[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Brett Williams, On 03/08/2012 18:22:
Hmm, this is an interesting thread. I think there's room for lots of loglangs! I wish we would explore more of the possibilities. The loglang I'm working on is presently named "Babebabo"! Its segmentation and basic level of parsing is all in the vowels, it uses five: A: Continues a root, so just "b" is a very short root, and then "bab" is another root, or "t" is another very short root, and also "bat" "tat" "tab" "batatatatab" "batabatababababababat" etc are all distinct roots infinitely. So there's plenty of room for roots, though of course there's advantages to being short. E: Combines roots into compounds, so the root "t" plus the root "b" makes the compound "teb", or the root "batatatatab" plus the root "t" makes the compound "batatatatabet", or "bab" plus "tat" plus "bat" makes "babetatebat". I/U: Together a root+i and a root+u form a pair of parentheses. Inside them can be nothing, or one or more more such pairs. So for instance: "babi babu" (babi babu) or "babi babi babu babu" (babi (babi babu) babu) or "babebabi babi babu babi babu babebabu" (babebabi (babi babu) (babi babu) babebabu) or "babi babebabi babi babu babebabu babi babu babu" (babi (babebabi (babi babu) babebabu) (babi babu) babu) O: Just a shortcut-- if there's nothing inside of an I/U pair, instead of saying the word twice it can be shortened to just root+o once, so "babi babu" becomes just "babo" and "batabatabababababababati batabatabababababababatu" becomes just "batabatabababababato"!
There are less cumbersome alternatives to this root-doubling method. The thread beginning with <http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0905b&L=conlang&F=&S=&P=4004> discovered that given a binary tree, a four-way inflectional contrast on terminal nodes is sufficient to yield an unambiguous parse. So for example if you were prepared to add a sixth vowel, Y, you could use I,U,O,Y as bracketing markers. (I'd use I,E,U,O for bracketing, and Y for the compounder.) -- This presupposes the trees are binary branching, tho. My conlang, Livagian, is (nowadays) strictly left-binary-branching, except for quasi metalinguistic stuff like quotatives. So its syntax is so tediously simple as to be virtually nonexistent. --And.