Re: Fickleness

In a message dated 1/26/2003 6:34:50 AM Pacific Standard Time,
faceloran@JUNO.COM writes:


> Iomgra!
>
> I find it difficult to keep working on a language for more than fifty or
> sixty words. (But then there's my near-marriage to Sturnan....) I was
> wondering if anyone has found a way to get past that stage that's perhaps
> a little more fun than just sticking it out, and how many of you have
> managed to stick it out.
>
> Amraga,
> Wright.
 Some suggestions:

 1. Work on a large number of noun declensions for your language and try to
get at least one sample noun for every declension created.
 2. Create a complete system of names for colors.
 3. Try to name every system you can think of.
 4. Try to find a verb for every verb class, and invent new verb classes if
it will fit into your conlang. Something like Japanese's yoBimasu, moCHimasu,
tsuGimasu, kiKimasu, noMimasu, shiNimasu, toRimasu, sagaSHimasu, a_imasu,
tabe|masu should give you a lot of vocabulary to add.
 5. Try to answer five big questions that should tell you a lot about the
grammar and see how well you know them: Is it SVO, SOV, VSO, OSV, VOS or
totally non-word-order-based, is it prepositional or postpositional (or a
language that gets around adpositions by marking other parts of speech), do
adjectives come before or after nouns, how would a simple genitive (an
example denoting PROPERTY) be formed and in what order would they be, and how
would a yes/no question be formed? If you figure out any of these five things
that hasn't been figured out before, that could get you past a lot of
impasses.
 6. Focus on the conCULTURE instead of the conLANG for a while, which should
give you plenty of new word ideas for the items in the conculture.
 7. Take a "Dick and Jane" primer and see if you can translate the sentences.
This will get you through some basic structure development and you can have
fun snickering at the idiotic simplicity of the sentence level and Dick and
Jane's little world while you're at it.
 8. Just go about inventing the interjections. This should give you some idea
of the range of emotions expressed in the conculture, and perhaps the
absolute phonological limits.
 9. Look at the Babel Text pages and drool at the thought of the time when
you'll finally be able to put your own conlang's text up there with the best
of 'em.
 10. Invent a simple story in simple sentences for a mythological hero of
your conculture. He is born of some monster. He is abandoned in childhood. He
acquires supernatural powers from the gods or simply from a great deed. He
falls in love. He develops hubris or perhaps just finally meets an unbeatable
foe. He dies.
 11. Ask yourself what the view of time is in your conculture's philosophy.
This should answer any doubts about how verb tenses (or other tenses?) should
work.
 12. Decide exactly how unusual (or counterintuitive) you want your conlang
to be, and throw in the bizarrest, most novel features you can think of.
 13. Build a 3-D pyramid from the land of your conlang's speakers and write
messages on it in your conlang (in your con-script, if the language doesn't
use the Roman alphabet). Think about what you'd want to write about on a
pyramid.
 14. Imagine your conlang's speakers speaking the language while still at
Neolithic level, as they go through a whole day . . . then through a whole
season . . . then through a year. What would they have to say from beginning
to end? The sophistication of their thought and sentences would probably
increase later on.
 15. Make a con-script, if your language would have it. (If your language is
simply a Romance altlang that stays reasonably close to the original
locations, it probably wouldn't use any alphabet other than the Roman.)