Re: Results of Poll by Email No. 24

On Sunday 02 March 2003 12:54 pm, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:

> On a sidenote: I agree with Peter that there is something odd about
the fact
> that word building seems to enjoy so little popularity among
conlangers.
> But on the other hand, I admit that an ardent a posteriori conlanger
like yours
> truly is in a slightly more comfortable position than those who have
to make up
> everything from scratch. As a matter of fact, the hunt for PIE or
Common Slavic
> roots takes more effort than the (sometimes rather automatic) process
of
> converting them into words...
>
> Jan
I spent most of today adding words to the Trade Speech lexicon (which is
now up on the website, though it's not in any order, not even random).


Mostly syntactic glue and a few nominal and verbal roots, so I can
actually give example sentences now when I write about the syntax.

How to build up an alien language vocabulary:
1. determine the phonology and write a perl program that will spew out
random syllables and words in approximately correct patterns
2. figure out some of the grammatic structures and make lists of items
needed (pronouns, prepositions, directions, color words, etc.)
3. filter the results of 1. to add additional syllable constraints
(including human pronouncability, if desired)
4. Dowse with a pendulum to map some of the results of phase 3 to the
lists produced in phase 2. (Argue with the pendulum when appropriate.)
5. Tweak the resulting tables SLIGHTLY to make things a little more
systematic within classes such as pronouns. Be careful: if things make
too much sense in human terms, you may be wiping out the alienness.(I
haven't done this step yet...)

I may need to re-balance the phonological system a bit as I add more
lexical items... the vowel distribution feels a little off




--
Elyse Grasso

www.data-raptors.com/cherani/tradespeech.html