How unbalanced is your lexicon?

[Chagen]

Looking over the lexicons I have for my languages, I have come to the realization that my languages have some...skewed lexicons.

For instance, in Azenti, I have words for "bitch", "incorporate", "deport", and "airport"...but still not a word for "hand". Or one for "food". The reason for this is that I simply come up with words on the fly, and then I usually make derivations from roots that result in lots of complex words at one time...while completely missing some rather obvious ones. Maybe I should confront the Swadesh list more.

So I'm wondering if anyone else has "unbalanced" lexicons like this. Do your languages have words for rather complex things while lacking ones for simple terms?

[Aseca]

Oh yes, know what you mean.

I had exactly the same trouble as well, esp for feet, hands, neck and head. So I just used root morphemes along with gender to either extend or localize body parts, divided into 8 regions below:

Patu is leg (masc), whereas Patā is foot (fem).
Latu is thigh (masc); Latā is butt (fem).
Vatu is gonads (masc); Vatā is kidney/bladder (fem).
Ratu is 6 pack (masc); Ratā is stomach/intestine region (fem).
Yatu is arm (masc); Yatā is chest/heart region (fem).
Hatu is hand (masc); Hatā is shoulder area and neck (fem)
Matu is head (masc); Matā is brain but not mind (fem)
Atu is masc body; Atā is feminine body. (also asu/asā, but more man/woman)

By using gender, you can see it's easy to class nouns into their respective parts. Works well for simple core nouns but ends up agglutinating too much for abstract/complex nouns I just end up weakening verbs instead to create a PPP.

[DesEsseintes]

My Sōkoan lexicon is still in the early stages (approx. 600 words, I guess), so there are many holes in it. I'm particular about words, especially the more common ones, and I have already rejected at least ten of my own ideas for the word for 'hand'.

But my lexicon also suffers from a phonological imbalance. At an early stage, I decided I wanted to include the consonant clusters [tn̥] and [dn], fell head over heels in love with them, and way overused them. In contrast, I've almost totally neglected the retroflex affricates...

Does anyone else have a similar experience?

[Lao Kou]

Looking over the lexicons I have for my languages, I have come to the realization that my languages have some...skewed lexicons.
So I'm wondering if anyone else has "unbalanced" lexicons like this. Do your languages have words for rather complex things while lacking ones for simple terms?

I touched on this on page 9 over at Lexicon Milestones. I should think it's a rather natural phenomenon in conlanging if you coin words as you need them. And I've played with Swadesh and similar types of lists -- that may plug a few holes in the dike, but not that many, at least in my experience (though there was a sense of tangible accomplishment -- Swadesh List? check!). Why just the other week, I was shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- to find there was no entry for "elbow". Elbow! And it may well have been you, Chagen, who threw "(musical) staff" into one of the lexicon-building game threads a while back, revealing a yawning vocabulary void in a heretofore untouched field of knowledge I can at least feign being cocktail-party conversant in. Meanwhile, because I translated into Géarthnuns an ESL textbook for people in hotel management, there is nothing you could conceivably do to an egg culinarily that I can't describe in gruesome detail. And I can't imagine I'm the only one here who plays the "Gee, I wonder how you say 'chalcedony' in Hungarian." game (variations: "that's a fun, obscure Chinese character I haven't seen before, what is it?"). You look it up. It's a fun word. "Chalcedony" is fun enough in English just 'cause. It's a hole in my Hungarian vocabulary (a language I scraaaape by in reading/writing anyway), ergo, there must be a hole in Géarthnuns, and so that hole gets filled before "(on/off) switch", "coffee pot", "shoelace".... One just never knows.

However, I find, and DesEsseintes just touched on this, that if I try to work too systematically at filling holes ("I can't stand it! I'm going to name everything on my bathroom counter right now!"), then batches of words may take on a certain sameness (as I reread this, I notice that I've unwittingly used the expression "touched on this" twice -- which I won't edit to make my point -- authors have editors, I assume most of us don't, and even then, I've stumbled onto two-or-three-page sections in books where the same word or turn of phrase gets reused to no particular effect other than it looks like the "touched on this" phenomenon and the editor didn't catch it) . Even if you're not suddenly smitten with a certain sound (or combination), one may just have "k" on the brain on a given day, and so there you are, with a shopping cart full of fresh produce all having a subconscious preponderance of "k", and not in a nice, morpheme-y kind of way (unless, assuming you catch it, you go back later and tweek it so that it becomes that). I've been committing my Géarthnuns translation of the Lonely Planet Phrasebook series to the computer and recently found a cluster of words that each look and work fine out on their own, but suddenly, there they were, all in the same room together and it became clear, "Oh, I'll just bet I created you guys at roughly the same time." Damned if I'm going back and laying slash-and-burn waste to 10-year-old words (and who would know (let alone care) unless you called them together for a family reunion as I did?), but it is a lesson in what I might not want to do moving forward. And if you are suddenly smitten with a sound, God help you.

For me, I just don't find vocab building all that sexy, even in natlang studies. And at the 1000-2000 level, I really thought it sucked. The fresh, "I'll call this this and I'll call that this!" phase is over and it feels like you don't have words for anything. You think there should be a word for something (the lexicon is gaining some heft, there oughtta be a word for "soup"), but when you get there, the cupboard is bare... Massive coining just to get to, "Please pass the salt." But now, the lexicon is filling out, instances like "elbow" are fewer are farther between, and discrepancies like "'aircraft carrier landing strip' - yes / 'needle' - no" seem less glaring somehow. I can even say wordsmithing is fun again. Hosannah!

[Sangfroidish]

Not very. I seem to have such an aversion to developing such a situation that it's actually kinda hampering my lexicon's growth; I keep looking at words and deleting them, because they're just so complex and obscure, surely I can come up with a word for some relevant, more basic concept and derive the word for Overly Specific Concept X from that? The problem being I never get around to deciding just how basic I want to go and my lexicon remains tiny and stagnant forever because I'm discarding nearly as many words as I'm putting in.

[Ànradh]

I used to have a lot of words like 'hate', 'darkness', 'ruin' etc. but nothing like 'smile' or 'pretty'.
But it is getting there; I can talk about eating, drinking, fighting, dancing, sex, colours, animals, people and the time of day.
I have nothing on plants, games, anatomy, art or religion though.
My main problem is actually coming up with words that don't match up perfectly with their English counterparts.

Edit: Actually, I do have one major imbalance: Words beginning with <a> far and away eclipse all others.

[Click]

But my lexicon also suffers from a phonological imbalance. At an early stage, I decided I wanted to include the consonant clusters [tn̥] and [dn], fell head over heels in love with them, and way overused them. In contrast, I've almost totally neglected the retroflex affricates...

Some phonemes can be much more frequent than others.

[DesEsseintes]

Edit: Actually, I do have one major imbalance: Words beginning with <a> far and away eclipse all others.

Yeah, what's with <a> and its sneaky, infiltrating ways?! I so have that problem! Mind you, so does Sanskrit...

[Creyeditor]

Edit: Actually, I do have one major imbalance: Words beginning with <a> far and away eclipse all others.

Yeah, what's with <a> and its sneaky, infiltrating ways?! I so have that problem! Mind you, so does Sanskrit...

Well, I just noticed that, if I had a dictionary in my newest conlang, it would be rather difficult, because the quotation form prefix of a verb is a-, so half of the words would begin with A

[Sangfroidish]

Initial-wise my language is pretty heavily biased toward a, c, l, m, p, r, s, and v, while quite strongly neglecting b, č, e, ë, ǧ, i, ï, j, n, ň, o, ö, š, u, ü, w, y, and ÿ. So from that perspective it's pretty darn unbalanced after all. (In fact I literally just created the first word beginning with ÿ (ÿn, "mouth"), and I still don't have any words beginning with ň whatsoever.)

[Ànradh]

Well, I just noticed that, if I had a dictionary in my newest conlang, it would be rather difficult, because the quotation form prefix of a verb is a-, so half of the words would begin with A

I'm now wondering whether the fact that <a> is the only vowel that doesn't change due to harmony, meaning it can theoretically appear in twice as many words as the others, might have something to do with it... It wouldn't explain why it's always at the start of the words though. *throws <a> suspicious look*

[Khemehekis]

Oh, how I know this feeling. When Kankonian had over 15,000 words, I was shocked when I realized I didn't have a word for "vocabulary" or "nickname". At one point I had over 24,000 words, including words for "belomancy", "byssunosis", "dolichostenomelia", "indehiscent", "hawsehole" and "sciolistic", but no word for "to navigate". Now I have over 37,000 words and who knows what commonplace word/concept I'll find missing tomorrow.

[Ambrisio]

In Proto-Ginosic I have a word for "otolaryngologist" but not "oat". And in Kinuiltys, "adenine" but not "add" (which is kind of weird for a language spoken by math nerds!)

Well, I just noticed that, if I had a dictionary in my newest conlang, it would be rather difficult, because the quotation form prefix of a verb is a-, so half of the words would begin with A

In Kinuiltys, a-/an- is the negative particle, and can be used with any verb:

Liiwesela "He wants to go"
Aliiwesela "He doesn't want to go"

Estammer "I'm reading it"
Anestammer "I'm not reading it"

[prettydragoon]

The Rireinutire lexicon is definitely patchy. This isn't helped by the fact that I also need to create the species that speaks it together with their worlds and their entire solar system. Possibly including some notes on their nearest galactic neighbours.

But I'm in this for the long haul. I will get everything in before it's all done.

At the end of the day, I hope I will be able to say it is...
ku yaya ku vimarate:
'as beautiful as an airport'

[mbrsart]

I have two lexicons for Hra'anh, and the old one isn't past 300 words. So yeah, there are tons of holes. I'm pretty sure I don't have words for body parts other than fetek "tail", and I know I don't have words for tons of basic concepts. My problem is that I find lexicography boring as hell, and I tend to coin words only when I need them.

[Sasquatch]

Y'all are scaring me. I haven't even finalized my phonemes yet. I only have a bunch of notes and a handful of carved-in-stone rules laid out for the grammar and syntax. Now I see that even after all of this is done I'll have another ton of work to do building the lexicon.

How does anybody create more than one language?

[Ànradh]

How does anybody create more than one language?

Oh, that's easy; they're all unfinished! :P

[clawgrip]

Looking at the Himmaswa lexicon, it seems vowel-initial words are far less common than consonant-initial. By far, the most common initial consonants are /g/, /t/, /k/, and /p/, with /s/ and /b/ following. There are over 2000 words now, and I would guess that jobs and cooking/eating utensils are probably less represented, among other things.

[kiwikami]

In Culphecc Glyw, one can discuss easily the process for preparing a human sacrifice, the alignment of the planets required for said sacrifice to have any significance, and several different ways to ambush and then disembowel someone. You can also beg for mercy, discuss fables and politics, and speak about ostriches, elephants, soap, and beer.
What you cannot do is say "Hello," "Goodbye," "How are you?" or "I'm fine, thank you."

Castian's a bit better-suited for the everyday pleasantries, but as has been said, I keep finding all these interesting holes to fill. Swadesh lists can only go so far, and there will always be new fields and topics that have yet to be covered. I couldn't, for example, have a discussion about linguistics in Castian, because there are no words for "consonant" or "vowel," or "phone" or "phoneme" or "syllable" or "syntax" - heck, I'm only half sure there's a word for "word." Unfortunately, Castian is somewhat boring when it comes to lexical derivation. It's too predictable and too obvious, and I don't feel that I'm really adding anything significant when I add new words to the lexicon (of course, I'm still adding plenty of new roots as well.)
(Incidentally, there's a word for "to tear one's spine out through one's mouth," but not yet one for "to breathe" - I'm working on that.)

Wa Qān is much more fun in that regard. It's still missing a heck of a lot of basic vocabulary (body parts, colors other than orange and purple, various things in nature, "up" and "down," etc.) but it's at least entertaining to come up with various more complex derivatives. For example, i şui sang cōn, "politician." It derives from şui sang, "to walk sideways" (referring to the tendency of politicians to sidle around issues rather than facing them directly). But şui sang in turn is a derivative of şui san, "crab" - which is formed by a combination of şuin (fingernail) and san (animal), since the verb form of şuin means "to pinch." So "politician" may be translated as "one who acts like a fingernail animal."
So basically, Wa Qān's lexicon is more likely to be balanced in the future than Castian's, and certainly Culphecc Glyw's, simply because I like playing with it more. That said, there's still a heap of holes in it. I haven't even tacked a Swadesh list yet.


Like other people have said, for me, it's mostly just an add-things-as-I-go deal.

[Lambuzhao]

In Culphecc Glyw, one can discuss easily the process for preparing a human sacrifice, the alignment of the planets required for said sacrifice to have any significance, and several different ways to ambush and then disembowel someone. You can also beg for mercy, discuss fables and politics, and speak about ostriches, elephants, soap, and beer.
What you cannot do is say "Hello," "Goodbye," "How are you?" or "I'm fine, thank you."

Not so hard -

A greeting - May you (not) in strange ages lie
A (particularly Chthulhu) greeting - You again?
A (particularly Chthulhu) greeting #2 - What do you want?
Insted of "How are you?" - Have the sacrifices been auspicious?
Instead of "I'm fine thank you?" - Indeed, and the livers were particularly tasty.
Or, - Indeed, the stars (names of 2 particularly auspicious planets ) shone upon me/ were in conjunction.

Wa Qān is much more fun in that regard. It's still missing a heck of a lot of basic vocabulary (body parts, colors other than orange and purple, various things in nature, "up" and "down," etc.) but it's at least entertaining to come up with various more complex derivatives. For example, i şui sang cōn, "politician." It derives from şui sang, "to walk sideways" (referring to the tendency of politicians to sidle around issues rather than facing them directly). But şui sang in turn is a derivative of şui san, "crab" - which is formed by a combination of şuin (fingernail) and san (animal), since the verb form of şuin means "to pinch." So "politician" may be translated as "one who acts like a fingernail animal."

... sliding across a chalkboard!

So basically, Wa Qān's lexicon is more likely to be balanced in the future than Castian's, and certainly Culphecc Glyw's, simply because I like playing with it more. That said, there's still a heap of holes in it. I haven't even tacked a Swadesh list yet.

Yeah, but whether we're using Legos, Tinker Toys or Lincoln Logs, or

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LyxZsaQuZO8/S ... Art+16.jpg

http://ix.cs.uoregon.edu/~michaelh/110/ ... mplete.jpg

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos- ... 5714_n.jpg

We are capable of making some pretty cool stuff.

Like other people have said, for me, it's mostly just an add-things-as-I-go deal.

Ever and so, Bean-Seller/Planter,