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Agglutinative Morphemes

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 10:23 am
by Škjakto
I'm sort of new to conlanging and I want to make a language just to get a feel for it. I'm thinking of making it an agglutinative language with few morphemes (along the lines of Finnish and most if not all Algonquin languages) and was wondering which morphemes to use. I do own all 3 of the Zompist's linguistics books, so feel free to reference any of those.

Re: Agglutinative Morphemes

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 12:37 pm
by Frislander
Škjakto wrote:...an agglutinative language with few morphemes (along the lines ... most if not all Algonquin languages)
What? I've got an Algo-lang in development and I can tell you that a lot of morphology goes on in Algonquian!

Re: Agglutinative Morphemes

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 1:29 pm
by mèþru
Škjakto is referring to the number of roots.
If you want an easy start with conlanging, make an altlang (short for alternate language, it is a language which developed differently due to an alternate history, This concept is known by many other names.)
Here is a link describing how to make one (the author calls it a bogolang).

Re: Agglutinative Morphemes

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 2:10 pm
by ObsequiousNewt
I recommend using these morphemes: this, that, I, him, cat, semen, broil, dodecahedron, trilobyte, neodymium filing, Bolshevik, and a suffix marking the antipassive.

This should serve well enough for most languages.

(Bonus conjunction: and)

Re: Agglutinative Morphemes

Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2016 4:11 pm
by mèþru
I use the Leipzig-Jakarta list as a starter for the lexicon, but it doesn't necessarily apply for alien languages.