Re: Lahabic Syntax

* Estelachan@aol.com <Estelachan@...> [001001 02:02]:
> Incidentally, if anyone would like to translate the (in?)famous sentence
> "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" into their conlang and give me the
> name of the language and it's author, including if you wish an email address
> and/or a link to your conlang's website, I'm collecting the phrase and
> putting a list on the web.
I wonder which meaning of "idea" is important here... WordNet 1.6 says:

  idea
       n 1: the content of cognition; the main thing you are thinking
            about; "it was not a good idea"; "the thought never
            entered my mind" [syn: {thought}]
       2: a personal view; "he has an idea that we don't like him"
       3: an approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth;
          "an estimate of what it would cost"; "a rough idea how
          long it would take" [syn: {estimate}, {estimation}, {approximation}]
       4: your intention; what you intend to do; "he had in mind to
          see his old teacher"; "the idea of the game is to capture
          all the pieces" [syn: {mind}]
       5: melodic subject of a musical composition; "the theme is
          announced in the first measures"; "the accompanist picked
          up the idea and elaborated it" [syn: {theme}, {melodic
          theme}, {musical theme}]

More and more I find myself disagreeing with wordnet, I think this
definition lacks: idea as in (for instance) a political theory (possibly
covered by 2) and idea as in sudden insight (symbolized with a lightbulb
going on in the comics).

Anyway, I don't have one word covering all of the above.

idea := sudden insight, <vycer> or <vyrr>
idea := thought, would be derived from <âr> "to think that"

and nothing covering the rest. It's not that târuven pulls a Yiklamu,
it's just that the semantic space is somewhat different to put it mildly.
Makes translations quite hellish to do :)


t.