Pronunciation

I just updated the section on alphabet and pronunciation to deal with the special problems of proper name borrowings and the actual names of letters that aren't cwazim.  Check it out HERE.

The Imperative

The Ceqli imperative can be formed in various ways.  You can invite, order, insist, beg, etc.  It's all explained in Lesson 8.  Check it out HERE.

Pyuvor je Gravor

Ceqli grammar words (pyuvor) are in the shape CV, that is, one cwazim followed by one vawl.  See HERE.  Now, Ceqli regards the difference between Pyuvor and Gravor (content words) to be fuzzy, in keeping with the Gödel theory of linguistics.  So sometimes it's hard to decide which a given word should be.  Currently, Ceqli has ko and de, for to and from.

Go don hon ko zi.  I give a book to you.
Go pren hon de zi.  I take a book from you.

Now, other prepositions are gravor:

Go ziq ben zi.  I sing benefit you, or I sing for you.

Go dan cwaq dorm.  I in the bed sleep.

So why should to and from be any different?  Is it because they seem so much like case endings in my mind?  Or is it because, as lone verb/prepositions, they're hard to translate?  Or are they?

Go ko do.  I to the house.  Maybe it means I'm on my way to the house.
Go de Doycehaym.  I'm from Germany.

So, they don't seem to be any different from ben or dan or sur.  I propose, then, to replace ko/de with tsu/del.  Please give me feedback.

Lesson Seven Added

I've added Lesson Seven to the Ceqli Wiki.  It deals with Ceqli place structure as it is based on Loglan principles.

"Ceqli Through Pictures" Updated.

I just added 22 new panels to "Ceqli Through Pictures." A lot of it is about explaining kinship terms, which is pretty simple, Ceqli having fewer basic roots than most languages, but describing them clearly in what amounts to pantomime takes quite a bit of time and space.  Barazo and Samzo have a lot of relatives out there!  Also, I've gone through the basic numbers and terms for arithmetic.  Again, your comments are appreciated.

Ceqli and Cartoons

Here's a trivial but interesting puzzle.  In real life, I'm a cartoonist.  The word is a little ambiguous in English, because to a lot of people it means 'animator.'  There are two basic kinds of 'cartoons' — animated and print.  And print cartoons are divided into comic strips and gag cartoons.  Now, there's also a thin like between cartoonists and fine artists.  Guys like me are definitely cartoonists, whereas some, like Doug Sneyd, are clearly just about fine artists, though their work is in the form of a gag cartoon.  Now, all three groups — animators, comic strip cartoonists, and gag cartoonists — sort of do the same thing. Draw simplified pictures.  A lot of languages use some form of 'caricature' to designate all three, but 'caricature' has a special, narrower meaning in English.  And there simply aren't any words out there that are borrowable into Ceqli.

And this leads me to think that I need a word for cartoon, and compound words to indicate all three, and maybe eventually even more fine-tuned classifications.   Let's say we have:

tun - is-a-simplified drawing, usually humorous in some way, but not necessarily. Simply a shortening of the English word which is used in a few other languages.
zinatun - a magazine cartoon.  That covers me and all the artists in New Yorker and other magazines.
jurnaltun - newspaper cartoon.  That covers comic strips in newspapers, as well as single-panel cartoons, like "Ziggy," that appear in newspapers.
tunfilm - an animated cartoon, or cartoon film, or an "anime," a word we get from Japanese.
paneltun - a single-panel cartoon, wherever it's printed.
stritun - a comic strip cartoon, stri meaning a long thin thing.

Having decided all that, and deciding that the base root should mean is-a-cartoon and not makes-cartoons, I see that I need a word for "worker" to append to tun to mean "cartoonist."  I say 'worker,' because many languages use -ist, but that's too broad, what with artist, Buddhist, anarchist.  Too many meanings.  I want a word that doesn't just mean cartoon-maker, but cartoon-worker.  Someone whose job or profession is making, or somehow dealing with, cartoons.  It would work in such compounds as build-worker, office-worker, government-worker, health-worker, shoe-worker.  So let's take kam from Hindi, to mean 'do work,' or 'be a worker.'  So...

Go tunkam.  I'm a cartoonist.
Go zinatunkam.  I'm a magazine cartoonist.

Also:

Go tunfar.  I make cartoons.  But a lot of people do that, but it's not their job. Note that kam doesn't mean "make professionally," but has a broader meaning of doing work that has something to do with the root word.  In the case of cartoons, a cartoon worker is also a cartoon maker, but an office worker doesn't make offices.  If you say

Go tunkam.  And you're asked, "Oh, do you print cartoon books?'  You'd say
Bu.  Go hwey tun.  "No, I draw cartoons."

Adding Color to "Ceqli Through Pictures."

I got a wonderful suggestion from Arthaey Angosii over at The Conlang List that I should add some color to "Ceqli Through Pictures."  I have done so, and will continue in the future.  Really spices it up.  It's not in full color.  I rejected that idea to begin with, as sometimes color is more distracting than helpful, but it didn't occur to me to use color strategically.  Thanks again to Arrhaey! I've just colored the pertinent elements to make it a tad bit easier to follow. I hope to periodically add more panels till I have what will amount to a full Ceqli text. Check it out here:
http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/41974416/Ceqli-through-pictures

More on the Cause/Become paradigm

I've been thinking more about the possibilities for this paradigm.  All Ceqli predicates are indeed predicates, and a predicate like blu "is blue" is pretty straightforward when used with vey and zay "become and cause"

Go blu.  I am blue.
Go bluvey.   I turn blue.
Go bluzay zi.  I make you blue, color you blue.

So that's perfectly natural for adjectivish predicates.  For noun predicates it also seems to work:

Go poljin.  I am a policeman.
Go poljinvey.  I become a policeman.
Go pojinzay zi.  I make you (into) a policeman.

What about prepositionish ones?

Go dan to dom.  I am in the house.
Go danvey to dom.  I get into, go into, the house.
Go danjay zi to dom.   I put you, get you, into the house.

Because dan has a direct object, or an argument place, that third one is a little iffy, but is perfectly acceptable in terse Ceqli, which is what Charlie Chan would use habitually.  In more precise Ceqli, it would be

Go zay ke zi dan to dom.  I cause that you be in the house.

But the basic paradigm still works.

What about inherently verbal predicates?  Like "hit." As I have it, they don't fit the paradigm very well.

Go slo zi.  I hit you.  (I originally had blo for this, but I'm changing it, because, you know)
Go beslo zi.  I am hit by you.
Go zay ke zi beslo da.  I cause you to hit him.

There doesn't seem to be any room or function for a slovey form.

Now to cram this into the other paradigm, you'd have to make it this way.

Go slo.  I am hit — I'm in a state of having been hit.
Go slovey.  I get hit.
Go slozay zi.  I cause you to be in a state of being hit.  I hit you.

Awkward.  The paradigm just doesn't seem to fit with transitive verbs.  And it seems a little odd with prepositions, but works.  So the other, verbal paradigm seems to be the thing for transitive verbs.  Now, for intransitive verbs, it seems to work just fine.

Go dorm.
Go dormvey
Go dormzay zi.


I sleep, I go to sleep, I put you to sleep.

This leaves one glitch, or I think it does.  Let's borrow fraq, meaning 'break', from Latin 'frango.'

Go fraq to teler.  I break the dish.
To teler da fraqvey.  The dish breaks, gets broken.
Go zay ke zi fraq to teler.  I cause you to break the dish.

Now, how do I say "the broken dish"?  English and other IE languages seem to turn the past participle into an adjective in these cases, and it's clear as a bell.  But Ceqli to befraq teler just means the dish that somehow is broken, now, or in the past, or in the future.  In terse Ceqli, the meaning is obviously 'broken' as in it's already happened.  So, can I use the tense markers that way when I want to be specific?
To pa befraq teler.  To do befraq teller.  To fu befraq teller.
The broken dish.  The dish now being broken.  The dish that will be broken.

Is there a parsing problem with this?  I don't think so.  Loglanists, let me know what you think.

Of course, you have to leave the object (actually the subject, really) of that verb out.  But if you want to say "The dish broken by me," you just expand it a little, with sa or hu.


To go pa fraq sa teler.  To teler hu go pa fraq.


Without any need for the be- form.  So the befraq form is handy when you can't, or don't want, to name the breaker

The two systems aren't incompatible.  Let's say the difference between:

Go smer.   Go besmerzay.

I am dead.  I get killed.  In the first, it's just a state of being.  In the second, it says you are not only dead, but someone or something killed you, and use of the be- form means that you don't have to specify who or what.  This applies to all verbs that can take a be-

Go xaw.   I see.
Go bexaw.  I am seen (by something)

So now I'm thinking of the word

tayar  ready (adjective)  Maybe it should be a transitive verb:

Go tayar to xyen.  I get the dog ready.
To xyen da betayar go.  The dog is gotten ready by me.
To xyen (pa) betayar.   The dog has been gotten ready.
To (pa) betayar xyen.   The ready, or readied, dog.

And here I see I need a reciprocal pronoun.

To xyen tayar se.  The dog readies itself.  Unless maybe I just need a prefix for transitive verbs that makes them reflexive.  How about borrowing suy from 'suicide.'

To xyen suytayar.  The dog self-readies.
To jino suysori.  The man shaves himself.

Let me know what you think about all this.  Later:  I'm keeping tayar as an adjective meaning "is ready."

"Ceqli Through Pictures"

"Ceqli Through Pictures" is now revised.  I've also dumped kaw and bli in favor of zay (from English '-ize') and vey, (from Mandarin 'wei') as equivalents of Esperanto igi and iĝi because they will constantly be used as suffixes, and the z and v will be more easily pronounced after nasal final letters in the roots they're appended to.  Please send in any comments and criticisms, especially about typos, which I'm prone to in my old age.

Lesson 6

I've added Lesson 6, question words, to the Ceqli Wiki.  I've also revised the first five chapters.  "Ceqli through pictures" and the glossary will be revised next.  I've adopted kaw for cause and bli for become, analogous to Esperanto igi and iĝi.  I've also given the tense particles predicate forms for use in making compound words.  I've also made Ceqli words for consonant, vowel, semivowel, etc.

As always, your input is valued and appreciated.

Cause and Become

I've decided to go with kaw (from English CAUse) and bli (Danish/Norwegian word for become) for the equivalent of Esperanto igi and iĝi.

smer - dead
smerkaw - kill
smerbli - die

corn - black
cornkaw - blacken
cornbli - turn black

jan - know
jankaw - inform
janbli - find out, come to know

sum - exist
sumkaw - create
sumbli - come into existence

tayar - ready
tayarkaw - get (something) ready
tayarbli  - get ready, ready oneself

Now, thinking about a set of words like 'cook'.  Should 'cooked' be the base word, from which I can derive

X - cooked (food)
Xkaw - to cook somethink
Xbli - to become cooked

Or should the intransitive verb be the base?

X - to become cooked
Xkaw - to cook something

If so, how do I say "cooked" as in "cooked food is on the table"?

I'm inclined towards the first pattern, in keeping with the notion that the basic form should be intransitive whenever possible.

Phonology

Before I go any further with this, I'd like some feedback on the phonology.   Here it is:

B as in Boy

C as in CHin

D as in DuD

F as in FluFF

G as in Good

H as in Hat

J as in John, Gem

K as in KinK

P as in PiP

S as in So

T as in ToT

V as in Victory

X as in SHoe

Z as in Zoo

The other 12 are called non-consonants (N) in Ceqli

Five Full Vowels (V):

A as in fAther

E as in bEt*

I as in machIne

O as in bOAt

U as in bOOt

And two semivowels (S):

W as in We, coW

Y as in You, boY

And five sounds, nasals and liquids (L), that are usually thought of

as consonants, but are considered non-consonants in Ceqli:

L as in LuLL

M as in MiM

N as in NooN

Q as in siNG

R as in RoaR (Midwestern American or Mandarin preferred, but any 'r' sound will do.)

It differs from Logan in a couple of ways.  First, it has the phoneme /N/ represented as 'q.'  Second, instead of letting i and u serve as semivowels, I add y and w.  Third, and here's where I want the feedback, Where Loglan has:

dj for /dZ/ I have j

tc for /tS/ I have c

j for /Z/ I have no letter and don't include the phoneme

c for /S/ I have x

As it stands, it's definitely an asymmetry in contrast to Loglan.  I don't have the voiced counterpart of /S/.  How bad is that?  Also, I have only two affricates regarded as phonemes, while ts, for example, is two phonemes.

If I were to change over to the Loglan dj and tc, apart from the hassle of change, I'd have the disadvantage of making Ceqli look just a little weirder than it already is, and I'd lose the five CV's ca ce ci co cu.  And then I'd have 25 letters with one left over.

Would it be worth all that hassle to make Ceqli technically more symmetrical?

Question particle

I've moved 'ku' to being one of the 'what' words, so I need another CV to act as Eo 'ĉu.'  But then I got to thinking about making it a little more versatile.  Let's say the word is 'xu.'  It could act just like Eo.

Xu zi fumspir fumkana?  Do you smoke a pipe?

Or, I could arrange for xu to make a question out of the following word, not the whole sentence.

Xu zi fumspir fumkana?  Do YOU smoke a pipe?  Is it you that smokes a pipe?

Zi xu fumspir fumkana?  Do you SMOKE a pipe? (as opposed to doing something else with it)

Zi xu fumspir xu fumkana?  Do you smoke a PIPE?  Is it a pipe that you smoke?

Problem with this is, how do I make the whole thing a question?  Well, 'ke' turns a whole phrase into an argument, thus.

Zi jino.  You are a man
Go jan ke zi jino.  I know that you're a man.

So, ke can operate with xu the same way.

Xuke zi fumspir fumkana?

I think that'll work, so the equivalent for ĉu is xuke.  Now, what about an afterthought?  Well, 'hay' means yes, or 'it is so.'  So:

Zi fumspir funkana, xu hay?  You smoke a pipe, don't you?

How does this sound to everybody?

More on 'what' words

Check this out.  If it makes sense to everybody, I'll write it into the wiki.

Loglan has five "what" words:
ie he hu ho ha 


ie is called the identity interrogative.  Steve Rice defines it as meaning "which of the ones called", and let's say that the Ceqli ki has that meaning.


Zi ten ki to hon?  You have which one of the books?


Go bekyam Janzo.  Ki Janzo?  My name is John.  Which John are you?

he asks to be replaced by a predicate, telling about the thing being questioned about.  Let's say that ka means the same.

Da ka?  Who is he?  or, better, "What is he?" or "What does he do?"  Because to say "Who is he" is sometimes a request for a name.

Da pamo go.  He's my father.  "Pamo" is a predicate, meaning "is a father".  "Go" is its object.

Da ka?  can of course also mean "What is it?" depending on the referent of  'da."

Da xyen.  It's a dog.

hu, now, doesn't ask for a predicate, but for an argument.  A name, or a noun phrase.  Let's let Ceqli 'ku' serve for that.

Da kusa xyen?  Whose dog is he?  Or, in certain contexts, it might be "What's dog is he?" if you're talking about dogs that belong to houses or something.

Note that

Da kasa xyen?  Would mean "What kind of dog is he?" because you're asking for a descriptive predicate to be inserted.

Da byelsa xyen.  It's a white dog.  Da hawsa xyen.  It's a good dog, etc.

As for ho, it's a Loglan word that asks for a number replacement, and means 'how many.'  I don't need it in Ceqli, because the word 'si' turns the preceding word into a quantifier, whether it's a number or anything else.  Numbers are in the shape of predicates, but being quantifiers, they behave a little differently.  Anyhow, then I affix 'si' to get how many from 'ku.'


Zi ten kusi xyen?  How many dogs do you have.  Go ten hansi xyen.  I have one dog.

ha is even more esoteric.  It asks for a connective to be inserted.  I haven't decided how to handle that yet, but I certainly don't want to waste a CV on it.  It could be as simple as 'kije'  Which and.

Loglan people.  Please critique this.

Questions and Answers

Peter Cyrus e-mailed me the following, and I'll try to answer his questions one at a time:


I have a few other questions and comments:

1) I find it confusing that you define liquids and nasals as
"non-consonants".  Why don't you just call the two group "obstruents"
and "sonorants", and put vowels in a third group?  And isn't your
morpheme shape really (S/Z)Ob(Son)V(Son)?


The terminology for this is a challenge, at least for me.  Loglan just has consonants and vowels, so I originally simply defined aeiouywrlmnq as vowels, for the purpose of defining morpheme shape.  Then I realized that it was a little misleading, because of course CV shapes can't include anything but the aeiou as the V. Not to mention the fact that every morpheme has to have at least one vowel in it to be pronounced. So what I've done is fail to keep the morpheme shape rule from getting mixed up with permissible letter combination rules.  


So if we divide everything up into Consonants and Nonconsonants, the morpheme shape is clear.  All morphemes are in the shape nCnN.  A special case of that is the grammar word shape, which is CN.  Now, none of that is taking into account the differences between the nonconsonants and the limits on how they can be combined and still be easily pronounced.  If you or anybody else can figure out a better way to express that, I'd love to clarify it on the Wiki.
2) I didn't understand "A vowel followed by a consonant signifies the
end of a morpheme".  At first, I thought it meant that words all end
in a vowel, a real vowel.  But that doesn't seem to be the case.  Do
you mean that each Consonant (Obstruent) starts a new morpheme?


Each consonant cluster starts a new morpheme.

3) You seem to be missing the ZH sound as in beige or treasure.  Is
that because there's no letter for it?


Yes. I didn't want to have more than the basic 26 letters.  I originally tried using the Loglan phonology, which indicates /tS/ with 'tc' and /dZ/ ad 'dj', thereby having c and j for /S/ and /Z/, but that I ended up rejecting for esthetic reasons more than anything else.  So I didn't have enough letters to reserve one for /Z/.  I know that leaves the phonology a little assymetric, but a look around the world at the big languages seems to show that many languages have either /Z/ or /dZ/, but few have both (even English just barely has /Z/).  And many have both /S/ and /tS/.  And my own subjective feel is that I can easily distinguish minimal pairs in the latter case, but the /Z/ vs. /dZ/ distinction is harder.

4) Attributive adjectives need SA, after the Chinese model.  But
compound words don't - again, like Chinese DE.  What does that SA earn
you?  In English, we distinguish "black bird" from "blackbird" by
stress, and so can you.


Here we have the thing about terseness vs. preciseness.  In spoken Ceqli, you include as much as you need to for clarity.  And you can certainly say blu fawl as distinguished from blufawl.  But blu sa fawl makes for complete clarity.  Also, sa, again like Chinese, can show a modifying phrase.


To go paydey kom sa pan.  The bread I ate yesterday.


You see, Loglan insists on preciseness, slowing down the process.  Ceqli permits preciseness, as needed.
5) Are ZAM and ZMA examples of a system of oppositions?


Yes, but not a good example:)  Inversions should be more clearly distinguishable than that.  So I try to pick vocabulary words that can be clearly inverted when their opposites are likely to be common.

6) Do you pronounce XYEN different from XEN?  That's subtle.  In most
languages, palatal sounds can't be palatalized.  Chinese SH is
retroflex (in Putonghua), but most SHs are palatal, as in English
"nation".


Yes, it is subtle.  When y is hard to deal with, as in this case, it's permissible to pronounce it as i, but you still follow the stress rules as tho it were a y.


Xyen - shee-EHN.  Xien would be pronounced SHEE-ehn.
7) Your E is mid-open, while your O is mid-closed - that's odd.
Mid-open E as in English "bet" is hard for English speakers to
pronounce at the end of a syllable, since it's a checked vowel in
English, and that letter is reduced (usually to schwa) when final and
unstressed in most other languages - it's not stable.  Meanwhile, many
languages would consider O as in English "boat" to be a diphthong : OW
in your orthography. The mid-open O is like English "ball" or even
"bought".  It seems to me you either want to make both of them
mid-open, never final, and add the OW diphthong, or you want them both
mid-closed and pronounce the E as in English "bait", losing the EY
diphthong.


I don't intend the vowels to be that specifically defined, but the default is the Esperanto values.  Only exception, sort of, is that I emphasize the shortness of the 'e.' That's to clearly distinguish it, as you say, from the ey.  As I understand it, Japanese e behaves pretty much the same way.  I'm aware that it tends to turn to schwa, so I'm trying to avoid it as an unstressed end-letter as much as possible.

8) Go-Zi-Da are your 1st-2nd-3rd pronouns, but Ci-Ca-Cu are your
1st-2nd-3rd demonstratives?  Seems odd.


Yes.  It was a judgment call.  I went with the i-suggests-closeness concept for the here/there/yonder thing, and since I already had the pronouns, I decided to not try to make them suggest each other.

9) Bi and Sta are "ser" and "estar", or "desu" and "arimasu"?  What
does that gain you?


Actually, bi is equals, and I shouldn't have included it in the pictures thing.  I'll take it out in the revision.  Ceqli is like Loglan in that all predicates behave as verbs, so Go jino means I am-a-man.  So there really isn't any word for ser in that sense, except for identity sentences like Go bi Janzo.  If a sentence is reversible without changing meaning, bi is appropriate.


But that points out a glitch I could use some help with.  If the answer to 'what is that?' is


Cuba jino.  That is a man.


What is the Ceqli form for the question?  "Da ka" seems wrong, because 'ka' isn't a predicate.  "Da bi ka?" uses the bi, but the bi isn't called for in the answer. Loglanists/Lojbanists, how is this handled?  I forget.


Hold everything.  I just looked it up.  Loglan has a special 'what' word, 'he', which means "is/does what," so it's a form that behaves as a predicate, despite its shape.  So.


Ta he?  means what is that?


Won't work in Ceqli, because ka is an argument, not a predicate.  I really don't want to use 'bi,' because logically, it's a question that calls for an argument, not a description.


If you want to say


Who/which is that


In Loglan, you do use bi, but with the word 'hu,'  which is an argument.


So if I stick to the Loglan form, which I try to do as much as possible, the only think I can say is


Cuba bi ka?  Who/which is that?


So maybe I need a 'blank' predicate of some sort, that calls for another predicate as an answer, like Loglan does.


Cuba bi ka?  Which is that?  Asking which of a group of known things something is, and expecting a name or a to+predicate as an answer.


Loglanists, help me out here.  Is there any problem with saying:


Cuba ka?


And relying on the fact that the lack of a 'bi' shows that I'm expecting a predicate for an answer?  Or do I need an equivalent to 'he,' to make it clear?  And then will the 'he' word have any other use except in questions like this?  Or should I have an "-um" type thing I can attach that turns the 'ka' into a predicate? And if I did, would it have any other use?


I need help here, most especially from Stivzo.


Hold the presses!  I just thought of Loglan 'me,' which is a prefix that turns a name into a predicate, as in 'melakraisler.'  Why not use that system to turn 'ka' into a predicate?  Just thinking out loud here.  If I used, say 'swa' for that.


Cuba kaswa?  What is that?  Cuba xyen.  This is-a-dog.


Then how the hell do I say what's in the house?


Ka dan dom?  But that calls, again, for an argument, not a predicate.


Kaswa dan dom?  Doesn't do it, because here, 'kaswa' is a predicate, and it doesn't parse, does it?


Now I know I can say 


Dan dom sa ba kaswa?


The thing that is in the house is what?


But that's a lot less natlang sounding than I want.






But sta does mean estar, but it also means 'located at,' so to speak.


Go sta cwaq sa dorm.  I inthebed sleep.
That's enough, maybe too much.


Not at all.  Great set of questions.  You've helped me clarify my thinking.  Keep it up!

Revision to CV gramvor

Yes, it was the kwa.  I loved the kwa.  Anyhow, here are the replacements I've come up with:

kwa > ka     Zi ten ka?           What do you have?
kyu > ku     Ku zi tayar?        Are you ready?

The igi 'cause' word is fer, from French faire.  The iĝi word, become, is vay, from Frisian, no less.

Go dormvay.  I go to sleep.  Go tayarfer to komxto.  I prepare the food.

Big is now gran, and small is tayn (English tiny)  and we shorten them to form gra, a prefix that acts like Eo -eg, and tay, for -et.  As modifiers, they mean 'very' and 'slightly/moderately.'

'to go' is now 'gey,' from German, and old ja now means and/or.  All four basic connectives are jV.

This isn't all reflected on the Wiki yet.  This won't look a whole lot different, but will make parsing things a lot easier.

The Revision Process

I'm in the process of revising the Wiki.  http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/5455970/FrontPage  And I couldn't do this without a computer.  One thing I've consistently learned from the beginning is that it's often counterproductive to obsessively trying to find a root to borrow from a natlang, when an a priori word will work better.  I was just doing that with the 'cause' and 'become' roots.  (iĝ and ig in Esperanto), which were pretty a priori in Eo, too, come to think of it.  Thing is, they'll both be used a lot, so they should be optimally suffixable, and not begin with a plosive that might be slightly interfered with by a preceding N or M or Q.   Also nice if they could be inversions of each other. What do you think of zaw and zwa?   Or saw and swa?

Go granzwa.  I get bigger.  Go granzaw gosa dom.  I enlarge my house.

Go granswa.  I get bigger.  Go gransaw gosa dom.  I enlarge my house.

Speaking of that, I'd also like a 'start' word like Eo ek-, because it somehow sounds better to use it with a clear change-of-state situation like 'sit down,' as opposed to what might be gradual, like getting bigger.  And a proposal for that is 'tsu,' which is a shortening of Japanese totsuzen, meaning 'suddenly'.  And it would be used like a Slavic perfective prefix.

Go tsustu.  I sit down.

And also to start a race... Tsu!

So you could say:

Go granswa.  I get bigger.  Go tsugranswa.  I have a spurt of growth.

Am I right that a prefix seems better than a suffix in this case?  It seems that, say 'redden' is about becoming, and the red part describes the becoming.  But sitting down is about sitting, and the down modifies the sitting.  Or am I sapirwhorfing myself?

***********

I found a better word.  Kay, Japanese for 'start'.  (old kay, being a CVV, has turned into je)  And I think maybe it should indeed be a suffix.

Go stukay.  I sit down.  Kay!  Start, go.   Kay ko Centerzo!  Off to Middle-Earth!

So do I need both a kay and another word for become?  I think I do.

To ze gramvor (the grammar words)

Imitating the old Loglan list, here's my list of grammar words at this point, all in CV form:

Gramvor (Grammar Words)

ba something

be switches position of subject and object

bi equals, is reciprocally equivalent to

bo

bu not, no

ca there, near person addressed

ce pronoun used un subordinate clauses to refer back to something in main clause

ci here

co pronoun that refers back to previous phrase

cu there, not near person addressed, yon, yonder

da 3d person pronoun

de  from

di

do now, present tense marker

du

fa

fe

fi

fo

fu  after, future tense marker

ga

ge

gi  during, marks progressive verb

go  I, me

gu

ha  if

he

hi

ho

hu  marks what follows as modifying what precedes it

ja  and/or

je  and

ji  if and only if

jo  whether or not

ju

ka  what

ke  marks what follows as a phrase that can be handled as an argument

ki

ko  to, towards

ku  opening quotation mark, closed by beku

pa  before, marker of past tense

pe  opening parenthesis bepe closes it.

pi

po

pu

sa  marks what precedes it as modifier of what follows

se

si  marks what precedes as a quantifier

so

su

ta

te  converts predicate indefinite noun

ti

to  the, converts predicate to definite noun

tu

va

ve

vi

vo

vu

xa

xe  acts as suffix to make sentence modifier

xi

xo

xu

za

ze more than.  If not followed by a quantity, "more than one" is understood.  Plural marker.

zi  you

zo

zu

They're here at the Ceqli Wiki:

http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/42155283/Gramvor-(Grammar-Words)