200-word vocabulary

[ffutures]

For the automaton thing I've said that the default vocabulary is 200 words - it seems about right. What I think I now need to do is decide what the most useful 100 or so words are, assuming that the remainder are specialised skill-related words etc. To make things easier I'll assume that plurals etc. of words don't count, e.g. gun, guns are one word (and would be skill-related anyway)

So... suggestions for the core vocabulary?

Comments

Word up, dude.

[elementalv.livejournal.com]

Danger
Help
Malfunction
Repair
Request
Need
More
Ammunition
Oil
Coal (presumably, your automatons run on coal, yes?)
Enemy
Sighted
Rough
Terrain
Tea (presumably, there would be at least a minimal domestic function, yes?)
Sugar
Milk
Lemon
Direction
North
South
East
West
Up
Down
Left
Right
Engine
Order (or Command)
Result

***

Not sure if those helped or not. Was all I could think of on the spur of the moment.

Re: Word up, dude.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I was thinking more of words like "put, get, bring" etc. but some of those will be good, especially Tea (since the automaton in all the examples has a special tap on its boiler for making the stuff).

[sirernest.livejournal.com]

how about not just single words but also certain phrases?
"Very well, Sir."
"By your orders."
"May I interrupt your extremely important pastimes, Sir, and inform you that the oil lubricating my joints is running very low and if it isn't refilled very soon I may not be up to perform to specifications?"

Or even parts of sentences? "I am ...bzzz... on my way ...bzzz... Sir."

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Spoken or understood vocabularly?

Young children have a large vocabulary "inbound" but a smaller one "outbound".

This is particularly true of synonyms (the automaton would always say "drawing room" but would understand "sitting room", "living room", "front parlour" etc. as being the same location)

I suggest that most verbs it will know be built in, but that a certain number of nouns be assignable by the owner to reflect a particular use of the automaton.

And I think it was Heinlein in Glory Road (or was it Delany in Babel-17?), suggested that the words like "between", "into" etc. are good words to learn first, nouns can be acquired as necessary.

The vocabularly for a basic pc adventure game (Collosal Caves etc.) would be a good starting point otherwise.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent idea - I'll look for something like that.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

No luck finding an actual vocabulary list for Colossal Cave, but here's a link to the 800-word Basic English vocabulary.
http://www.diac.com/~entente/basicpg.html
Just need to drop about 90% of them...