Re: New member with a few questions.

Hi, John, welcome to the list!

Let me skip down a ways first...

John wrote:
<<
I've read interviews here and there, but information on the subject of
conlangs is difficult to come across.
 >>

This remains a very unfortunate issue.  If you put the info on
conlanging on the web onto a scroll, the scroll could probably
wrap its way around the earth many times over.  Why is it so
hard to find?!  What are we doing wrong?  :*(

One thing you did was you found the list.  How did you find the
list?  And did you come across langmaker.com?  The site hasn't
been updated for a few months, due to technical problems, but
when it's up, it's updated every day with tons of information
about specific conlangs, and conlanging in general.  If there's
something on the web about conlangs, there should be a link
to it on langmaker.com somewhere.

Another board that I'm not a member of but which I understand
is fairly large is the Zompist board.  It can be
found...uh...somewhere...
Someone here has the link, I'm sure.  I couldn't find it on zompist.com.
Since we're there, though, this is also a useful resource:

http://zompist.com/kit.html

That's Mark Rosenfelder's language construction kit.  Lots of good
info there.

Okay, now back to your actual language...

John wrote:
<<
Empty words are words with an implied connotation. A word can seem to
mean "light" but until it has the proper qualifier in the form of a
suffix
bound word it has no meaning.
 >>

Do you mean something like noun classifiers applied to content-filled,
but unusable bases?  I.e., something like this:

http://dedalvs.free.fr/zhyler/nclasses.html

If so, sounds cool.  :)

Two questions come to mind:

(1) You make the distinction between empty words and bound
words, but I'm not sure I understand the distinction.  Is it the
case that you have nouns which just have a fixed meaning, but
also nouns that need qualifiers/noun class markers, and the
same with adjectives, or are empty words neither nouns nor
adjectives?

(2) You said the difficult part is getting the language to be precise.
How so, specifically?  Do you mean as far as you're getting words
for "dog", "flower" and "man", but not "doberman", "violet" and
"alchemist"?  If that's the case, further affixation (or new bases)
can be your friend.  Or did you mean something different...?

Also, when posting to the list, it always helps to show examples
from your language, because (a) that makes the examples
concrete, and (b) languages are kind of our thing; we like to
look at them.  ~:D

Your project sounds interesting, and further details would be
great.  Welcome, again, to the list!

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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