Onomastics and taxonomies; Was, LeGuin; Was: 12th-century conlang

I was only copying Hildegard's categories... of course you're all free
to change them if you want.  It's relatively easy to cover many of the
"family" concept with twenty words, but for the Natural World,
twenty will be a fairly uncomprehensive selection!  Same with
the parts of the body and diseases.  Do you want to be the first
to take a shot at this, Irina?  <G>


Irina Rempt wrote:

> On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Sally Caves wrote:
>
> > Let's see a list from some of you with at least twenty items
> > in each of these categories:
> >
> >     1.  God, gods, angels, saints, and demons.
> >     2.  Human family relationships.
> >     3.  The parts of the body.
> >     4.  Diseases of the body.
> >     5.  Names relating to Church or Religion
> >     6.  Names relating to Secular Hierarchies, the parts of Government
> >     7.  The parts of trade and human craft.
> >     8.  Days, months, seasons of the year, hours, minutes.
> >     9.  The Quotidian things of life: clothing, houses, farming.
> >   10.  The parts of the Natural World.
> >
> > That would make two hundred words.  What a challenge!
>
> A 'wc' of my Valdyan-Dutch word list gives 1097 words so I should be
> able to come up with two hundred, but twenty in each category...! In
> English (also in Dutch) "father", "grandfather", "great-grandfather",
> "ancestor" are four different words, in Valdyan there's one word
> distinguished by different numerals; does that count as one or four?
Four, I would think.

> "Twins" in Valdyan is the dual of "child"; is that a separate word?
Yes!

> And are plants and animals part of the Natural World, or is that only
> for landscape and weather? What about things of the mind?
Well...Hildegard had subcategories.  Under "The Supernatural Order"(which is
my God, gods, etc.), she had "Man as a Spiritual Being," and
under that, "as believer, practitioner."  Bear in mind that these are
Schnapp's
categories.  Things of the mind for this medieval nun pertained almost
entirely to faith and theology.

Sally