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

And Rosta comunu:

> (1) Compounding is not the only alternative to creating a new and
> totally unanalysable root. There are various alternatives, including
> * arbitrary or quasi-systematic modification of an existing
>   semantically related root or stem
> * derivational affixes
> * having very many roots, but organizing them into paradigms such
>   that roots with related meaning have similar forms, possibly in
>   a relatively systematic way
I've decided that one of the most difficult aspects of learning a language
is mastering sufficient vocabulary.  Contemplating this led to my decision
to design Dublex and to have the goal of a lexicon that was as easy to learn
as possible with the primary way of achieving that goal being keeping the
lexicon as small as feasible.

I decided compounding was the simplest derivational morphology to learn.
Before designing the Dublex phonology, I studied a number of books on
memorization, and these works said CVC forms were easier to learn than CV or
VC forms.  While the original goal had been 400 CVC forms, it is even easier
to memorize roots with different shapes, which led me to expand the
morphology to five forms (CVC, CVCC, CVCVC, CVCVCC, CVCVCVC).  This gives
the brain another point of difference in memorization.


> -- Sometimes, these alternatives yield apter stems than compounding
> does. A compound X+Y is apt if the denotatum is X and is Y, or if
> (in a head-final compound) it is a Y a salient characteristic of which
> is saliently associated with X. But not all new concepts can be
> expressed by such apt compounds.
Yes, compounds have their strengths and weaknesses.  I think you and I and
Ray agree that what makes language engineering so challenging and rewarding
is balancing the constant trade-offs.  One of the goals of Dublex is to
develop the best vocabulary for compounding; i.e., to develop the lexicon
which forms more "apt compounds" than any other compounding (or even
affixing) lexicon.


> (2) Compounding yields unnecessarily long stems...
> If you care about concision -- and almost all language users do --
> then you want words to be as short as possible.
I would disagree, but just slightly.  I would say, "If you care about
concision -- and almost all *fluent* users of a language do -- then you want
the *most common* words to be as short as possible."

Myself I probably care least about concision of any language *designer* I
know.  The heck with gemütlichkeit for experienced language users -- I'm
designing for intermediate language users who are constantly trying to
remember words and unravel texts that interest them.  Longer forms offer
more clues. :-)

Now that said, Dublex does have methods of shortening words once introduced:
acronyming a long compound for quick reference;  abbreviating subsequent
appearances of the word.  The first person to write an article in English on
"what-you-see-is-what-you-get graphical-user interfaces" quickly stumbled on
"WYSIWYG GUI" as a shorthand for the rest of the article.  Dublex texts may
have 'catvoc' (cut+words) that are shortened forms of introduced terms.  So
'viclavmahin' might be referred to as 'viclav' without confusion later and
repeatedly.


> Moving on to the general Dublex experiment, I don't really see
> anything magically special about roots. The inventory of
> a language's morphological or etymological roots tends to be
> rather accidental -- accidents of history.
Exactly.  And with an engineered language you don't want accidents but you
want to systematically develop the most productive system you can.


> They don't represent
> semantic primitives or anything truly elemental to the cognitive
> structures underlying language.
No, that's not a goal at all, and I would shudder that someone in the future
would ever claim Dublex's efficiency on this score somehow reflective of how
our brains work.


> Hence although your Dublex goal interests me by virtue of
> being an engelanging exercise, its specific goal is not one I
> myself think worthwhile to the world at large.
Well, I did ask you for your opinion. :-)  It is certainly not of interest
to the world at large.  Reasons I think it is of interest to the *conlang*
world at large:
- For artlangers, with very little work the system can suggest thousands of
new compounds, which they can adopt on a case by case basis into their
language.
- For engelangers, they can expand or contract the system.  So if improving
concision is a goal, they can identify the 200 most used compounds in the
lexicon and expand the root system to have 600 roots, which would yield
shorter words in their language.  If minimalizing the lexicon is a goal
(there are a number of ~100-word languages out there) they can work on that
as well by rephrasing Dublex roots as compounds in their reduced set.  I
think the system could be very helpful for a developing a briefscript, as I
e-mailed Ray Brown earlier.
- For auxlangers, well, I know that one auxlanger is using the lexicon to
introduce the most apt of its compounds into his IAL, which primarily uses
derivational affixes of very broad ranges of meaning.
- Conlangers of all sorts looking to generate word lists often turn to Word
Net, Roget's Thesaurus or the Universal Language Dictionary for creating
unique roots.  Up until now there hasn't been a useful list for generating
derivational lexicons.

Best regards,

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

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