Re: Necessary Components of a Language

On 4/23/07, John Crowe <johnxcrowe@...> wrote:

> I'm looking for a list of
> absolutely-necessary-in-order-to-communicate-unambiguously words (to be part
> of a lexicon)
Try looking at Natural Semantic Metalanguage, and at the lexicon of
Toki Pona.  Neither of them is an absolutely irreducible set -- generous
use of opposite-derivation could reduce either of them by several words,
for instance.  Rick Harrison's Universal Language Dictionary is
a rather larger set of 1600 words/concepts in several natural
and constructed languages; again, it's not an irreducible set of roots
but it might help you start making such a set.

>and grammar concepts. For example, many verb aspects seem to
> have purpose to me. Is imperfective vs. perfective needed?
I suppose all verb aspects have a purpose, but perhaps none
of them is absolutely necessary.  At least, mandatory marking
of aspect is not necessary since some languages get by without
it.

In fact mandatory marking of any grammatical category you
can name is probably not necessary, since there are more or
less isolating language that lack any given category.   Awhile ago
there was a discussion of which categories are most widely marked
in the languages that have some kind of verbal inflection; I think
transitivity/valency and evidentiality/mood were near the top of the
list and tense/aspect were further down.

I'll take a stab at what grammatical concepts are probably necessary
to any language:

1. Some kind of number system, even if very simple

2. A way to show what modifies what, whether in a
compound word or a phrase (rules like "adjectives precede
nouns", etc.)

3. A ways of indicating the spatial, temporal and abstract
relationships between the constituents of a sentence
(prepositions, postpositions, cases, and/or word order rules)

4. A way of indicating the sense in which a sentence is
intended (mood or mode, roughly speaking - is it a
question, statement, command, performative...?)

I think I've read that all natural languages have pronouns
but it's easy to conceive of a language without them
and I believe a few conlangs lack them.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry

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