ansric | [LFN] Re: Freezing the basic grammar
--- In LinguaFrancaNova@yahoogroups.com, "dave5dave5dave"
<mithridates@...> wrote:
>
> --- In LinguaFrancaNova@yahoogroups.com, Paul Bartlett <bartlett@>
> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 29 Apr 2006, Kevin Smith wrote:
> >
> > > [most trimmed for brevity]
> >
> > > Especially if this new language is
hard to
> > > learn, either because of difficult grammar, or because they
have to
> > > memorize (or look up) thousands of words.
> > >
> > > That is why I still believe that the key for a new IAL to
surpass
> > > Esperanto is that it must be extremely easy to learn to read.
Part of
> > > that is being able to memorize or print out a tiny word list
> > > (500-1000) and with it to be able to read almost any non-
technical
> > > material.
> >
> > One of my disappointments with LFN has been this almost weed-
like
> > growth in the vocabulary. Having some familiarity with Romance
enables
> > me to read much of it at sight, but don't ask me for an active
use of
> > it for now. There is just too much of it.
> >
> > --
> > Paul Bartlett
> >
> That's all well and good, but what is one to do with a sentence like
> this when translating?
>
> the coordination and unification of the petroleum policies of [its]
> member countries and the determination of the best means for
> safeguarding their interests, individually and collectively;
> [devising] ways and means of ensuring the stabilization of prices in
> international oil markets with a view to eliminating harmful and
> unnecessary fluctuations; [giving due regard] at all times to the
> interests of the producing nations and to the necessity of securing
a
> steady income to the producing countries; an efficient, economic and
> regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations, and a fair return
on
> their capital to those investing in the petroleum industry."
Actually, that isn't a sentence; it's a fragment that needs to be put
out of its misery. The only sure way to make it intelligible in any
language is to break it down into clauses of reasonable size. The
authors will protest that doing so will destroy the meaning, but
that's an obvious lie: it will require them to state what they mean
openly, and with wording like that, they almost certainly are using
verbiage as camouflage. (I used to edit government documents, and I
got used to such things.)
> In my opinion keeping a vocabulary too small is a waste of effort -
> people use whatever vocabulary they need in their daily life,
whether
> large or small. Not knowing certain words doesn't make one any less
> fluent, but not being able to express something as a language is a
> fault. Here's a message from my brother telling me what he's been up
> to lately:
>
[cut]
> That's fine. But an IAL should have as much vocabulary as a natural
> language; whether people use the vocab or not is up to them. People
> don't have a large repetoire to work from anyway, usually only a few
> thousand. People will do the weeding out themselves, and you can't
> stop that. If it's too small they'll make up their own terms, and if
> it's too large they'll just choose the ones they like to use and the
> others will only be used in translating content and higher-level
> discussions.
But the point was (at least in Kevin's posts) defining a minimum
vocabulary so learners know where to begin. To some extent they can
do this on their own, but there are words they might not consider
important that actually are necessary for normal communication. Also,
if a language has a really large lexicon, it will generate mandatory
distinctions that require everyone to learn more words.
This is the problem. If a lexicon is well designed, niggling
distinctions can be left to context or compounding. But if you have a
word for everything (as Ido generally does, for example), then the
learner's chance of using the wrong word mushrooms. On the other
hand, if the base is generally well defined, and if there is a
resistance to lexical bloat, the lexicon will remain small. It will
take the pressure of actual need (not collective whim) to enlarge the
lexicon. So it will become large enough to handle actual needs (as is
the case with Esperanto) without producing needless yet mandatory
vocabulary.
Steve