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

Trebor Jung said:
>
> 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?

Merging the most basic grammatical features of Lithuanian, Hungarian and
Maltese oughta be a piece of cake. We'll just add several multidimensional
matrices of inflectional morphemes and a whole lot of agglutinating
affixes to a basic system of triconsonantal roots. Then everybody'll be
happy.

I'll get right on it as soon as y'all have completed the requirements
document (where I can find the specification of "optimal grammar").

Of course, some people may just want to go with Lithuanian if they figure
that Hungarians and Maltese aren't *really* Europeans...

Then again, in ten years' time the EU will realize that they're going to
have to support "secondary" national languages (e.g. Irish) and "minority"
languages without their own army and navy (e.g. Basque, Breton, Welsh,
Saami, ...). Then we can have some *real* fun coming up with an, umm,
optimal grammar that feels equally comfortable to speakers of
Plattdeutsch, Scots Gaelic and Basque.

Whatever solution we choose, the main thing is that we make sure that we
remove as much motivation as possible for citizens of the EU to become and
remain multilingual. Europe will never become as important as the US until
they get rid of all those extraneous languages and become fervent
monoglots like Americans.


-- Mark

Polymathix
San Antonio, TX