Re: Bootstrapping a cooperative conlang

MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:
> In a message dated 11/18/2007 9:47:58 PM Central Standard Time,
> hmiller@IO.COM writes:
>
>
>> If you've identified a group of potential collaborators who are all
>> familiar with Wierzbicka's work, and who have the time and level of
>> interest to write definitions in that style for all the words you're
>> going to need, that could be an interesting thing to try. I just think
>> that having to learn a technical set of words for basic meanings, and
>> how to use them, is likely to be intimidating to just about anyone who
>> might want to participate.
>>
>
> What do you mean by "a technical set of words for basic meanings"?
> NSM uses only the simplest words as the basis for definitions (actually
> explications, a sort of scenario explaining the meaning).
> Everyone already knows the semantic primes, just not that they *are* semantic
> primes.
They're technical in the sense that their meaning is very specific. You
need to understand the theory before you can use them. How is "move"
distinguished from "go"? Which meaning of "think" is intended -- as in
"I'm thinking about (contemplating) designing a language", or  "I think
(believe) this language is a good idea"? But the fact that so many
fundamental words need to be derived from these "semantic primes", in
some way that isn't at all obvious from looking at the words themselves,
is the biggest drawback.

Take a really simple word like "red". If you had a definition for
"apple" -- no, some apples are yellow -- if you had a word for "cherry"
and a word for "color", you could say "color of a cherry". But why a
cherry and not a tomato? And although it might be possible to eventually
define a cherry or a tomato without referring to its color, how do you
know there isn't some other fruit of a different color that fits the
definition? Red is such a fundamental sensation that you need an easy
way to express it (if your language has words for colors at all).

How do you express causation? That seems pretty fundamental. Many
languages even have a grammatical way to express it.

It's just not clear why these words have been singled out. At first
glance, some of them can be defined in terms of others (far = not near),
and yet other fundamental ideas are left out (left, right, turn,
straight, away). No doubt this is all explained in the expensive book
that was mentioned, but for conlanging purposes, I don't see the benefit
of such a minimal set of words. I don't know what the optimal number of
basic words for using in definitions might be, but I have the feeling
that most people who might otherwise be interested in a collaborative
project would have little patience for this kind of a system.

> I would like to create a language derived from the English primes, but
> without reference to any other English words.  English grammar would be defined in
> terms of these primes as well.  New words would be formed to conform to English
> sound rules (phonotactics?).  No words would be borrowed from anywhere, at
> least until much later after the language was essentially robust.
> It would be a case of building English from scratch from the bottom up.
Seems like a Herculean effort. Good luck!