[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
on 4/7/02 10:57 PM, Mike Wright at darwin@hidden.email wrote: > Rex May - Baloo wrote: >> >>> >>> What I'd really like to see is for all the non-verbs to be CV words, and >>> all the verbs to be something else. I don't know if this is possible. >>> There would probably have to be exceptions. >> >> Well, that would be 13 consonants x 5 vowels, or only 65 grammar words, >> unless we selected one CV which means that the following morpheme is a >> grammar word, then it wd be unlimited. Maybe 64 wd be adequate for the most >> common. > > You could expand that to include C+diphthong and C+triphthong, if > necessary. If you don't create a lot of vocabulary before the syntax > is set, you should be able to see whether 65 will be enough, or not. That's just how Loglan does it, and they have far too many (I think) structure words. What happened is that they used them for numbers and all kinds of other things. I see no reason why numbers can't be content words. (Shall we call them structure words sw and content words cw?). Come to think of it, if we call numbers cw's, we have expanded possibilities. Gozi fay. We are five (There are five of us) Go ten ta faysa hon. I have five books (books which are five) Then si can be reserved for _converting_ words into measures. Go ten ta taqsa krim. I have hand cream. Go ten ta taqsi krim. I have a handful of cream. Anyhow, we have 65 CV's, and with the option I mentioned above, 64 CV's and an unlimited number of more awkward CV nCnN's If we expanded into Cdi/triphthong, we'd lose a lot of nice words. We could just go with CV, CVy, Caw. That would give us 65 + 39 + 13. Hm. Or just cut loose and go with CV(V), where V is a vowel or a semivowel. That would give us oodles, and we could follow the Loglan method of using sw's for math symbols. One Loglan thing I do not want to do, of course, is use sw's for hello, good bye, thank you, stuff like that. So. We can go with 64 or 65 sw's, which is going to be a strain, or expand into CV(V), which will give us more than enough. Comments? It will eliminate a lot of nice little words like zo, pe, xi, ju, ji... -- >PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: rmay@hidden.email > Rex F. May (Baloo) > Daily cartoon at: http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/baloo.asp > Buy my book at: http://www.kiva.net/~jonabook/gdummy.htm > Language site at: http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Uploadexp.htm >Discuss my auxiliary language at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/txeqli/