Re: Quick sound change plot

>From: Christopher B Wright <faceloran@...>
>
>Andy sekalge:
> >Your Very Basic Root List... how did you compile it?  I'm making my
>first
> >one and I just wondered if it is supposed to be such a pain in the
>butt...
>
>It is a pain in the butt if you try to do a lot at once. Think of
>abstracts (not necessarily things you can't touch or see, just things
>that encompass more than one object; television would be a bad example,
>and valley / lowland / river would be a good example). Once you have a
>bunch of abstracts listed one at a time, think which ones would be
>linked. An easy link would be "mother" and "kind, gentle". Not all of
>them must be linked, but many will be.
>
>Just be very general. Then, when you make words from the VBRL (tm),
>combine different roots and radically alter them.
>
>I'm a novice giving people advice. It's the lame leading the blind....
>
>Laimes,
>Wright.
On the contrary - that helps a lot.  I've wondered if it wouldn't be easier
to go one step at a time... my approach so far has been to compile lists of
roots.  I started by creating a list of root concepts, based mostly on a few
key Chinese terms I needed for my language.  Later, I took the Longman
defining vocabulary and started grouping terms by part of speech.  Verbs and
nouns remained what they were, but if I could find terms that were related
(eg. to agree, agreement, agreeable), then I put them in a single record in
my spreadsheet and called it a root.  It was taking _FOREVER_ - and I hadn't
even gotten to combining synonyms into a single term.

So I put that on hold and tried a different approach - I looked for lists of
greek and latin root words on the net.  When I found a few that looked
pretty comprehenseive, I put them all together in a spreadsheet.  This
method looks much more promising - since I was working with roots to begin
with instead of whole words, the initial list wasn't so damn big; it was
also nice because I could begin to see the roots of English.  Its still
taking a while, however (eliminating duplicate entries, and categorizing
them to track duplicate meanings).  < I don't have a website, but I plan to
put the list on the net when it's finished, if anybody is interested in
hosting it >

Your suggestion is apt - I perhaps have bitten off a bit more than I can
chew; starting small and making roots as I need them would be easier.  I am
just worried that I would end up having to re-invent vocablulary.... oh...
but that could be good because as I added new roots that would be a source
of new synonyms and the language would be more natural... hmmm.... I must
think about this...

Andy








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