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Re: Most developed conlang

From:David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 18, 2007, 16:40
Harold wrote:
<<
1. Lexicon must be greater than 2000 (and contain essential words)
2. Lexicon must be "a priori". (some loans are acceptible)
3. Lexicon must be accessible on the internet.
4. Grammar must be complete.
5. Grammar must be able to be learned on the internet.
6. Language must be speakable.
 >>

One thing I've always found problematic about questions of this
sort is that there seems to be a caveat, stated explicitly in numbers
3 and 6 up there.  If you go to the original question:

John Crowe:
<<
Which conlang is the most highly developed (in terms of lexicon,
grammar,
usability, etc.) that is not intended in any way to be an auxlang?
 >>

Items 3 and 6 shouldn't have anything to do with the answer.
Nevertheless, it seems to be implicitly understood that it does--
that a language doesn't "count" unless everything about it is on
the internet (a disadvantage to those whose HTML skills are
nonexistent, or who don't have all the time in the world--or
who simply prefer another method of language documentation).

If only online-documentation counts, then I'd say probably
amman-îar is one of the most complete (even in its incomplete
state), as well as Tokana.  If we count *all* languages, though,
then I'd say there's really no way to say.

(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 )

Dirk wrote:
<<
I don't know about Tokana, but I can tell you that Tepa has a lexicon
of 600+ stems. Of course, that doesn't mean a thing, since the
derivational processes in place will yield many more words than that.
 >>

I echo this sentiment.  Consider a conlang like English that has
verbs and a /po-/ prefix that's identical to the English /-er/ suffix.
It's not original, but it can be done in language, and can be done
in a conlang.  Now say that language has 300 verbs.  Automatically,
it has at least 600 words, whether they're written down or not.
And what about verb conjugations?  Using Esperanto as an example,
or "estas", "estis", "estos", "esti" and "estus" all different
words?  If
so, what about a language like Spanish, with even more conjugations?
If not, what are those things?  And what indeed does one do about
Inuktitut or Turkish?

-David
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Replies

H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>