Re: natural semantic metalanguage and Glosa

— In glosalist@yahoogroups.com, “William T. Branch” wrote:

I’ve been = studying the NSM or natural semantic metalanguage

If this claim holds u= p, (and so far it seems sound to me) then the implications are profound = for all languages and especially constructed languages. It means a simpl= e word list won’t and can’t cut it for an artificial language since seve= ral words don’t really translate across very well.

Could you explain w= hat you mean? Based on what you wrote and a quick read of the NSM material,= I would have reached an opposite conclusion. If there really are a finite = set of primitives from which all other words can be derived, it would seem = that a language could have a vocabulary of just those primitives and still = function (although awkwardly). Something like Toki Pona, I suppose.

A lang= uage of 1000 words, built around these universal primitives, plus extra wor= ds for convenience, seems very practical, based on this reasearch.

Kevin

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