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Re: GROUPLANG: cases (was: noun and verb roots)

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Monday, October 19, 1998, 9:45
At 01:56 18/10/98 GMT, you wrote:
>On Sat, 17 Oct 1998 00:12:04 -0300, Pablo Flores ><fflores@...> wrote: > >>We are. I've seen this thing getting too logical too, but I think >>it's necessary. When I make a conlang, I start by drawing a structure >>that is completely symmetrical and quite logical. *Then* when I've >>gained some perspective and I'm more at loose, I begin twisting >>little things here and here, adding irregularities, using features >>for functions they didn't originally had, etc. > >Hmm... That brings up an interesting question. How do other conlangers >build their languages? I've always done it by starting with short phrases >and building up from there. I figure out how a language says "bats fly" or >"the cat saw the mouse" or "the moon is made of green cheese" before >working up to more complex sentences. If I don't have quite the right noun >case or verb aspect for what I want to express, I'll add, rearrange, or >expand others to fit. > >
I actually do exactly the opposite. My ideas are grammatical, so I create the syntax (with some words to make examples), and when it's finished, I recreate it from what I did to rearrange what, I think, doesn't work (in fact I just improve it in order to find it "self-consistent", what it is generally not after the first creation). That's why my languages often lack a vocabulary. Christophe Grandsire |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G. "R=E9sister ou servir" homepage: http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html