Re: Deriving words that aren't too long

>From: Simon Kissane "<jilba@...>"
>Subject:      Deriving words that aren't too long
>
>Simple English words are mostly short, normally one or two syllables.
>But English doesn't seem to derive these simple words from smaller
>roots. My conlang does, more or less regularly, but its words seem so
>long...
>
>For example, I have the root "chit" (gift), and by adding the endings
>"il" and "a" I get the word "chitila" (to take). Is there any way I
>could still have regular derivation, but keep the size of the words
>down?... it makes a single English sentence 3 times as long translated.
>
>Simon.
Some strategies that I have used with my pronouns, tense particles, and
verbs in Vector Time Tense for NGl are diphthongization, contractions,
and infixes.  Diphthongs are at least shorter to pronounce. Infixed
tense can appear as a single syllable before the first vowel; the words
are analogous to the "strong" verbs of English, ie the ones that change
form such as sing sang sung. There are other ways to infix. Nik's point
that derivational style must increase wordlength proved very true in
NGl when trying to work with a limited vocabulary, the Ogden set. Jack
Durst also developed a form of speech compression which I believe is on
his website. It would allow complex derived forms yet keep them short.


Gerald Koenig