Re: Re : Malat

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Garrett wrote:
> > verbs can be made pretty close to logical; nouns can't. The nouns that
> > I've been deriving are ones based on verbal concepts; I haven't touched
> > the purely noun concepts (such as dog, house, street, etc).
>
> Have you ever read _Words in Context_ (also published, sans a chapter,
> as _Japanese and the Japanese_)?  The author makes a similar argument -
> he argues, quite persuasively, that most verbs can be defined exactly,
> while non-derived nouns cannot.
Perhaps that refers to abstract nouns?
Scientists use extensive hierarchies of terms
for species, chemicals, numbers, ...

Many philosophical/ontological conlangs have also
been attempted. A complete hierarchy of nouns based
on the "X is a type of Y" and/or "X is a part of Y"
relations is online at Princeton's WordNet:
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/

... so, I think it can be done, since it has been.
Verbs are tougher than nouns, but there are ways
of organizing them too.