Re: "Language Creation" in your conlang

Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:

> Matt Trinsic wrote:
> > Hello Isidora =)
> > By an interesting coincidence, my language also happens to have two
> > roots for the verb 'make'. Although they differ somewhat from yours. Tre
> > means 'to build or make something of material already in existance'
> > while Thra means 'to cause to exist or make something from nothing'. In
> > the case of conlanging, the actual root used would depend on if it was
> > an a priori or an a posteri.
> >
> Curiously, so does Kash, and then some.
> 1. ahan-- like your Thra, create, devise, invent, compose (from nothing, but
> by mental effort)
> 2. rumolu-- put together, build/assemble from parts; it's the caus. of volu
> 'bring together, amass; as adj. constructed, man-made'
> 3. rumale-- caus. of ale 'to be', to bring into being, create; not sure
> about the semantics of this, but it definitely implies non-volitional or
> unintentional, as in "Your mistake has created a problem".
>
> Finally, 4. mepu 'to do, to make; to work', which also serves to make verbs
> out of nouns and onomatopoeics-- mepu honder 'make an attack, to attack',
> mepu çunduçu 'to leer at, ogle' (lit., make eye-promiscuous), mepu sit-sit
> 'to go "scratch-scratch" and so forth.
Is this some kind of areal feature of CONLANG?

As said, Tairezazh makes a distinction between _zlai_ "create (with artistic
purpose)" and _zaz_ "create, construct, design". There's also
_gled_ "construct, build", focusing on the material effort rather than the
intellectual aspect. And we can throw in _dhris_ "design, make drawings for" -
I guess it would be applicable for conlangers would conjure up grammatical
systems without filling them out with phonological content.

There does not seem to be any single verb with a range of meaning even nearly
covering all those of English "make".

                                                Andreas

Reply