Re: Greenberg's universals

On Sat, Sep 09, 2000 at 08:15:34AM -0400, Jim Hopkins wrote:
[snip]
> That may have a lot to do with the way that I created Druni.  Basically I
> took features that I liked from all the languages that I knew.  Then I
> fleshed it all out by creating words that had the type of sound that I liked.
>  Obviously, a very amateur way of doing things but I am happy with the result.
[snip]

Heh, I'm doing my conlang in a similar way too. I start with a
construction that is in a language I know but isn't yet expressible in my
conlang, then I think about how speakers of my conlang would express it
(this is where the conculture influence comes in -- but of course, it's
more of a what-I-like-my-conlang-to-have thing), and then, if necessary,
I'd coin new words needed for these constructions.

Coining words have a roughly two-part process for me: first, because my
conlang associates vowels and consonants with different philosophical
connotations in the conculture, I first have to pick which syllables I
want to use for the new word; and then I try to come up with a
nice-sounding word that at least remotely resembles its meaning, as far as
vowel/consonant connotations are concerned.

(Of course, the vowel connotation part may be superfluous, since
inflection for nouns in my conlang is done by vowel contouring which
almost completely wipes out the identity of the original vowel in the word
stem! :-)


T