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Languages with the essential parts removed (was: Greek plosives)

From:John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Date:Thursday, February 2, 2006, 21:19
> > Graeca sine flexione, now that's a language that needs to be made! > >On the same subject, how about Finnish without agglutination? (John, >this is where you come in.)
Whomewhatta? ... Okay, is fusionality allowed (giving something Estonian-like), or are you talking full-scale isolating? 'Coz the latter would turn into either oligosynthesis or some sort of a rural pidgin. I can't really see a way to express, for example, all of { kirja, kirjo, kirje, kirjoa, kirjasto, kirjailija, kirjallisuus, kirjoittaa, kirjava, kirjain, kirjuri, kirjoitin } isolatingly with sensible effort while still sticking with Finnish roots only. The corresponding English words are { book, spectrum, letter, embroider, library, author, literature, write, colorful, glyph, scribe, printer } : One root versus about a dozen. Not that there's anything wrong with oligosynthesis or rural pidgins. Alternatively, one could sack a whole load of Finno-Ugric languages plus their history for a wider base of roots. John Vertical (PS. I can't be the only Finnish person on the list, can I? Julia probably doesn't count, but I don't remember off the top off my head if Markus's L1 were Finnish or Swedish. Also, lurkers.)

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>