasons to do that), it is a bit short, and all possible syllables quickly get used up. Some suggestions? (2) Diacritics are not welcome on mail software, as I could see browsing the list. I tried restrincting the initial first 8 (yes, plus three special letters, if you care to know), but the use of di- and tri-graphs eventually seems unavoidable. Thus _hs_ for [C], _sh_ for [S]; and hence _hhs_ for [C:] and _ssh_ for [S:]. And what about _h_ [X] + _s_ [s]??? Urgent help neede!!! I have my own, 17-character font, of course, largely and purposely ambiguous, but, aha, it is written vertically and I am *sure* that I am the only and proud possessor of this font on the planet :-) Thank you in advance, François (BTW, I'm new here, some of my questions may have been answered before - not found in the archives anyway).

Replies

Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Herman Miller <hmiller@...>