Re: generate etymological roots automatically (was: Re: poll 30? (long...Sal ...

John L. Leland sikyal:

> I have a system for generating alien names in Traveller by assigning vowels
> and consonants number values and rolling dice.  I assign different
> vowel-consonant patterns to different races, so the names of all members of a given race
> are visibly similar. Of course, again, this is more regular than most natlangs,
> though some of the Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) fall into
> fairly preditable patterns.
> John Leland
This is a fairly good way to generate etymological roots, though I find
that it doesn't work as well for "output" languages. I generated a
significant chunk of my Proto-Yivrian vocabulary this way, using
LangMaker, and found that they work pretty well when sent through a
carefully-designed set of sound changes.

Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"