Taxonomic A Posteriori


A Taxonomic A Posteriori Language

 

Matthew McVeagh | my conlangs

 

Taxonomic languages are almost always a priori – in fact the original sense of 'a priori' applied to conlangs was not just making vocabulary up from scratch, but doing so in a systematic, schematic way, with all meanings organised in an array and morphs and words applied methodically rather than randomly. If you're organising the lexical and semantic structure carefully in an overarching system, why wouldn't you organise the morphic/morphophonemic representation of that structure in a similar way?

 

A reason might be precisely in order to show it can be done! It's counter-intuitive, but how about systematising the semantic range, but representing each concept with vocabulary borrowed from existing languages? It seems strange but it's perfectly possible, as I hope to show.