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Re: proposed conlang database

From:Anthony M. Miles <theophilus88@...>
Date:Friday, March 15, 2002, 6:46
>Message: 2 > Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 14:35:20 -0800 > From: Garrett Jones <alkaline@...> >Subject: Re: proposed conlang database > >http://conlang.alkaline.org > > >My conlang Lahabic is that world's Latin, and as such, more written and >read > >than spoken. And what about languages that the creators declare are >extinct > >reconstructions? > >Furthermore, I am a student of the ancient languages Latin, Greek, and > >Sanskrit, and therefore am not bothered by my lack of fluency in > >pronunciation (vocabulary, however, does matter to me). Just because I >have > >trouble pronouncing a language shouldn't rule it out as a source or >model. >
<snip>
>I modified the "estimated * speakers" category to be labeled "estimated >fluent users", "estimated familiar users", and "estimated fictional users". >This category could hypothetically get really complicated if you think of >all the possibilities, so i want to keep it under control. So, the first >two >categories are for real-world users and the last is for the constructed >culture. The first two are for people to get an idea how many other people >can converse in the language if they want to learn it themselves. The >fictional users category is more of a conculture thing. It obviously >wouldn't apply to auxlangs at all. > >I have modified the Vocabulary Source category. Here's how it looks now: > >A. Primary Vocabulary Source > >modified single natural language >modified single artificial language >blend of natural languages >blend of artificial languages >descendent of natural language >descendent of artificial language >a priori, categorical >a priori, non-categorical >mixed a posteriori/a priori >unspeakable
<snip>
>I also >added the descendent categories, for historical based languages and >languages in artifical language family trees. Quenya would be an example of >a descendant of an artificial language (descended from ancient elven, >whatever it's called).
In that case, (Early) Lahabic (fictional) is the descendant of Gweinic (fictional).
> >4. Language classification: > >basic description: > > >language family: > >Indo-European-like > >i was thinking more along the lines of the name of the fictional language >family.
(Early) Lahabic is a member of the Gweinic Language Family, which includes Maradic, Halnic, Qannic (Q=[N]), and Southern (all of which are sketched very sketchily).
> >vocabulary source: > >a priori, categorical > >syntactic system: > >VSO with topic fronting in interrogatives; cases: nominative, genitive, > >dative (dative/benefactive/reflexive), locative (locative/instrumental), > >accusative; aspects: aorist, imperfective, perfective; tenses: past, > >present, future > >i added aspects & tenses to the syntactic system. > > >morphological system: > >between agglutinative and declinational > >design motivation: > >fantasy, with historical precedents, cognates, and descendants > >The last thing i added is in the "current language status" section: > >-vocabulary size
This is a notoriously difficult number to compute. I may have 2000 words, including every body part and tree-borne fruit or nut I could think of, but how often would I be likely to use the word for 'walnut' or 'toenail'? Furthermore, the agglutination in Lahabic and its 30+ prefixes are complicating factors.
>-estimated date of useability: not necessarily when the language is frozen >in development, but when people could learn the language and use it, and >not >worry about big things changing. Naturally, some languages will never be >useable.
Well, you ('you' in general terms) _can_ write in Lahabic (although some words are very long). As a 'classical' language, pronunciation is likely to vary according to region, much like Mediaeval Latin. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx

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Garrett Jones <alkaline@...>