ConwayLife.com

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 3:57 am One thing I was thinking of doing is handling conjunctions like "and" and "or" with something like "foo and bar" <foo X bar Y>, where X and Y are as-yet undecided words. I imagine that distinctions between conjunctions will be made more on the Ys than the Xs. What do you think?

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 4:21 am I'm saying that we could translate something like "foo and bar" as <foo X bar Y>, where the X and Y are both necessary parts of the phrase (like how "neither foo nor bar" works, but "foo nor bar" doesn't unless you're talking about Boolean logic), so <foo X bar> would seem incomplete to speakers of this language. The last point is that we could use the same X for eg "and" and "or", but distinguish the two by different Ys.

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 4:55 am Yes, except that the conjunctions follow the constituent phrases.

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 4:55 am Also, what do you think about removing initial consonants from person suffixes?

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 4:59 am Could you use each conjunction with the words we already have and give their translations please?

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 4:59 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 4:55 am Also, what do you think about removing initial consonants from person suffixes?

I don't think I like that. Why do you want it?

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:14 am

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 4:59 am Could you use each conjunction with the words we already have and give their translations please?

We haven't made any conjunctions yet.

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:14 am The person suffixes seem a bit heavy to me.

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:40 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:14 am We haven't made any conjunctions yet.

Just use some placeholder.

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:40 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:14 am The person suffixes seem a bit heavy to me.

I can't find them, can you please repost them?

First person		let
Second person		so
Third person animate	hei
Third person inanimate	zein

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:52 am "food and water" <ngwe place pu holte>. (Should we use those for the actual words for "and"?)

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:14 am

Code: Select all

First person		let
Second person		so
Third person animate	hei
Third person inanimate	zein

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:59 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:52 am "food and water" <ngwe place pu holte>. (Should we use those for the actual words for "and"?)

I think they should be single-syllable. Also, let's find words for yes and no, also single syllable.

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:59 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 5:14 am

Code: Select all

First person		let
Second person		so
Third person animate	hei
Third person inanimate	zein

They're already one syllable each. Getting rid of the h in "hei" would also make it vowel only.

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 6:48 am Do you have any suggestions?

fluffykitty wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 6:48 am So? Plenty of languages have vowel-only affixes and they work just fine.

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 7:14 am lan - yes
suk - no

Hunting wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:14 am with - jy, from Chinese. (Admittedly not a very good match but and is taken)

Hunting wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:14 am Pastebin anyone?

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:00 am

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 23rd, 2020, 7:14 am lan - yes
suk - no

Some other things I think we should do are marking positions relative to an object using "top", "inside", etc+genitive, eg <(top)(loc) (house)(gen)> "inside the house", and using those with the position noun in the instrumental for paths of motion, eg <(inside)(instr) (tunnel)(gen)> "via the tunnel". We're not really at a point where that would matter, but it's something I think we should do.

Hunting wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:14 am with - jy, from Chinese. (Admittedly not a very good match but and is taken) Pastebin anyone?

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:36 am so you think maybe /aj/ could be -jy? We already have sounds for both j and y and in it doesn't sound like /jy/.

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:36 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:00 am Some other things I think we should do are marking positions relative to an object using "top", "inside", etc+genitive, eg <(top)(loc) (house)(gen)> "inside the house", and using those with the position noun in the instrumental for paths of motion, eg <(inside)(instr) (tunnel)(gen)> "via the tunnel". We're not really at a point where that would matter, but it's something I think we should do.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Let's not forget this. Can you make words for conjunctions please?

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:36 am

Hunting wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:14 am with - jy, from Chinese. (Admittedly not a very good match but and is taken) Pastebin anyone?

so you think maybe /aj/ could be -jy? We already have sounds for both j and y and in it doesn't sound like /jy/.

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:42 am I think he meant using <jy> for "with".

Hunting wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:14 am with - jy, from Chinese. (Admittedly not a very good match but and is taken) Pastebin anyone?

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:42 am <cu> "and (X)" <con> "and (Y)" <he> "or (X)" <hoi> "or (Y)" <hekoi> "or (exclusive, Y)"

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:30 am We're tracking progress on a LifeWiki page, but Schiaparellio hasn't updated it since page 5 or so. Here's a Pastebin of my much-better updated personal sheet, which I won't link here because that's against the rules.

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:59 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:42 am <cu> "and (X)" <con> "and (Y)" <he> "or (X)" <hoi> "or (Y)" <hekoi> "or (exclusive, Y)"

Could you use them with our current words?

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:59 am

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 4:30 am We're tracking progress on a LifeWiki page, but Schiaparellio hasn't updated it since page 5 or so. Here's a Pastebin of my much-better updated personal sheet, which I won't link here because that's against the rules.

Sorry, I'll try to update better in the future. I still have trouble with links and stuff on my user page.

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 5:08 am <kara cu tai con> "a table and a chair" (you still haven't fixed <kara>, <tzegomai>, or <germ> btw)

fluffykitty wrote: November 24th, 2020, 5:30 am Okay. I think we should use <ngwemai> for "to eat", and in general derive verbs from nouns by adding verb endings. We can use the nominative singular for ordinary derivations, like <ngwemai>, and maybe other cases/numbers for other kinds of derivations, like "to make drinkable" <pulmai> (dative) or "to sleep" <keinamai> (locative).

Also, for verb derivations, along with a passive suffix, we could have suffixes that promote each of the basic cases to the object position, like <(give)(promote dative)mai> "to give to", or <ngwe(promote instrumental)mai> "to use for eating". We could then use the passive suffix on top of that to promote to the subject position.

We could also express stuff like "I make you eat" with something like "You eat caused by/because of me" (with a special preposition for "caused by/because of"). Maybe <faup>+genitive?

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 24th, 2020, 5:51 am I think "to make someone do something" should still be a suffix. Maybe we could even chain the suffix like "to make someone make someone do something". Cause could be reserved for something else.

Schiaparelliorbust wrote: November 24th, 2020, 5:51 am I don't think all verbs should be based on nouns, stuff like "to walk" ("to leg" would be weird), "to watch"/"to see" (they should definitely be different verbs, maybe one of them could be based on "eye"), "to hold".