reconlangmo 6: lexicon (#151)
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title: "ReConLangMo 6: Lexicon"
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date: 2020-05-22
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series: reconlangmo
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tags:
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- conlang
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- lewa
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---
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# ReConLangMo 6: Lexicon
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Previously in [this series][reconlangmo], we've covered a lot of details about
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how sentences work, tenses get marked and how words work in general; however
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this doesn't really make L'ewa a _language_. Most of the difficulty in making a
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language like this is the vocabulary. In this post I'll be describing how I am
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making the vocabulary for L'ewa and I'll include an entire table of the
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dictionary words. This answers [this
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prompt](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/gojncp/reconlangmo_6_lexicon/).
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[reconlangmo]: https://christine.website/blog/series/reconlangmo
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## Word Distinctions
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L'ewa is intended to be a logical language. One of the side effects of L'ewa
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being a logical language is that each word should have as minimal and exact of a
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meaning/function as possible. English has lots of words that cover large
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semantic spaces (like go, set, run, take, get, turn, good, etc.) without much of a
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pattern to it. I don't want this in L'ewa.
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Let's take the word "good" as an example. Off the top of my head, good can mean
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any of the following things:
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- beneficial
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- aesthetically pleasing
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- favorful taste
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- saintly (coincidentally this is the source of the idiom "God is good")
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- healthy
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I'm fairly sure there are more "senses" of the word good, but let's break these
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into their own words:
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| L'ewa | Definition |
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|-------|------------------------------------|
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| firgu | is beneficial/nice to |
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| n'ixu | is aesthetically pleasing to |
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| flawo | is tasty/has a pleasant flavor to |
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| spiro | is saintly/holy/morally good to |
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| qanro | is healthy/fit/well/in good health |
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Each of these words has a very distinct and fine-grained meaning, even though
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the range is a bit larger than it would be in English. These words also differ
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from a lot of the other words in the L'ewa dictionary so far because they can
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take an object. Most of the words so far are adjective-like because it doesn't
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make sense for there to be an object attached to the color blue.
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By default, if a word that can take an object doesn't have one, it's assumed to
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be obvious from context. For example, consider the following set of sentences:
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```
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mi qa madsa lo spalo. ti flawo!
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I am eating an apple. It's delicious!
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```
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I am working at creating more words using a [Swaedish list][swaedish207].
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[swaedish207]: https://tulpa.dev/cadey/lewa/src/branch/master/words/swaedish207.csv
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## Family Words
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Family words are a huge part of a language because it encodes a lot about the
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culture behind that language. L'ewa isn't really intended to have much of a
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culture behind it, but the one place I want to take a cultural stance is here.
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The major kinship word is kirta, or "is an infinite slice of an even greater
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infinite". This is one of the few literal words in L'ewa that is defined using a
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metaphor, as there is really no good analog for this in English.
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There are also words for other major family terms in English:
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| L'ewa | Definition |
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|-------|-------------------------|
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| brota | is the/a brother of |
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| sistu | is the/a sister of |
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| mamta | is the/a mother of |
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| patfu | is the/a father of |
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| grafa | is the/a grandfather of |
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| grama | is the/a grandmother of |
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| wanto | is the/a aunt of |
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| tunke | is the/a uncle of |
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Cousins are all called brother/sister. None of these words are inherently
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gendered and `brota` can refer to a female or nonbinary person. The words are
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separate because I feel it flows better, for now at least.
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## Idioms
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L'ewa strives to have as few idioms as possible. If something is meant
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non-literally (or as a [conceptual metaphor][cmet]), the particle ke'a can be used:
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[cmet]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor
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```
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ti firgu
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This is beneificial
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ti ke'a firgu
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This is metaphorically/non-literally beneficial
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```
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---
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I have been documenting L'ewa and all of its words/grammar in a [git
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repo][lewarepo]. The layout of this repo is as follows:
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| Folder | Purpose |
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|----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
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| `book` | The source files and build scripts for the L'ewa book (this book may end up being published) |
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| `nix` | [Nix][nix] crud, custom packages for the eBook render and development tools |
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| `script` | Where experiments for the written form of L'ewa live |
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| `tools` | Tools for hacking at L'ewa in Rust/Typescript (none published yet, this is where the dictionary server code will live) |
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| `words` | Where the definitions of each word are defined in [Dhall][dhall], this will be fed into the dictionary server code |
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I also have the entire process of building and testing everything (from the
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eBook to the unit tests of the tools) automated with [Drone][droneci]. You can
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see the past builds [here](https://drone.tulpa.dev/cadey/lewa). After I merge
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the information from the latest blogpost into this repo, I will put a rendered
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version of it [here](http://lewa-book-devel.kahless.cetacean.club:43001/). This
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will allow you to browse through the chapters of the eBook while it is being
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written. Eventually this will be automatically deployed to my Kubernetes cluster
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and the book will be a subpath/subdomain of `lewa.christine.website`.
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I have created a system of defining words that allows you to focus on each word
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at once, but then fit it back into the greater whole of the language. For
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example here is `kirta.dhall`:
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```dhall
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-- kirta.dhall
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let ContentWord = ../types/ContentWord.dhall
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in ContentWord::{
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, word = "kirta"
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, gloss = "Creator"
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, definition =
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"is an infinite slice of an even greater infinite/our Creator/a Creator"
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}
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```
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This is put in `words/roots` because it is a root (or uncombined) word. Then it
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is added to the `dictionary.dhall`:
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```dhall
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-- dictionary.dhall
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let ContentWord = ./types/ContentWord.dhall
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let ParticleWord = ./types/ParticleWord.dhall
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in { rootWords =
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[ -- ...
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./roots/kirta.dhall
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-- ...
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]
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, particles [ -- ...
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]
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```
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And then the build process will automatically generate the new dictionary from
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all of these definitions. Downside of this is that each new kind of word needs
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subtle adjustments to the build process of the dictionary and that
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removals/changes to lots of words requires a larger-scale refactor of the
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language, but I feel the tradeoff is worth the effort. I will undoubtedly end up
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creating a few tools to help with this.
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I will keep working on additional vocabulary on my own, but [here][vocab] is the
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list of vocabulary that has been written up so far.
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[vocab]: https://git.io/JfaeF
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Be well.
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[lewarepo]: https://tulpa.dev/cadey/lewa
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[nix]: https://nixos.org/nix/
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[dhall]: https://dhall-lang.org/
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[droneci]: https://drone.io
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