Silili — A Minimalist, Logical Conlang (Abandoned)

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Silili — A Minimalist, Logical Conlang (Abandoned)

Post by ghoom »

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Last edited by ghoom on 25 Oct 2023 01:26, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by Khemehekis »

Ghoom: I checked out your vocabulary list. You have insect/insect-like, aquatic, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal, but what would you call a worm?
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

Khemehekis wrote: 27 May 2023 08:12 Ghoom: I checked out your vocabulary list. You have insect/insect-like, aquatic, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal, but what would you call a worm?
A worm is insect-like: so just lusu or, if you wanna be more concise, lusu linja (stringy bug).
Last edited by ghoom on 05 Jun 2023 20:13, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by Arayaz »

By "all the vowels are short," do you mean that they have their English "short" values (/æ, ɪ, ʊ/)? Or do they have their IPA values (/a/, /i/, /u/), and you're just specifying that there is no length distinction?

I've also seen that many words (e.g. nu, wili, un, muwa) seem similar to their English counterparts. (And kiwi, which seems connected to "kiwi," the type of bird.) Was this intentional?
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

This is neat. I think you have an interesting strategy for minimizing the use of verbs, as traditionally understood. aja is basically a topic marker, which is used in constructions in some languages, like Japanese, where language like English would use a verbal construction.

I do notice that the two possible interpretations of what you call "adjectives" and "noun phrases" are essentially noun-modifier constructions and noun-predicate constructions. So, essentially, every content word can be used as both a noun and as a stative verb of sorts. I also see that you permit at least three different basic interpretations of a concatenation of two content words - noun-modifier (wet bird), noun-predicate (the bird is water, the bird is watery), and a relativized version of the noun-predicate construction (the bird that is water, the bird that is watery).

How would you translate a transitive sentence with a straightforward agent and patient? Or one with an agent, patient, and instrument?

Like "The dog bit the cat" or "My brother broke the window with a hammer"?

Or a transfer sentence - "The fish gave the water to the bird?"
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 27 May 2023 23:36 This is neat. I think you have an interesting strategy for minimizing the use of verbs, as traditionally understood. aja is basically a topic marker, which is used in constructions in some languages, like Japanese, where language like English would use a verbal construction.

I do notice that the two possible interpretations of what you call "adjectives" and "noun phrases" are essentially noun-modifier constructions and noun-predicate constructions. So, essentially, every content word can be used as both a noun and as a stative verb of sorts. I also see that you permit at least three different basic interpretations of a concatenation of two content words - noun-modifier (wet bird), noun-predicate (the bird is water, the bird is watery), and a relativized version of the noun-predicate construction (the bird that is water, the bird that is watery).

How would you translate a transitive sentence with a straightforward agent and patient? Or one with an agent, patient, and instrument?

Like "The dog bit the cat" or "My brother broke the window with a hammer"?

Or a transfer sentence - "The fish gave the water to the bird?"
The dog bit the cat. — kawa wawawa ja tunti anun in kawa miju. — Speaking of the woof mammal, its teeth were in the meow mammal.

My brother broke the window with a hammer. — sasa ana ja tawa pakaka kumu puki kasi. — Speaking of my sibling, the window was broken with a hard tool.

The fish gave the water to the bird. — pisin ja ama titi pija kiwi. — Speaking of the fish, water was given to the bird.
Last edited by ghoom on 01 Jun 2023 18:11, edited 7 times in total.
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

Üdj wrote: 27 May 2023 22:45 By "all the vowels are short," do you mean that they have their English "short" values (/æ, ɪ, ʊ/)? Or do they have their IPA values (/a/, /i/, /u/), and you're just specifying that there is no length distinction?

I've also seen that many words (e.g. nu, wili, un, muwa) seem similar to their English counterparts. (And kiwi, which seems connected to "kiwi," the type of bird.) Was this intentional?
By short vowels, I mean the IPA values. I don't know how to say it in a concise and non-linguist-friendly way..

Here are the etymologies of the words you mentioned, all except muwa are directly from Proto-Indo-European. They all have the same concepts as their source words:

nu*ne
wili*welh₁-
un*óynos
muwa ← mwah
kiwi*h₂éwis

But I think kiwi was influenced by English 'kiwi'. I can't remember well.. I didn't write down the etymologies..
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by DesEsseintes »

ghoom wrote: 27 May 2023 23:57 kawa wawawa
Love this. Unironically.
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by lsd »

the success of the Toki Pona, has generated,
through the Picasso effect ("I could do the same..."),
an impressive number of tokiponidos...

what are Saja Lili's inovations...
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

lsd wrote: 28 May 2023 08:59 the success of the Toki Pona, has generated,
through the Picasso effect ("I could do the same..."),
an impressive number of tokiponidos...

what are Saja Lili's inovations...
i'm not trying to make toki pona obsolete. i'm just having fun making a minimalist and cute conlang :)
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by lsd »

the only obsolete languages are the so-called endangered languages...
as far as conlangs are concerned, only a few have passed this stage, most are stillborn...

but each new language brings its own vision of the world through the set of techniques it uses,
if not through the innovations it adds to its predecessors...
Last edited by lsd on 28 May 2023 18:14, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

lsd wrote: 28 May 2023 17:58 the only obsolete languages are the so-called endangered languages...
as far as languages are concerned, only a few have passed this stage, most are stillborn...

but each new language brings its own vision of the world through the set of techniques it uses,
if not through the innovations it adds to its predecessors...
so whatchu think is saja lili's vision
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by lsd »

dunno its tweak to TP...
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

lsd wrote: 28 May 2023 18:19 dunno its tweak to TP...
for starters:
- it doesnt have the vowels e and o
- it has a more efficient and comprehensive vocabulary
- it doesnt have special words to indicate the subject and object (li and e in tp)
- it doesnt have an imperative or vocative marker (o in tp)
- "and" and "or" are merged into a single word
- it has an actual number system of base-6 (thanks jan misali :P)
- the official words are carefully ensured to never bleed into each other in speech (for example in tp, nimi can be heard as ni mi, and palisa ma can be heard as pali sama)
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by Arayaz »

ghoom wrote: 28 May 2023 19:02
lsd wrote: 28 May 2023 18:19 dunno its tweak to TP...
for starters:
- it doesnt have the vowels e and o
- it has a more efficient and comprehensive vocabulary
- it doesnt have special words to indicate the subject and object (li and e in tp)
- it doesnt have an imperative or vocative marker (o in tp)
- "and" and "or" are merged into a single word
- it has an actual number system of base-6 (thanks jan misali :P)
- the official words are carefully ensured to never bleed into each other in speech (for example in tp, nimi can be heard as ni mi, and palisa ma can be heard as pali sama)
So it's a somewhat edited version of Toki Pona? Seems to me to be a similar idea to the hundreds of Esperantos I've seen or heard of ─ "it's Esperanto, but without the diacritics," "it's Esperanto, but without scii (pronounced [stsi.i], for those unfamiliar)," "it's Esperanto, but it's not sexist," "it's Esperanto, but with more diverse source languages." Ido did gain some success, but it was one among hundreds. The chances of any language, especially a revision of someone else's concept, becoming well-known are slim. If you just want to have fun, by all means, go ahead! I do confess I've tried before to make an auxlang. But if you want to create something famous, the new Toki Pona, I'd honestly advise you to try to have a whole new concept.
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by lsd »

if you want to create something famous, don't conlang...
(if you can, for me it's impossible, it's not a question of fame but of life...)
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

guys ik it aint gettin famous like tp dw lol
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by DesEsseintes »

ghoom wrote: 28 May 2023 20:37 guys ik it aint gettin famous like tp dw lol
Your lang has kawa wawawa, which makes it better than toki pona in my books [:D].

I’m glad you’re ignoring the odd projections in the thread and hope to see more of your lang.

Would be fun to see a text with explanations of fun turns of phrase or such.
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by ghoom »

DesEsseintes wrote: 30 May 2023 17:21
ghoom wrote: 28 May 2023 20:37 guys ik it aint gettin famous like tp dw lol
Your lang has kawa wawawa, which makes it better than toki pona in my books [:D].

I’m glad you’re ignoring the odd projections in the thread and hope to see more of your lang.

Would be fun to see a text with explanations of fun turns of phrase or such.
haha! thanks des! btw do u mean random fun phrases?
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Re: Saja Lili — A Minimalist Conlang

Post by DesEsseintes »

ghoom wrote: 30 May 2023 17:25
DesEsseintes wrote: 30 May 2023 17:21
ghoom wrote: 28 May 2023 20:37 guys ik it aint gettin famous like tp dw lol
Your lang has kawa wawawa, which makes it better than toki pona in my books [:D].

I’m glad you’re ignoring the odd projections in the thread and hope to see more of your lang.

Would be fun to see a text with explanations of fun turns of phrase or such.
haha! thanks des! btw do u mean random fun phrases?
Yeah, anything really that shows the language in the wild.

The fun thing about languages with “small toolkits” is to see how they cope when nuance and detail need to be conveyed.

For instance, how would you translate sth like “She had chosen to start biting him with alarming regularity”?

Or sth else.
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