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Re: Word Construction for a New Conlang

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Friday, July 9, 1999, 2:06
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