Re: basic morphemes of a loglang

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).

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