On Jul 24, 2010, at 10:33 PM, David Peterson wrote:

> On Jul 24, 2010, at 9◊46 AM, <deinx nxtxr> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> On 7/21/10 3:35 AM, David Peterson wrote:
>>> I was wondering if anyone could recommend some examples of
>>> conlangs that have been derived from a proto-language that are
>>> documented online. What I'm most interested in is seeing methods
>>> of documenting the lexicon showing, for example, the modern
>>> lexeme, its meaning and uses, the proto form, its meanings and
>>> uses, and any other changes that occurred along the way. I'm
>>> looking for a crisp and consistent way to document everything
>>> without it turning into a jumble.
>> 
>> I do document my a posteriori lexicons with "etymologies".
> 
> 
> Perhaps I should explain more clearly what exactly I'm doing here.
> 
> Right now, imagine that I've got Language A. It's got a fairly extensive
> vocabulary. I'm currently inventing Proto-Language AB, the ancestor
> of A, with an eye to using it to create Language B, another daughter
> of AB. I'm not sure if AB will be fleshed out, but I would like it to store
> the etymological information, and not the daughter languages.
> Essentially, the document for AB will be a behind-the-scenes work
> document.

On that note, I've been thinking for a while that it would be cool to develop a diachronic lang and have (ultimately) one set of documents that just describes the language at a given time, and a separate set that shows the developments at each step. It would be great to have a program that would take some sort of markup and create both sets of documents from it. Or even a web app that would generate pieces of the different sets of documents on the fly; but I'm thinking the description of each set would contain things that couldn't adequately be represented by a neutral markup, and thus need manual tweaks. Oh well, just an idea.

> I was wondering about how to format this--especially
> keeping in mind that there's already a lot of vocab for A. I guess I
> just wanted to actually take a look at some documentation strategies
> to get ideas.
> 
> Hey, that sounds like not a bad idea. Perhaps people can take a
> screenshot or a .pdf of whatever program/file they use (just of one
> page) and put it online somewhere? I'd also be interested in seeing
> some documentation of real proto-languages (e.g. is there a PIE
> dictionary online somewhere? I bet I can find this out...).
> 
> -David
> *******************************************************************
> "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
> "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
> 
> -Jim Morrison
> 
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> LCS Member Since 2007
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