Re: MeloChalaka

In a message dated 9/25/01 3:00:01 AM, florarroz@YAHOO.COM writes:

<< How are you doing it in Gweydr?  Can you be more
specific or give examples? >>

    Well, I realized that all the languages I had created, while
semantically, morphologically, phonologically, syntactically complex, were
missing something that made them seem less real.  And, of course, the answer
was history.  I came to the conclusion that the only way to make a truly real
language would be to literally start from the bottom, create a proto-world
language, and move on up, having things like, for example, "amare habeo"
turning into the future "amarò" in Italian.  All these things only seem
believable if they happen over time.  But anyway, I really am not up to doing
this proto-worlding right now; I'm too impatient for that (especially
considering all the schoolwork I've got).  So, rather than do that, I tried
to insert affixes into Gweydr that were non-transparent, non-productive and
unpredictable.  I have a list that I refer to when making words.  Let's see
if I can pull it up real quick...

Word Making Endings (if any of these don't come out, they're the "ae"
ligature):

-æm/-am=human agent (from verb/adjective); negative agent from i-/a-
adjectives.
-r=human agent also
-in/-un=instance of action noun
-æf/-af=instrument
-iks/uks=natural extension of a living body
-is/-us=metaphorical abstract noun from a natural noun
-l=natural things (plants, etc.)
-ex/-ox=emotion (bad)
-t=instrument which is an agent of an action (from verb)
a-/i-=adjective from a naturaly abstact noun
-ok/-ek="hon" (Japanese), or a large group of something
-ith/-uth=emotion
all vowels upstep=forming an adjective from a human word
all vowels downstep=forming an adjective from anything else
bare root=abstract noun from a verb
-ed/-od=abstract noun from an adjective
add j or w=abstract noun from color adjective
a-+downstep/i-+downstep=positive agent from i-/a- abstract nouns
dwæ-/da-=not, in/un
mi-/mu-=super, strengthener
ze-/so-=covered with, bedecked with

    But the important thing about these is that they're non productive.  G
weydr speakers might notice that there are a lot of nouns that are animals
and plants and things that end in /l/, but they wouldn't, then, go and take
the verb for "swim", add an /l/ and come up with a word for a new type of
fish, or something.  I'm thinking that these are kind of old noun class
markers (or at least a few), and the others old derivational morphology.
There's new derivational morphology that IS productive, however, and when
creating new words, they'd be more likely to use that.  The whole point of
all this, again, is to make the language SEEM more realistic, without going
in and doing the dirty work.  ;)

-David