Re: Worthwhile Engelang Goal

Hi!

Rene's posting reminded me to answer, too:

David J. Peterson wrote:
>...
> Though, another idea I'm having too late is showing where a given
> conlanger creates their *own* sound symbolism.
>...
> Anyway, have any others done things like this?  Or perhaps a
> better question: Those who have done this (intentionally or
> unintentionally), would you care to share? ...
Ok, I lied.  No, I simplified... :-P

In Tyl Sjok, some of the vocab is indeed constructed instead of
randomised.  I just couldn't resist, it seems. :-)

Words starting with j- indicate sentients, humans, or related
concepts, and pronouns.  Further, the pronoun's vowel quality is
constructed.  The vowel 'far away' from the speaker makes 'you' and
the one closest makes 'I/we/me'.  The one in between make
'he/she/it/they'.  So you get:

   je - you
   jo - I/we
   ja - he/she/it/they

The sentient words:

   jan - man
   jas - woman
   jal - old person              jul - parent
   jat - young person, child     jut - son, daughter
   jax - spouse, husband, wife   jux - brother, sister

Further, Tyl Sjok has

   jet  - to love
   jes  - ghost, spirit, mind, intelligence; to think
   jyku - heart, spirit
   juna - family
   jyx  - person, someone
   jun  - body

Yet, there are exceptions:
   jetys - cherry

I think that's about the construction and symbolism.

As one can see, introducing symbolism introduces bias -- something I
wanted to reduce.  But I just noticed that 'jun' fits in the 'jul,
jut, jux' series and by analogy, one might think it relates to 'jan'.
Although it's pure coincidence, it's clearly against my own
construction goals for that languages.

I should've only used the random generator. :-)

The problem was that when I did that to decide the words for

   'man' and 'woman'

(I chose them by random in that order) the two results were

   'il' and 'la'.

No-one would've believed they were randomised, so I started
constructing bias-free words...

**Henrik

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