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units and modalities

In a message dated 2002-06-18 8:55:54 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ram@hidden.email writes:


>
> I mentioned "mesya" because of the association of "me-" with heat and
> temperature.
>

I realize that.  I just want something that will remind me of what
system I'm dealing with.  In my career, I've had to use degrees Celsius,
Fahrenheit, Kelvin, and Rankine.

If I do use "mesya", it'll mean simply 'degree (i.e. unit of
temperature)' with no reference to the system.  This will probably be
necessary for MT because translation software may not be aware of the
system being used.


Okay.

>
> I'm not real fond of the mnemonic use of the semi-morphs, which is why
> i prefer "mesya" to "sentisya".
>

I'm not sure what you mean.  Semi-morphs are intentionally used for
their mnemonic values.  If they had to be semantically precise, you'd
need thousands of them.

As an example of what I mean, "mesya" has a meaning that is related to the components of the word.  It 'feels' like a native Katanda word.  "Sentisya" has only the classifier to supply the meaning.  The only meaning "senti" has is from outside Katanda itself.  I definitely don't want to learn thousands of semi-morphs, though. 
(Maybe my use of 'mnemonic' is different.  In any case, other words that have the same sort of 'empty' mnemonic semi-morphs are:  ponusya, dolasya, metabyo/metanto, and kofiswa.  Names do too, but I don't expect names to have meaning.)

>
> I think "sesya" would make a great word for "general unit of
> currency".
>

I'm not aware of any natural language that has a single morpheme
representing that concept.  Do we really need it?


Maybe not.  It just seems like a good cover term for words like "dolasya", and it might be useful in creating other words or terms for national currencies, rather than a new word for each currency.

I'm going to leave the word-building to the word-builder.


>
> Another possible epistemic modality is for expressing how well-known
> something is.
>

I don't understand.  The concept 'well-known' is not a modality.  Can
you provide examples?

It seems to pass the test for (epistemic) modality that is presented in LS 16.5 ARE THERE OTHER MODALITIES? 
Are the various modalities of language a well-defined closed group, or are they still being discovered and investigated?  I am under the impression that the latter is true, since you mention several other concepts as being 'possible' modalities.  Can you point me to a good basic reference on modalities, besides LS?

[By the way, that same section of LS contains this sentence:

... here's a list of other modal concepts that I believe are inherently
modal in nature. 

The first use of 'modal' seems redundant.  Calling the concepts modal is begging the question.]

Steven