Re: Operation Infinite Vocabulary

Danny Wier wrote:
> Question: Is there a system for languages, especially IAL's, that facilitates
> the expansion of vocabulary using affixation, compounding, even inflection
> that's open-ended, with a potentially unlimited vocabulary, while making words
> (and phrases) easier to write/pronounce, more regular, and preventing
> excessively long words and phrases.
Well, I think you could just take something like what Ygyde does.
Without the limitations of being incredibly easy to pronounce by the
handful of people who distinguish /I/ and /i/, and the limitations in
the amounts of possible roots (I'm assuming you allow multisyllabic
roots), it'd probably not be a bad idea with compounding.

> In many ways, the language is a type of anti-Tech, with no voiced or glottalized
> stop distinction, no affricates, fewer laterals, much longer words, strict word
> order, word-initial stress, agglutination rather than inflection, no prosodic
> pitch accent, inherent vowel length rather than accidental, and the fact that
> Dragons are for the most part evil while Techian Elves are good. The Dragons
> seek to re-conquer the earth, enslave the birds and destroy all mammals.
Well, by Jove, that doesn't sound like a nice thing to do at all. I
revoke my help; I shan't be helping any species that intends to anything
like that. (And my next question is how do you enslave a bird? It seems
to me that all they're good for is laying eggs, producing meat, and
going from one place to another.) If you don't mind, I think I'll steal
your language and Widserise it some so that the Dragons can't remember
communicate any more, and fail miserably in their plot.

Tristan.

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