Gilo Vocabulary Notes

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1    Vocabulary - Where does it come from?

The Gilo vocabulary is compiled from a number of different sources.  These include:

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The Gilo vocabulary format is based on the Roget Thesaurus numbering system (see Roget's Thesaurus below).

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My initial starting point for a simple wordlist was Ogden's 'Basic English'.  This is a well thought out and compact list of 850 common English words.  The theory being that you can say anything that you need to say just using those words.  Unfortunately Basic English is fatally flawed due to allowing multiple meanings of words, since this is the only way the list can be kept down to 850.  Multiple meanings are confusing in any language and English suffers particularly badly from this problem.  Any artificial language must be designed to avoid this.

The reference book which I used to establish the various meaning of the words used in Basic English was Roget's Thesaurus.  In using the book in a detailed and methodical way (rather than just looking for synonyms for essay writing or crosswords), I began to realise the excellent work which lay behind it.  In compiling his Thesaurus, Peter Roget had first categorised the whole of the English Language.  This was a lifetime's work and the final product is not just a detailed list of English synonyms, but, most importantly, a comprehensive analysis of the English language into a logical list of just under 1000 categories of meaning.

It is a great complement to Roget's intellectual ability and language skill that his categories are, with only very minor exceptions, still valid today after 150 years.  Every single word in the English language can be placed in one of the categories.  Since the categories are based on meaning, then any other language can be similarly categorised using the same 1000 headings.  Roget himself was certainly familiar with, possibly even fluent in French, German and Latin and did hope that a common world language might benefit from his work.  In fact, shortly after Roget's Thesaurus was first published, versions also appeared in French and German.  It would be interesting to know if they have been published in any other languages.  Since crossword puzzles cannot be a purely English language hobby, then I'm sure there must be more versions around somewhere!

Modern versions of Roget’s Thesaurus sometimes use a different numbering system (e.g. starting with '001: Birth' instead of '001: Existence').  Other versions may not use numbers at all but simply be a list of synonyms in alphabetical order.  It is the classification system of Roget’s original Thesaurus, as much as the grouping of synonyms that makes Roget’s work so useful in language analysis (although a few of his categories might seem a little questionable today).  The construction of a new logical vocabulary would be impossible without first deciding what meanings it was necessary to express and what associated words stem from those meanings.  The classification process was a lifetime’s work in itself.  Fortunately we are able to use the excellent work of Roget to continue with the construction of a new language, today.  

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The word lists used to build the Gilo vocabulary contained three similar words: delay, defer and postpone.  All three words come under the same category of Roget 136, for which the Headword is 'Lateness'.  Lateness is a general term and is sub-divided into 'Lateness' and 'Delay', which I have given the numbers Roget 136a (Lateness) and Roget 136b (delay).  'Delay', 'defer' and 'postpone' all come under sub-section 136b (delay).

In other words 'delay, defer and postpone' are all considered by Roget to have a similar enough meaning to be grouped under the same category and to be a form of 'delay'.  As an initial assumption, we could say that all three words have the same meaning.  Note that this does not imply that they would always be interchangeable whenever they were used in English.  It may be that under different circumstances either 'delay' or 'defer' or 'postpone' might be used, due to 'custom and practice' of normal English usage.  However, the point is, initially we are starting by saying that the semantic meaning of the three words is identical and for that reason any one of them could be used and the Gilo word that represents that meaning (del) would apply to any one of the three.  Note also that the noun and verb forms of the words are mixed together, hence when I compare 'a delay' I am comparing it with 'a deferral' or 'a postponement'.  It is the semantic meaning that we are looking at here, not the grammatical usage.

However in looking at the words more closely, we may consider for example, that although 'defer' and 'postpone' have identical semantic meaning, that meaning is slightly different to that of 'delay'.  In such a case we need to modify the Roget numbering slightly e.g.

In this case we have chosen to define 'defer' & 'postpone' as a delay to starting something and therefore formed the compound word ' delgi ' from the roots 'del' (delay) and 'gi' (begin).  An alternative may have been to say that 'defer' & 'postpone' might be defined by 'hãp' (happening/event) and 'del' (delay), hence making 'delhãp'.

This then enables others to quickly compare the semantic meaning of any words with both English and other languages, both natural and artificial. 

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5.1       Classification

Gilo is classified into approximately 1000 main classes of meaning.  The classification is based on those used by Peter Roget in his Thesaurus.  Each main heading of meaning is numbered.  Sub headings and individual words are shown by additional letters to a maximum of 3 digits and 3 letters e.g.:

5.2       Root Words

A Root Word is a Gilo word that is in its most basic simple form.  It is generally (but not always) a noun and can have tense and verbal affixes etc added.  An example of a root noun is 'bel', meaning beauty (an abstract noun).  To this root we add a verbal suffix to create the verb 'beliz', meaning 'to beautify'.  We can also add an adjective suffix 'a' to make 'bela' e.g. 'peel bela' (a beautiful woman).  The same affix 'a' can also make an adverb e.g. 'pentoz bela' (beautifully painted).  Note that a 'qualifying' word following a noun will always be an adjective and one following a verb will always be an adverb.

A number of frequently used words consist of single letter roots e.g.:

However the above roots are never used alone, they will always have an additional letter or letters to make them into a noun, adjective, verb or adverb e.g.:

5.3       Gilo Vocabulary

The Gilo Vocabulary has a separate web page and based on MS Excel.  It consists of a Gilo word list categorised by Roget reference number.  The wordlist can be copied from the web page onto any spread sheet and then re-sorted into alphabetical order of English or Gilo words as required.

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The starting point for a new vocabulary is going to be one's own language.  In my case, English.  The initial need is for a basic wordlist/vocabulary of the more commonly used words, which can then be expanded to include the remainder of the language.  Given the tens of thousands of regularly used words (including the variations of tense etc) and the hundreds of thousands of lesser used words (including specific animal, plant and technical terms), the difficulty is in knowing even where to begin.

A second difficulty is that basic word lists, no matter how common the words, do nothing to help with the classification of the vocabulary which is essential for a new language.  Without classification and the sensible ordering of words of similar meanings or those derived from the same roots, then, no matter how much better the grammar is, the new language itself is going to be little better than any natural language with all of its inconsistencies and difficulties for the learner.

Previous artificial languages have generally succeeded in providing a simplified grammar but have generally still tried to use lengthy and sometimes illogical European language words as the basis for their vocabulary.  They often use just an alphabetical word list with little or no attempt at a classification of word meanings.  This may have eased word recognition by European language speakers but would be meaningless to native speakers of Chinese, Hindi, Arabic etc.

Perhaps the simplest way to demonstrate the advantages of a classified list is to look again at the words relating to family

English words such as son, daughter, brother & sister have no common roots to denote male or female or to denote child.  Seeing the words together, in the same Gilo classification group above, makes it much easier to see which words ought to use a common root.  The Gilo words follow a logical pattern, making understanding and learning much easier and quicker.

Gilo uses many words of English origin and I have chosen to use new root words if the word is 1) frequently used and 2) would otherwise require a long compound word of three or more rootwords.

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Root words are generally based upon the abstract noun.  In some cases there are a large number of choices, any of which would work and none of them obviously right or wrong.  In these circumstances the tangible noun is often the one chosen due to being the more common word.  An example is friend 'fren'.

However, we could have used 'friendliness' as the main root word and modified the other meanings accordingly e.g.

Alternatively we could have taken 'friendship' as the main root word :

In most cases the root chosen, in order to maintain the shorter word (without affixes), has been that which is most commonly used.