Re: PIE conlangs [was: Re: Weekly vocab #2]

At 8:53 AM +0100 04/11/02, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>--- Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>
>>  No; _shem_ is from PIE *dhghem- 'land, earth; human
>>  being' (this from the AHD of IE Roots; my source for
>>  most of the vocabulary).
>
>AHD? What is that? Until now, I have been gathering my
>PIE roots like a bird from here and there, but
>frankly, I could use something more extensive.
AHD = American Heritage Dictionary. They used to publish a separate
dictionary of PIE roots which contribute to Modern English
vocabulary. I found mine at a used bookstore for $4.00.

>  > There are other IE conlangs which depend in varying
>>  degrees on the reconstructions of PIE. I lost track
>>  of how many others have tried this. I remember Tom
>>  Wier's Degaspregos fondly; I think the name
>>  Degaspregos is based on the same root as Shemspreg.
>
>Not that much, I'm afraid. The ones I can recall just
>now: Talarian-Yllurian-Angeran, Aredos, Thosk,
>Calistan, and Vokhomos. Recently added to the list:
>Chris Wright's Sturnan and Hansu.
>Verdurian and its sister languages look quite
>Indo-European as well.
>Furthermore, I found a reference to something called
>"New Indo-European" or "Dhelsavek", but I couldn't
>find anything more about it than the name.
>In all modesty: my own interrelated Hattic and Askaic
>languages are quite good examples, as well.
Those numbers compare quite favorably with the Celtic-Romance blends
which are often discussed here as well.

>All the above languages can (to some degree, at least)
>be considered as hypothetical PIE offshoots. Both
>Degaspregos and Shemspreg are apparently much closer
>to the PIE roots; I seems to me, that they intend to
>be rather an effort to make PIE "usable" or something
>like that. If I understand you well, both were
>originally designed as a kind of IAL.
Yes. Shemspreg was begun in an attempt to satirize the political
correctness of modern IAL efforts which tried not to favor one
linguistic group over another. My thought was that if we go back to
PIE, then everyone is in the same boat (at least if your native
language is IE). But I spent too much work on it to keep considering
it a joke, so I began treating it as a real project.

I also included some fun phonological alternations and some
less-than-intuitive morphology (reduplication patterns which are
sensitive to the kinds of consonant clusters involved and idiomatic
usages of preverbs that aren't necessarily found in any IE language)
so those were also reasons not to consider it a potential IAL anymore.

The project is dormant now. I couldn't find a way to sustain it since
there are after all only so many reconstructed PIE roots, and I got
tired of trying to make compounds which were sensible (you try saying
'paper clip' in PIE!).

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                  Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

Man deth swa he byth thonne he mot swa he wile.
'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants.'

- Old English Proverb

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