> On 5/24/06, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
> > It's interesting to watch the "war of the words"
> > developing on the Kalusa free-for-all site!
> >
> > Some are offering stict CV words and some are using
> > consonant clusters. There are a lot of reduplicating
> > words emerging, and a lot of people voting them up or
> > down. Some are using short words and others are
> > offering longer, more comoplicated words. Which will
> > prevail?
>
> I've generally been trying to avoid using phonemes
> or clusters that others haven't already used.
>
> > Some are compounding words to create new words and
> > others are insisting on using particles with the root
> > words for derivation. Some are attaching suffixes
> > while others are attaching particles with a hyphen,
> > and still others setting the particles apart from the
> > root word.
>
> > It's almost as if there are two "dialects" of Kalusa
> > developing that I've been thinking of as "Slavic
> > Kalusa" and "polynesian Kalusa". The two seem quite
> > alien to each other, and the words don't seem to mesh
> > together in a single sentence.
>
> I vaguely see what you mean, but can you be
> more specific? The isolating and agglutinating
> trends are in conflict, as is a priori coinage vs.
> borrowing from Indo-European.
>
> > By this weekend I hope to have a new page with the
> > first 100 standardized and graded sentences that will
> > allow visitors to offer alternate translations and
> > vote on the various versions. Once that happens it
> > will be interesting to watch the battles over what the
> > "true" translation of such common, yet currently hotly
> > contested words and "man", "father", and "mother" will
> > be. Which "man/woman" faction will prevail, the
> > "ezikize/kalemaze" faction or the "andru/adesa"
> > faction?
>
> When I noticed that there were two words for "man"
> in the corpus, I added a sentence that used both
> of them in different senses; it looks like it has had
> some influence, but now somone has added another
> sentence that makes another distinction between
> the two words glossed as 'man' in early sentences.
> Also, there are at least three words for "woman":
> kalemaze, adesa, and guniko/guniku (the last
> seems to mean either "old woman" or "grandmother").
>
> > Will "da" become the definite article that some are
> > trying to make it as in "Ma vito da palu", (I see the
> > cat.) or will it be reserved for the meaning "the one
> > which is..." as in "Ma vito da ruba" (I see the red
> > one.)?
>
> All the "vito" sentences with a ranking of >=100
> have "SUBJ vito es OBJ". "vito" seems to want its object
> marked with "es".
>
> > Will "kia" be reserved for linking adjectives to
> > nouns, or will it be used as the possesive link as
> > well? The partilce "a" is trying to become exclusively
> > the possesive connector as in "palua a ma" as opposed
> > to "palu kia ma", but "kia" as the possesive is
> > putting up a good fight. Which will win out?
>
> All the handful of "a" sentences currently have CQ rankings
> below 50.
>
> There are 330 sentences in the corpus as of now.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
>
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
>