Re: Dublex (was: Washing-machine words (was: Futurese, Chinese,

Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> comuni:

> How would you pronounce the words?  Presumably you'd have to use the Roman
> letters as a syllabary as Babm [bO"A:bOmu] does.
Actually, I was thinking of using the abbreviations as mnemonics but you
could pronounce the Dublex root.  So 'bc' would be pronounced 'bac' /bak/,
'bk' would be Dublex 'bacar' /bakar/, etc.  Think of it as having 400
digraphs!


> >bcbc: writing system
> alphabet-alaphet - How does that mean "writing system" which must include
> syllabaries, and systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese and
> ancient Sumerian?
Got me. :-) I didn't make up all these compounds, nor have I completely
revised the list yet.  I'm probably going to generalize 'bc' from "alphabet"
to "writing system" anyway.


> >bibc: hieroglyphics -- the system of letters and pictograms used in
> >Ancient Egypt
> 'building + alphabet' ? Nor would I describe Egyptian hieroglyphics as a
> system of letters and pictograms.
I'll change this to:
hieroglyph, hieroglyphic -- a writing system using picture symbols; used in
ancient Egypt


>vlbc: Gregg shorthand
> fast-alphabet?  Surely this denotes a system like Speedwriting or,
> possibly, T-Line.  In any case, why 'Gregg shorthand' specifically?  What
> would 'Pitman shorthand be'?
I'll generalize this to:
shorthand, stenography -- a method of writing rapidly


> Some of these compounds seem to me to be in head-modifier order & others
in
> modifier-head order.
Yes, that's a known problem with the source list.  The correct order if
modifier-head but I haven't cleaned them all up yet.  I'm going to do that
when I review roots -- basically I'll sort the words by their last morpheme.


> But even supposing we vigorously revise the list, making sure either all
> are head-modifier order or all are modifier-head order, and making the
> bimorphemic compounds as accurate as possible - this would be OK if the
> resultant language had just monomorphemic and bimorphemic words.
Yes, this is what I am working on.


> But if we
> allowed further compounding, e.g. (random sequence) -
> fgdshjkl, it starts getting tricky to read.
>
> I suppose we do have self-segregating morphemes in the written form in the
> sense that all morphemes consist of two letters.
Correct. And English is full of idiomatic compounds.  Is fgdshjkl worse than
say "brothers-in-law", an English compound with four morphemes?  Yes, the
word fgdshjkl looks weird and ugly -- but that will happen with BrSc as
well, given the goal of brevity.


> In ... Speedwords, one has to have a dictionary to make sure which, of
> several possible meanings, a compound actually has.  The examples you
> give ... do not reassure me that this is not also true of Dublex
> and Vlvc.  If one has to resort to a dictionary, what advantage does
> compounding have over having a separate word?
Humans have a high tolerance for polysemy.  So what 'comanjlet'
(eating+diminutive) means will be clear from context.  Contributors to
Dublex have suggested it means "a taste", "a drink", "a nibble" and "a
snack".


> I'm sure some Vlvc compounds, just like Speedwords compounds, will be
> longer than the equivalents in a natlang.  What are the Vlvc words for:
> lion, tiger, puma & lynx?
Well, it's a nonce language so I don't have these forms, but I can tell you
the word length based on the number of morphemes:

lion -- 2 morphemes; 4 letters
tiger -- 1 morpheme; 2 letters
puma -- 2 morphemes; 4 letters
lynx -- 2 morphemes; 4 letters

Dublex forms:

catohton  [cat+{augmentative}.]  n.  puma, cougar -- short-tailed wildcats
with usually tufted ears  (Submitted by HMM.)

montcatoh  [NA.]  n.  lynx, catamount -- short-tailed wildcats with usually
tufted ears

tiger  [From Greek 'tigris', extant in Latin, Russian, English, Spanish,
Italian, German, Dutch, et al..]  n.  tiger, Panthera tigris -- large feline
of forests in most of Asia having a tawny coat with black stripes
(Submitted by NA.)

tigerton  [NA.]  n.  lion, king of beasts, Panthera leo -- (arge gregarious
predatory feline of Africa and India having a tawny coat with a shaggy mane
in the male

So the forms are the same length for all the words but "tiger", which is
shorter because it happens to be a root.

If I were serious about a briefscript, I would increase the root count from
400 to 676 (26*26), which would help keep the compound words much shorter.
I might even increase the root count to 936 (26*36, where the second
character could be a letter or digit).  So the problems of word length are
addressable in a 'vlvc' approach, and I don't think polysemy should be seen
as a showstopper either.

I encourage someone out there to develop a briefscript based on the Dublex
etymological dictionary.

Best regards,

Jeffrey
http://jeffrey.henning.com
http://www.langmaker.com