Re: basic morphemes of a loglang

On Monday, December 1, 2003, at 01:58 PM, John Cowan wrote:

> Ray Brown scripsit:
[snip]
>> Just out of interest - How was decided what the list basic morphemes
>> should be in Lojban?
[snip]

> I don't know, and it's possible that nobody living really understands it.
> We know that a couple of lists, including Basic English and possibly
> the Swadesh list,
Yep - but they aren't sufficient IMO.

> got stirred into the pot, but James Cooke Brown
> probably took the details to his grave.
Interesting - so all the loglan derivatives basically just took JCB's list?

> Lots of words were added later
> as one-offs.  Lojban removed a few from its copy of the list because
> they seemed over-specific ("olive", "billiards", "mushroom" as opposed to
> "fungus"),
Now this pinpoints one of my problems. If I'm not specific, then obviously
I
have to use compounds.  I suppose, e.g. something like "oil-fruit" for
'olive'.
This starts making words get longer than, perhaps, one should have in a
briefscript (in BrScA, this would mean 6 letters, which is one more than in
ordinary English!); also it starts introducing a certain amount of
ambiguity in that
not all compounds are going to be uniquely obvious (e.g. I quite expect
someone
to point out that oil can be obtained from other fruits besides olives).

I know, despite what one or two have said, BrSc is not a loglang.  So I
have
other considerations for my basic wordlist.

And what compound does one have for "mushroom"? 'edible-fungus' won't do
because many types of fungi, besides agaricus campestris are edibled? If
we're
not careful we'll end up with three morphemes which in BrScA would be nine
letters (one again, 1 more than the English equivalent.

The concern for bevity is going to push up the number of 'basic' morphemes;
  that's
why I'm concerned that BrScA, with its in-built upper limit of about two
and a
half thousand may not be adequate.  BrScB will allow for something like
8000 which,
I think, should be adequate.

(What's Classical Yiklamu's word list?)

> and a very few were added to Lojban at the end.  The Gua\spi
> list contains the whole Loglan list with no removals plus some but not
> all of the Lojban additions.
>
> I'll post to the Lojban list and try to find out.
Thanks - I'll be interested to know if there is an answer.

Ray
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