Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Lindiga and naturalism

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Saturday, May 17, 2008, 3:03
Every once in a while I play with the idea of reviving Lindiga. I'd also
like to do some more naturalistic languages. So the obvious thing to do
is to revise Lindiga to be more naturalistic.

Obviously one of the things I can do is introduce some irregularity,
especially in frequently used words like pronouns. Minza already has
some irregular pronoun cases, which I could borrow back into Lindiga.

case:		1sg.	1pl.	2sg.	2pl.	3sg.	4sg.	3pl.
absolutive	kam	tu	øyx	vyl	va	so	łu
genitive	kát	tut	øyxa	vyla	vat	sot	łut
ergative	kǽ	tyø	øyxe	vyle	vǽ	syø	łyø
dative		køy	tun	øyxon	vylon	van	son	łun

E.g. "kát", "kǽ", and "køy" replace the regular forms "kama", "kame",
and "kamon". The regular endings are illustrated by the forms of "øyx"
and "vyl".

In general, Lindiga is very regular (as originally intended). The
diminutive suffix -ka can be added to all sorts of things: suvas "river"
  -> suvaska "stream", kop "rock" -> kopka "pebble". A more naturalistic
lang might have a variety of different ways to make diminutives. But
there are some interesting complications with Lindiga that I could build
on, such as the variety of plural formations.

muoŋ "nose" -> pl. muoŋa
palta "island" -> pl. paltak
ɳoka "basket" -> pl. ɳokami
kɛki "sword" -> pl. kɛkiɭa

Are there languages without irregular verbs? Lindiga verbs are pretty
much regular so far.

But irregularity and other complications are only part of what makes a
language naturalistic. I'm thinking I might want to try building earlier
versions of the language to give it a bit of history. I've had mixed
success with that sort of thing, but I didn't have much of an
understanding of historical linguistics when I tried it before.

Replies

Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>