VL-TRANS: a favorite saying
Rob Zook 
Thu, 16 Oct 1997 10:13:33 -0500

Note: instead of a VL topic we have a whole vulcan-linguistics 
mailing list which Randall setup a while back - let us use it.
So reply to vulcan-linguistics*shikahr,com,inter,net, please. 

One of my favorite quotes:

va'num s'at s'thai,  s' kalkal'vna'lu: qa s't'ya

"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please"
-- Mark Twain


va'num     - search, find 
s'at       - your
s'thai*    - fact    (mutated from c'thia and kya)
kal'vna*   - distort (mutated from k'teriniazh and va'ne)
kalkal'vna*- greatly distort (distort intensively reduplicated)
'lu:*      - past-tense-local particle "after now" 
qa         - interrogative particle
s'         - you
t'ya*      - like, please (mutated from t'hy'la)

* these 4 words I constructed.

Along with lu: I would suggest the whole matrix of:

now            'li: (local)
distant past   'le: (past tense non-local)
before now     'la: (past tense local)
after  now     'lu: (future tense local)
distant future 'lo: (future tense non-local)

to be morphologically similar to the deictics, and also as a
mutation from an assumed root "li" in these words:

lik'rt - time unit (eq-second)
lirt'k - time unit (minute)


Something else which came to mind while thinking about this: If we
come up with a morphology scheme it would make generating words much
easier. Then we can select existing words in a one or more languages 
and use a mutating algorithm to create whole lists of Vulcan words.

Or alternatively, I created a program a long time ago to generate
words with a certain morphology. If you have a morphology I can
modify the program with than and we can just start with a list of
words and assign them meanings. At this point we really do not have
suffient numbers of words to do much translating. We need at least
the base 500-1000 words used by most english speakers and any other
words which Vulcans might commonly use.

Marketa, did you or your father ever create on an explicit morphology?
Also, what does your father think of sharing out parts of the project
to people on this list?


Rob Z.
--------------------------------------------------------
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps 
it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step 
to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. 
-- Henry David Thoreau