Re: Basic vocabulary when starting a conlang

Quoting bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>:

>  --- Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...> wrote: >
>      What do you think is the basic vocabulary to
> > start a conlang?
> >
> >         I was thinking that there are a few verbs
> > that, because of its everyday use or significance, should
> > be the first to be "created": to be, to have, to live, to
> > die, to go, to come. There should also be a few basic words,
> > as: man, woman, child, life, death, sky, earth, water, fire,
> > god. And of course, the basic personal pronouns: I, you,
> > he/she/it, we, you, they.
>
> not necessarily. if you have a conculture with either
> no sexes or more than two, then man and woman aren's
> useful concepts. bac isn't based on a conculture, but
> as i'm atheist it doesn't have a word for god
Pray, tell, why should there be any congruence between your
language and reality if you're positing no culture to go
along with the language?

I have had difficulty with rationalizations about language
structure that do not make reference to some specific
kind of social interaction, since the very notion of language
implies some kind of interaction between distinct beings.
Considering that *every* human culture has pondered metaphysical
verities of some kind, and the vast majority reference that
through unseen yet animate forces, it's difficult to imagine
a human language where the generic notion of "god" (in some
form) is never needed for communication.

(Of course, you may ignore this if you do not intend
Bac for a human audience.)

> ( it
> borrows specific religions' terms when it needs to
> refer to their deities, and would probably nick the
> latin |deo| if referring to the western concept of god
Surely you mean "latinate", since the Latin word for "god"
is _deus_ (_deo_ only in the ablative and dative singular).

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637

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