Re: Word Construction for a New Conlang

On Wed, 7 Jul 1999 22:20:21 -0600, Ed Heil <edheil@...> wrote:

>I'm finding myself in a state of throwing away all the beginnings of
>conlangs I've started and wanting to start over again.  And I'm just
>not sure how to start, so I turn to you (pl) for help...
Yep, that's about where I am right now. Not so much throwing away as
setting aside, but basically starting over.

>It's the phenomenon of making words and making phonologies.  Think
>back, if you can, to when you first started on your conlangs (or first
>started on a new project)...  How did you go about making a phonology
>and then making words?
>
>Let's assume for the moment that the thing to do is (1) settle on a
>phonology and phonotactics and (2) make words according to that
>pattern.
Well, if I go back to when I first started conlanging, it was a pretty
disorganized process. Recently I've settled into a pattern of using bold
face for all the word lists, which allows me to change the phonology =
rather
easily in the initial unstable stages of the language. (I can globally
replace all the bold face characters without affecting the English text.)

>Do the rest of you start with this kind of harcore linguistics
>description and proceed to specific words, or vice versa, or somewhere
>in between, or some cycle between the two, or something entirely
>different?  Where did your words come from?
I haven't found any single method that works, which is why I leave the
phonology somewhat incomplete until I've played around enough with the
morphology and syntax to figure out the interactions and the overall =
sound
of the language. But I usually have a pretty good idea what kind of
phonology I want for a language to begin with, and work out the details
later.

--
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin