Re: Vocab lists

On Sunday 22 June 2003 03:54 pm, Alex Fink wrote:
> >Hi,
> >In the past people have posted urls to various lists of basic vocbulary.
> > Those have been fairly useful. What I could really use, however, is a
> > corpus of sentences comprised of that basic vocabulary (and only that
> > basic vocabulary). The vocab exercises have been somewhatly useful in
> > this respect. However, I'm thinking of something closer to the kinds of
> > sentences that appear in linguistics books. Good example sentences. Lots
> > of 'em. Thanks,
> >-Sylvia
>
> I've often longed for a similar thing.  It would be nice to have a
> collection of sentences which exemplify particular bits of grammar, like "I
> thought this thread was dead" for complement clauses and "the cow jumped
> over the moon" for 'relational expressivity' that are going around now, and
> all the better if the vocabulary is simple.  I'd be particularly interested
> in sentences that any of you found difficult to translate into your conlang
> for whatever reason (other than the vocab), or that illustrate interesting
> features of your conlangs (to give an example, I translated "between a cat
> and a hare" as
> der     rakau   ka   weneu
> between cat.LOC from hare.LOC
> I didn't use <an> "and" because it tends only to be used where it could
> 'distribute': <der rakau an weneu> would be like <der rakau an der weneu>,
> as if whatever the clause was modifying was between each of them
> separately.)
>
> Anyway, if nobody knows about an existing website which has a collection of
> these, I'd be eager to create one.  So do any of you have any such
> sentences?
>
> Alex
I guess I'll start going through all those linguistics books again, and see
what I can find.

Some I found from literature, that may not be quite appropriate, but...:

Glendower:
     I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur:
     Why, so can I, or so can any man;
     But will they come when you do call for them?
               - Shakespeare, Henry IV, part 1, Act III, Scene 1

 "Of course, a certain number of scientists have to go mad, just to keep the
tradition alive."
               - Matt Ruff, Fool on the Hill

 "His movements could be called cat-like, except that he did not stop to spray
urine up against things."
               - Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

"From the way you attack your consonants as if they were an enemy swordsman
and swallow your vowels as if they were a light snack, I would judge that you
were raised inthe East. is that not so?"
                - Sethra Lavode to Morrolan
                -Steven Brust, Lord of Castle Black

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com