Re: my proposals for a philosophical language

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Nowicki" <andrew@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 8:54 AM
Subject: Re: my proposals for a philosophical language


> Andrew Nowicki wrote:
> AN> It is easy to change pronunciation and add more
> AN> root words, but it seems impossible to change the
> AN> meaning of existing root words or to change Ygyde's
> AN> prefix table.
>
> Garth Wallace wrote:
> GW> It's hardly impossible. The meanings of words
> GW> drift over time. "Hussy" used to mean housewife,
> GW> now it means a rudely-behaved woman. It's not
> GW> something you can really control.
>
> We are talking about *root* words. If you change
> meaning of a root word, all the compound words
> that use it will change their meaning as well.
> For example, if "man" means "dog," "crafts-man"
> means "crafts-dog."
Not necessarily.  To consider Garth's example, "hussy", it originally came
from "huswif" (or something like that), literally "house-wife".  The word
changed meaning despite the fact that the roots didn't.  So the meaning of a
compound can be independant of the roots.

Hopefully someone else can think of a better example.

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