Re: New Conlang: Terkunan

Hi!

Christian Köttl writes:
> It seems plausible enough that newly coined words would use a regular
> system, however, one would assume that many old words still show
> affixes now unproductive, especially if people don't think of the old
> word as "derived" anymore, which is frequently the case with oft-used
> words.
Well, yes.  But I still want it to be regular.  My goal is to do it in
a way that it is as regular as possible while still maintaining a
Romance feel.  There will be some irregularities, though, but not
many.

> Therefore I think that "amasion" for love is a rather bold decision,
> since "love" was and is a common word,  not much affected by changes
> in the derivational system. Testament to this is the state of the word
> in modern Romance languages:
> amour in French;
> amore in Italian;
> amor in Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan and Romanian as well
> and so forth.
Does it still say 'amasion'?  It was my first try which was changed to
'amur'.  Currently, -asion derives abstractions and -ur derives
states.  So 'amur' is the state of loving, not 'loving', but 'love'.

Sorry for the confusion, I fixed it now.  It was inconsistent: under
'Derivation', there was the current word.

> Nonetheless, if people still perceive a word as derived than it may
> change its ending.
That's one possibility, yes.  Modern German does this now: many old
-lich adjectives change to -bar:

     verständlich ->  verstehbar    'understandable'

(Oh, and the English '-able' und 'understandable' is exactly that,
too!)

It depends on the verb on how bad it sounds to me.  The previous
example sounds quite bad, but Google reveals that it actually exists.
I'm sure there are more widespread examples of exactly this kind.

>...
> Looking at your self-set goals, I have to say you fully met them: A
> good sounding Romance language with an easy to grasp, but yet
> realistic grammar. I am looking forward to more texts in Terkunan!
Thank you! :-)

I will probably be able to produce texts much quicker than for
Þrjótrunn, since the grammar is so easy and I don't need to write a
grammar in Lisp first...

And please don't hesitate to criticise the derivational system more --
it is under construction and I am sure the 'ugliness' of some
derivations is something I can feel, too. :-)  E.g. 'amasion'.  It
would be great if I get some help in finding a way to find regular,
yet plausible derivations.

**Henrik