Tr: Re: boustrophedon (was: Atlantis II)

Oups! should have been sent to the list. I don't know if you have the same
problem, but each time I want to reply to a post of Claudio, the 'reply-to'
address is set to his own address. I often forget to change it. Sorry Claudio.

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En réponse à claudio <claudio.soboll@...>:

> well the human body is symmetrical. really ?
> not quite..
> how about solving this with an elegant metaphor-term:
> "heart-side" and "non-heart-side" ? :-)
Nice metaphor. Maybe I should use it for one of my conlangs as the origin of the

names for "right" and "left" (maybe respectively "liver-side" and "heart-side",
in order not to have a negation :) ). I think Narbonósc is a good candidate. it
is full of things like that already, and has quite a few language registers
which use different words (like names of months and days are different depending

on whether they are used by the people (and whether they are christians or not!)

and by the church and/or the administration). For instance, the original Latin
words DEXTRA and LIVA could gradually lose place among common people, while they

will stay for official/religious matters. Among common people, "liver-side" and
"heart-side" would be used instead. Now I have to come with words for "side",
"liver", "heart", and the outcomes of DEXTRA and LIVA :)) .

> for such things it would be neat if the marker for a negation
> ("non-/not-/un-/dis") would be inflected instead of affixed (like
> esperanto). why?
> because a longer word is inferior for the human brain. contradict me
> if you like :-) but.. we like to use shorter words in general.
> so it would damage equality of the negated and the not-negated term.
>
I agree with you, and I think that why common terms usually have unrelated
contraries with about the same size (cf. big vs. small, thin vs. thick, French
grand/petit, etc...). For less common terms, the fact that they are used less
often makes the loss of equality less important (also, they are usually longer
words, so one syllable more is usually not that much :) ).

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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