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Re: Verb order in Montreiano

From:jesse stephen bangs <jaspax@...>
Date:Monday, April 2, 2001, 22:24
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