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Re: Most developed conlang

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Sunday, April 22, 2007, 23:14
Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi! > > Herman Miller writes: >> ... a lot of interesting stuff ... > > So your main criterion would be predictability of semantics? If > predictable => no new word, if not predictable => new word. This > seems, well, very reasonable for composing a lexicon. Of course there > will be difficult cases, but let's ignore them for now.
At least it's something to fall back on in the absence of specific information about a language. Stress patterns, inflections, and so on may be useful in some languages. But I don't know if I'd consider it as the main criterion.
> This means that for counting a conlang's words, we probably should: > > - also count phrases ('bubble sort algorithm') and idioms > > - not count lexicon entries that are due to irregular forms > ('saw' cf. 'see') > > - count polysynthetically constructed words several times, > excluding structures that are semantically clear operations, > but counting all irregularly derived concepts > > This seems quite reasonable. Do you also think it's a good way of > counting? It also looks undoable since the lexicons are generally not > structured like this.
Right. Minza for instance has various predictable forms listed separately since their English equivalents aren't always formed in the same way: chengiła "shame" is derived from an adjective (chengi) meaning "shameful", for instance. I don't know if that's the best way of counting. Take the Minza phrase "tlahzi kiřvi" -- literally it means "yellow tea" (referring to the color of the liquid) but it's translated as "green tea" (referring to the color of the leaves) in English. It has a place in the lexicon, but should it count as a word? I think the native Minza speakers (if any, since Minza doesn't have a conculture) might see this as a transparent phrase consisting of two words.