Re: Using METONYMS; was: O Duty (Was: "If")

Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:

> Translating "Verimak" has reminded me how impressed I used to be with
> Elizabethan writing, especially Shakespeare's penchant for metonymy and
> personification.  I had always thought that that was something I wanted
> to achieve in Teonaht poetic diction... not just to speak of love, but
> to invoke Love as an entity, a being capable of enfolding you in her
> arms; fortune as an entity that can turn her back on you, make a face
> at you; prosperity that can strew coins in front of you; the muse that
> can breathe inspiration into you, and so forth.  Not just poetry would
> profit from these metaphors, but everyday expressions.=20
/snip/
> I was wondering what some of the rest of you
> conlangers
> did with personification in everyday expression... and better yet...
> metonymy or senechdoche... making the part stand for a whole, or a
> related object stand for a concept:=20
/snip/

Well, not much over here... I really didn't stop to
think about that. I don't want to create anything and
then show it to you saying "See? I thought of that before!"
But these things I already have might be on topic:

_gaufog_ "locust", _g=E1ufongas_ "devastation, poverty, barren land"
_ieden_ "silk", _iednis_ "the courting rituals"
_thasat_ "waterfall", _thasteks_ "exhilaration"

_qoft_ "hard, strong" + _idan_ "hand" + -on (agent) =3D=20
=3D _qoftidnon_ "dictator, tyrant"

en- (transitive/causative) + _eq=E1l_ "string, link, binding" =3D
=3D _enqaltas_ "(the institution of) marriage"

and also

_qlon_ "big" + _eq=E1l_ =3D _qlonqalas_ "the family"

Pantato _untu_ "enemy, adversary, rival" >> borrowed as
_untur_ (intrusive -r) "the enemy, the Enemy" (appropriate
to call the Devil, or a Sauron-type guy :).

/snip/
> then what for religion (Teonaht is eclectic in its embracing
> Christianity,
> Islam, Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, and retaining its own pagan
> religions--
> there are Jews in Tsorelai Mundya, but they are not Teonim)?
In Thaqulm, the god of the swamps and marshes (and the
patron of the rice farmers) is Sk=F2im, and one of his
avatars is Iriket, a little frog. So I think I could
have "frog" (_kr=ECk_, which is onomatopoeic BTW) mean
"wet climate and rains" (favoring the rice crops).
(I remember seeing a Mayan glyph for "rain" with the
form of an upside-down frog). In the same line, _idnis_
"the hand" would probably mean "the touch of death" of
Srothlon, the Carrier of Death.


--Pablo Flores