Re: Declension Help

Hi Adam,
My very first conlang used declensions. I designed a very predictable system
but never got to something that felt "natural" or something that felt a
"real" language. Are you looking to build something that has a "progression"
to it, a pattern? After studying Latin and New Testament Greek, I learned
those declensions by rote and could nearly "sing" them in my sleep. I feel a
pattern to them and one could argue either way that one really exists. I
don't know anything about your linguistic background and frankly I'm a
"back-yard" linguist, one who dabbles and learns by exploring.

Defining such things is what makes conlanging an art. I'd suggest trying to
think in patterns of some sort. An idea just popped into my head for this.
Perhaps go back and read some poetry and maybe see a rhyme scheme or a
scheme of asonance or alliteration. From that you might begin to develop a
pattern. As another option, you could work with some random number schemes
and assign phoneme values to the numbers and find a pattern that way.

The musician in me thinks in terms of composition where one might
experiement with intervals in order to find a pattern as a precursor to a
melody, or tap a pencil on the  desk top to think through a rhythm.
Ulitmately though it is a matter of discovery. This is a good forum to
bounce some possible ideas. Perhaps put a few patterns together and show
them here and see what others think.

Good luck
Scotto, (Scottorum, Scottes, Scotton.)
(I've always liked the Latin genitive "-orum")

-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On
Behalf Of Adam F.
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 10:40 PM
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Subject: Re: Declension Help

I guess I have a lot of ideas on how I want things to look or sound, but
when it comes to the act of creating scheme for declension I don't know
where to start.