Lexicon milestones and discussion of lexicon growth

[Arayaz]

I have been laboring for days on converting someone else's lexicon to my format, applying semantic drift and sound changes, and correcting typos. Currently, I am at the 94% mark, with 605 words converted. This doesn't count as a new record for lexicon size in my conlangs, since I didn't make all of these words, Lee did, and then Pell modified them, and then Vedertesu & GIM modified them more. So I only inherited it. Nonetheless, it is the biggest lexicon of any of my conlangs.

Congrats on having more than 600 words in one of your conlangs!

I made this post partially so that I could rant about one thing: eight ─ yes, eight ─ words have merged as wəth. Why? I don't know. Will the speakers put up with "the grey moon,"* "sadness," "to be unhappy," "claw," "yesterday," "to be dark," "water," and "darkness" all being identical? Probably not. We'll see.

The water under the grey moon was dark and made me sad yesterday . . .

wəth xə wəth əwəwəth ə́xəwəthua wəth

Here you go

[DV82LECM]

I think it is kinda cool. Those roots seem to have a loose semantic similarity. If it were tonal, you could accomplish it.

[Arayaz]

I think it is kinda cool. Those roots seem to have a loose semantic similarity. If it were tonal, you could accomplish it.

It in fact is a tonal language, but only high/low register, and the merger has already happened.

Oh, and I finished the lexicon! 643 words total.

[DV82LECM]

Eff yeah! I am quite thrilled for your milestone. I really think you should have WƏTH merge into a whole tonally-distinct block of semantically-similar word(s). Most of those words as a merged conceptual block give off an almost mythological vibe, dreary but dreamy; even down to a very interesting level where "yesterday," symbolized and epitomized by the night that follows it, is thought of as sad because it is over and no longer "today."

[Arayaz]

Eff yeah! I am quite thrilled for your milestone. I really think you should have WƏTH merge into a whole tonally-distinct block of semantically-similar word(s). Most of those words as a merged conceptual block give off an almost mythological vibe, dreary but dreamy; even down to a very interesting level where "yesterday," symbolized and epitomized by the night that follows it, is thought of as sad because it is over and no longer "today."

I appreciate your pointing out this connection, since i didn't recognize much semantic similarity between them, but there's not really a way to un-merge them. Again, there are only two tones in Areyaxi, and the environments that they come from aren't present in any of these words. In fact, many of these words had already merged before this language was even mine.

[Khemehekis]

Six false cognates -- they seem as if they should be related! The word for "to measure" and the word for "worth" are both shta in Kankonian, even though I had forgotten complete about the frst one when I made the second one. Also unrelated are arig, tongue, and arik, word.

EDIT: Is that avatar of yours a NightCafe' image?

[Arayaz]

Six false cognates -- they seem as if they should be related! The word for "to measure" and the word for "worth" are both shta in Kankonian, even though I had forgotten complete about the frst one when I made the second one. Also unrelated are arig, tongue, and arik, word.

Some may be real cognates, actually! I'll contact Pell and ask about it.

EDIT: Is that avatar of yours a NightCafe' image?

Nope, it's a cropped picture of a kilonova (look it up!). I have a new image that I'm using elsewhere but I couldn't bring myself to replace this one.

[Khemehekis]

Six false cognates -- they seem as if they should be related! The word for "to measure" and the word for "worth" are both shta in Kankonian, even though I had forgotten complete about the frst one when I made the second one. Also unrelated are arig, tongue, and arik, word.

Some may be real cognates, actually! I'll contact Pell and ask about it.

Real cognates? I wouldn't be surprised . . .

EDIT: Is that avatar of yours a NightCafe' image?

Nope, it's a cropped picture of a kilonova (look it up!). I have a new image that I'm using elsewhere but I couldn't bring myself to replace this one.

So it's a neutron star colliding with a black hole or another neutron star? Looks positively NightCafe'worthy!

(Now, if only I could find out how to do E+accent aigu on a Hewlett-Packard . . .)

[Khemehekis]

Today I was doing U-words for Kankonian. One word, oelyateur, meaning "undecorated", as in without medals (from oel, without + yateur, medal), became the 84,000th Kankonian word!

xuxuxi, which is Classical Yiklamu's less-known computer-generated spiritual cousin created by John Cowan, is said to have "over 83,000" words. This could mean anything from 83,001 to 83,999, since if it were over 84,000, John would've said "over 84,000". So now I can be absolutely sure that Kankonian has more words than xuxuxi.

Kankonian is now second only to Classical Yiklamu in lexicon size. Proud to be #2!

[lsd]

a priori in the strong sense languages,
measure their success by the smallness of their lexicon...

in 3SDeductiveLanguage(1Sense=1Sign=1Sound),
many of the hundred or so semantic primes are hapaxes,
created for symmetry, which are not productive,
and whose number should be further reduced...

However, I'm not seriously considering doing this,
as 3SDL reforms are carried out in a very measured way,
always with backward compatibility,
there would be no question of reallocating this now old base...

especially as their number is never displayed,
their reduction would have no influence on the success of the system...

[VaptuantaDoi]

a priori in the strong sense languages,
measure their success by the smallness of their lexicon...

No they don't.

[lsd]

a priori in the strong sense languages,
measure their success by the smallness of their lexicon...

No they don't.

oh you are adept at the new use of "a priori" for "with invented lexicon",
note that I specified "in the strong sense",
and that the length of my post does not suffer from ambiguity...
you need to understand "philosophical"
(although there is no philosophy in it, and I am not a philosopher...)

[VaptuantaDoi]

a priori in the strong sense languages,
measure their success by the smallness of their lexicon...

No they don't.

oh you are adept at the new use of "a priori" for "with invented lexicon",
note that I specified "in the strong sense",
and that the length of my post does not suffer from ambiguity...
you need to understand "philosophical"
(although there is no philosophy in it, and I am not a philosopher...)

This makes no sense whatsoever.

[Keenir]

a priori in the strong sense languages,
measure their success by the smallness of their lexicon...

No they don't.

oh you are adept at the new use of "a priori" for "with invented lexicon",

There is less than no reason to be rude about things.

note that I specified "in the strong sense",
and that the length of my post does not suffer from ambiguity...

You mean *other than* leaving unexplained what you mean by "strong sense"?

you need to understand "philosophical"
(although there is no philosophy in it, and I am not a philosopher...)

then why does anyone else need to understand that word?

[lsd]

a priori in the strong sense languages,
measure their success by the smallness of their lexicon...

No they don't.

oh you are adept at the new use of "a priori" for "with invented lexicon",

There is less than no reason to be rude about things.

note that I specified "in the strong sense",
and that the length of my post does not suffer from ambiguity...

You mean *other than* leaving unexplained what you mean by "strong sense"?

you need to understand "philosophical"
(although there is no philosophy in it, and I am not a philosopher...)

then why does anyone else need to understand that word?

you're probably right...

[Khemehekis]

I just finished adding 83 new words about sexual orientation and romantic orientation to Kankonian. Up until today, most of the sexual orientation words were supposedly taken from an "inkhorn" root language I've never actually invented, and ended in -khaili: akhaili is heterosexual, zikhaili is homosexual (although there are also pleu for gay and pozerizh for lesbian), yankhaili is bisexual, blinkhaili is asexual, and so on.

Recently words like "homoromantic", "aromantic", and "demiromantic" have been coming into popular use in the English language. For years I put off adding them to Kankonian, because my understanding of the English words has always been "has the hots for", not necessaruly "wants to have actual sex with", and so I've figured that, say, yankhaili already includes the concept of biromanticism.

Today I figured out a way around all that. Words ending with -meili instead of -khaili would be for romantic orientation (ameili is heteroromantic, zimeili is homoromantic, yanmeili is biromantic, blinmaili is aromantic, etc.), and there would also be words ending in -piksli that refer strictly to actually wanting doing the deed. So now I have new lexicon spreadsheet entries like:

heterosexual (referring to desire to have sex, distinguished from heteroromantic) apiksli

While I was adding these 83 new words, I got over the 85,000 mark. Word #85,000 was gyameilios, meaning "skolioromanticism". Cheers!





My next milestone coming up is 87,500 words, followed shortly by 87,654. Next will come 88,888, and then 90,000!

[Arayaz]

I have around 650 words in Arežagh right now. Unfortunately, around 120 of them have potentially dangerous homophones. Also, there are the near-homophones va "benefit, gain" and vá "travesty."

So I have to, before the end of the week, fill out 1,300 words in the lexicons of Aryayaxi and Orayoxe, apply sound changes by hand to all the words in all four lexicons, and figure out all these homophones.

Vąvąbęberigh.

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I have reached 100 words in Olwöa. The 100th word is Nooza /ˈno:.za/ - ground, dirt.

[Arayaz]

My current largest lexicon is Erụụxangụxerụ, with 681 words, but that's for Tyuns, so it's not originally my creation.

The biggest lexicon that could be said to be mine would be Ruykkarraber, which just got to 250!!! The 250th word was sketi "to assist, to coach."

[_Just_A_Sketch]

My biggest lexicon is Vuisi, with about 360 words. The language has a lot of problems but I'm still very proud of how far I developed it. The second largest would be Hɛlcɛso, with around 250.