Re: Tunu not dead

Yahya wrote:

<<<
Hi all,
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Taka Tunu wrote:
> The Tunu language is back at http://conlang.free.fr
> I lost the old lexicon so I made up a new one with excel. It's CVCV with
a, e,i, o, u, p, k, t, m, n, x, r. Instead of parts of speech there are 4
deictics referring to the topic, the previous word and phrase and the next
phrase--but it looks the same.
Just had a chance to look at it now. Impressively logical.
>>>
Thank you. I do appreciate your kind comment, as well as Remi Villatel's.

<<<
I wonder whether it would be less verbose if you had more distinct consonants?
>>>
My family include French, Puerto-Ricans, Dutch, Khmers and Americans (among
others), good friends are Japanese and I like Bahasa Indonesia. I wanted sounds
that all of them could equally well pronounce (not that they know about the
language though) and I got this few, plus maybe [tS] and a final nasal.

<<<
Also, is there any particular reason for not allowing monosyllabic roots?
>>>
Yes. Tunu is self-segregating with compound/construct made without a tag. If you
had ti, ku, tima and maku as valid root words, then timaku could mean either
ti-maku or tima-ku or tima-kuXX or tima-ku XXXX or else. In the past I tried
several solutions: a construct tag (like the -u- tag in Wolof), an article and
you name it but for reasons too boring to explain here I came to the conclusion
that no-tag construct and CVCV work relatively better.

<<<
If the 100 or so commonest roots had only one syllable, the language would be
much more efficient.
>>>
I'm not much into "efficiency" :-) I've read this argument a lot in the past
years on conlang websites together with the "noisy environment issue" but I
cannot see how saving a second expressing a phrase is more efficient, for what
purpose and compared to what. Maybe because I find Japanese and Tahitian
efficient enough in that regard :-) "Or" in Japanese may be a-ru-i-wa or
so-re-to-mo (4 syllables like in Tunu) and Japanese still look kind of
efficient enough people to me although taka, take, taki, tako and taku are
valid roots with completely different meanings in their language. But granted:
Tunu speakers as I imagine them are plain inefficient in a modern world :-)

<<<
I'm also impressed with the way you can completely discard the lexicon and
start over with the same rules. Not that this ever happens with natlangs,
but supposing two neighbouring languages used the exact same rules while
completely replacing the vocabulary, I imagine it would take a speaker of
one a very little time to learn the other.
>>>
Japanese grammar tags can be used that way too, provided you use the verb suru
(to do) and Indonesian too if you try hard enough. The little plus of the 15
Tunu tags is that they can be used with a different word order.

<<<
Also, the link to the Tunu Primer is broken.
>>>
It's a comprehensive one and I'm halfway through.

<<<
> The Pikutu language with only 6 phonemes (p, k, t, a, i, u) at
> http://galimathias.free.fr also came out less silly than I thought it
would.It's not at all silly. But it IS very long-winded! :-) The small phoneme
inventory makes for inefficiency.
>>>
Ditto.

<<<
If you ask most people "What's the opposite of 'something'?", I'd be
willing to bet they'd answer "'Nothing'.", rather than "'Anything'." as
you have in Pikutu.
>>>
Yes. But "pine" rather means "a certain (one)" and "piwane" "any (one)."

<<<
Expressing some significant distinctions by a single phoneme, would, in my
opinion, make misunderstandings fairly common. Greater redundancy would
add to Pikutu's robustness and usability.
>>>
That's possible although Tunu is a conlang so it's not going to be used by
anyone but me and for now I find -wa- distinctive enough. More than the
Japanese colloquial -(a)n anyway!

<<<
All quibbles aside, both your conlangs demonstrate that a small palette of
sounds and a small book of rules can indeed produce a very expressive
language. Very elegant!
>>>
Thank you very much.

<<<
> µ.... still for "Mathias", or have you changed your name to "(the mysterious)
µ"?
>>>
My sad guess by now is that linking my real name to a conlanging web link can
ruin an application for the range of position I have reached by now.

Thanks again and Regards
µ.