Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

Matt Pearson wrote:

> The last time this issue was discussed on
> Conlang, we tried to figure out some objective criteria for measuring
> relative logic and complexity, without much success (or at least, *I* was
> unconvinced).
Numerical estimates are certainly difficult or impossible.  But see
http://www.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de/linguist/issues/4/4-900.html#2
for a bit on Tolomako (very regular) and Sakao (very irregular,
with lots of holophrasis and phoneme splits, a kind of "French
squared"), two fairly closely related Austronesian lgs of Vanuatu.

More information on Sakao (and sometimes Tolomako) is available at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-572.html#1 ,
http://linguistlist.org/issues/3/3-22.html#6 ,
http://linguistlist.org/issues/3/3-4.html#2 ,
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/VAN/santo.html (a map).

ObConlang: http://linguistlist.org/issues/6/6-837.html#1 , on the
Sindarin substrate in Sakao (!).

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
                Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)