Re: CHAT: EU allumettes (was: Re: THEORY/CHAT: Talmy, Jackendoff and Matchboxes

>For vocabulary, a computer program could be designed to pick random words
>from a list. So for example, there would be a list of all EU languages'
>words for 'dog', and the program randomly selects one of the words. (We'll
>have to decide on a phonology too...
I think the criteria of wide recognizability and high
distinctiveness would be a better choice for selecting
vocabulary than mere randomness.


>Syllables should be (C)V(C),
>IMO--Slavic consonant clusters are very difficult to pronounce.)
Certain final consonants (like voiced plosives) may
cause more trouble than certain initial clusters
(like pl- and kl-).


>For grammar, what's needed is a sort of basic "EU grammar"--a list of
>concepts, rules, etc. that many European languages have.
Interlingua does something similar to what you propose (only
that vocabulary was chosen non-randomly through an algorithm
and the phonology mimics that of Romance/Germanic languages).
But I think aiming at a regular and flexible grammar would
be better than simply choosing grammar features "common to
EU languages". European languages share features which do
not make a language easy to learn and use, such as compulsory
number and tense marking, and the rules for their use do
not always agree between those languages, so even if you
as a speaker of a European language are familiar with such
grammatical features, whenever the usage rules for them do
not agree with the ones used in your language, you will meet
trouble and difficulties. OTOH, a constructed language that
is easy to learn and use (avoiding for example compulsory
marking of number and tense, which are unnecessary
complications for an auxlang) and that has a certain
degree of internationality in its vocabulary without being
especially biassed towards a certain cultural area, would
be useful both for the EU and as an acceptable candidate
for a more international use.


>This'll take a huge amount of work... we'll need to recruit lots of
>polyglots, and get a list of basic concepts (the ULD maybe?) for
>translation. And linguists could design an optimal grammar.
>
>Anyone interested in maybe trying this?
I'm interested in the idea of constructing an auxiliary
language along the lines I've described (international,
neutral, regular, flexible and not unnecessarily complicated),
rather than in merely another euroclone (of which there
are already many to choose from), and I'm currently working
on that, mainly as an intellectual challenge (I'm not that
interested in the political aspect of auxlangs), but AFAIK
people in this list supposedly do not to care about auxlangs
because auxlangs are allegedly "boring" and "simplistic".

Cheers,
Javier

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