> Hello, John.
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, John Vertical <johnvertical@H...>
> > wrote:
> > [snip]
> > Also, the Speedtalk thread has given me the idea of
> > "ordered variables"; in
> > a large crowd, instead of proper names,
> > ordinal affixes could be added to
> > pronouns in order to refer to 3rd person #2,
> > not 3rd person #1 or #33. How
> > the numbers would initially be defined seems
> > still a little hazy, tho. If it
> > were simply in the order in which
> > each person was first mentioned (you start
> > from 3rd#1, the next 3rd person you'll need
> > to refer to is #2 etc.) the
> > discussion would not be understandable by
> > someone who had not followed it
> > since the beginning.
> > Wait, scratch that - using the names *themselves*
> > as the affixes would
> > actually be a lot more efficient.
> > Or, since names tend to not inflect much,
> > and can be quite long, maybe such a case would be better
> > analyzed/constructed as affix versions of personal pronouns
> > (more on which
> > below) added to the names.
> >
> > I pulled the last paragraph straight out of my head,
> > but I'm almost sure
> > there's a natlang somewhere which does just that...
>
> About your "ordinal affixes" idea;
> Here is a quote from
>
http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Texperanto.html
> where a similar goal is accomplished;
>
> The names of the letters are: af, bet, ce, del, ep, foy, gam, hac,
> ic, jey, kap, lam, mim, nan, om, pi, qa, ro, sig, taw, up, vay, waw,
> xin, yot, zed
> They are used as names of letters, of course, and (since a trend
> began in the late 20th century) they are also used as anaphora, i. e.
> as pronouns that refer back to the last word that begins with that
> particular letter. Example: Me donis karno ad la leono. Lam manjis
> kap. (usually just written as "L manjis k.")
>
> Of course, Texperanto is not a natlang, but...