Re: poll 30? (long...Sal at her most voluble)

BP:
> Actually I let the computer help me with vocab building, and sometimes it
> presents me with pleasant surprises.  The oldest of all roots in Sohlob is
> *tyasl-; impf. _saehl_, perf. _sohl_, inf. _sahl_; "flow, well", found both
> the name of the lang and in the nominalized form _sohl_ meaning a large
> body of water -- used both in referring to "The White Sohl", which is the
> great lake in the desert around which the Sohlob culture is centered, and
> to "The Black Sohl", which is the ocean.  Now recently the computer came up
> with a new root *tyulsy-; impf. _sihl_, perf. _suhl_, inf. _sohl_; "wrap,
> enfold", the meaning of which fits remarkably well with the "ocean" sense
> of "sohl"!
Very nice! Perhaps you have hit on one possible solution to the downside
of automatically generated vocab, viz the flavour of excessive arbitrariness.
That is, generate the etymological roots automatically, & then run them
through regular sound changes and other processes such as analogy,
folk-etymology, metanalysis, etc. etc., and add them into compounds and
other derivatives that in turn are run through the same processes.
There'd still be a lot of work involved, but it would overcome the agony
of inventing the word in the first place, while at the same time resulting
in the sort of lexical patterning that gives words their sense of fitness.

--And.

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