Seeking a linguistic term

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tikoo
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Seeking a linguistic term

Post by tikoo »

Hello. Does anyone know the term that describes a language in which every phoneme is a morpheme. I regret that I didn't make a note of it when first I found it in an article. I use such a language for a game of invented words and crazy brains. I invented the game just lately.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by eldin raigmore »

I have never heard or seen such a term.
It’s not a far-fetched idea IMO.
Someone’s existing conlang might be like that; and it’s not impossible some natlang is like that.
….
Under the circumstances you could make up your own term if you could think of something that readers could understand why it means that.
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by Dormouse559 »

Welcome to the board, tikoo! The philosophical language aUI seems to be based on the same concept. Wikipedia calls the language oligosynthetic, but this term is about the number of morphemes a language has, not their form. I don't know of a term specifically for "one phoneme=one morpheme".
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by eldin raigmore »

Dormouse559 wrote: 07 Sep 2021 03:39 Welcome to the board, tikoo! The philosophical language aUI seems to be based on the same concept. Wikipedia calls the language oligosynthetic, but this term is about the number of morphemes a language has, not their form. I don't know of a term specifically for "one phoneme=one morpheme".
I didn’t interpret their question quite the same way I interpreted your answer.

I got that for every phoneme there was a one-phoneme-long morpheme consisting of just that phoneme.
I didn’t get the impression there couldn’t also be longer morphemes.

If every morpheme is just one phoneme long there aren’t likely to be over 200 morphemes so the language probably would qualify as oligosynthetic.
But an oligosynthetic language can have longer morphemes.
“Oligosynthetic” means something like an agglutinative language with lots of polymorphemic words but only a few different morphemes in the vocabulary.
Any language where there are <= 500 morphemes but words are typically >= 5 morphemes long probably counts as “oligosynthetic”.
In fact I’d say if it has <= 3000 morphemes it might count as “oligosynthetic”.
But that might just mean I don’t know what “oligosynthetic” means.

….

How about “bradymorphemic” for a language with mostly very short morphemes?
Edit: I meant “brachy-“ not “brady-“.
And “polyagglutinating” for a language with many words made by gluing together long strings of morphemes?
….
I don’t know what term to use that would transparently mean, to me, that the language’s entire lexicon didn’t have many different morphemes in it.

…. …. ….

Anyway;
If a language had ten phonemes, it could have almost 1,110 morphemes with three-or-fewer phonemes.
Or if it had a hundred phonemes, it could have almost 10,100 morphemes with two-or-fewer phonemes.
I thought the OP was considering such languages, possibly in addition to others.
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 07 Sep 2021 17:24, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by Khemehekis »

eldin raigmore wrote: 07 Sep 2021 06:29 How about “bradymorphemic” for a language with mostly very short morphemes?
I believe you mean "brachymorphemic". Like "brachycephalic".

Brady- means "slow".
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

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A language where there is an exact one-to-one relation between phonemes and morphemes does not have double articulation/duality of patterning. Maybe you could say it's singly articulated? Or you could say it has Monism of patterning.
Also, does such a language really have phonemes/morphemes? Only one of them? Neither?
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by eldin raigmore »

Khemehekis wrote: 07 Sep 2021 08:25
eldin raigmore wrote: 07 Sep 2021 06:29 How about “bradymorphemic” for a language with mostly very short morphemes?
I believe you mean "brachymorphemic". Like "brachycephalic".

Brady- means "slow".

Oops!
You’re right!
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by eldin raigmore »

Creyeditor wrote: 07 Sep 2021 09:17 A language where there is an exact one-to-one relation between phonemes and morphemes does not have double articulation/duality of patterning. Maybe you could say it's singly articulated? Or you could say it has Monism of patterning.
Also, does such a language really have phonemes/morphemes? Only one of them? Neither?
(Those ideas are interesting. Probably some of them are correct!)

Latin had one-phoneme verbs like “i” meaning “go”.
English has just three one-phoneme morphemes, “a” and “I” and “O”. And “O” is archaic.

….

A much likelier (in my opinion) situation is, every syllable is a morpheme and every morpheme is a syllable.
Several natlangs are almost like that; some Chinese dialects, for instance, come close, so it is said.

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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by lsd »

I am working on such a language...
it was called philosophical language or a priori language...
not the taxonomic ones but the olysynthetic ones
I call it a 3S language (1sign=1sound=1sense)...
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

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Well, yes, this is the aUI I am thinking of. I don't believe its form was Weilgart's original invention. In a published interview he said he got as a child of five (in Austria) and from a magician he met somewhere near his home, perhaps in the neighborhood's local park. He went home to tell his parents of this. They then arranged a psych-evaluation for little Wolfgang. Nothing wrong with the child was the report: he has an IQ of 200.

How old might this style of language be?

Every phoneme is a word. Every combination of phonemes is also a word.

The set of symbols I play with is represented by thirty phonemes. aUI as a word has three phonemes that associate. The meanings color one another. Weilgart translated the word aUI as Space Language.

I am so pleased with all your replies.
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by Khemehekis »

eldin raigmore wrote: 07 Sep 2021 17:20
Creyeditor wrote: 07 Sep 2021 09:17 A language where there is an exact one-to-one relation between phonemes and morphemes does not have double articulation/duality of patterning. Maybe you could say it's singly articulated? Or you could say it has Monism of patterning.
Also, does such a language really have phonemes/morphemes? Only one of them? Neither?
(Those ideas are interesting. Probably some of them are correct!)

Latin had one-phoneme verbs like “i” meaning “go”.
English has just three one-phoneme morphemes, “a” and “I” and “O”. And “O” is archaic.
You mean English has just three one-letter morphemes. There are other one-phoneme morphemes: "eye", "aye", "owe", "eau", "eh", "ah", "oh", "ooh", "uh", "oy", "oi", "ow", etc.
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Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

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lsd wrote: 07 Sep 2021 17:52 I am working on such a language...
it was called philosophical language or a priori language...
not the taxonomic ones but the olysynthetic ones
I call it a 3S language (1sign=1sound=1sense)...
3S should become a classical term. It's easy.
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by eldin raigmore »

Khemehekis wrote: 07 Sep 2021 21:26 You mean English has just three one-letter morphemes. There are other one-phoneme morphemes: "eye", "aye", "owe", "eau", "eh", "ah", "oh", "ooh", "uh", "oy", "oi", "ow", etc.
Right again!
And there are also para-linguistic clicks most English-speakers understand.
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by lsd »

tikoo wrote: 07 Sep 2021 17:54How old might this style of language be?
since the 17th century
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Re: Seeking a linguistic term

Post by tikoo »

I find the root of the phoneme=morpheme Language as original to Africa. There is known as the Royal Language. It appeared in America with the slave importation. It survives best in the south sea Georgia Island culture.
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