Re: How big

From: "Christopher B Wright" <faceloran@...>
> How big is too big to change? Sturnan has 1100 words (thank you, Aidan,
> because without you, it would be 150 words lighter) and perhaps five
> pages of grammar when I condense it. There are between twenty and thirty
> pages of text in Sturnan, much of it horribly outdated. (I've probably
> done forty pages, though not all survives.)
My language work goes out of date quickly also :)
But since I tend to work along the same principles whenever I work on langs, I
recently set up a "version system" I use on language data so that

    1) the whole thing doesnt have to be thrown out when changes are
       instituted (I can keep the old things with a note on what's
       changed, then update the old things when I get around to them)
    2) I know what language data is concurrent (I have been using one
       document for Kirumb pronouns for the past who knows how long--I
       havent the faintest idea if they're parallel to the current Plan
       because this was before I set up versions) :p
    3) I can actually see progress being made!!  The lexicon grows, even
       if half of it lacks the latest tweaking!

Ibran, developed entirely under this, is currently at version delta (Kirumb,
the only other lang I've really worked on recently, is at honorary version
beta, which was the current working lexicon and soundchanges, with alpha being
"everything before").

So translations are marked for version, grammar notes are marked, and
individual lexical items are marked (tons easier that way).

> The three questions, therefore, are:
> What is the ratio between size and morphability?
Depends on your methods. :p

Obviously (...to me) a small lang with no vocabulary commitments can change
easier than one that is already tied to a lexicon and existing translated
texts.

My Rami has gone through several complete revisions, but due to its very small
corpus of finished data very few people are even able to notice this :p

My Mira (funny I just notice how "mi-ra" is just "ra-mi" backwards...
coincidence, entirely) which is entirely a priori (being descended essentially
from random noise) can change quite easily, even though I had already
random-generated the whole ULD as a lexicon, because there's not much to
characterize it:  Not much grammar (the closest thing is "function words are
monosyllables, nouns/adjectives disyllables, verbs trisyllables; isolating),
not much phonology ('ideal auxlang' /p t k d l s w m n a e i o u eu oi/ with
tons of free-variation allophones, CVN, and no translations readymade.  Pretty
much the only things set in stone, despite having already a huge lexicon, is
the phonology and the script (which does not exist yet, although the theory of
it does.. it involves color, shininess, and gradients, and is allowed to be
complicated since it's just a visual representation of the speech of machines
in an abstract story.. human speaker uses a modified katakana)

> How large were your languages when you instituted the last major change?
Well at the moment it is hard to measure the size of some of these langs, like
Ibran which is a little bit easy.  The last major change in the written
language was in the middle of this month, when I introduced 'z' /cC/ as a
replacement for 'x' /C/ and some 'tj' /C/.

Changes in the spoken language (the dialect of NRC, a major city) are going on
all the time, it is quite astonishing.  I may have to institute a spelling
reform just for them.  [Actually there is one already mentioned on my site,
talks about 'puiblaarskrijt'.. but this needs updating to the current myth]

But it offends my delicate sensibilities to see {le scuil} "the school"
pronounced [l3"k:O:].  Pluralization is even worse; many (most?) words only
differ sg/pl by "fortition" mutation:  {les scuiles} [l3"k:O:l]  or:

    le ciàte   [l3"Z&T]    "the cat"
    les ciàtes [l3"Z&t]    "the cats"

    le ciàn    [l3"Z&n]    "the dog"
    les ciànes [l3"Z&n:]   "the dogs"

The spelling reform marks this with an "h di fortizoon": lå-ccuil, lå-ccuilh;
lå-cjàt, lå-cjàth; lå-cjàn, lå-cjành.  (å is ideally a-breve, and cj ideally
dotted-g.)

Look irregular?  Did I mention the spelling reform happened in the mid 1900's
and is already out of date? =)  *TeRRaToCToPoD* !+~:)X   I also think it quite
cruel to have {th} [t] and {ph} [p], but English speakers deserve it for
having {ch} [k] =)

Oh dear there must be something in the air, I'm mutating...

> and What word(s) should I deform / combine to make the word "simple"?
Try something like "non-folded" ... "non-knotted, non-tangled".   Off the top
of my head this is similar to "simple" itself (sem-plo-, 'onefold', is it?  If
not it should be...)

    *Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/