Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture

On 11/18/05, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Jim Henry wrote:
> > On 11/17/05, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> > Volapük and Speedwords
> > have this kind of idiomatic compound
> > in even greater abundance,
> > if my impression is correct.
>
> I don't know about Volapük, but certainly Speedwords has them in
> abundance. See Rick Harrison's "Language Profile: Speedwords"
...> and my own pages:

Yes, I think it was from your pages I learned
most of what I know about Speedwords.

In Volapük there are a fair number of constructions
like:

pen == pen
penön == to write [not just with a pen]
pened == a letter [not any written matter]


> > gjâ-zym-byn has several idiomatic
> > compound words, mostly built with
> > suffixes similar to Esperanto's "-um";
> > each such suffix has a general way of deriving
> > one meaning from another,
>
> Sounds like Speedwords suffixes  :)
Or Volapük suffixes -- except I'm
honest up front about the suffixes
being deliberately vague like E-o's
"um", so you know (or would know,
if for bizarre reasons of their own
anyone besides me ever decides
to learn gzb) that when you see
one of these you'll probably have
to look it up in the lexicon. -- Though
maybe the root and suffix will give
you clues for guessing at its
meaning in context than would an _a priori_
monomorphemic word, or a
word derived _a posteriori_ from
a source language you're not familiar with.

> > lately.  I've been thinking about a possible
> > new project, and have been typing up some
> > scattered handwritten notes about it,
> > but I'm not quite ready to post here
> > about it yet.
> I know the feeling only too well! But in my case, I have specifically
> ruled out idiomatic compounding from Piashi, it being an engelang.
That makes sense.  I suspect, however, that
idiomatic compounds -- as long as they're clearly
marked as such like "ventumi" (to ventilate)
rather than purely opaque like "eldoni"
-- are on average easier to learn, or to
guess at in context, than _a priori_ words
or _a posteriori_ words that are so unfamiliar
to a particular learner that they might as
well be  _a priori_.  gzb is, in part,
an experiment to test this -- though obviously
not a well-controlled experiment.
In fact, I reckon this question would be one
of the easiest aspects of IAL or engelang
design to test cheaply; but perhaps
that's a topic for the other list, or offline
discussion...?

So, I try to find a way to form a clear,
non-idiomatic compound from existing
gzb roots whenever possible; but
when I can't figure out how to do that,
I often prefer coining an idiomatic compound
with one of the known-to-be-idiomatic
suffixes, over coining a new _a priori_
word.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field

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