Re: New Language

Garrett wrote:
>
> Didier Willis wrote:
>
> > [...] I have always
> > wondered what people meant by *logical* languages (are there any
> > *illogical* languages, by the way?), and as a matter of facts,
> > many so-called logical langs often show lots of illogicalities,
> > whereas artlangs are sometimes paradoxically much more regular
> > and logical...
>
> Well, I aim to make the language as "Garrett-logical" that I can
> make it (where everything is regular and relates in a logical way).
> Could you tell me some examples of those so-called logical
> languages, and the artlangs with more regular/logical structures?
> I'd like to see their ideas on the subject.
I was perhaps to rude here. It really depends on what people
mean by 'logical'.

For instance one might devise a different gender for 'inanimate'
and 'animate' items. I am not criticizing this (it is, indeed, a
rather logical structure), but the fact that the underlying classes
are often defined in a rather fuzzy way. An animal, an human being,
are aninate, but what about a tree, the sun, a rolling stone ?? So
are we speaking here of a distinction between *inanimate* and
*animate*, or merely between *alive* (in a stricter sense) and
*not alive* ?

As another example, one might try define a complex set of particles
to express distance (here, there, yonder...), but fail to specify
the scale. What one considers as 'far past'? Antiquity? Paleolithic?

IMO, so-called 'logical' languages can only be logical *in
structure*, i.e. regular to the extreme.

> >
> >    "Another unique concept is that most modifiers can be used
> >    on both verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Because of the structure
> >    of Malat, many unique concepts can be made by using simple
> >    construction rules."
> >
> > Regarding uniqueness, I am afraid that many conlangs (and even
> > natlangs) work this way. Nova (Brad Coon's conlang) has a strong
> > oligosynthetic structure and has therefore reached a particular
> > status on this topic.
>
> Do those languages use most of their modifiers interchangably
> between nouns/verbs/adjectives? I don't know much about the
> particular conlangs that there are, and I didn't really know if
> others used that concept...
Some langs do not distinguish verbs, nouns or adjectives which
are represented by a single stem. The distinction may exist, but
be either syntactic (e.g. word order) or semantic (contextual).
So in this case, the same modifiers are applied to a stem that
could appear to be used as a noun, verb or adjective.

Similarly, I once noticed that aspects can be applied not only
to verbs, but to nouns also. For instance with inchoative:

   he INCHOATIVE-eats = he begins to eat.
   INCHOATIVE-day     = the beginning the day, dawn.

As another example of modifiers applied to verbs and
to noun as well, just consider the english pronouns:

   he works  (= the work is performed by a male being)
   "he-goat" (= male goat)

That's more or less what I meant when I criticized your
claims of uniqueness. Of course, your paculiar added value
could be to define a more general and regular system.

> I pronounce the vowel in all of these words the same:- dot
> - caught
> - father (first syllable)
> - wrong
> - tall
For 'tall' and 'caught' I do agree, but for the remaining ones...
Well, I am french, so my pronunciation of english is certainly
biases :), and anyway there are many english accents (Texan
accent and Oxford's are not the same, aren't they ?:*). For this
last reason at least, you should switch to an IPA transcription.

Didier.
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