Re: The philosophical language fallacy (was ...)

Hallo!

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 12:24:40 -0400, Dana Nutter wrote:

> > [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Jorg
> Rhiemeier
>
> > On the other hand, one should indeed have more than one
> conlang
> > going.  Otherwise, you are likely to incorporate all your
> ideas
> > in one conlang and thus end up with a kitchen sink language or
> > whatever.  I have several ideas which I wish to try out, but
> > which I feel have no room in Old Albic.  So I apply them to
> other
> > conlang projects - some of them diachronically related to Old
> > Albic, others not.
>
> I agree.  A lot of my projects are mainly to experiment with
> ideas which may or may not find their way into other creations
> depending on how the experimentation goes.
Exactly.  There are various ideas I want to try out, including
ones which I know I will never ever build into Old Albic or
any of its sister or daughter languages, but which I find worth
exploring nevertheless.  Thus, I started several "minor" conlang
projects, such as the experimental languages named X-1, X-2 etc.:

http://wiki.frath.net/X-languages

None of the ideas tried out in those conlangettes will ever
find their way into *any* Albic language, never ever, because
Albic is meant to be a family of *naturalistic* languages, and
experimental engelangs are an entirely different game.

Some other sketches serve as testing ground for sound changes
and grammatical developments of Albic languages.  I also have
ideas for a modern Continental Celtic language that does not
resemble an Insular Celtic one, an Indo-European language
with preserved laryngeals on one hand and Uralic influence
on the other, and several others.

> > On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 23:14:05 -0400, Dana Nutter wrote:
> >
> > > This is why I gave up on that approach a long time ago.  I
> do
> > > still see value in an oligosynthetic system.  At least there
> > > will be some mnemonics to aid in learning vocabulary.
> >
> > Oligosynthetic schemes suffer from many, though not all, of
> the
> > problems that weigh down taxonomic schemes.  It is not easy to
> > break down reality to a restricted number of semantic
> primitives,
> > and how do you handle proper names and such?  You need an
> "escape
> > mechanism" which allows for "importing" arbitrary lexical
> material.
> > At least that is what I feel to be the case.
>
> 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.

> Proper names will be handled as distinct entities based on
> pronunciation.  There will be a particle to introduce them.
This is exactly what I meant by "escape mechanism".
The names are borrowed, and tags added which mark them
as such.  In my oligosynthetic experimental language X-3,
for instance, "normal" morphemes are all exactly one
phoneme long (speedtalk-wise).  But there is an "escape
mechanism" for proper names and other borrowed material:
the borrowed words are enclosed in glottal stops, which
do not occur elsewhere in the language (and are also not
allowed within borrowed words).  Thus, I can borrow
arbitrary material of almost any shape (the only
restriction being the absence of glottal stops) without
sacrificing self-segregation.

On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 12:31:45 -0400, Dana Nutter wrote:

> > [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Herman Miller
>
> > > I have seen at least one taxonomic language scheme that
> derived
> > > place names from geographic coordinates!
>
> That sounds like the kooky scheme of Ygyde.  The idea isn't bad
> for an artlang, but this is being promoted as an IAL.  I just
> can't see people walking around with GPS's to find out the names
> of places.
Yes, I think it was Ygyde.  While, as Herman Miller has
remarked, it is indeed used in some star catalogs, it
is hardly practical for everyday use.

> [...]
> The saxophone is classified as a woodwind because of the reed.
> You could taxonomically place it somewhere in a "woodwind"
> category.  Then realize there are several type of the sax:
> baritone, tenor, alto, and soprano.
Yep.

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