Re: Wordless language (WAS: NonVerbal Conlang?)

And Rosta wrote:
> Eldin Raigmore, On 01/07/2006 23:01:
[snip]
>> The conlang I meant to mention -- not And's apparently -- had just two
>> "parts of speech" -- "linkers" (a small closed class) and content-
>> morphemes.
>>
>> The syntax is the same as the morphotactics; the morphotactics is the
>> same as the syntax; in this conlang there is no difference between
>> morphotactics and syntax.
>>
>> The content-morphemes include many whose semantics would strike a
>> speaker of a natlang as "particles".
>
>
> That sounds like Jonathan's ("T4"?).
Right - thanks for naming Jonathan's language. I've tracked it down now   :)

To sum extent - but I find in Jonathan's description (2003):
"This class is known as 'full words', and a large majority of words are
of this class. There are three other syntactic classes, namely
operators, DA-markers and delexical clitics; all of these are realised
as clitics rather than full phonological words, and all form small,
closed classes..........
Full words are used to translate English content words, including most
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and prepositions."

Of the 'full words' listed by Jonathan, only prepositions might be
classed as 'particles' as far as I'm aware. It is also clear that the
language is not wordless, nor indeed does the author claim the language
has no words; quite the contrary in fact.

So maybe it is not "T4" that Eldin had in mind.

[snip]
> I suppose it is pertinent to remark that one could without difficult
> design a conlang in which there was perfect homology between
> morphophonology and syntax, and only a single, uninflected, class of
> content words, plus various uninflected function words. -- Not a
> particularly groundbreaking idea, but it constitutes, I believe, the
> maximum degree of simplicity that conlangers have so far managed to
> conceive.
Yes - it's the way Piashi (aka 'briefscript' seems to be going).

--
Ray
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