How unbalanced is your lexicon?

[Chagen]

Looking over the lexicons I have for my languages, I have come to the realization that my languages have some...skewed lexicons.

For instance, in Azenti, I have words for "bitch", "incorporate", "deport", and "airport"...but still not a word for "hand". Or one for "food". The reason for this is that I simply come up with words on the fly, and then I usually make derivations from roots that result in lots of complex words at one time...while completely missing some rather obvious ones. Maybe I should confront the Swadesh list more.

So I'm wondering if anyone else has "unbalanced" lexicons like this. Do your languages have words for rather complex things while lacking ones for simple terms?

[maıráí]

I have basically the same problem; I take a root, or a handful of roots, and run with them, which is probably why I have words for "ceremonial sword handler" and "a lesson that is mostly from a book", yet somehow lack "window" "happy" and other fairly basic things.

[Lyhoko Leaci]

In Zukish, there's no food or water... but there is tea, lava, and wormholes... blizzards but no rain, killing and murder but no living or birth; cats, gutarxaen (a hairy sauropod-like animal) and leeches make up the entirety of the animal kingdom...

It ended up that way because I just make words as I need them... or because I'm messing around with roots, which resulted in the creation of keyboard, leech, arrow (weapon), kill, murder, aim, and pencil, all from a root that originally was for trees. And all those words (or at least the nouns there) are feminine.

[Anguipes]

How about an overly balanced lexicon? The Second Language has sixteen colour terms, sixteen kinship terms, sixteen conjunctions, sixteen variations on the genitive, sixteen demonstratives, sixteen verbs of directional motion, sixteen life processes, sixteen emotions, sixteen body parts....

[Abi]

Mine are balanced towards "fun" words over boring words. Most of my languages will have words for dog, mountain, or winter over words like hand or chair.

[WechtleinUns]

I've only got about 100 to a 150 words in the Teune Lexicon. I can derive a large set with compound constructions, but in general, I'd say the language isn't too unbalanced. There's a lot of words missing, of course, but the proportion of simple to complex seems to be about even.

[Ketumak]

My Õtari vocabulary has a couple of deliberate skewings, one I'm happy with and one I mean to correct one day. The Õtari were an iron age people on a parallel Earth and I've only a vague idea of how parallel and divergent it is.

The vocabulary is intentionally rich in concrete observational terms and lacking in abstractions. The sample sentences on my site are about hunting, eating, sailing, building huts and so on. There's no philosophical schools or academic disciplines and not much technology.

You'd think though, that I'd have more words for animals and plants, at least for useful and edible ones. That's all on hold till I've decided which species are vaguely the same as ours and have invented a few more.

[WechtleinUns]

Oh, that sounds cool, Ketumak. If I may ask, how similar are you making your alternate earth to ours, with respect to history and language, I mean? Do you, for example, have an alternate Spanish that sounds just like Spanish, but isn't Spanish? (I've always loved that Idea. )

[chris_notts]

I have started trying to build the lexicon of Mɛdíṭṣai by systematically going through basic/key semantic areas rather than just inventing words as and when I need them. The reason for this is not only so I fill the most important gaps first, but also so that if I do an entire area in one go, for example family terms or spatial terms, I can think about the patterns, distinctions and systematic relationships between the terms better. By contrast, if I just invent a word at a time then either I end up with a relexification of English or a random jumble that doesn't hang together very well.

I've not done too much yet, so I guess I'll see how it goes.

[WeepingElf]

I try to avoid unbalancing in the Old Albic lexicon by keeping my words in a thematic dictionary, which is organized according to subject matters. But it still has huge gaps and is overall in a mess.

[tezcatlip0ca]

Oh, that sounds cool, Ketumak. If I may ask, how similar are you making your alternate earth to ours, with respect to history and language, I mean? Do you, for example, have an alternate Spanish that sounds just like Spanish, but isn't Spanish? (I've always loved that Idea. )

I’ve had a similar idea. Derive Spanish, French, Italian, etc. from Proto-Germanic; English, German, Danish, etc. from Proto-Slavic, and Russian, Polish, Serbian, etc. from Vulgar Latin.

[Ketumak]

Jose wrote:
Oh, that sounds cool, Ketumak. If I may ask, how similar are you making your alternate earth to ours, with respect to history and language, I mean? Do you, for example, have an alternate Spanish that sounds just like Spanish, but isn't Spanish? (I've always loved that Idea. )

I’ve had a similar idea. Derive Spanish, French, Italian, etc. from Proto-Germanic; English, German, Danish, etc. from Proto-Slavic, and Russian, Polish, Serbian, etc. from Vulgar Latin.

Since people are asking and commenting, I take the end of the Jurassic Age as the point of departure for my con-world from our world. Continents are only vaguely familiar, they're in rather different places and subject to somewhat different tectonics. Similarly species differ, particularly mammals.

The geography's more advanced than the species. Once I've finished writing up the Õtari language, I'll backtrack and do so more worlding. Then I can balance up the Õtari lexicon.

If you're looking for a closely parallel world, with languages similar to ours, the collaborative conworld Ill Bethisad is good one:
http://www.bethisad.com/

[R.Rusanov]

Slavic from Vulgar Latin is pretty fun to do, I've applied the actual slavonic sound changes to a vulgar latin substrate and it turns out pretty well, you have to kinda force it in though, like keeping intervocalic g and d.

rādō rādis rādit rādimus rāditis rādunt
rádo rádes rádet rádemos rádetes rádǫt
rádo rádešĭ rádetŭ rádemo rádete rádǫtŭ

ego tū illum/illa nōs vōs illī
ɛgɔ tú elo/ela noš voš eli
ĭzŭ ty jelo/jela nošĭ vošĭ jeli

laurum patrem
lóuro pátrɛ
lúro pátrĭ

subinde
sobędĭ

So "subinde, laurum illum rādit dorsum de patrem" - immediately the blond person scrapes the back of the father - would become
"sobed, lurolo rade dărso de patăr" in pseudo-Bulgarian
"sobyad', luro jelo radet dorso de pater" in pseudo-Russian (I think)
"sóbiądz, luro jelo radziet dórso dzie patrz" in pseudo-Polish (I think)