Re: Oligosynthesis

On 2/3/06, 轡虫 <snapping.dragon@...> wrote:
> I'm about to sketch out the basic morphology of a language that I'm
> working on for a friend who writes fantasy stories, and I thought it
> would be the perfect opportunity to play with oligosynthesis.
>
> I don't really know where to start as far as researching to get a good
> idea of what would make good  roots and affixes, though. Does anyone
> have any suggestions?
You might look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage

It seems to be a theory listing a set of basic concepts in terms
of which all other concepts should be definable.

Toki Pona is an oligo-isolating language; you might look at
its list of words and the way it uses phrases (or compounds,
depending on one's analysis) to express more complex ideas.

For derivation possibilities, see Gary Shannon's list of
derivation functions:

http://fiziwig.com/functions.txt

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm