Re: Kele: An Idea for Participatory Language Creation
| From: | David Peterson <thatbluecat@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, March 4, 2004, 7:20 |
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Nik wrote:
<<Interesting idea! So, how "drastic" are we allowed to make the
changes? Like, I can see some rather dramatic sound changes that could
cut down quite a few words, and perhaps create a heavily agglutinating
or fusional language.>>
As drastic as you want, provided you can *explain* it. So, here's an
example of a wacky derivation:
slaZô "lawn mower" (where the circumflex indicates a falling tone)
salasi + oko > salaziogo salaZiogo > salaZogo > salaZoGo > salaZô: > slaZô: >
slaZô
salasi = "grass"; oko = "cut"
As you can see, each of the sound changes above is a fairly realistic sound
change (though contour tones don't always develop when a consonant gets lost
between a stressed and unstressed vowel [it is happening in Spanish]). So
there is a story about you get from "salasi oko" to "slaZô". And there are
even wilder sound changes about, so conceivably you can do anything. As I said,
thoug, you have to make sure you can explain it--that's part of the fun. :)
-David
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