Re: LUNATIC again

In message <Pine.A41.3.96.981109002351.9584A-
100000@...>, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
writes
>On Mon, 9 Nov 1998, Herman Miller wrote:
>
>> >Boy, I never thought we'd come up with such a good example of English
>> that is >subject to poor encoding by an unsophisticated conlanger.
>> Anyone still reading >this might look at their conlang to see whether
>> they can distinguish between >the possible senses of "invented" in ways
>> that English cannot.  Since English >does not make the distinction,
>> "invented" will usually be taken to mean "done".
>
>poor encoding, unsophisticated conlanger... criminently, LB, I just hate
>it when you introduce these damn value judgments.  You know, natural
>languages encode poorly.  Like English!!!  People grope towards different
>goals in their artlang making.  Not every conlang is lojban.
Well, I must admit that I'm not too concerned about whether my, er,
lang-thing is a code of English or not.  Words in the general area of
"invent" include:

#0922 polic (Vtr, Vin)      have an *idea (of), *invent
 (Vin): Have an idea
 En vas polic: S/he has lots of ideas, is *ingenious
 (Vtr): Have an/the idea of idea/acc
 En polic electye cara: S/he had the idea of an electric car
 En polic ya, vithasy' areconve: S/he had the idea of going to the
  seaside
 zenswa polic: be *original, have original ideas
 Enye cafransur vas zenswa polic: His/her paintings are very original
 policsu (N): *idea
 policyen (N): *inventive person, *ingenious person
 policyal (N): *inventor, ideas person
 policasi (N): *idealism (philosoph); policasial (N): *idealist
 cos polic (Vtr): give the idea of
 Falonsu Caralilaw cos polic ina electye caar: Speaking to Carali
  gave me the idea of an electric car

#0202 cedlec (Vtr, Vin)     *plan (to), *design
 (Vin): plan
 (Vtr): plan to thing-planned/acc
 Ant yelda ya cedlec shaliara: We need to plan the admission ceremony
 design thing/acc;
 En antlaw cedlec salaythye colota: S/he designed a beautiful house
  for us
 cedlecsu (N): plan, design

#2056 gal (Vtr)             *construct
 implication is: according to a plan.  Does not usually include
  buildings (colo)
 galsur (N): *structure (the physical object)
 galis (N): structure (ie, the plan on which it's based, the thing-
  to-construct)
 galisasi (N): *structuralism
 galsu (N): *construction (the act)

...and you could use each of these with a perfective modifier (la) if
you wish.  The glosses of the example sentences above are not complete;
for example "En antlaw cedlec salaythye colota" could just as well mean
"S/he is/was designing a beautiful house for us", unless you inserted a
"la".  So whether Elet Anta makes the distinction you want, I don't
really know.  It could if the speaker wanted, but it needn't.

I would say "In la polic Elet Antara" (I have conceived the idea of EA)
and "In la cedlec Elet Antara" (I have planned out EA) (mostly) but not
"In la gal Elet Antara" (I have constructed EA).  There is a "policsu"
of EA, and a "cedlecsu", but not as yet a complete "galsur". I'm not
sure which of these most closely corresponds to "invent".

<shrug> I do this for me, you know.  I read what other people write and
sometimes I snarf ideas, but really if I like it, it's justified as far
as I'm concerned.  Sorry.  In any case, I have an excuse: the scenario
of EA is that the speakers are a minority in a mostly English-speaking
community.  The language (sorry, thing) is bound to be influenced by
English, as are, for example, Welsh and Scots Gaelic.  This is the
internal justification for such forms as "galisasi"="structuralism".
The speakers of EA need a word to talk about structuralism, so they form
it fairly regularly from a nearby stem, and in imitation of English.
(The fact that this is a jolly sight easier for me than making an
intensive reading tour of French philosophy and then embedding the whole
essence of structuralism in a carefully-chosen sequence of EA morphemes
is also a consideration...)

That's also the reason for entries like this:

#2552 melan (N)             *melon
 following Eng, used also for *water melon: imisye melan
 {Eng}

Now I admit that this is a one-line gloss, and I should have put a
string of Latin botanical names indicating precisely which species of
fruits can be called "melan", but I didn't because I couldn't be
bothered.  More to the point, "melan" is a loan from English, and EA has
even borrowed the English phrase "water melon" and translated it to
"imisye melan", rather than having a separate word for it, as languages
sometimes do in countries where these fruits are common (eg, Spanish
melo'n, sandia). Therefore the implication that the semantic field
covered by "melan" is the same as the English "melon" is correct.

While we're at it, "antlaw" in my examples above mightn't mean "for us",
but "for a group of Anta people," and "in" mightn't mean "I" but "the
speaker".  That's because EA doesn't really have pronouns, a structural
difference which has semantic effects all over the place.

--
John Fisher   john@drummond.demon.co.uk   johnf@epcc.ed.ac.uk
Elet Anta website: http://www.drummond.demon.co.uk/anta/
Drummond ro cleshfan merec; fanye litoc, inye litoc