Lexicon milestones and discussion of lexicon growth

[Khemehekis]

My current largest lexicon is Erụụxangụxerụ, with 681 words, but that's for Tyuns, so it's not originally my creation.

The biggest lexicon that could be said to be mine would be Ruykkarraber, which just got to 250!!! The 250th word was sketi "to assist, to coach."

Congrats on the 250 milestone. DON'T GIVE UP! Get Ruykkarraber to 1,000 words!

[Khemehekis]

My biggest lexicon is Vuisi, with about 360 words. The language has a lot of problems but I'm still very proud of how far I developed it. The second largest would be Hɛlcɛso, with around 250.

Check out viewtopic.php?t=450 . Would you be a spawner? Or more of a sandboxer? Or are you just a scrapper?

[_Just_A_Sketch]

I think something between spawner and perfectionist would be most accurate for me. I do make quite a lot of languages, just in the last half of last year I was working on four languages at once, three of which started as random ideas or phonological sketches. I also had tried making four other languages in that time, which all vended in a week or less. As for the perfectionist side, I've remade the same language three times in one year (and it may get a 4th revamp soon).

[Khemehekis]

Yeah, I definitely see the spawner in you. I'm surprised to learn you have a perfectionist streak!

[_Just_A_Sketch]

That's surprising. I always thought my perfectionism was one of my more notable traits (although I have been doing better at managing it lately). Is there anything in particular that made you think I wasn't a perfectionist?

[Arayaz]

I think more people are perfectionist than others might realize. I have a bit of it in me, especially lately when I've been trying to reborrow from my old scrapped langs.

But I am still a scrapper. Maybe filmstabber too, since I've made and scrapped probably 10-odd languages while keeping Ruykkarraber.

[Khemehekis]

That's surprising. I always thought my perfectionism was one of my more notable traits (although I have been doing better at managing it lately). Is there anything in particular that made you think I wasn't a perfectionist?

Oh, it was just that I wasn't aware you'd completely remade the same language four times!

[_Just_A_Sketch]

Oh yeah, I guess I haven't mentioned that before lol!

[Arayaz]

I got to my hundredth Ngama word! It was ʔècyocyim "estrogen," an adapted borrowing from English. It's not a canon word in-setting, though; the *canon* hundredth word is hím "leg."

[Khemehekis]

After spending decades on top, Classical Yiklamu has been dethroned from its position of largest conlang lexicon by a conlang called M̄av̄ī, created by someone who calls himself Imjustadudeontheinternet. M̄av̄ī has 100,000 words, all defined with a Toki Pona definition, and was created for the sole purpose of having sextuple digits in its lexicon.

https://conlang.fandom.com/wiki/Largest_Conlangs

[Visions1]

With much awe and respect from me, a lowly ant, to Imjustadudeontheinternet, because really he did good and taking sides isn't right in a hobby (*breath in*), nevertheless -
Khem, he won't know what hit him.

[Arayaz]

Oh goodness! Well, I don't doubt that you, Khemehekis, will eventually hold the title ─ but in the meantime, congratulations to Mmavvii and Imjustadudeontheinternet!

[criminalmammal]

After spending decades on top, Classical Yiklamu has been dethroned from its position of largest conlang lexicon by a conlang called M̄av̄ī, created by someone who calls himself Imjustadudeontheinternet. M̄av̄ī has 100,000 words, all defined with a Toki Pona definition, and was created for the sole purpose of having sextuple digits in its lexicon.

https://conlang.fandom.com/wiki/Largest_Conlangs

There is no way this should count for anything. This person seems to have randomly generated their hundred thousand words and then assigned each of them a random, singular Toki Pona word: so it's a relex of Toki Pona where every word has seven hundred-odd synonyms, with no reason or nuance. It's a stunt and it seems sort of insulting considering the work that is put into languages that actually have thousands of dictionary entries.

[Arayaz]

After spending decades on top, Classical Yiklamu has been dethroned from its position of largest conlang lexicon by a conlang called M̄av̄ī, created by someone who calls himself Imjustadudeontheinternet. M̄av̄ī has 100,000 words, all defined with a Toki Pona definition, and was created for the sole purpose of having sextuple digits in its lexicon.

https://conlang.fandom.com/wiki/Largest_Conlangs

There is no way this should count for anything. This person seems to have randomly generated their hundred thousand words and then assigned each of them a random, singular Toki Pona word: so it's a relex of Toki Pona where every word has seven hundred-odd synonyms, with no reason or nuance. It's a stunt and it seems sort of insulting considering the work that is put into languages that actually have thousands of dictionary entries.

Wait, each one has *one* Toki Pona definition? I thought the person was just a hardcore Toki Pona fan and defined all their words in Toki Pona for fun. If it's a randomly generated relex, congratulations revoked. I suggest we update the requirements of the FrathWiki page.

[Pabappa]

To be fair, Classical Yiklamu is just a cipher of English with its definitions taken from WordNet, which at the time had about 90,000 words. I dont consider it a full language because it's strictly tied to English ... even to the point of having the word for "bat" mean both an animal and a sports implement. Likewise, there is no relation in Yiklamu between words that are obviously related in English, such as dowse, dowser, dowsing, all of which have unrelated roots in the cipher. I realize the original LangMaker writeup says that the language would evolve and have a descendant, but so far as I can tell the creator abandoned the language soon after creating it and I don't even see a website for it anymore.

I've kept quiet on this because it was a novel idea back in 1997 when it was created, and it also may have been more difficult to do at the time, but it's still not a language in the sense that most of ours are.

[Khemehekis]

Wait, each one has *one* Toki Pona definition? I thought the person was just a hardcore Toki Pona fan and defined all their words in Toki Pona for fun. If it's a randomly generated relex, congratulations revoked. I suggest we update the requirements of the FrathWiki page.

Any idea for how to rewrite the criteria so as to exclude Mmavvii? I don't think being a relex of sometjing like WordNet, like Classical Yiklamu, or even being an English cipher-but-not-a-cryptographic-cipher, like those 16 languages Marduk made, should disqualify a language from being on the list. But I agree with you and criminalmammal that what Imjustadudeontheinternet did is basically cheating. I mean, it's taken me 27 years -- the length of Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix's life -- to get Kankonian up to even 86,400 words. (And now I'm afraid that after Kankonian reaches 120,000 words or something, another Imjustadudeontheinternet is going to come along and computer-generate a speustic relex of Kankonian, with a hundred-twenty-thousand-and-first word that's the name of his conlang/Kankonian relex.)

[Khemehekis]

To be fair, Classical Yiklamu is just a cipher of English with its definitions taken from WordNet, which at the time had about 90,000 words. I dont consider it a full language because it's strictly tied to English ... even to the point of having the word for "bat" mean both an animal and a sports implement. Likewise, there is no relation in Yiklamu between words that are obviously related in English, such as dowse, dowser, dowsing, all of which have unrelated roots in the cipher. I realize the original LangMaker writeup says that the language would evolve and have a descendant, but so far as I can tell the creator abandoned the language soon after creating it and I don't even see a website for it anymore.

Huh? I'm pretty sure WordNet was never a simple "English word" list. It has separate entries that merge or distinguish meanings of English words. For an example of a WordNet entry (see https://wordnet.princeton.edu/) that merges a lot of English words, see this one:

S: (n) chap, fellow, feller, fella, lad, gent, blighter, cuss, bloke (a boy or man) "that chap is your host"; "there's a fellow at the door"; "he's a likable cuss"; "he's a good bloke"

Looking up "bat", for instance, I get:

Noun

S: (n) bat, chiropteran (nocturnal mouselike mammal with forelimbs modified to form membranous wings and anatomical adaptations for echolocation by which they navigate)
S: (n) bat, at-bat ((baseball) a turn trying to get a hit) "he was at bat when it happened"; "he got four hits in four at-bats"
S: (n) squash racket, squash racquet, bat (a small racket with a long handle used for playing squash)
S: (n) cricket bat, bat (the club used in playing cricket) "a cricket bat has a narrow handle and a broad flat end for hitting"
S: (n) bat (a club used for hitting a ball in various games)

Verb

S: (v) bat (strike with, or as if with a baseball bat) "bat the ball"
S: (v) bat, flutter (wxnk briefly) "bat one's eyelids"
S: (v) bat (have a turn at bat) "Jones bats first, followed by Martinez"
S: (v) bat (use a bat) "Who's batting?"
S: (v) cream, bat, clobber, drub, thrash, lick (beat thoroughly and conclusively in a competition or fight) "We licked the other team on Sunday!"

[Pabappa]

Right, but the list that you get when you go to the download page is a list of the individual words that have pages, not a list of the definitions on those pages. Searching for "doughnut" gives me

S: (n) ring, halo, annulus, doughnut, anchor ring (a toroidal shape) "a ring of ships in the harbor"; "a halo of smoke"
S: (n) doughnut, donut, sinker (a small ring-shaped friedcake)

Each of those blue words is an entry in WordNet. Those are the entries that make up the list. So "bat" is still a single entry, not a list of entries. While "donut" and "doughnut" are two completely independent words, simply because they are in English.

Sorry if Im not explaining it clearly. Another way to put it is ... you can download the WordNet list (its a large file) and see that the older versions had about 90,000 words and the newer versions have about 150,000 words. If the author had manually gone through and split words into subsenses, then he would have had far more than 90,000 words. Therefore I believe that he did not. Based on that I would say Yiklamu is a cipher of English and not an independent language.

However, I now think that I have never actually seen the Yiklamu dictionary, because it's not clear to me that it's actually been published. There's no active website and the archives of the website don't contain a link to the dictionary. What I remembered as the Yiklamu dictionary was most likely the WordNet list i downloaded at the time out of curioisity. Also, it does seem that Yiklamu has grammar independent of English, so the word for "I" isnt needed just to mark something as first person. That does raise it somewhat above the level of a straight English cipher with no grammar of its own.

[Arayaz]

Wait, each one has *one* Toki Pona definition? I thought the person was just a hardcore Toki Pona fan and defined all their words in Toki Pona for fun. If it's a randomly generated relex, congratulations revoked. I suggest we update the requirements of the FrathWiki page.

Any idea for how to rewrite the criteria so as to exclude Mmavvii?

One could simply disallow relexes. I honestly feel that Classical Yiklamu shouldn't count either.

Perhaps one could require distinctive grammar of the language; i.e. something doesn't count if it's only a lexicon/wordlist. (Could be too extreme?) Or the rule related to unmodified computer-generated outputs could be extended.

[Khemehekis]

Right, but the list that you get when you go to the download page is a list of the individual words that have pages, not a list of the definitions on those pages. Searching for "doughnut" gives me

S: (n) ring, halo, annulus, doughnut, anchor ring (a toroidal shape) "a ring of shxps in the harbor"; "a halo of smoke"
S: (n) doughnut, donut, sinker (a small ring-shaped friedcake)

Each of those blue words is an entry in WordNet. Those are the entries that make up the list. So "bat" is still a single entry, not a list of entries. While "donut" and "doughnut" are two completely independent words, simply because they are in English.

Sorry if Im not explaining it clearly. Another way to put it is ... you can download the WordNet list (its a large file) and see that the older versions had about 90,000 words and the newer versions have about 150,000 words. If the author had manually gxne through and split words into subsenses, then he would have had far more than 90,000 words. Therefore I believe that he did not. Based on that I would say Yiklamu is a cipher of English and not an independent language.

However, I now think that I have never actually seen the Yiklamu dictionary, because it's not clear to me that it's actually been published. There's no active website and the archives of the website don't contain a link to the dictionary. What I remembered as the Yiklamu dictionary was most likely the WordNet list i downloaded at the time out of curioisity. Also, it does seem that Yiklamu has grammar independent of English, so the word for "I" isnt needed just to mark something as first person. That does raise it somewhat above the level of a straight English cipher with no grammar of its own.

OK, I see what you're saying. That's not how I remember the list I saw.

According to the horse's mouth, it seems Classical Yiklamu isn't an English cipher after all; see this post on the CBB.

I believe my Facebook friend Larry Rogers has checked out the Classical Yiklamu dictionary. I might ask him about it.