Friday, July 8, 2011

The final, I promise, revision

Loglan separates all words into grammar words (C)V(V) and everything else, which are names and predicates.  I abandoned that early on, because it made for too many possible grammar words.  But a recent thought was to restrict grammar words in two shapes CV — a consonant followed by aeio or u, and C(S)V, or a consonant followed by y or w, and then aeio or u.  So words in the form ka or kwa are grammar words, or particles.  That includes pronouns, conjunctions, and time and space modifiers.  This necessitates replacing a few things, but it give Ceqli 14x5, or 70 CV's and 14x5x2 or 140 CSV's, for a total of 210 grammar words, plenty.  Loglan has a heap more, of course, so many more that I'm afraid they overused them.  This still leaves the shape CVS and CVV available to be predicates, thus keeping a lot more monosyllabic predicate roots.  Now I have to redo everything to fit.  Oh, note that unlike Loglan, Ceqli numbers are not grammar words.

OTOH, do I need more than 70 grammar particles?  Am I hanging on to the CSV form because I'm so fond of "kwa"?  Actually, one CV can be a 'shift key,' to make more particles.  Say it's 'hi.'  If I've used all other 69 CV's I can define hi as creating a whole new grammar particle.  If 'to' means 'the', then 'hito' can mean something else entirely.  And if I want to reserve ten such CV's as shift keys, then I'd have 60 CV grammar words and 600 CVCV grammar words. And they could conceivably have specialties.  "He" could mean that its CVhe's would all be math words, for symbols like plus and greater than, etc.

5 comments:

  1. (my apologies if this is a double post... the internet seems to have eaten my first attempt)

    I just came across the blog today but I've been an admirer of Ceqli for a while. Ironically, I was thinking that I might invest some of my spare time trying to learn a bit of Ceqli and then I saw this announcement! :)

    It sounds like it is the right thing to do, though. What is your estimate as to when you will be finished with this re-working?

    -Sheldrake

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  2. Lord knows. I have to make a living somewhere in here:) Seriously, I'm going to pretty much stick to this till I at least have the revision nailed down.

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  3. Rex, in each of my languages, all of which (as you may remember) hew to SSM and disambiguation, I keep coming in at about 70 grammar words. So I think reserving 210 may be overkill, and holding aside one to be a shift key is a good idea. You could also use one to be a "between" key that glues together grammar words, maybe into a related word or into something completely unrelated:

    hibu = a grammar word unrelated to bu?

    buhaki = some grammar compound of bu and ki?

    buteki = a new grammar word unrelated to bu and ki?

    The last scheme is likely overkill; it would give you about 4900 grammar words.

    By the way, what are the words for the letters of the alphabet?

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  4. Forgot to mention that the "specialties" idea is nice, though you'll probably want to identify only a handful of big ones, like your example of math.

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  5. I'm thinking of using 'di' as a suffix that means what precedes is a letter, and then trying to be fairly regular about it, always using a non CV as the word: Baqdi, Celdi, Dimdi, etc. With some awkwardness, of course for non-consonants. They'd have to be a little less obvious. Hyardi for y, Hwindi for w, and make all the others two syllables, I think. Hanadi, hemedi, hilidi, hoqodi, hurudi. Or maybe y and w should just act the same way, and be hayadi and hiwidi.

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