>Phil Hunt: <<<<<<<How a common language for the EU could be established8 13:
>In article <[log in to unmask]>
>           [log in to unmask] "STAN MULAIK" writes:
>< Rather than trying to invent words
>< or a schema for word derivation as other invented languages had
>< proceeded, they decided to establish what was international among
>< the major European languages (words and affixes in three or more
>< languages) and to standardize them on the etymological prototypes
>< from which the variants in these languages deviated in ways
>< characteristic of these languages.
>
>Then why is the word for horse _cavallo_ and not _caballo_? (From
>Latin "caballus").

Good question.  The simple rule described above does not tell the whole
story of IALA's procedure to establish the standard form of the
international word.  Words were never examined in isolation.  They were
sorted into word families and then the word families in all of the source
languages were examined to find the prototypic root that was common to
most of the variants, and this root form was used as the standard root
for the family.

Although I don't have all the dictionaries that IALA had at its disposal,
I've been able to reconstruct the following list:

English: horse, cavalcade, ride (horseback), mare, chivalry, cavalier,
         chivalrous, cavalry

French:  cheval, cavalcade, chevaucher, jument, chevalerie, cavalier,
         chevaleresque, cavalerie

Italian: cavallo, cavalcata, cavalcare, cavalla, cavalleria, cavalliere,
         cavalleresco, cavalleria

Spanish: caballo, cabalgata, ir montando, yegua, caballerosidad, caballero,
         caballeroso, caballeria

German:  Pferd, Kavalkade, reiten, Stute, Ritterlichkeit, Kavalier (Reiter),
         ritterlich, Kavallerie

Interlingua: cavallo, cavalcada, cavalcar, cavala, cavalleria, cavallero,
         cavallerose (but "cavalleresc" is also a possible new formation),
         cavalleria.

German Ritter is listed as a loan translation of French _chevalier_.  I
         suspect that also goes for German "ritterlich" (cavallerose),
         and Ritterlichkeit (cavallerositate).  Kavalkade < Fr. cavalcade <
         It. cavalcata; Kavalier < Fr. cavalier < It. cavaliere;
         Kavallerie < Fr. cavalerie < It. cavalleria.

My Larousse for French lists cheval < Lat. caballus, cavalcade < It.cavalcata,
         cavalier < It. cavaliere, cavalerie < It. cavalleria,
         chevaucher < Lat. caballicare, chevaleresque < It. cavalleresco
         (perhaps a loan translation).

My reconstruction then of the Interlingua solution for "horse" = cavallo,
    is that this is based on the Italian which is the prototype for several
    German, English, French words, which are the most international by
    there being at least three languages accepting variants on this form,
    and further, this form is found in several of the derivatives.  Were
    it not for the German: Kavallerie, Kavalier, Kavalcade; English:
    cavalry, cavalier, cavalcade, then it is likely that the Latin
    caballus and Protoromance *caballu would have given rise to an
    Interlingua *caballo and a word family based on it as *caballo,
    *caballcata, *caballa, *caballeria, *caballero, *caballeresc,
    *caballeria.

So, Interlingua is not based solely on the Romance languages, for if it were,
    then the Protoromance *caballo would have been the Romance
    solution.

>
>< It was decided that the
>< international vocabulary is largely Latin and Greek in origin,
>< but other languages have also contributed to the international
>< vocabulary.  So, to reduce the scope of the search (under the
>< assumption that searching a broader set of languages would produce
>< very little different) they used English, French, Italian,
>< Spanish/Portugese, German and Russian.  If a word with a similar
>< form and the same meaning was found in at least three of these
>< languages
>
>This is not true, because German and Russian had lower priorities
>than the other languages.

Actually this is wrong. By the rule of three there are words like "blocada"
which are based only on English, German and Russian which have no exact
counterpart in the Romance languages, even though it appears Romance.
And we have seen above how German and English supported an Italian
prototype as opposed to a Protoromance Prototype.  By the way, Russian
also has forms corresponding to French cavalerie, cavalcade, cavalier,
borrowed ultimately from Italian.  So, English, German, and Russian tip
the scales in favor of the Italian prototype.

>
>< it was then accepted into the vocabulary and then its
>< form was standardized according to the etymological prototype
>< common to the variants.
>
>What did they do for meanings where each of the languages used a
>different word?

Given a common international meaning, but different words having no
common origin, then other "back-up" procedures were used. Usually
the variants in the various source languages were examined to see
which had the most immediate international recognition and an Interlingua
solution was based on that.  For example,

  English match, lucifer (old word for 'match' = light bearer)
  French  allumette
  Italian fiammifero
  Spanish cerilla, fosforo
  German  Streichholz

Because of German Flamme, Fr. flamme, It. fiamma, Sp. llama, Eng. flame
and the affix -fero (= bearer of) is International, the Interlingua
solution in this case was "flammifero".

>
>Also, this process, as applied by IALA, has caused some words to
>have very unforrtunate meanings. Consider the IL words _ape_ and
>_camera_. Both these words are related to English words, but I
>bet that 99.9% of English speakers wouldn't guess correctly what
>they mean.

It doesn't matter.  99.5% of English speakers likely don't know what
apiary, apiarian, apiculture mean in their own language, but they would
if they learned Interlingua which provides the root "ape" (bee) to complete
the derivational series, that is international. But the people who should
know about these things in English would know, the professional apiarists.
As wouldj professional practioners of apiculture in France, Spain and Italy.
And biologists the world over know that the genus for "bee" is "apis".
French abeille < Lat. apicula (little bee), as does Spanish abeja.

As for Interlingua "camera" = room, I think Steinar Midtskogen has set you
straight.  German Kammer = small room, chamber of the heart, chamber of
deputies, Kammermusik (chamber music), Kammerherr (chamberlain), Kammerkonzert
(music played for the prince in his room), Kammerlein = closet, small room;
Kamerad (originally meant "room mate").

Interlingua lists numerous meanings for "camera":

camera n. chamber (1. room, bedroom; 2. hall used by deliberative or
  judicial body; 3. group of lawmakers; 4. "the chamber of a gun").
  musica de camera = chamber music; camera de aer = inner tube; camera
  obscur 1. [Optics] camera obscura; 2. [Photog.] darkroom;
  camera (photographic) [Photog.] camera.  Related in the derivational
  series are camerero (valet, manservant), camerera (chambermaid),
  camerada = comrade, cameraderia = comradery, camaraderie;
  cameretta = small room; antecamera = antechamber
>
>< That would be the form that is either
>< historically or theoretically the form from which each of the
>< variants is derived.  In some cases, where the word is borrowed
>< from other languages and is not yet assimilated (e.g. English
>< "software"), the international form is the form of the original
>< language.
>

>Does this word in IL mean "computer program" or "any informational
>entity"?

It means what English means as this has been borrowed into other languages.


>
>< The choice to base it principally on the angloromance
>< family of languages (English is included because its heavy
>< borrowing of Latin and French as well as Italian and Spanish words)
>< was also influenced by the fact that these languages are daughter
>< languages of Latin
>
>English is *not* a "daughter" langauge of Latin.

Reread what I said CAREFULLY. I did not say that English is a daughter
language of Latin, but that it was included with the daughter languages
of Latin because it borrowed so heavily from Latin.

>
>< derivational series.  Interlingua has a standardized Latin-Greek
>< affix system for new word formation which introduces considerable
>< regularity into the language while retaining naturalness.
>
>This is both untrue and logically impossible. You can either have
>regularity or naturalness but not both.

You can have relative degrees of either, and Interlingua achieves both
a high degree of regularity and naturalness.

>
>Consider nouns meaning the action of a verb. In west European languages,
>many affixes are used here. The most common affix in English and
>the Romance languages is -(t)ion or some varient (Sp -cion, It -zione,
>Po -ca~o). So Eurolang uses this. Eg:
>
>_salvar_ (vt) to save
>_salvation_ (n) an act of saving
>
>Now consider an English speaker wondering what theword might be in IL.
>He might think that because IL is naturalistic, that it is the same
>as English in this respect. So he might consider that English has
>the words "salvage" and "salvation" and from this conclude that the
>IL verb is _salvar_ and that the derived action noun is the same
>as one of the English words. But he'd be wrong! the IL action
>noun in this case is _salvamento_ (which is presumably from the
>Spanish)

Read your Interlingua-English Dictionary more closely, Phil. Interlingua
has both "salvamento" = n. saving, rescue, also salvaging; cinctura de
salvamento (life belt); "barca" or "lancha de salvamento" = lifeboat.
And
"salvation n salvation, rescue; also salvage.

Interlingua has the verb

salvar v. to save, rescue; also: to salve, salvage; salvar le apparentias =
save appearances; salvar se  to save oneself, escape.  Derivatives are
salvator = savior; salvation, salvamento (Port., Catalan, Spanish, and
the internationality of -mento as suffix indicating "action of" - likely
this is a fall-back solution;
>
>Note that the -age ending on this word is common to English
>("salvage"), French ("sauvetage") and Italian ("salvataggio") so
>in this case it is more naturalistic than the form IL chooses.

English "salvage" does not come from French sauvetage or Italian
"salvataggio" but from Latin "salvagium". Both French "sauvetage" and
Italian "salvataggio" mean "rescue (people) from danger"; whereas
English "salvage" means to rescue a ship or cargo or property from
danger.  The Italian and French forms seem to be based on a Latin
past participle of "salvare" to which the -agium affix was added (or
its Romance counterpart).  But this particular past participle form
is not found in the other Romance languages as far as I can tell.
You could create a new formation in Interlingua from the suffix -age =
'action or process of ....' and the verb "salvar" > salvage, the
action or process of saving. But with salvation, salvamento already in
the language, this would be redundant.

>
>But the whole naturalistic project is fundamentally flawed anyway,
>because IL's source languages often use different affixes for a purpose.
>You've seen the "salvation" example above; here's another one: the
>English noun "conspiracy" comes from the verb "conspire". This verb
>is common to En, Fr, It, and Sp. However the other languages use
>a different affix for their equivalent action nouns. So it is
>impossible for a naturalistic language to use the same affix that
>is used in the source languages, because there isn't one.

Eng. conspiracy, conspiration (look it up); Fr. conspiration,
It. conspirazione, Sp. conspiracion, Ger. Konspiration
Interlingua: conspiration.

Interlingua usually uses the most frequent affix of equivalent meaning.
If at least three of the variants have it, then that is the one chosen
automatically.

>
>< The Interlingua grammar was essentially a standard average European
>< grammar: Any grammatical feature absent from at least one of the
>< source languages was dropped from the language.
>
>This is not true. En and Ge don't allow adjectives after a noun, and
>Fr Sp and It allow adjectives before and after, so if IL used this
>principle then IL adjectives would always precede the noun, which
>they don't.

The Interlingua Grammar of Gode and Blair says:  " Adjectives placed
next to a noun can either PRECEDE or FOLLOW. The latter position is
more frequent and hence normal. Adjectives preceding a noun tend to
suggest that what they express is an essential feature of the noun
concept and not merely a feature distinguishing the present representative
of the noun concept from others."

By a similar argument one could argue that always preceding the noun with
the adjective is not found in the Romance source languages, so that
option is excluded.  The only reasonable compromise is thus to allow
one to place them either before or after the noun, with essential
features preceding and contingent ones following as the usual course to
follow.

>
>Similar remarks could be made about the fact that in Romance languages
>object pronouns precede the verb, which they also do in IL.

Interlingua Grammar of Gode and Blair says:  "Personal and reflexive
pronouns (except in prepositional constructions) precede the simple
tense forms of the verb but follow the participles and the infinitive.
...

In a combintion of two personal pronouns that one precedes whose
relation to the verb is more indirect or remote:

"Illa me lo dice" = "She tells (it to) me"
....

Then it adds:  "The place of pronouns in the sentence is not rigidly
fixed. The preceding paragraphs describe the norm from which deviations
are justified by considerations of rhythm or emphasis."

>
>< Interlingua represents the common, shared linguistic heritage of
>< Europe, and thus is the logical choice for a common language of
>< Europe.
>
>IL is not a bad language, but with a few minor reforms would be a much
>better one. Useful reforms could be:
>
>1. standardise the plural of all nouns to be -(e)s

Interlingua Grammar, G&B: "The plural is formed by the addition of
s or - after a consonant - of -es.  Final c changes before -es to -ch-.
So what are you talking about?


The only exception would be unassimilated loan words that are international.
Then you use the plural form of the loan language.
>
>2. standardise the action noun of verbs to be -tion

Then you get unfamiliar wierdness, like "displaciation" for "displaciamento",
"excretion" for "excremento" (and you lose the distinction between
excretion and excremento); "disveloppation" for "disveloppamento" (development),
"expertion" for "experimento" (or even wierder, "experition");
"consension" or "consentition" for "consentimento", "sentition" for
"sentimento"; "confination" for "confinamento"; "establition" for
"establimento"; "fallition" for "fallimento" = failure, bankruptcy;
"investition" for "investimento". For Europeans who are familiar with
the -mento endings, you are asking them to unlearn them and replace
them with unfamiliar -tion words.

>
>3. have a standard form for deriving an adjective from a noun (possibly
>-ale or -ar or -e), and for deriving an adstract noun from an adjective
>(-itate).

Then what you get is less familiar, and this seems to contradict your
basic aim to make the words maximally recognizable to Europeans.
>
>4. remove surplus words: where IL has two or more roots with the
>same meaning, just use the most internationally recognisable one.

Why?  English, German, French get along fine with synonyms in their
vocabulary.  Interlingua does too.
>
>5. change some of the more obvious "false friends" eg _ape_ and _camera_.

For other false friends?  You can't avoid them between any two languages.

But you misunderstand what Interlingua is.  Interlingua is not designed
to conform to preconceived notions of what a desirable language should
be but simply to register the international vocabulary in a standardized
form and provide a simple grammar for using it.  In doing that we avoid
the subjectivities of different language inventors' conceptions of what
constitutes a desirable feature in the language, and simply describe what
exists with a minimum of subjectivity.


Stan Mulaik
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Io pete vostre pardonos pro iste usage del anglese, mais io opinava
que le explication de "cavallo" e "conspiration"  esseva de
interesse.