Re: A gripping language, and a question about suprasegmental analysis (WAS: re: conlanging partners)

On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 6:55 PM, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> Morse Code: Handshake with one finger position is "dot" and an alternate finger
> position is "dash". You can express anything whatsoever.
Right. It's certainly possible.

However, I have a strong preference for succinctness, which this sort
of highly serial use wouldn't do well in. (How long a handshake would
you need to say "this is my boss, please pretend to like him but don't
tell him anything about my personal life or about our friend Steve"?)

Possibly however it could be a non-binary Morse code analogue, or even
use something like a combination of Morse code and stenographers'
coding...

Basically, this reduces to that I'd like to take as fully customized
advantage of the medium as possible, rather than treat it as a generic
bit-channel and. (If you haven't seen it, taking a look at my essay
'On the design of an ideal language' from a few years ago may help to
explain my perspective:
http://community.livejournal.com/conlangs/14524.html.) This is
approximately the same as the difference between SEE, which IMO is
horrific, and ASL, which is cool.

- Sai