Re: making up words

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Sean M. Burke wrote:

> A question to all language constructors:  once you've settled on the
> phonology and phonotaxis of your language-in-progress, how do you go about
> making up the phonological forms of new words (as opposed to their meaning)?
I have found two different basic strategies successful:

1. I start out with a meaning, either a meaning more or less imported from
a natlang (this happens quite often when I'm trying to translate
something, or express something specific), or a meaning that just randomly
pops into my mind, and that I think my language should have.  Then I make
up a word that I think fit the meaning.  Sometimes I can do so
immediately, other times I must try and retry some times before I find the
"correct" word, and sometimes, very rarely, I forget about adding the word
to my language because I can't find an appropriate form for it.

I usually check the word for phonotactical correctness before adding it to
my lists.  If there is any conflict, I change either the word (often
simplifying a consonant cluster), or update the phonotactical rules.

Examples of words that came about this way are <cevin> /'SEvin/ 'dinner,
biggest meal of the day', <tak> /'tAk/ 'lightening', <ketea> /'kEtEA/ 'to
throw'.

2. I start with a word that randomly pops into my mind, and think about it
until I "know" what it means.  I find the words created this way to be my
best.  Examples are: <ban> /'bAn/ 'locus, location/, <entik> /'Entik/
'being', <mak> /'mAk/ 'bubble of air', <vel> /'vEl/ 'cypher'.

Note that this is only the methods I use for creating content words (nouns
and verbs).  I haven't made structure words in a while now, but at least
with some of them I try to follow a pattern, such as the inflection of the
irregular verb "to be", where the past tense ends mostly with -s, and the
perfect tense ends mostly with -v.

-arj