> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Jorg
Rhiemeier
> > No, it's not easy but it's only difficult if you take it to
> > extremes as with AUI or Toki Pona. I have an
oligosynthetic
> > project in the works, but there is also a phonosemantic
schema
> > that will underly the root morphemes. It's just an idea
I'm
> > playing with right now. I don't expect to reduce everything
> > down to 32 roots, though I'd be happy to get it down to the
> > 500-600 range.
>
> In my opinion, *all* closed-vocabulary schemes run into
> this sort of problems, only to a lesser degree if the set
> of roots is larger. There are always things that cannot
> easily be captured adequately by any construction of
> reasonable length. Of course, you can define it with,
> e.g., the word list of Basic English. But what if the
> definition of something is 100 morphemes long? In a pure
> closed-vocabulary language, you'd have to repeat the
> definition every time the concept is mentioned in the text.
> Hardly practical, especially if you are talking about a
> subject matter where such things occur frequently. You
> will want to assign a shorter name to it.
Sometimes, it's possible to have a shorthand form. Used
contextually, this can often be enough. My longlang is
primarily verbal so a lot of "things" will have meanings that
refer to what they do.
I've set up basic morphemes of the shape CV(n), but I'm also
going to have a disyllabic shape CCVCV(n) or CVCCV(n) for the
less common ideas like chemical elements and other technical
terms that will need their own morpheme.