Re: Relexes Pt. 1: Defence

Tim May wrote:
> Gary Shannon wrote at 2003-12-13 13:58:53 (-0800)
>  > In the final analysis it might be difficult to find a
>  > conglang that is not a relex of SOME language, whether
>  > Latin, English, or Urdu.  Is there really such a thing
>  > as a novel grammar?
>
> Certainly.  Even if all possible grammatical features were attested in
> the world's languages*, the number of possible combinations of
> features is far greater than the number of extant languages (even
> allowing for the fact that grammatical features are not independant).
>
> In any case, grammar is only indirectly relevant to whether a conlang
> is a relex.  The real point is the lexicon - whether each dictionary
> entry covers the same semantic field as an equivalent in the natlang.
I wonder...what would you call a language that has a one-to-one
correspondence with another language between grammatical features? For
example, doing a relex of English, but using case suffixes instead of
word order to mark subjects and objects.

Or one that copies another language's grammar but has a lexicon with
different semantics than the other language? (A re-gram?)

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