Re: basic vocab

On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, dirk elzinga wrote:

> When mapping meanings to roots, I found myself unconsciously selecting
> certain types of roots over others (eg; roots ending in -u are not as
> common in Tepa as roots ending in other vowels, though there is not
> phonotactic prohibition against it). This process has given Tepa a
> perhaps more natural feel. In fact, I'm wondering now if it wouldn't
> have been better (if more tedious) to create words on the fly rather
> than selecting from a automatically generated list. It certainly would
> have revealed some interesting things about my phonotactic
> predilections ...
I create words for Telek on the fly, and it seems to work pretty well,
except for a couple problems.  One is that I find the words too influenced
by natlangs I'm familiar with; that is, I tend to neglect possible
patterns if they do not occur in the natlangs I know.  That's a bad thing
IMHO.  Then a start creating words to compensate, and end up making too
many words that are "strange".  I end up replacing most the "strange"
words, because they don't feel right.  Still, I think they end up better
than pulling them out of Langmaker (I recently deleted the program, since
it wasn't useful for my style).  I wrote Telek specific program once too,
but the words it generated were likewise bad, and I haven't used it for a
while now.

Marcus