In English, it’s not possible to construct easily a word that refers to “someone who has the same teacher as me” or “someone who reads the same blog as me”.
I don’t see how it’s useful to make words (i.e. separate lexemes) for these concepts, when they’re better expressed as phrases. The relationship of “parent-child-sibling” (in the genetic sense) is more fundamental than “employee-boss” because the former is immutable. You cannot lose your genetic relation, whereas you can separate from your boss. I also think it’s good that “coworker” doesn’t imply having the same boss—there could be no boss (e.g. a startup with two co-founders). Whereas there cannot be a child without a parent.
I’m more concerned with removing ambiguity from words (in the sense that words that enclose non-continuous spaces in semantic space have to be separated), than I am in trying to figure out how to divide it exactly. Many natural languages make distinctions (and not make distinctions) differently than in English—and in the same way, you can rederive the relation “has the same boss as me” via phrases using other words rather than creating a word.
No language that gets actually used in practice has people consistently referring to dictionaries to deal with new words. If anyone doing knowledge production has to interface with a dictionary-maker to get his terms approved, that’s widely unpractical.
This is a consequence of the languages being less mature than natural languages. Natlangs have had much more time to build up vocabulary.
Now, what’s the name for 7? You can derive from the pattern that it’s ‘me’.
I cannot see how it’s ‘me’. I can tell the pattern of the vowels: a e i o u. But how is it m?
Phrases take more effort than having words for things. In practice that usually results in people being vaguer about what they mean and less conversational bandwidth.
Generally, when people are doing new things they need new words. In the poly community, you for example have people talking about metamours (which is someone who is in a relationship with the same person as you). While it’s possible to express that as a phrase, it’s something that’s important enough to have it’s own word. In English, a newly made word like this is not able to be understood by people who haven’t heard it before.
If you however put effort into thinking through the primitives of your language, you can actually easily make words that are understood without having to be learned specifically.
There can be context where the ability to have a word for a person who has the same boss is important and contexts where it’s not important to have such a word. A language that makes it easy to have such words when needed is superior when it comes to speaking about new domains of knowledge.
It’s possible that a new language would be superior enough over existing languages to be used in a new domain of knowledge that people prefer to write in it over writing in English.
I cannot see how it’s ‘me’. I can tell the pattern of the vowels: a e i o u. But how is it m?
If you follow the alphabet m would be the next consonant. My main point here is that you can have structure that can give order that make learning easier that doesn’t depend on the words being phonetically similar.
This is especially true if you reuse the structures.
If you however put effort into thinking through the primitives of your language, you can actually easily make words that are understood without having to be learned specifically.
I highly doubt this is true or possible in any meaningful degree. There have already been several conlangs that try this—Lojban is one with its compounding system, another is Toki Pona. While it’s definitely possible to have compounds whose meaning is related to their components, each context a specific component is going to have to be interpreted in its own special way. Again, because of context. You’re going to have to learn something explicitly regardless.
I highly doubt this is true or possible in any meaningful degree.
I gave an example of my friend having an experience where Esperanto already allowed him to have a conservation about meditation that he couldn’t have had easily in English or German which are the languages he otherwise speaks.
Lojban put little effort into it as evidenced by having words for individual cardinal directions instead of going for a more systematic approach.
When it comes to family relations and also for things like lover/metamour, you would model them mathematical as a graph plus a context. Systematizing a language allows you to have words for things like metamour that are immediately understood.
I don’t see how it’s useful to make words (i.e. separate lexemes) for these concepts, when they’re better expressed as phrases. The relationship of “parent-child-sibling” (in the genetic sense) is more fundamental than “employee-boss” because the former is immutable. You cannot lose your genetic relation, whereas you can separate from your boss. I also think it’s good that “coworker” doesn’t imply having the same boss—there could be no boss (e.g. a startup with two co-founders). Whereas there cannot be a child without a parent.
I’m more concerned with removing ambiguity from words (in the sense that words that enclose non-continuous spaces in semantic space have to be separated), than I am in trying to figure out how to divide it exactly. Many natural languages make distinctions (and not make distinctions) differently than in English—and in the same way, you can rederive the relation “has the same boss as me” via phrases using other words rather than creating a word.
This is a consequence of the languages being less mature than natural languages. Natlangs have had much more time to build up vocabulary.
I cannot see how it’s ‘me’. I can tell the pattern of the vowels: a e i o u. But how is it m?
Phrases take more effort than having words for things. In practice that usually results in people being vaguer about what they mean and less conversational bandwidth.
Generally, when people are doing new things they need new words. In the poly community, you for example have people talking about metamours (which is someone who is in a relationship with the same person as you). While it’s possible to express that as a phrase, it’s something that’s important enough to have it’s own word. In English, a newly made word like this is not able to be understood by people who haven’t heard it before.
If you however put effort into thinking through the primitives of your language, you can actually easily make words that are understood without having to be learned specifically.
There can be context where the ability to have a word for a person who has the same boss is important and contexts where it’s not important to have such a word. A language that makes it easy to have such words when needed is superior when it comes to speaking about new domains of knowledge.
It’s possible that a new language would be superior enough over existing languages to be used in a new domain of knowledge that people prefer to write in it over writing in English.
If you follow the alphabet m would be the next consonant. My main point here is that you can have structure that can give order that make learning easier that doesn’t depend on the words being phonetically similar.
This is especially true if you reuse the structures.
I highly doubt this is true or possible in any meaningful degree. There have already been several conlangs that try this—Lojban is one with its compounding system, another is Toki Pona. While it’s definitely possible to have compounds whose meaning is related to their components, each context a specific component is going to have to be interpreted in its own special way. Again, because of context. You’re going to have to learn something explicitly regardless.
I gave an example of my friend having an experience where Esperanto already allowed him to have a conservation about meditation that he couldn’t have had easily in English or German which are the languages he otherwise speaks.
Lojban put little effort into it as evidenced by having words for individual cardinal directions instead of going for a more systematic approach.
When it comes to family relations and also for things like lover/metamour, you would model them mathematical as a graph plus a context. Systematizing a language allows you to have words for things like metamour that are immediately understood.