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Re: Lexicons and Langauge Borrowing

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Tuesday, March 16, 1999, 21:16
Irina Rempt wrote:
> I'm curious how other people come up with words - I know some people > who can sit down and *make* them, but if I try that I usually have to > throw away ninety-five percent of the result. Most of the time, if I > need a word for something, I dip into my stock of unused stems and > consider them one by one until I hit one that fits.
I usually just make up words, at random (altho they sometimes show unconcious influences from natlangs). Sometimes, I'll adapt an English word or a name, with a certain distortion protocol. For instance, I have a friend named "Laura", and so I adapted her name, as sla'na (s- = gender 3), meaning "friend". No specific reason for r --> n, just a slight "disguising". To adapt her name to my phonology would probably be tLu'dya (t- = gender 1), /tlu.ra/ -- "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father was hanged." - Irish proverb http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-name: NikTailor