Re: restricted semantics language

Hi!

Nils Schäffer writes:
> this is my first post to the conlang mailing list.
Welcome!  And enjoy the list!

Do you already have some conlangs to show or are the following for
first ideas for one?  If you have some, it would be particularly
interesting to see whether they already try to achieve something
similar.  In my own conlang history, there were different phases with
a focus on different kinds of conlangs.

>...
> i wonder if anyone has got any sources/ideas to a priori languages where the
> main feature is a highly restricted semantics, say languages that are
> constructed around a set of sememes which are meant to be primitives out of
> which many possible meanings can be generated. i have read about
> wierzbicka's natural semantic metalanguage and have something similar in
> mind, but without the academic approach and with a larger corpus with
> perhaps hundreds of primitives.
>...
There are quite a few around.  Some of Jeffrey Hennings conlangs are
structured around some 400 primitives, e.g. Kalisise.

My own Qþyn|gài has a vocab constructed in a more-or-less ad-hoc way
from 40 category consonants to roots to stems, so there are three
layers of semantical vagueness used to construct the basic words.  It
is meant to have a reduced set of stems, but not down to 100, but more
like 1000.  I am currently not working at the language, however.

**Henrik