Re: Verb order in Montreiano

Yoon Ha Lee sikayal:

> > The very first germs of a language are almost always a vague idea for me:
> > "I'd like to make an active lang," or "How about something with
> > German-like vowel ablaut?"  But once I actually make the language, I
>
> Huh.  :-p  I start culture-first and language-second, which may or may
> not be bass-ackwards.
I sometimes do that, as well.  I have a shepherd people that live in a
very mountainous area who don't have a language yet; I only know that the
people call themselves 'Noma', whose plural is 'Nomin," and that the word
for 'mountain' is 'gnap.'


> > always start with phonology, then do inflectional morphology.  The
> > morphology obviously depends a little bit on the syntax (is this nom/acc
> > or erg/abs or agt/pat?), but I start out with very little syntax.  I
> > usually do verbs first, but that varies.  Once I have the morphology I
> > work on nailing down the syntax, and then vocabulary comes last.  But once
> > I get really involved w/ the vocabulary, etc, any of the previous things
> > can change if I feel like I need it; Praçí in particular has changed cases
> > and word orders and syntax many times.
>
> Interesting.  Do you give yourself a few "sample words" to start with
> (before doing core vocab) to work with morphology?  I find it easier to
> "see" what's going on with even morphology *I've* invented when it's
> applied to an actual word, but that may be a peculiarity of my brain.  :-)
No, I do this too, but I usually don't even give my words meanings.  In
the German-ablaut language I mentioned earlier, I only have about five
words, corresponding to five noun classes, and none of them have meanings.
I'll figure it out later, though.

> Vocab is probably my favourite part of conlanging.  <embarrassed look>
Yuck.  I always find it extremely tedious.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton