The BG Language Creation Guide
#4: Example of First Collaboration
Feedback from First Language Collaboration
- From: Angles, Saxons and Jutes and a couple French citizens
- To: s. Wells-Jensen
- Creator of: Liqupa
- Brief description of the culture in which this language is spoken. Peaceful, pine-tree worshipping pre-industrial islanders
- YES You are using technical linguistic vocabulary consistently such as: inflectional, morpheme, prefix, suffix, derivational.
- YES The tone of the documentation is objective and professional rather than conversational. (Try to give specific suggestions.)
- Two ways in which your segment inventory differs from mine. 1. You have a uvular stop [q]. You have no [t]
- You are using phonetic transcription with typable equivalents and I find place manner and voicing designations for your segments:
- x yes no
- suggested changes
- Your maximum syllable is: CVC
- Noun Classes:
- Number of classes? 2
- Way these are marked: Marked only in the plural: M class takes inflectional suffixes -ma -mi or -mu while NA class words take -na in the plural.
- Semantic motivation (if any) for nouns being in a particular class.
M class nouns are usually tangible while NA class are intangible.
- Suggested changes
- You mark number in this way: (specify)
three inflectional suffixes: -ma -mi -mu for M class: last vowel of the root determines the vowel in the suffix. NA class words take -na suffix for plural.
- You mark possessives in this way (specify): circumfixes
yu- -la: default;
yu- -yu inalienable;
yu- -siq given as a gift;
yu- -nai possessed because stolen;
yu- -li borrowed object.
- You negate nouns in this way: Negation not found
- suggested changes: add a negation morpheme
- The case(s) of polysemy in your language are: Nui = root and bedrock
- The case(s) of homonymy used in your language is/are: nuna: broccoli and nuna mountain
- The noun you made that I wish I had is: qaqu wildfire vs. qu-mana-ya bound-sun-small (bound star) campfire
- A check for ungrammatical forms and presentation errors: ok
- Any nouns which use a segment not allowed by the phonetic description of the language--none
- Any problems with how nouns are transcribed in the word list such as use of English orthographic convensions rather than phonetic transcription--none
- Any words you find which violate maximum syllable--none
- Any errors in the use of hyphens to separate morphemes--none
- Here are the five words I made for you with their glosses and translations:
- qihadusi university qi-ha-dusi hardened-know-tent (a place for 'hard' knowledge
- lidusi a holy place inside or outside li-dusi spirit-tent; na class
- qili brave person; qi-li hardened-spirit
- qipimala paper; qi-pimala; hardened' leaf
- alasiq; refreshment of the spirit. ala-siq rain-good; na class
- Translations: Using your partner's grammatical system and lexical items, translate these words and phrases into his or her language. Note that we have no equivalent for "the" at present. You may ignore that for now.
- I translate "people" as "miqi-mi"
- I translate "the woman's forest" as "yu-aina samu-la"
- I translate "the men's stars" as "yu-qali-mi mana-ma-la"
- I translate "tree's branches" as "yu-pimala palama-ma-yu (that's inalienable possession)
- I translate shammans' story" as
"yu-li-mai-mi li-qasi-ni-li"- (necessarytouse the circumfix that means 'possessed because it was a gift since no story can be possessed unles it is first given.)
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Updated 2/24/2008