May 2019 – GreysonWHY

It shouldn’t take another two weeks.

No worries. It’s not my first time being wrong. Though, it was my first time taking a three-day trip to Ohio. My girlfriend had to go to Ohio for an interview, which was very exciting, so I tagged along! Well, even if I hadn’t wanted to, I would’ve had to tag along—she doesn’t like to drive.

Her car’s in the shop right now, so that’s also fun. It’s another antifreeze leak, so here’s to hoping we can finally get that fixed once and for all. It’s really only a small inconvenience and the worst part of that whole procedure happened after we left the mechanic. Without the car, we had to walk (part of the way) home. Not even 100 feet away, I slipped on a patch of mud, fell hard, and twisted my leg. It’s still pretty sore. So, unfortunately, I have still not been able to squat for months.

Also, I finished The Wheel of Time after almost two years of reading it and listening to it with my girlfriend. I’ve been playing Bioshock Infinite as well as a large dose of Screencheat. Both are great games, and I would highly recommend Screencheat as a fun party game.

This life update is going to have to stay brief because I just got back from a bike ride and I’m pretty worn out, but I should have some more conlang-focused updates soon. It’s hard to believe it’s been a month.

Also, there’s quite a bit of GURPS stuff in the works too…

Things have been going well for the Greyfolk language and things have been going well for me. You’re probably here for the Greyfolk language, but let’s start with me. Since my last update, my girlfriend has graduated from her dual master’s program at IU. That’s fun! I haven’t done anything too amazing like that, but I did beat Dishonored without killing anyone—in the game and in real life.

As for the Greyfolk language, I did decide on a new glyph for «h». It’s the one that looks like an ‘M’. Of course, I haven’t given context for that, so I’ll go ahead and post the new «h» as well as the runners-up soon.

Also, I’ve been doing my adpositions wrong this whole time, which is fun. “Hoy mia feke dio!” I exclaimed in Esperanto. My language is head-initial, so it should have prepositions and not postpositions.

Then, I started thinking about compounds and relativizers. The past six entries in my language document have been about those two things, but they’ve mostly been about relativizers. For compound words, I’m just using a some kind of compounding particle in between words to solve my problem. It’s good enough. For relative clauses, I figured out my relativizer and I proposed adding an elidible phrasalizer (like a nominalizer for phrases or like a terminator from Lojban) to show where those clauses end. It will also be useful for signifying names. Speaking of which, I’m also proposing a name particle to introduce names as well.

That means I was also working on phrase structure rules. I wish I had my old syntax workbook from when I took that class because the internet really doesn’t have a good resource for phrase structure rules. Luckily, I found the ones I used for the previous incarnation of the Greyfolk language.

S → NP_E VP T (NP_O) (NP_U)

NP → N (DP) (AdjP+) (PP+) (CP)

DP → D

AdjP → Adj

PP → P NP

VP → V (PP) (AdvP+) (CP)

AdvP → Adv

CP → Comp S

X → X Conj X

That may prove useful for someone else someday. Furthermore, I started taking another deep look at Pandunia again for some inspiration. Also, Lojban. Also, semantic primes.

I thought about adding a coronal affricate to my language, but, after some thinking, I ultimately decided against it because the internet tends to favor only one sibilant in an international auxiliary language—which I’m not exactly going for, but I like following some of the ideals.

Last but not least, I realized that, if «h» can be Ø (null), then it can’t be followed by «l», «w», or «y».

Most of these paragraphs could (and probably will) be a post of their own. It shouldn’t take another two weeks.

Month: May 2019

It’s a life update! 2

Another two weeks later