LEX: Useful Little Words

[Miatato]

This is a first attempt at a vocabulary unit proposal thread. Please feel to suggest additional things I've missed and to throw in all your ideas about these things. If you really hate something, suggest an alternative, and we'll let them duke it out in use. I know some of these have had some use, so there are some suggestions floating around out there already.

I/me/my/mine/myself
you/your/yours/yourself (singular)
he/she/it/his/hers/its/himself/herself/itself (sex-specific or one epicene pronoun? Or both?)
we/us/our/ours/ourselves (inclusive and exclusive?)
you/your/yours/yourselves (plural)
they/them/their/theirs/themselves (if singular forms are sex-specific, are the plural forms also?)

If you'd like to argue in favor of not having any personal pronouns at all, bring it on!

this
these
that
those
(Include and explain distinctions. For instance, Nevashi has a 4-way distinction based on where the thing being spoken about is relative to the speaker and the addressee. For all we know, our language may distinguish between "this, IRL" and "this, on the Net".)

a, an
the

and
or
but
(Just a personal note: I rather liked the idea of having a simultaneous-and and a sequential-and... simultaneously.)

after
before
unless
although
if
until
as
since
when
because
than
while

There's not a lot of content in this group, but I wanted to throw this out there for people to think about. If someone else wants to post another thread that includes more content words (verbs of motion, common transitive verbs, animals, flavors of ice cream, whatever), that would be great.

I will be submitting my own proposals for this and other things before the end of the weekend. I am in a conlanging mood.

[kadani]

Being slightly feminist, I tend towards not discriminating between a male and female forms.

Here is what we have already:

ji: I
you: zai
dau: s/he


My proposed additions:

jizai: we (inclusive)
jime: we (exclusive)
zaime: you (plural*)
daume: they

For the demonstrative pronouns 'this', 'that', I would propose a three way contrast like Latin supposedly had:

kena: this, near the speaker
kexu: this, near the person it is addressed to
kea: this, near both.

This would conveniently mean that things on the web are addressed via kea: kea kaida: this forum. (Unless for example one of us is behind the great firewall of china and it blocks the site, then this person would use kexu kaida and others kena kaida)

Articles ... I have not seen them so far in our translation. Rejistanian uses jilih (this/that/there) if it wants to specify a specific thing, Jasabagé'a uses prefixes, Danish suffixes. I suggest to move that issue to the grammar thread

I also like the idea of a sequential and a simultaneous and.

ila: and (as in "waking up and eating breakfast" or "drinking and driving")
tei: and (as in "sandwish with ham and cheese")
iva: or
juvu: xor (exclusive or, as in "make assignment 2 or 3 (but not both)")

More later.

[Uh-Oh]

[kadani]

[Miatato]

Regarding the question of where we can store the growing lexicon, I can host the files on this conlang.org webspace. I can put together a repository page where people can go to find them. Putting together the files, uploading them, and making them available are now items on my to-do list.

In fact, I am going to start compiling something right now.

[kadani]

What are you going to use?

[Miatato]

I am compiling the list in Google Docs for now, but I can put it out there in multiple formats.