reconlangmo 6: lexicon (#151)

* reconlangmo 6: lexicon

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