Re: Relexes Pt. 1: Defence

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.

* And I don't think this is the case.  For example, I don't think any
  natural language has anything like lojban argument structure.

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