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Re: Conlanging techniques

From:Boudewijn Rempt <bsarempt@...>
Date:Thursday, April 5, 2001, 9:57
On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Bjorn Kristinsson wrote:

> First of all, you've been great! :D Must be the friendliest list I've ever > subscribed to :) > > Now to my question, I was wondering if you had any conlanging techniques to > share. Like, do you use computers much and what software do you use? Do you > follow the now-surely-famous The Language Construction Kit guidelines? Or > what? I personally have found it very difficult making up a whole phonetic > system with restrictions and the lot before starting with the actual > lexicon, and likewise I find it difficult forming a grammar after making up > a lexicon, but then it's not easier at all doing it the other way around :P >
I have used a database with a CGI interface for lexicons for some time; before that I had a few scripts that used grep(1), but I've spent the last two years, not conlanging, but developing a tool for the compleat conlanger: kura (http://www.valdyas.org/linguistics). It includes modules for lexica, texts and so on, and I now working on a docbook xml exporter. However, people tend to find it a challenge to install Kura and everything it depends on, even on Windows. Nevertheless, I'm quite prepared to talk anyone through an installation. I'm now helping a real linguist working on Beiyou to get Kura to install on Redhat 7.0. I've never seen a version of Linux that broken before. It reminds me irresistably of SCO. Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org