Gary, why do you think philosophical conlangs are silly?

stevo

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 12:48 PM, Gary Shannon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Philosophical conlang are, in my humble opinion, just silly. But
> Here's a thought about how to build a lexicon for a conlang based on a
> semi-taxonomic idea, and sort of related to Semitic triconsonantal
> roots.
>
> The online version of Roget's thesaurus (hopelessly outdated, but
> somewhat useful just the same) has 1000 conceptual categories. Many of
> those categories come in pairs of opposites that can be combined, like
> #325 Elasticity and #326 Inelasticity. Others form related sets that
> can be combined, like #618 Good, and #648 Goodness, or #890 Friend and
> #888 Friendship.
>
> After combining pairs of opposites, and related concepts that can be
> derived from one another there are 663 categories left. Some pairs of
> opposites are so fundamental that I left them separate, like "good"
> and "evil".
>
> Next I took a list of some 50,000 English words and extracted every
> initial consonant cluster and ended up with a list of 63 (after
> removing sound-alikes like "wr-" and "r-" or "ph-" and "f-"). Then,
> using the same list, I extracted clusters of consonants found between
> two vowels. Again removing sound-alikes, I ended up with a list of 763
> usable medial consonant clusters.
>
> By picking the "best" 37 initials and the "best" 37 medials I can form
> 37 * 37 = 1369 pairs. That makes 2 pairs for every one of the 663
> Roget's categories. From each pair longer words, or 2, 3, or more
> syllables can be coined by adding vowel-initial prefixes, and/or
> syllables to the end of the root. Since no internal vowel is
> specified, the I have complete freedom to use whatever vowels work for
> a given pair, and to use vowels for inflections or derivations.
>
> Unlike the triconsonantal root system, there are only two consonants
> (or clusters), and the location of the internal vowel is fixed.
> Unlike a philosophical system, WITHIN each category it's a lexical
> chaos may be allowed to reign, although subdividing the category could
> be done in a somewhat systematic manner.
>
> For example, suppose a category gets the two pairs "pr-k", and "pr-ks"
> those roots could form the basis of words like prokano, praksis,
> prokseniot, upriko, pruksi, priaksuma, apraksia, etc., all having
> assigned meanings related to the general category assigned to those
> roots.
>
> Or by picking 45 initials and 45 medials 2025 roots could be formed
> making enough for each category to get three roots of its own.
>
> Using a different set of initials and medials, different flavored
> roots could be created. And the number of initials and medials does
> not have to be the same. Those 663 categories could also be covered by
> 14 initials and 50 medials, or any other combination that works out to
> 663+ (or some multiple of 663) possibilities.
>
> Using such a system one could take a copy of the online Roget's and
> insert at the head of each category the assigned roots. Then when it
> came time to coin a specific word one could look up that word in the
> Roget's and find out which roots were to be used for that category and
> coin the new word accordingly.
>
> BTW: Another source of conceptual categories is the ULD (Universal
> Language Dictionary) http://www.uld3.org/
>
> --gary
>