Introduction:
Now that you have covered all the vocabulary groups except those of the questions and time symbols (coming up in Lessons 9 and 10), it is important to learn how you can expand the vocabulary available on a communication display or an electronic vocabulary. Blissymbolics offers many strategies for vocabulary expansion. In Lesson 8, you will learn about three of the strategies. To learn more, you can go to Resource 8 (Word- Building Strategies) and the Fundamental Rules (Listed in Resource 22). Further attention will be given to this topic in Course 201.
The two most important Bliss strategies are the opposite meaning strategy and the combine strategy. They have been a part of Blissymbol communication by persons who are nonspeaking since the early seventies.A new strategy will also be introduced. It is called the colon strategy. It has been developed in order to arrive at a particular synonym when Bliss-words are used on the current voice output technology or when a precise translation into Blissymbolics is required. In the future, when programs are developed to enable the user to readily access synonyms and antonyms, the colon strategy along with that of the opposite meaning strategy may no longer be needed by the user when using a voice output device. In the meantime, these strategies offer a way for the Bliss user to represent the particular word they wish to have spoken.
You will also learn the two semantic modifiers that offer the user augmentation and intensity.