Obsidian Words

A few weeks ago I added the word miusma obsidian to Kílta. I knew it would get some sort of metaphorical or metonymic meaning at the time, but hadn't settled on the details. I focused on the long use of obsidian as a weapon-making material—go take a look at a macuahuitl—to extend the meaning.

As of yesterday, miusma can be used metonymically to represent violence, organized violence in particular, though it doesn't have to be state-organized. It is normally used as an attributive:

Rëtu korá miusma vë kinta kwan uttimo.
many people obsidian ATTR night during die-PFV
Many people died during the obsidian night.

The phrase "obsidian night" refers to some sort of group violence that took place at night.

Orávës në miusma vë lár si mítët, kwál si salkësto.
fanatic TOP obsidian ATTR word ACC speak.CVB.PFV, riot ACC put.INCH.PFV
The fanatic spoke obsidian words and started a riot.

The implication of "obsidian words" is that they were meant to provoke violence.

This is probably enough baggage for the word for now, but I wonder if other ways of using it will present themselves.

Kílta Lexember 30: omulutta "earthquake"

I'm not entirely thrilled that today's word comes out looking a bit like breakfast, but these things happen sometimes.

omulutta /o.muˈlut.ta/ earthquake < om earth + lúto move + -ta nominalizer

Kílta has two entirely different stems for English move, one transitive, one intransitive. I've used the transitive one here, focusing on the effect (the earth moves things), rather than the merely describing the event in isolation.

Luikin omulutta vima si tuëmo.
heavy earthquake city ACC pound.PFV
A terrible earthquake struck the city.

This is exactly the sort of example sentence I like best, if I can pull it off — it gives two collocational usage hints. First, a bad earthquake in Kílta is luikin heavy, and second, the verb for earthquake destructive activity is tuëmo pound.

Kílta Lexember 18: válusórin "ambitious"

The English word ambitious apparently only started to take on positive senses in the 1600s. The Kílta word reflects a deep ambivalence about it, suggesting a certain aggressive, grasping quality.

válusórin /βaː.luˈsoː.ɾin/ ambitious < vál privilege, perq + -ór-in adj. derivation meaning fond of

In new derivations and compounds Kílta will make an effort to avoid sequences of heavy syllables. It's not completely precious about it — there are, after all, roots that have HH patterns — but it will try. In the case of the -ór-in suffix, the usual ligature to add a light element -ar- is too echo-y, so the noun compounding ligature -u(s)- is preferred here.

Válusórin kattëkës në avur nalaikin kata si chasëtiu máko.
ambitious boss TOP 1PL further work ACC do.PURP.CVB.PFV want.PFV
Our ambitious boss wants us to work more.

There are a few common collocations I worry about when generating new words: intensity, approval, good/bad for a purpose. There are others, but those are pretty core. A simple very is usually available, but not very interesting, and in many natural languages, not even usual for many words. Approval for this word is unlikely for Kílta, but I'm going with mákohin covetous as the main term for intense ambition (adverbialized if necessary). Using these collocations is one of the main things I try to do in my example sentences in the lexicon.

The noun is válusóras ambition. Certain actions might expose ambition, which is indicated with ráno signal, gesture, point (out).

Sím vë lár në mákohin válusóras mai ráno.
3SG ATTR word TOP covetous ambition LAT signal.PFV
What he said exposed his intense ambition.

Kílta Lexember 15: lapin líkkis "junk food"

A phrasal entry today, from words that already existed:

lapin líkkis junk food < lapin empty + líkkis food

Nothing too exotic here.

Ha në lapin líkkis si kwilë sanët, ichunëho hír.
1SG TOP empty food ACC too.much eat.CVB.PFV, feel.unsatisfied PTCL
I ate too much junk food and feel gross.

Ichunëho is defined as feel unsatisfied despite normal consumption. It can be used with non-food items, such as a book that didn't live up to expectations, but when used in reference to actual food it implies that not only are you not satisfied, you don't feel well.

The postverbal particle hír is used for narrative cohesion, and means something like as you'd expect. It is used more often in Kílta than I use as you'd expect in English.

Kílta Lexember 14: kiummin "spooky, eery"

And old one from my ever-growing list of words to create:

kiummin /kiˈum.min/ spooky, eery, creepy

It has no etymology.

I wanted a particular word to intensify this notion, beyond just very. Physical sensations are good place to go for this, so I went with inesui "icily."

Ummul në kinta kiummin no.
forest TOP night spooky be.PFV
At night the forest is spooky.

Eman në inesui kiummin máha si cholat máko më re.
child TOP icily creepy story ACC hear.INF want.PFV NEG PTCL
The child didn't want to hear a super creepy story.

I'm leaning toward making any statements about other people's internal state (mental or otherwise) require the particle re, which hedges it a bit.

Kiummin is a good match for topicalized infinitive clauses:

Ël tu si mítat në kiummin chaso.
3SG those ACC say.INF TOP spook do.PFV
It got spooky when she said that.

Kílta Lexember 12: chítas "regret, remorse"

Today's word has a modestly interesting etymology, but it kicked off a bunch of new polysemy for some adjectives:

chítas /ˈtʃiː․tas/ regret, remorse < chíto bite, chew + -as abstract nominalizer

Part of the motivation for this is that chíto also means sting when insects do it.

As is normal with emotion nouns, the verb relo bear, carry is used when one's experiencing it. I use the ablative li for the matter about which one has regrets, and the dative kë for a person who has been wronged.

Mannur në nirika li chítas si relo më.
3PL TOP war ABL regret ACC carry.PFV NEG
They don't regret the war.

Ëlá në atta kë chítas si relo.
3PL TOP father DAT regret ACC carry.PFV
They have regrets about their father.

Regrets have standard lexical collocations, generally adjectives, like: sincere, deep, etc., so I needed to cover that a bit. For a sincere regret, I just chose tásin true. That word is also used to mean something like equal to the task, which is more the sense I was drawing on here.

For other intensity terms I went back to the original meaning of chíto bite, and went with nútokin strong for deep regrets. Kwimin weak can mean mild regret, but more carries the sense of insincere regret. I'm not going to give examples of all of them, but one should give the flavor:

Nútokin chítas ël si sikwa mai nuto.
strong regret 3SG ACC house LAT impel.PFV
Deep regret(s) sent him home.

Nuto covers urge, set in motion, impel, etc.

But then I took an aversion to the knee: constructions and collocations

I've been on a Construction Grammar (CxG) kick for a while now. I gave a talk about using it as a creative tool at LCC7. We talked about it on a recent Conlangery episode (Conlangery #140: Word Classes with William Croft). I don't want to go into great detail here, but the fundamental difference between CxG and the usual grammatical theories we're familiar with is that in CxG a construction is any pairing of form and meaning. In CxG, your grammar and your lexicon are not separate things — they're all constructions. Examples:

• morphemes: pre-, -ing
• word: and, sleep, peanut
• complex word: daredevil
• schematic complex word (partially filled): [N-s] (regular plurals)
• idiom: give the Devil his due
• schematic idiom: jog memory
• ditransitive: Subj V Obj1 Obj2 (e.g., he gave her a book)

For conlanging, the most exciting thing about uniting lexicon and syntax into constructions is that everything that can happen to words can happen to all constructions: polysemy (have several meanings), grammaticalize, undergo semantic shift historically, appear and disappear as a fad (think "I did it because reasons"), etc., etc.

One very important feature of words is that they tend to have friends — words they appear with more often than chance or even semantics would suggest. Often these pairings mean something more than just the combination of the parts. For example, "dry land" is not simply land that is dry. It is used to contrast to bodies of water. Think also of: confirmed bachelor, insist firmly, seriously ill, etc., etc. These collocations (as they are called) are also a kind of construction.

I heard an English turn of phrase recently that go me thinking about collocations. I'm going to work out the associations and collocational restrictions a bit, with some help from Google. But this is not just an analysis of English. Think about using things like this in your own conlangs.

The schema is: Take (a/the) X to Y.  Now, this can be used as simple expression with an obviously compositional (non-idiomatic) meaning: I took the book to work. But things get interesting when we make specific selections for X and Y.

For example, if for X we pick a bladed object, and Y is some normal target for activity with that object: he took a razor to my beard; Thomas Jefferson took a scalpel to his copy of the gospels; [Girl] took a machete to this kid's car and completely just smashed it.

The word razor is in this, and from there it seems that other grooming tools can be brought into this construction: She took a razor to my hair, and it looked good at first; Ellen DeGeneres took a trimmer to Julian Edelman! she did use a diffuser but then also took a comb to my hair.

Another line of development, again seemingly related to cutting implements, is tools: the Fire Department took a Ax to the trunk and windows; on the last week of lab a lab technician took a saw to the top of the cadaver's head and removed his brain as a final organ for study in our lab; the aftermath of a carpenter bee infestation can look like a deranged carpenter took a drill to your property just for the fun of it. And then this use seems even to spread to stapler, and from that to other adhesion methods: it feels like someone took a stapler to my left eyeball; I took glue to my wanton collection, pasted together each part of each story and tried to make the edges fit; we took some pictures of a "DADS INN" (the sign obviously a Days Inn until someone took duct tape to it).

Perhaps yet another development of either the blade sense or the tool sense, weapons can be used: in the early part of the campaign, Baker took a bazooka to an entire ridge of enemy forces assaulting his company. Interestingly, when I looked for take a shovel to, most clear examples of this construction when the shovel was being used offensively, though not always: I took a shovel to the tawny daylilies that doubled in number every year; 7 grammar mistakes that make others want to take a shovel to your face.

From here there's a an interesting development where if X is a ballistic item and Y is a body part, the subject of the expression is on the receiving end of the action, always bad: McCarthy stepped in front of President Reagan, and took a bullet to the chest but made a full recovery; he took a mortar to his chest, and he was cut off behind enemy lines; he took a baseball to the face this weekend, but temporarily stayed in the game; "I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee."

Finally, there is a completely different development, an interpersonal reading where certain nouns of liking and aversion are used to indicate an inchoative sense: He took a liking to his new neighbor; that's why Biggie took a like to them, because they lived what they rapped about; Laura took a shine to her at the interview and offered her the job; she took a dislike to me after a small argument over my political beliefs; I remember a race of lispers, fine persons, who took an aversion to particular letters in our language.

Here's a map of what I think is going on semantically:

There are probably some senses I have missed. This is probably an over-rich example of constructional flexibility. Regardless, it's worth thinking along these lines when developing vocabulary and idiom for your conlang.