Page 168 of 173

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:42 pm
by Soap
din wrote: next: coat hanger
Andanese:
huinui "shaped like shoulders". The prefix hu- means "shaped like" and is often used for clothes, but classifiers can spread to objects associated with their primary category as well. That is, the "clothes" category includes clothes and objects that are found where clothes are found, such as ironing boards and clothes hangers.

Poswa:
Probably bustobis "shoulder substitute". The same "shaped like" morpheme exists in Poswa, but it's an infix and is used less often since it often creates ambiguous words. If it were used, though, the resulting word would be busfos.

Pabappa:
parpuma piris also "shoulder substitute", but the word for shoulder is cognate to a word that in Poswa means a cliffside or viewpoint and shows up in placenames. I'm probably going to change my mind on this, though, and revive the original word, which would be pustar in Pabappa assuming normal sound correspondences. This would be less ambiguous with other words.

Khulls:
Possibly ṁŋiḳē or gʷōŋiḳē. The intended meaning of both is "shirt support", where the word for shirt is in the first word derived from "breast + shield" and in the second from "heart + shield". I think my resistance to the first one is just based on my not wanting a word to begin with a syllabic nasal followed by another nasal, and that it would be perfectly normal to the speakers of Khulls.

IPA for these is fairly messy: [m̩˧ŋi˩ˈkʼeː˥] and [ɣʷoː˧ŋi˩ˈkʼeː˥]
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next:

cucumber

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2017 12:13 pm
by din
Tormiott (Rockall):

I decided that simply borrowing it was boring, and so I came up with a little folk etymology by taking two existing morphemes which together sound a little like cucumber, and using their meaning to come up with an explanation for its name.

cuacômo ˈkwakoːmʊ (n) cucumber

cua- is a prefix meaning things like big, blown up, inflated, wide or thick. Cômo is the passive form of com, dirt. By itself it doesn't mean much. Perhaps it could be 'made with dirt' or 'made into dirt', but not 'dirtied', as that would be acômo. So together, cuacômo could be taken to mean something like 'big thing made of dirt' or 'inflated dirt', which I guess could be explained through their quick growth, close to the ground.

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next: to air (clothes, sheets...)

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2017 10:49 am
by hwhatting
din wrote:next: to air (clothes, sheets...)
Tautisca: wéntun dóten + Dat. "to air (a room, clothes)", lit. "give wind to"

Next: story, tale

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2017 4:02 pm
by din
Tormiott (Rockall)

sienît ˈɕənijt (n) history (historical account, compare nâcho); account, story, tale
- sie- (pref) moving away; changing shape, material or form
- nît (n) time; period (compare noth)

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next: shelter

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:42 pm
by Soap
din wrote:
next: shelter
Khulls:

ṗā "fort, lookout, watchtower". Not a good semantic match, but I'm proud of this word and I think that a more exact semantic match would likely be a derivative of this word. (Pronounced /p'a:˥/)


Bābākiam:
fapus refuge, safe place
kupita maternity ward; by extension, any place safe for babies
pupee nest, den, safe place for animals (pronounced /'pu.pə.ə/)
uka sanctuary, safe place

Bābākiam is the ancestor of Poswa and Pabappa.

Poswa:
pis means shelter in a broad sense, and can refer to a natural place of refuge such as an island or to a building made specifically to house people. (pronounced /pisʷ/, narrowly [pys]) This word is related to pes, which denotes an object that provides shelter by dividing people from whatever element would otherwise harm them. Both words can appear as the second element of a compound:
mippis, homeless shelter
pupis, a refuge from natural predators (pu = "prey, small animal")

There are other words available:
pwusam "sanctuary", which is distantly cognate to fapus[/b]


next word:
bulldozer

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2017 1:55 pm
by din
Tormiott (Rockall):

The etymology for this word is nowhere near as interesting as that of the English word 'bulldozer', but oh well:

saulthadog ˈsolθɪðoʊ (n) bulldozer
- saul- (pref) slowly creeping, inching forward, moving heavily
- thadog, active participle of thog (v) to push, to shove (compare sogodd); to push something forward

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next: (to do) magic

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 1:09 am
by Soap
din wrote:Tormiott (Rockall):

The etymology for this word is nowhere near as interesting as that of the English word 'bulldozer', but oh well:

saulthadog ˈsolθɪðoʊ (n) bulldozer
- saul- (pref) slowly creeping, inching forward, moving heavily
- thadog, active participle of thog (v) to push, to shove (compare sogodd); to push something forward

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next: (to do) magic
Poswa:

The Poswobs practice pubo, translated as "womb magic", to protect the health of their babies while they are still growing and prevent miscarriage. These are considered magic spells rather than prayers because the women are taking the power of their goddesses, Maptavem and Waptena, for their own rather than praying for the goddesses to grant their wishes.

The word pubo is distantly cognate to popo, the word for speech in general, and conjugates in the same way. Use of this verb in the reflexive can indicate a pregnant woman using womb magic on herself:

Swaspabam pubofa.
Swaspabam (a woman's name) is using womb magic for her baby.

In the normal transitive voice, it refers to other women helping a pregnant woman with her pregnancy. The beneficiary of the womb magic is still in the accusative case, not another case such as a benefactive:
Paliambum Swaspabiap pubaraba.
The women are casting womb magic spells on Swaspabam.

Womb magic uses a special vocabulary for its spells; the word two means "to translate into Womb Magic" and also conjugates the same way as pubo and popo.

Any other form of magic that uses verbal spells will be described using a similar formula, but womb magic is the only form of magic where the word has fused. The word for a magic spell in general is rapšom. A few other words involving magic are:

ripitom the magic associated with Ripi, a goddess believed to have the ability to hypnotize people and to shape-shift
šiaši illogical self-replenishment; a miracle
nomba to conjure an object into view; this is believed to be a nonverbal form of magic but some conjurors prefer to use words while they are performing their magic
tavam the name of a magic spell protecting young children from harm;
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next: honeymoon

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 3:54 pm
by din
Tormiott (Rockall):

Well, the month of May is literally called 'honey moon': tholenolda ˈθoləˌnolda (n) May {thole, honey + nolda, moon}

Going on vacation after one's wedding isn't exactly traditional among the Miott, but western people all do the same things nowadays, so there's a word for it:

mothuadenohnin ˈmoθwɪðəˌnohnɪn (n) honeymoon (v) to go on a honeymoon
- mothuade ˈmoθwɪðə (v) to marry, to wed
- - moth- (pref) together, in a duo, twinned, paired up, allied, complementary
- - uade (v) to make sure, to ensure; to insure {from EN wed or ON veðja}
- nohnin ˈnohnɪn (v) to travel, to journey; to go on a holiday (n) trip, journey

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next: pockmark

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2017 8:16 pm
by Nortaneous
North Pannonian: čůvmůkel or čůva

čůva /tSuova/ 'small hole' < *k'ewHwos (contrasts with kach 'big hole')
můkel /muok@l/ 'discoloration' < Lat. macula

(I'm still not sure whether /uo/ < /O/ should be <å>, <ů>, or <uo> -- maybe an alternative is to standardize the spelling before the Great Pannonian Vowel Shift and use <au> or <aa>/<á>)

next: almond milk

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2017 3:34 pm
by din
Tormiott (Rockall):

mandelnem ˈmɛndənːəm (n) almond milk
- mandel ˈmɛnːəl (n) almond {via LA amandula ultimately from GR ἀμυγδαλή}
- nem nəm (n) milk (v) to milk; to rub, to stroke (archaic)

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next: breadcrumb

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 1:11 am
by Nortaneous
Pannonian:

Bread crumbs made intentionally:
chuslau < chus 'cracker' + ˀlau 'flour' (reanalyzed as a first-declension collective noun, *ala:v > *ala:u)

Bread crumbs made unintentionally:
bukkavau < buk 'bread' + kavau 'droppings'

Next: ironing board

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2017 8:59 pm
by Soap
Nortaneous wrote:
Next: ironing board
The last few have been very difficult for me, as even with more than 10000 words in Poswa I still have major gaps in certain semantic fields, mostly relating to modern technology but also some areas closer to nature, where, for example, my only word for almond was derived from "seed-shaped", even though an almond is just another type of seed, so that etymology makes no sense.



Poswa:
This is a little bit experimental, but I've created a few other words with this formula. Basically it's polysynthesis, but I'm not sure if any natlangs use polysynthesis in quite this way. For this word, I need two nouns and a verb. Both nouns are incorporated, and therefore undergo morphological alternation when combined together:

Bla is a Poswa word for clothes in general. This argument is the patient of the verb rather than the agent, but for an inanimate object, the accusative suffix -p is omitted whenever the noun is indefinite, which it always is in this type of compound.
Fupa indicates a flat surface, upon which things can be lain; it often corresponds to English "table" in the wider sense. The locative suffix -m that would normally be required to create the meaning of "on a table" is usually omitted in this type of compound.

Wana is a verb meaning to flatten out, usually relying on natural forces rather than crushing an object with one's hands or another object.

Lastly, pwu is a verbal affix indicating the nominal stem of a verb in the potential mood. I'm not sure what to call this; its basic meaning is "now, you can [VERB]". Combining the four morphemes in the order given and applying Poswa's aggressive sound rules produces the word

Blappafampwu
Ironing board.

But this is where Poswa's grammar diverges wildly from English. This noun can be used in isolation, but it will commonly be used with the possessive affixes turned on, producing the triplet

Blappafampwo My ironing board / I have an ironing board / The ironing board is mine.
Blappafampwe Your ironing board / You have an ironing board / The ironing board is yours.
Blappafampwa His/Her/Their ironing board / They have an ironing board / The ironing board is theirs.

There is no distinction in Poswa between the three interpretations of the sentences above. But these are also verbs meaning "I can flatten clothes on a table", "You can flatten clothes on a table", "They can flatten clothes on a table". i.e. there's no distinction in Poswa between the concept of "ironing board" and those whole sentences. I'm not sure if other polysynthetic languages do this, or if they would all add an additional morpheme that distinguishes between the general concept and the specific.

Now, of course, you might notice that I still don't have a word for iron (the tool), and that my word for ironing board could equally well be a word for iron, and perhaps would be better as such since I could just use blappa as the word for ironing board. I may decide to do this, but in general I don't consider words for modern technology to be set in stone, so I haven't decided yet.
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next:

cane, walking stick

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2017 3:20 pm
by din
Tormiott (Rockall):

huarhaiara ˈhwaɾɪˌjaɾa (n) walking stick, cane
+ huarha (v) to stroll, to walk leisurely {from ON hvarfa, to wander}
+ iara (n) thin, long object; stick, rod; remote control (abbreviation of rhiadaniara); (v) to be very tall; to be stretched; to be outstretched, to be straightened

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next: (body) hair

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 3:03 am
by hwhatting
din wrote:next: (body) hair
Tautisca: corti "hair" (collective); e.g. wit is immoi corti lucha "he has long hair"; a single hair is corticun.

Next: shoe

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:31 pm
by din
hwhatting wrote:
din wrote:next: (body) hair
Tautisca: corti "hair" (collective); e.g. wit is immoi corti lucha "he has long hair"; a single hair is corticun.

Next: shoe
Oddly, I had a word for sole, but not for shoe... Typical. Because I didn't come up with an etymology, I came up with an idiomatic expression instead.

ocsa ˈoksa (v) to shoe; (n) shoe
mai cador ôcsaio mɛa ˈkɛðəɹ ˈoʊksɪjʊ (expr) ≈ his bark is worse than his bite (lit. to be a shod bear, requires mai to be conjugated)

Cador (bear) literally means 'being brown'.

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next: jug

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2017 1:31 pm
by Soap
din wrote:next: jug
Poswa:
To me a jug is any bottle with a handle, whether or not it has a cap on. I could be very specific about the word for handle, but my guess is that there will never be a need to distinguish different types of bottles by the shape of the handle, so I'll just pick wae "round hole" since I'd expect, even in a primitive culture, most handles would be curved so that people would not hurt their hands on the corners. (And I suspect pottery is just a lot easier to make that way anyway.) The essive case of wae is wabe "having a handle, handled".

Blem is the word for bottle. Combining these two words together and applying sound changes produces blempie. This is considered a nominative case noun; it could be said that Poswa has a zero-morph that derives nominative case nouns from those of any other noun case. The contents of a container are placed in the essive case when referring to the container, so that one could say

Blempie tampie šapipamba.
The jug of wine is in the refrigerator.

(The word for refrigerator is literally "fresh (thing) box", but is chosen because the first three letters are the same as one of the words for snow.)

Pabappa:
I seem to have thrown out the word for bottle, which would normally have survived in Pabappa entirely unchanged as *blem. Probably there was a middle stage at which it collided with some other word. It was replaced by pampablem, originally "baby bottle". But with the loss of the second morpheme as an independent word speakers came to see pampa as a separate word for a drinking container that just happened to be a homophone of the word for baby, and thus came to see blem as a precision morpheme, specifying a particular type of drinking vessel. Thus a good word for a larger container such as a jug could either be

Tarna pampa
Party bottle.

or

Pampa rittab.
Bottle with a handle. (though a separate word for handle exists, the word used here is literally "ear")

Since neither of these is a one-word compound, both are equally valid and both could be used with slightly different meanings. Even tarna pampa rittab "party bottle with a handle" would work. Since people do not generally invite babies to drinking parties or carry them around by the ears, the homophony would not generally cause any confusion for the listeners.

Khulls:
No word for handle yet, but I might get around it by just using a suffix for a handheld object, unless I decide that the word for bottle also has that suffix. But for now I could say either mīʕʷi or mīgʷo, where is "bottle" and the other two syllables are the locative forms of two different words for hand.

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next:
to step on, press on, choose

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2017 3:10 pm
by Travis B.
Lions, tigers, and labials, oh my!

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:41 am
by Nortaneous
North Pannonian:

ˀusseeˀchirai 'choose'

So ˀusseeˀcha, Pikaču!

From PIE *ug'h-deh1g-s-. Mutation from perfective sigmatism was regular in PP but removed by analogy in NP, sometimes creating doublets of perfective and imperfective verbs which split into new semantically momentane or habitual forms. In this case, the other half of the doublet is ˀusseeˀkirai 'like'.

This is one of Pannonian's quirky-case verbs: the subject appears in the dative. Köˀm eˀ Mëgdanëldzů žai fišfileiŋ ˀusseeˀchu.

*ug'h- doesn't exist in the real world; the etymology of Proto-Balto-Slavic *uź, the element in the Slavic vzjat-like forms for 'take', appears to be unknown. However, the fun thing about a conbranch of IE is that you can provide conevidence for reconstructed PIE.

Also, infinitive forms vary heavily across Pannonian dialects, due to differences in the extent of vowel reduction, the outcome of PIE diphthongs, and the extent of preservation of *h. Standard North Pannonian generally preserves monophthongization except word-finally and has little reduction, hence -irai and -uvai in the standard; dialectal forms range from -(u)rä and -(u)fä to -ir and -ëv.

Next: dagger

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:36 pm
by Travis B.
Old Laqar

'dagger' (lit. 'stabber'):

sg. indef. nukme
pl. indef. nukmemu
sg. def. nukmedə
pl. def. nokmemudər
sg. indef. 3rd sg. m. poss. nukmetə
pl. indef. 3rd sg. m. poss. nokmemutə
sg. def. 3rd sg. m. poss. nokmitdə
pl. def. 3rd sg. m. poss. nokmemutdər

and so forth.

Next: 'curtain'

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 8:19 pm
by Soap
Travis B. wrote:
Next: 'curtain'
Poswa:

bublami, originally a compound of bom "birds' wings" and lami "protective clothing". This type of compound would usually be interpreted attributively ("clothes for wings") rather than associatively? ("clothes that resemble wings"), but this compound is very old.
paefwup, literally "night-maker", for especially thick and dark curtains.
laepae, another general purpose word, though I will probably be removing this since it looks like a duplicate of lapa "(insect) wing".

Any of these words can take the dual suffix -pop to indicate a pair of curtains, or -bum to indicate a plural.

Bublamipwopi džobžybi; simpibo!
Close the curtains; I'm trying to sleep!


Pabappa:

pasipup, from pasup "night", plus the suffix -up "maker" and a sound change.
was "era, long period of time; curtain, drape" ... this will probably only be usable as part of a compound due to the large semantic range.
pampapep "baby blanket; curtain" from the idea that curtains are about the same size as blankets for babies. This is actually a collision of two words that was reanalyzed by folk etymology.

Late Andanese:
giti latima, hiti latima, anu latima are all listed in my dictionary as "window curtains". giti is "bedsheet, blanket" and hiti (a cognate) is "rug, carpet". anu means "clothes". I think latima is a compound of lati "door, gateway" and nima "window", again with a regular sound change, but I cant be sure. Late Andanese has a very small phonology and one of the things I like about it is that there are often, even with the small vocabulary size I have right now, several possible etymologies of any given word which feel about equally plausible, and therefore it could be said that the entire language is folk etymology.

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next: feather pen

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:50 pm
by Travis B.
Soap wrote:next: feather pen
Old Laqar:

'feather pen' (lit. 'quill stylus'): tš'elə nistə

For a more full paradigm:

sg. indef. tš'elə nistə
pl. indef. tš'elə nistələ
sg. def. tš'elə nistədo
pl. def. tš'elə nistəldum
sg. indef. 3rd sg. m. poss. tš'elə nistətə
pl. indef. 3rd sg. m. poss. tš'elə niståltə
sg. def. 3rd sg. m. poss. tš'elə niståtdo
pl. def. 3rd sg. m. poss. tš'elə nistələtdum

The speakers of Proto-Laqar had two main devices for writing, brushes for writing with ink on parchment and styluses for writing on wax tablets. So when writing with feathers came along, the writing utensils were called styluses due to their physical resemblence to a stylus even though they used ink.

Next: 'cilantro'

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2017 8:33 am
by hwhatting
Travis B. wrote:Next: 'cilantro'
Tautisca: coriandrun, from Latin coriandrum.
Next: Military commander, general

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2017 1:56 pm
by din
Tormiott (Rockall)

I ended up creating a very tautological word which literally would break down to 'great important (one)':

oimenie ˈʊjməɲə (n) general, captain; leader of a group
- oi- (pref) augmentative; main, principle, most important
- menie (v) to be important, to be great, to be regarded highly (compare mat); to be skilled, to be a master of one's trade or skill

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next: louse

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2017 5:53 pm
by Soap
din wrote: next: louse
Tapilula, Old Andanese, Gold, Khulls, and proto-Moonshine all share the root yĭta for "louse", though in all but the last two it must be padded with a classifier prefix, which varies between ha/ho/hu between the different languages.


Poswa:
This root would become lita in Poswa if it existed, but I seem to have decided to toss this one out in favor of using a word for "itch". I do have a word pwaeta "idiot" which could presumably be cognate to this since a louse could easily be a term of abuse. /l/ is not a very common sound in Poswa, and surprisingly, I found only one other Poswa word which would merge with this word in any of its inflected forms: lifa "skin group, moiety; genity". a societal division used among some Poswobs to determine who can marry whom; but the vast majority of Poswobs belong to just one of the many moieties, and therefore do not follow the system at all. Thus this word would be primarily used by the royal family and those who are close to them either geographically or genetically. I may change the word for louse to lipa, however, since most words ending in -ta are words for occupations, and not many humans make a living from biting and sucking the blood of other humans. Most of the inflected forms of lita and lipa would be identical, so folk etymology and analogy from those inflected forms could cause the switch to take place.

Pabappa:
This root would become lida in Pabappa if it existed. This would also go through a stage of appearing as if it were an agent noun derived from li "tongue; to lick". This would not be entirely inappropriate given how lice get their food, but neither Poswa nor Pabappa uses agentive formations for animals the way English does with words like "toe-biter" for a type of beetle. A similar type of reanalysis could take place here, changing the final vowel instead of the consonant before it. This would lead to even more collisions, however, so I think instead I will compound it with the word for flea, tipa, and have this compound take place early on so that it can contract via regular sound change to litipa.

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next: hobby, pastime

Re: Lexicon Building

Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2017 11:55 am
by din
I ended up making another word for this (because I thought the first one below was a little odd), and then I discovered that I already had two words for it, instead of one. Oh well, synonyms aren't a bad thing to have, and one is slightly different anyway.

muantanda ˈmwɛntɪnːa (n) sunset; the time around sunset; dusk (see also cor); west; hobby, pastime (with possessive; synonym of tornît; also compare miulthog); (v) for the sun to set; to be the time around sunset
- muat- (pref) under (static or moving under), out of something; down or downwards; low location (as a property)
- manda (n) sun

tornît ˈtoɹniːt (n) hobby, pastime, pursuit (synonym of muantanda; also compare miulthog)
- tor- (pref) around or pertaining to the neck and chest, heart or in the throat; relating to spirits or the spiritual; related to emotional pain or sorrow; With voice; The language of...; behind, at the back of, to the end of, at the end, after
- nît (n) time; period (for «the time that...», see noth)

miulthog ˈmyːlθoː (n) sport; game (requiring physical effort); hobby, pastime (requiring physical effort; otherwise consider tornît, muantanda)
- miul- (pref) good, pleasant, positive, beautiful; correct, right
- thog (v) to push, to shove (compare sogodd); to push something forward

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next: magnet (or magnetic)