Re: Hot, Cold, and Temperature

Philippe Caquant wrote:
>I once tried to consider, for every entry of a lexicon
>of some thousands substantives, whether:
>- when I thought of that word, I felt it connotated
>positively, negatively, or sometimes both (depending
>on the field considered
____________________
My brother Paul once created a conlang for an alien species in an
unpublished novel where the entire morpho-phonology of word-stems was based
on phonaesthetic principles -- so that "negative/undesirable" concepts and
entities were associated with plosive phonemes (especially velars), back
vowels and C-V-C syllabic structure, while "positive/desirable" concepts
were associated with continuants, particularly liquids and nasals, front
vowels and C-V syllables.  I'm sure this was inspired to some extent by
Tolkien's languages (e.g., compare the morpho-phonologies of Elvish vs.
Black Speech), but in my brother's novel, words were consciously created
by "poet-mystics" based on their feelings and introspection and presented
to the population at large as reflecting the "essence" of the new concept.

--John Quijada

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