Re: Langauge Constets (was Natural Semantic Metalanguage)

On Nov 21, 2007 12:02 PM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
>> I think the words 'here' and 'there' are a good place to start,
Quoting Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
> Eh? That seems to me like wasting 5% of your vocabulary space.
> Wouldn't "here" and "un-here" be better, since you can probably re-use
> an "un-" morpheme (or, rather, something along the lines of
> Esperanto's "mal-") better. OSISTM.

I'll see and raise:  You could just have one morpheme for "away,
distant, the opposite of," and double it for "here, this" -- as in
"the opposite of something else"! :)


I had this same idea recently.  I called my idea "haiku languages" and
had the limit set at seventeen, but same difference. :)  The ones I
played around with I made just by putting together random concepts,
but now I'm inspired to see what the most useful one I can come up
with is.  So I'll get back to y'all if I think of anything good.

I think it's a fantastic idea for us to explore, not just because it's
a fun challenge, but because if we come up with anything it'll be
really easy to learn and use each other's little languages.  (One idea
I had: What if a bunch of people all made tiny languages, and then you
stitched them together into one Frankenstein language??)

We all need to loosen up the way we're thinking about it in order to
come up with really good ones, though.  We're so used to inventing
concepts for languages with thousands of words.  I think that a tiny
language is going to need a different kind of word, one that has a
tremendous broadness, and also some special quality of refinability
and combinability.

"Mal-" in Esperanto has just what's needed; if only there were a way
to invent nineteen more "mal-"s.  Hmmm...

<3,
mungojelly

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