Re: Wordless language (WAS: NonVerbal Conlang?)

Sally Caves wrote:
It might be worth asking John Q. if he considers
>his Ithkuil to have words in the traditional sense.
>=========================================================================
Interesting thread.  As for Ithkuil, it is true that "word" is definitely a
secondary consideration and that the morpheme is king.  However, I would say
Ithkuil retains some concept of "words" in that word boundaries are
important in Ithkuil for parsing purposes so that a speaker/listener can
correctly interpret homophonous morphemes, e.g., a word-final vocalic suffix
-/a/ has an entirely different meaning than a word-initial prefix /a/-.  The
only way to know which you're hearing is via stress/tone patterns which
indicate word boundaries.  So in that sense, I would say Ithkuil definitely
retains "words".

--John Quijada