Saturday, July 9, 2011

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?

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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.

1 comment:

  1. I think that the problem with zaw and zwa is that they could be easily confused. It may be better to make them differ more from each other.

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