evmdbm wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 5:10 pm
Otherwise I might try compounding in a rather unscientific way, but at least I try to follow Zompist's advice not to create a new root every time
This is what worries me about coining new words… I’d
like to follow zompist’s advice and not make up new roots all the time, but given that I tend to be very slow at creating both words and derivational morphology (my current language has ~40 words and just 1 derivational affix), I feel that I am forced to make new roots anyway, simply because I don’t have any alternative. (And then of course I feel bad about doing ‘the wrong thing’… yes, I’m an inveterate perfectionist.)
zompist wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 5:37 pm
Everybody is being reasonable here (i.e, like me), but I'd add one more important category: borrowing. Obviously this gets easier the more languages you have, but you can get going with just one other language.
Occasionally you can use interdialectal borrowings, especially for minor differences in meaning.
Ah, of course! Let me retroactively add that as ‘option 7’.
I usually have a tier of words marked "imitative". This can obviously be used for sound effects (splash), and can be metaphorically extended (flash); it's also good for motion verbs, musical instruments, and animal names.
These seem to be universally called ‘ideophones’ (except for Uralicists, who call them ‘expressives’). Other categories include colour, smell, spatial state etc. (I’ve been reading a book on them, as it happens.)