>Joshua Shinavier wrote:
>
>>The new words I like best are those I feel the need to invent before I rea=
lly
>>even know what they mean: once in a while I see something and it seems
>>familiar, in an intuitive sort of way, but I can't really say how; maybe i=
t
>>is a sense connected to some abstract concept, or maybe it's the=
impression I
>>have of a stranger standing on a street corner, who in some unexplained wa=
y
>>seems *characteristic* -- but what the characteristic is I don't know, and=
I
>>feel I should have a word for it, so I invent a word which seems to fit th=
at
>>sense as a reminder to come back and think about it again. Later on I
>>may come
>>across something else which brings that same word immediately back to mind=
--
>>"aha, dvel ty=EBrna!" -- I just *know* that person is "ty=EBrn", and soone=
r
>>or later
>>I "discover" what the word really means; it's never a concept familiar to =
me
>>as a word from any of the languages I already know, otherwise that word wo=
uld
>>have come to mind right away
>
>I found this very interesting. What are some of the words that you've
>come up with in this way? What does "ty=EBrn" mean, for example?
>
>I've only ever come up with one Tokana word in this way, namely "kemet".
>When a bunch of pigeons suddenly all fly up into the air, circle around,
>and then land in an altogether better place, that action is called
>"kemet". Or when a bunch of fallen leaves are blown up into the air
>by a gust of wind, fly around, and then fall back down to earth again,
>that's "kemet". There are other examples of "kemet" as well, which in
>my mind seemed to form a natural class. The best definition I could come
>up with is "the sudden, spontaneous, collective movement of a large group
>of
>small objects".
>
>Matt.
>
>
------------------------------------
Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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