Mesaĝoj: 147
Lingvo: English
k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-09 16:04:16
jan aleksan:I'VE suggested the word "li", which currently doesn't exist in the dictionary. It could be put before and after a name of a person etc. so that in spoken Vuyamu, you know the speaker's saying someone's name rather than talking about a fast-moving-power-thing or whatever etc. etc. etc.k1attack:Vuyamu contains every possible syllable formed by the 20 consonants and the 5 vowels,I think it can be seen as a drawback more that an advantage, as it become harder to distinguish word that are so similar (because made of only one syllabe).
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-09 16:09:31
k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-09 16:12:57
trojo (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-09 22:44:43
jan aleksan:The technical term for a large group of similarly-spelled (and thus easily-confuseable) words is "dense lexical neighborhood", and it is a design flaw to set a language up with maximum lexical density. For one thing it has basically no margin for user-error. Usually with natural languages (or Esperanto), it is possible to tell what the speaker or writer meant to say even if there are several misspellings or mispronounciations in a single sentence. With Vuyamu, just one wrong letter gives a word or sentence a completely different meaning, since every possible misspelling that uses the valid letters of that language in a CV pattern has a meaning.k1attack:Vuyamu contains every possible syllable formed by the 20 consonants and the 5 vowels,I think it can be seen as a drawback more that an advantage, as it become harder to distinguish word that are so similar (because made of only one syllabe).
Maybe an example would help illustrate this. Say I meant to type "Ka kumo ve sida, za vuya ka, wofi ka," but accidentally typed "Ka kumo ve sida, za vuja ka, wofi ka" instead. One minor error, based on mixing up Y and J, changed the meaning of the entire sentence 100%. And almost any other letter you change from the initial sentence would have a similar effect. Compare that situation to "Sur la tutan terro esis unu lignvo kai uno parolmanireo", which has numerous misspellings but is still pretty much understandable. Thus the "less efficient" Esperanto is more robust for practical, real-world communication.
Another problem with maximum lexical density is that it leaves no room for the language to grow, since all possible valid letter combinations have been already assigned meanings.
Anyways, conlangs are more likely to be used through the Internet than by spoken communication.Good thing nobody ever misspells anything on the internet.
trojo (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-09 23:55:26
ceigered:@ Jan - I take it you might be referring to the problems that occur in one syllable words when spoken in crowded environments? I know there were similar problems discussed about a lojban-descendent language which was striving to become single-syllable orientated like many Chinese languages. I don't know how valid the original statement was, but it does seem to make sense depending on the speakers voice.In my opinion, the only way to make a monosyllabic conlang work would be to make it tonal. In Chinese, "chi" with a rising tone means something different than "chi" with a falling tone, and "chi" with a tone that dips and then quickly rises again has yet another meaning. This is one reason that Chinese can get away with having a fairly limited inventory of valid syllables and yet still allow rich expression. Of course most conlangers don't want to go that route even though, objectively speaking, simple tonal patterns are easy for almost anyone to distinguish even amid lots of background noise.
Also, east Asian languages in general are not as strict on the CV thing as many people seem to think. At least allow CV(n) and/or a few diphthongs. Chinese and Japanese both do.
Let's say we had a language with 12 consonents from the Top 20 linked to earlier (let's go with p, t, k, ĉ, f, s, ŝ, m, n, w, r [tapped r], j [real j, not ĝ]), 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u), and five easily-distinguished tonal patterns (low, mid, high, falling, rising), and allow syllables to take the form CV(n). If I am counting right, that should allow for 600 possible syllables. If you additionally allow CV(j) for all vowels except "i", that'll get you somewhere over 800. Think up about four hundred word-meanings that are deemed essential, and assign these meanings to the syllables randomly with a computer program (this is the only fair way to forestall the complaints of the politically-correct crowd, and I don't know why more conlangers don't do it this way), leaving the other possible syllables unassigned.
Now just structure the grammar in a way that is simple and NOT merely an English cipher. Voila! A completely monosyllabic conlang.
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-10 08:47:21
And yeah you're right about the CV thing in East Asian languages - however, lets say Japanese was full of one-syllable-words only (or 2-morae ones, provided the second mora is "n"). The immediate problem is that there is only one final "consonant" possible (in this case, a rather nasally one, which can sometimes be assimilated. For chinese languages with a variety of stops, however, things are made much easier. Then it comes down to aesthetics ("stops look ugly at the end of words", "ng is too nasally" and so forth) and some conlangers will generally model the sound system after a hypothetical Mandarin-Japanese love child
k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-10 12:54:00
trojo:This happens in English as well. Look at these 2 sentences:
Maybe an example would help illustrate this. Say I meant to type "Ka kumo ve sida, za vuya ka, wofi ka," but accidentally typed "Ka kumo ve sida, za vuja ka, wofi ka" instead. One minor error, based on mixing up Y and J, changed the meaning of the entire sentence 100%.
"They needed more guns for the troops."
"They needed more buns for the troops."
Just 1 letter changed and the sentence has been changed completely.
k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-10 12:57:57
trojo:Vuyamu is a minimalistic language anyway. One thing I like about it is that it's completely, completely neutral. Any resemblance to a language living or dead is purely coincidental (I think). There's still one syllable not in the language, "li".
Another problem with maximum lexical density is that it leaves no room for the language to grow, since all possible valid letter combinations have been already assigned meanings.
k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-10 13:12:42
k1attack:Any resemblance to a language living or dead is purely coincidental (I think).BUT, some say languages are easier if they contain familiar words. Vuyamu has a completely random vocab. Bon Wen and Toki Pona do contain some recognizable words, but they usually get altered because of the phonology. Bon Wen looks like a bettered Toki Pona. It's word forming and word order is similar to English. Puna's just a random bunch of 18 words. But again, Bon Wen wastes too many words. The word for good and bad are different, while even in Esperanto, the prefix mal- is used to give words opposite meanings. Bon Wen wastes too many words by using a completely different word for an opposite. These words should've been replaced by words which make it easier to express yourself.
Esperanto's the best conlang cos it's suited to the 21st century modern world. Esperanto's a really logical language.
That's why Esperanto's the number 1 conlang!
Mi pensas, ke Esperanto estas la plej bona!
k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-10 16:21:26