Re: Conlanging with constraints

Kelenala, a language of mine, was designed to be a fully functional
creole composed of nothing but the words in a wordlist, seen
below:

<http://dedalvs.free.fr/kelenala/wordlist.html>

An example of the result of this is the TMA system:

<http://dedalvs.free.fr/kelenala/tma.html>

Short version: in the original word list, there are no tense markers,
or anything of the kind.  Instead, I used locative prepositions to
fill in, plus some other strategies.

-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

On Feb 16, 2008, at 12∞59 AM, Sai Emrys wrote:

> I'm considering a topic for a talk at a future LCC, about conlanging
> with constraints.
>
> A literary allusion that comes to mind is that of the Abbe in Count of
> Monte Cristo, responding to the future Count's suggestion that as a
> free man is inventiveness might have known no bounds, to say that it
> were the bounds themselves that made him inventive.
>
> Drushek, Kēlen, and Toki Pona are some examples that come to mind
> offhand as being in some sense formed by the constraints within which
> they flourish - voicelessness, verblessness, and complicatedlessness
> (hee).
>
> What are other examples?
>
> How have you experienced your conlanging as being influenced (for
> better or for worse) by constraints imposed upon it, of whatever
> source? What constraints do you have, and whence derived? Why have you
> imposed them? What constraints have you considered trying?
>
> Please consider this a completely open-ended question (i.e. pretend I
> asked you the right question to elicit the most interesting answer
> :-P).
>
> Thanks,
>  Sai
>
> P.S. If you would be interested in *giving* this talk, please contact
> me at through the official lcs@conlang.org address. I'm not yet sure
> whether I would like to do it myself (in a way that I'd be confident
> was good enough), and I have no particular possessiveness about the
> topic - I'd just like to see it explored in some depth at an LCC,
> 'cause I think it'd be interesting.