Re: Taxonomic list (and Re: poll 30? (long...Sal at her most voluble)

----- Original Message -----
From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@...>

> Sally:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@...>
> >
> > > Sally:
> > > > For what it's worth, you can see it at:
> > > >
> > > >     http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teotax.html
> > >
> > > Fascinating. Hours of poring lie ahead of me (or would if time
permitted:
> > > I have only got as far as the garden so far)
I'm flattered that you're reading through it!

> > That's where I began to wig out.  Too many flowers to invent names for.
>
> I like doing flower names. Lots of scope for phonaesthesia & no nagging
> sense that there should be any systematicity to the names.
Actually, you have a point there.  I can go back to my earlier phonaesthetic
invention.  Norrela for "daisy" is one of my oldest.  So is bovob /'buvub/
for "bluebell."  I should have a purely Teonaht word for "rose."

> How did you come up with the English entries? It seems both more and
> less detailed than an English thesaurus would yield.
How so, exactly--more and less?  I'm curious, because I think I know what
you mean.   I haven't consulted a Thesaurus for years.  A Thesaurus, as I
understood it, was a book for helping you find English synonyms!  When I was
young, I misused it terribly, and have avoided it since.

My example for this thesaurus was taken straight out of Hildegard of
Bingen's taxonomy.  I intended to describe the Teonaht world in the form of
its inhabitants, its households, its cities, its gardens and farms, its
foods, its justice system, etc.  Hildegard is doing the same with her abbey.
She starts with God and moves down through the members of the family to the
parts of the body, to illnesses, to the offices of the Church, to the
structures of the church, to the vegetables in the garden, the fruit trees,
and so forth.  I've changed her order around, and vastly increased the list.
Basically it was this:   start with the name of the group, and move from top
down: great to small or most to least important item.   For the body, I
started with the head.  (I realize that I forgot to list the words for
eye-color!)  For the foods, I started with the meats and ended with the
spices (some would question my sense of importance here!!)   For the animals
I started with the large mammals.  For religion, I started with the one with
which I was most familiar (no top down sense there, please).  For concepts
and sensations, this was just a hodge podge.  I should perhaps alphabetize
those sections.  For the most part, I just went plumb nuts.

> I'm always on the look-out for some sort of magic list of English words
> as ingredients to build a basic vocab. I must get round to seeing
> whether I have a copy of Rick Harrison's ULD on my hard disk.
Tell me about that one.  Some of my lists are too detailed, and the basics
get lost in the complexities.  I have started a 501 Teonaht Verbs list,
though. :)  :)

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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