Ceqli Blog

Pronunciation

2011-09-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

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

2011-09-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-31T12:11:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-07-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-21T14:18:00.000-07:00

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 hwa tun. "No, I draw cartoons."

Adding Color to "Ceqli Through Pictures."

2011-07-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

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 suyhiqe. The man shaves himself.

Let me know what you think about all this.

"Ceqli Through Pictures"

2011-07-20T05:46:00.000-07:00

"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

2011-07-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-15T12:23:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-10T06:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-07-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

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

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

do now, present tense marker

fu after, future tense marker

gi during, marks progressive verb

go I, me

ha if

hu marks what follows as modifying what precedes it

ja and/or

je and

ji if and only if

jo whether or not

ka what

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

ko to, towards

ku opening quotation mark, closed by beku

pa before, marker of past tense

pe opening parenthesis bepe closes it.

sa marks what precedes it as modifier of what follows

si marks what precedes as a quantifier

te converts predicate indefinite noun

to the, converts predicate to definite noun

xe acts as suffix to make sentence modifier

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

zi you

They're here at the Ceqli Wiki:

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

The

The final, I promise, revision

2011-07-08T18:00:00.000-07:00

Loglan separates all words into grammar words (C)V(V) and everything else, which are names and predicates. I abandoned that early on, because it made for too many possible grammar words. But a recent thought was to restrict grammar words in two shapes CV — a consonant followed by aeio or u, and C(S)V, or a consonant followed by y or w, and then aeio or u. So words in the form ka or kwa are grammar words, or particles. That includes pronouns, conjunctions, and time and space modifiers. This necessitates replacing a few things, but it give Ceqli 14x5, or 70 CV's and 14x5x2 or 140 CSV's, for a total of 210 grammar words, plenty. Loglan has a heap more, of course, so many more that I'm afraid they overused them. This still leaves the shape CVS and CVV available to be predicates, thus keeping a lot more monosyllabic predicate roots. Now I have to redo everything to fit. Oh, note that unlike Loglan, Ceqli numbers are not grammar words.

OTOH, do I need more than 70 grammar particles? Am I hanging on to the CSV form because I'm so fond of "kwa"? Actually, one CV can be a 'shift key,' to make more particles. Say it's 'hi.' If I've used all other 69 CV's I can define hi as creating a whole new grammar particle. If 'to' means 'the', then 'hito' can mean something else entirely. And if I want to reserve ten such CV's as shift keys, then I'd have 60 CV grammar words and 600 CVCV grammar words. And they could conceivably have specialties. "He" could mean that its CVhe's would all be math words, for symbols like plus and greater than, etc.

Bol and Bebol

2011-07-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

Somebody just asked me what the Ceqli word for 'language' is, and I said 'bol'. It also means 'to speak,' as in 'Go bol Ceqlizo.' And it hit me that it doesn't make sense that way. The principle is that when a root is a verb, like 'dorm,' it means 'to sleep,' but as a noun, 'to dorm' means 'the one who sleeps.' So bol can't work that way. Now, if bol means 'is a language' as a verb, what's the direct object? One or more individuals, of course, or a group, or a book.

Da bol Japanzo. It is a language of Japan.

Now, you know what 'be' does. It switches the subject and object.

To xyen kom to felin. The dog eats the cat.

To xyen bekom to felin. The dog is-eaten-by the cat.

So, back to bol:

Ceqlizo bol go. Ceqli is a language of me.

Go bebol Ceqlizo. I know/speak/understand Ceqli.

Now to say, I speak Ceqli, in the sense that from time to time I actually make the sounds, you need a literal word for 'speak,' let's say 'xwo' from Chinese.

Go xwo Ceqlizo. I speak Ceqli. In English, when we say "I speak English," we usually mean that I have command of, or know, English, and 'speak' covers all that. But as in "I speak English when I'm in England," it means 'speak' literally.

Doke go sta Heqlazohaym, go xwo Heqlazobol.

Or, if you've learned to read English but can't speak it, you can say.

Go bebol Heqlazo, jiqkay go bu fey xwo da.

All this make sense?

The History of Ceqli

2011-07-07T15:26:00.000-07:00

Many years ago I heard about Loglan. I think about thirty years ago. I got hold of the books and was fascinated with it as an entirely new approach to language construction. I even did that logo over there for them. And a bunch of other drawings. But after awhile I got annoyed with some of its flaws. You can learn all about Loglan at http://www.loglan.org/ I recommend it. Anyhow, all Loglan content words (not grammar particles) were in the form CCVCV or CVCCV, where C is a consonant and V is a vowel. This meant that all root words were two syllables. And compounds were formed by wedging the two together into one 5-letter word. So you couldn't tell whether you had a root word or a compound. Clumsy. You could also replace the last letter of the first with a Y, pronounced schwa, and then just put them together.That made for words that were too long, so they changed that, and made allomorphs for compounding. For example:
tarci (star) + sensi (science) > tarsensi (astronomy)
Not too bad, but three syllables, and the first morpheme is a little fuzzy. Then, to make a shorter compound, we get:
traci (travel) + veslo (container) > racveo (luggage)
Clumsy. You have to learn the word, plus a shortened combining form, or allomorph. But sometimes they don't fit together, so some words have two or three combining forms. Ridiculous.
So I proposed a reworking of the language, using the 26 letters of the alphabet, but splitting them not between consonants and vowels as they're traditionally considered, but rather to redefine ywlmnrq as vowels, and making the rule for a morpheme shape to be nCnV, that is, one or more consonants followed by one or more vowels under the new definition. That way, words that are often used in compounds could be very short, and allomorphs would be unnecessary. It went over like a lead balloon.

So I decided to basically do a language of my own, based on that new morpheme shape, and you have Ceqli. Of course, I made other changes I thought necessary. Loglan makes me think of Gödel's theorem, in that it tries to be perfect, and can't. Too much cutting and pasting to make things fit. I changed the Loglan idea of proper names, the rule for which was just that they must end in a consonant, which means you have to pause after a name to avoid it being interpreted as part of the next word, and created the suffix -zo, which simply means that the suffixed word is to be understood as a proper name.

Go jan. I know. Janzo jan. John knows.

But I'm trying hard not to lose the good parts of Loglan. It has the feature that any sentence can be understood unambiguously, as far as grammar is concerned, and that's a good thing, but it all too often leads to overcomplex sets of little grammar particles. So in Ceqli, you can have unambiguity, but you don't have to. I call it precise Ceqli and terse Ceqli. Precise Ceqli:

Go ciq ke zi danho. I invite that you in-come.

Terse:

Ciq danho. Invite in-come.

If you're talking to a computer or Martians, or writing laws or legal briefs that must be unambiguous, use the first. Talking normally you use the second.

I first thought of this when, while being enchanted by the unambiguity of Loglan, I was struck by the terseness of languages like Mandarin and informal English. So I thought, why not have both?

Another difference is that Loglan root words were formed by taking the sounds from the words of the eight biggest languages, and statistically getting as many of them into the 5-letter word as possible. A clever, interesting idea. Example:

djano - to know

from three languages, thus:

2/2 English 'know' /no/ 2/2 X .28 = .28
4/4 Hindi 'jan-na' /djan/ 4/4 X .11 = .11
4/5 Chinese 'j dao' /djdao/ 4/5 X .25 = .20
Total R-Score: .59
Ceqli just takes "jan" from Hindi.

Another is likta, meaning week, formed from

2/3 ofEnglish 'week'/uik/ yielding2/3 X .28 =.19

3/5Chinese 'li bai'/libai/3/5 X .25 =.15

3/7Japanese 'isshukan'/iscukan/3/7 X .06 =.03

2/5Hindi 'saptah'/sapta/2/5 X .11 =.04

3/9Russian 'niedielia'/niedielia/3/9 X .10 =.03

Total R-Score:.44

Ceqli just uses the compound cildeygu

"seven day group."

The theory is that such words make it easy for speakers of the eight big languages to learn vocabulary. I have my doubts. I'd rather have some English words like 'grin' (green) or 'cer' (chair) and then learn some foreign words like Russian 'dom' for house or Japanese 'hana' for nose. It's even more 'neutral' than Loglan, because I don't limit myself to the Big Eight.

And now you know.

Connectives

2011-07-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

I've basically relexified the Loglan connectives here in my Lesson 3

CONNECTIVES

Ceqli connectives are based on the Loglan connectives. They are:

kay - and

va - and/or

fi - if and only if

seya - whether or not

da corn kay xyen. He is black and is a dog.

da corn va xyen. He is black or is a dog, and possibly both.

da corn fi xyen. He is black if and only if is a dog.

da corn seya xyen. He is black whether he is a dog or not.

Now, help me out, Loglanists. Would 'or' as in "You can have coffee or tea, but not both." be "fibu", that is, "if and only if" plus the negator bu? That's by analogy with Loglan 'onoi', but I can't follow the logic.

Would I have:

da corn fibu xyen. He is black if and only if he is not a dog. Or, he is either black or he's a dog, but not both.

Right?

To Loglan or not to Loglan

2011-07-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Should Ceqli "nouns" be verbs, as in Loglan? Should jin mean "is a person," or can it act more like English, and as a verb have the meaning of "to man the helm"? I'm inclined to think I should stick with the Loglan idea, and use the equivalent of an -um to derive words that don't have a clear derivation path. That occurred to me with 'fum,' which I was going to use to mean smoke as a noun and a verb as in English, but if fum means 'is smoke,' then I can use 'fumspir' (smoke-breathe) as I think Loglan does for smoke in that sense — "Janzo fumspir to kana." and something like smoke-treat for smoking fish. Make sense? I can imagine I'd actually need an -um word very rarely.

Ceqli Through Pictures and a question.

2011-07-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

I do auxlanging as a hobby. My day job is cartooning, so I've started a Ceqli Through Pictures page. The cartoons are deliberately crude. See my regular cartoons here. They're crude because I wanted the simplicity of those old "Through Pictures" paperbacks, but I also wanted them to be a little more attractive, somewhat cute. The Ceqli name for the Ceqli language is "Ceqlizo," (the "zo" suffix turns a regular word into a name.) "Ceqlizo" is also the name of the little narrator here. She's saying "Heyl," which is pronounced like English "hail," and means the same thing, but is used to mean "hello."

Anyhow, the first question I have for everybody is this. I've been using the words for "big" and "small" (ga and pi) also as intensives, that is, they also mean "very" and "slightly," and are used as prefixes to intensify or moderate, much like Esperanto -eg and -et. Now, I'm also using them to mean 'big' and 'small,' and I'm beginning to think I'm overloading them. What do you think? Do I need separate words for big/small? If so, one possibility would be slam/smal (English 'small', reversed after the initial consonant to form the opposite) or hyu/hwi (from English HUge). Or maybe kyo/koy (Japanese kanji meaning 'large') You can post your thoughts here, or email me at rmay@mac.com.

First Post

2011-07-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

Ceqli is an auxiliary language I've been working on for years. Here I intend to solicit criticisms and suggestions. If your posts don't appear, email me at rmay@mac.com and I'll try to fix the problem. To get a quick summary of Ceqli, go to the site at:
http://ceqli.pbworks.com/w/page/5455970/FrontPage

2/2	English 'know'	/no/	2/2 X .28 =	.28
4/4	Hindi 'jan-na'	/djan/	4/4 X .11 =	.11
4/5	Chinese 'j dao'	/djdao/	4/5 X .25 =	.20
			Total R-Score:	.59