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Re: Most developed conlang

From:Harold Ensle <heensle@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 18, 2007, 23:23
On Wed, 18 Apr 2007 13:06:52 -0700, David J. Peterson
<dedalvs@...> wrote:

>Harold: ><< >That is not my issue. > >> > >I wasn't trying to imply that it was.
I actually didn't claim you did. I meant that it was not my issue as opposed to your issue. (I can see how you could have construed it that way, though. We have a subplot here, somewhat appropriate, of a linguistic ambiguity in how English expresses a negative.)
>Harold (quoting me): ><< >> (Oh, and I always forget about the languages by that fellow >> Pehrson. Certainly Idrani should get a mention: >> >> http://idrani.perastar.com/idrani/index.htm ) >> > >not "a priori" > >> > >Wait, what? This is the first I've heard of it. What evidence do >you find that suggests it's a posteriori? Hopefully not his saying >that the vocabulary was heavily influenced by Finnish:
No..this is why...and I quote: "For example, the pronominal morphemes 'ta', 'tu' and 'ti' roughly translating as you (sg.), thee, and you (pl.), are left over from the influence of Latin upon Idrani. There are many nominal root morphemes which have been taken from various languages and have continued to travel with Idrani. Some examples are 'kai' meaning commencement taken from Mandarin 'kai' meaning to start or to turn on, 'pi' meaning preference taken from the Russian 'pishu' meaning I like, 'tna' meaning desire coming from an inversion of the English 'want', 'kohti' meaning house from the Finnish 'kohti' also meaning house, and 'chindi' meaning malevolent being from the Navajo 'chindi' meaning devil." Taking words from other languages, by definition, is not "a priori". Its true, of course, that languages can have loan words, but I got the impression here that it was more pervasive than that.
>Idrani : Finnish : English >do : talo : house >bru : veli : brother >dji : lapsi : child >iltlo : kaupunki : city >me : vaimo : wife
>Additionally, I'd hope that you wouldn't say that all this... > >http://idrani.perastar.com/idrani/ISMS_morphology.htm > >...came directly from Finnish.
Not an issue as the criterion was an "a priori" lexicon.
>If this is a posteriori, then I suppose all my languages are, as >well! Eep!
If over 50% of your words were taken from some other language yes, they would be postpriori. It does not have to be systematic to be postpriori (though typically they would be). Harold