Re: proposed conlang database & my classification

On Mon, 25 Mar 2002 10:01:18 -0000, And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:

>Herman:
>> On Mon, 18 Mar 2002 09:40:05 -0800, Garrett Jones <alkaline@...>
>> wrote:
>> >So, esperanto would be a blend, and Ido would be an 'unaltered'. Fictional
>> >languages like Klingon and Quenya would be a priori, random generation.
>>
>> "Random" implies generating vocabulary or assigning meanings automatically,
>> by computer or analogous methods like rolling dice or shuffling decks of
>> cards. My own language Tilya is an example of this approach, as is Mark
>> Line's Classical Yiklamu. I think the word you're looking for is
>> "arbitrary".
>
>Though a priori needn't entail arbitrary. Lots of creators of a priori
>vocab require as little arbitriness as possible, either in terms of
>phonosemantic motivatedness, or in terms of Ro-like systematicity.
Right, there were two sub-categories under "a priori", and one of them was
labeled "random"; the other was "categorical". I don't have a problem with
the "categorical" label, but I thought "random" was misleading.

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