Re: Vocabulary concept mismatches

On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:30:12PM -0600, Herman Miller wrote:
> H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> >Nevertheless, Ebisédian does have a few words which are literally
> >impossible to capture with any English word in a general sense. One such
> >is _gii'j3li_, whose literal meaning eludes direct expression in English,
> >although it can be described in a multitude of ways, eg.:
[...]
> >Nonetheless, the Ebisédian meaning is really only one.
>
> I have a hard time coming up with ideas that I can't easily express in
> English; that's one area where my languages aren't as well developed as
> they should be. Words that don't correspond one to one aren't that hard,
> but entirely new concepts are harder. Maybe reading through the
> Ebisedian lexicon will give me some ideas.
Perhaps... you can find it at:

	http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/ferochromon/lexicon.pdf

You might also want to see the reference grammar, which explains things
like conjunctions and correlatives in more depth:

	http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/ferochromon/grammar.pdf

I got the idea of correlatives from Attic Greek. I found it very
eye-opening to learn languages like Greek and delve a little into ancient
Greek culture. I got a lot of new ideas just by the realization that many
aspects of ancient Greek culture are that way simply because they looked
at things differently, in their own particular way. Once you adopt that
mindset, you discover a whole new world of hitherto unknown or unfamiliar
concepts.

That's why I found that having a con-culture helps a lot. Sometimes a
novel idea just suggests itself based on how I think a Bisédi would would
look at a certain concept or thing. It's like colored glasses with which I
can filter concepts and ideas that go into the lexicon. Sometimes you can
see entirely new objects with the colored glasses beyond what you
originally had in mind.

I also find that making analogies and metaphors is a powerful way to
derive new concepts. For example, the Ebisédian introvertive verbs use
physical analogies to describe psychological events. One could, for
example, psychologically look at something (regard something, to size
something up); see something (realize/comprehend); go somewhere (explore
an idea and its consequences, like walking over new terrain); navigate
(develop an idea with a definite direction); run (engage in intense mental
exercise, as in a competition); find something (discover a solution to a
problem);  etc..

Having said all that, though, I must admit that there aren't *that* many
novel ideas in the Ebisédian lexicon. It's just a handful of concepts that
I've already found lacking in the natlangs that I know; conlangs are a
nice outlet for those kind of things.


T

--
Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk, and so they are
gone to milk the bull. -- Sam. Johnson

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