Re: vocabulary

On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 06:51:05PM +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:57:42 -0700,
> Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...> wrote:
[...]
> > The first method, pulling them out of the air, *I* think has the
> > potential to be vastly better, since it allows the language to grow
> > organically, at least phonologically. When a sufficient number of
> > vocabulary items have been created, you can then see what the
> > phonological patterns are. It seems to me that this can be very
> > self-revealing, letting you know where your own phonological
> > inclinations lie.
>
> Yes.  I don't even know exactly what the phonotactic rules of Old Albic
> *are*, so I simply cannot generate a list of "acceptable" word-shapes.
> I just make up words and intuitively decide whether they sound "right"
> or not.  What has begun to crystallize out is that most words are
> derived from CVC roots, with some occasional CCVC (mostly CRVC,
> R=liquid or semivowel) and CVCC (mostly CVRC) roots strewn in.
> What I definitely have, though, is a well-defined phoneme inventory
> and a handful of rules (such things as Grassmann's Law, metathesis
> rules, rhotacism or umlaut patterns) operating on them.
With Tatari Faran, I've started out by fixing the phonetic inventory
and syllable structure (which perhaps I shouldn't have, as it became
rather restrictive), and then started coining words. Now, one might
say that I might as well have generated all possible forms using my
phonological rules, and assigned meanings to them; however, what I
found is that as I went along, I started getting a better feel for how
things "really" worked, and tweaked my rules to fit that better. The
current phonetic inventory, while keeping in the spirit of the
original, has since had a number of changes.

In the course of word coinage, I also discovered a number of vowel
glides that I hadn't included in the original list. I've also
determined that /r/ and /d/ are really the same phoneme, which gives
rise to such interesting forms as _diru_ -> _heriru_ with the addition
of the prefix _he_.

Another significant development was that I "discovered" Tatari Faran's
dislike for coincidental sequence of repeated syllables. For example,
if a noun ends with _-na_ and is immediately followed by the case
particle _na_, it shifts to _-nan_ and _da_, respectively. E.g.:
	huna + na -> hunan da

A similar mechanism works with the formation of the genitive, which is
derived by suffixing -n or -an. Normally, you get something like:
	diru -> dirun
	jibin -> jibinan

However, if the noun ends with -nan (or -nVn), the final -n in the
original noun mutates:
	busanan -> busanaran

An analogous mechanism also happens in the partitive, which suffixes
-s or -is. Normally, you have:
	buara -> buaras
	kiran -> kiranis

However, if the noun ends with -s, it gets substituted with -t
instead, to avoid the repetition of -s syllables:
	panis -> panitis (rather than panisis)

The upshot of all these "discovered" rules is that when I coin words,
it's no longer just a matter of assigning meanings to anything that
conforms to the rules of word formation; I have to consider the
"euphony" of the resultant word, and whether it will cause ambiguities
with the derived forms of other words, and whether such ambiguity is
acceptable.


[...]
> >       And has said before that some of the best projects
> > out there are done by people who are linguistically very sensitive, but
> > otherwise not formally trained.
>
> Yes.  I agree that a feeling for language is useful in conlanging, but
> formal training in linguistics is far less important.  It is the same
> as with music, for example: a good musician needs a feeling for music,
> but he doesn't need formal training in music theory.  It has been
> claimed that musicologists, when they compose at all, compose soulless,
> overintellectual music (though it has also been claimed that this
> is in no way the case; I don't know who is right), and it might be
> similar with linguistics and conlanging.
Now, I am an amateur musician, and so I tend to agree with this
theory. ;-) However, IMHO, it is not necessarily the case that
musicologists will always compose overintellectual music. I think it's
just a matter of inherent musical competence. Musicology is a tool; in
the hands of a musical master, it can be an extremely useful tool for
creating the most powerful, moving pieces. However, the same tool in
the hands of an inexperienced composer can easily be soulless and
overintellectual. (The case is the same with the bad composer who does
not know musicology, except that in this case we take no notice of him
because he doesn't have an audience to begin with.) A composer without
knowledge of musicology can still compose good music, although such a
composer would IMHO benefit greatly from a study of musicology.


[...]
> 20 words in two years - and I thought I was slow in building
> vocabularies.  (I have about 300 Old Albic words so far.)  But I
> know what you are talking about; it is one thing to randomly assign
> meanings to a list of word forms, it is something entirely different
> to coin words that sound "right" - but the latter is infinitely more
> rewarding!
[...]

Indeed. I can still recall the exuberance of day I coined the word
_kiapat_ [kja."pat] ("stupid", "foolish"). It even sounds offensive,
in accordance with its meaning, and gave rise to the verb _kiapitai_
[kja."pi.taj], which means "to mock" or "to ridicule" when used with
the complement _nana_, and "to argue" when used with the complement
_ihia_ [?ihja] ("to be out of breath"). The implication being that to
argue is to call each other stupid until you're both out of breath.
:-)


T

--
Question authority. Don't ask why, just do it.

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