--- In [log in to unmask], James Chandler <idojc@...> wrote:
>
> I've been looking into Arabic morphology with the
> "binyanim" and so forth.  I was wondering how the
> worldlangers go about incorporating Arabic words into
> their schemes.  How do you decide which binyan to
> take: kitab or kaatab?  Also, do you take any affixes
> from Arabic?
> 
> The other thing that struck me in looking at the
> variety of the world's languages, is just how much
> knowledge of different language groups in needed to
> build a worldlang.  It's going to be a huge
> engineering task..
> 

Salam, James.

No person knows everything, and even if he/she does, his/her
sophisticated product may be of no value simply because he/she lacks
taste. I guess that taste/sense of harmony is what should help in this
huge task. It is good to have consultants where you are not an expert.
I have a consultant on Arabic, not a native speaker but a graduated
linguist. With verbs, we have decided a long time ago that we should
take as a base the 3 person past tense form (which is usually given in
dictionaries). So, if I take "write" from Arabic, it is kataba =>
katabi (-i is the most frequent LdP verb ending). But e.g. with
"daraba" (strike, hit) I like "darbi" more than darabi because then
the noun is "darba" which coincudes with the Arabic one (also it is
similar to the Russian udar, udarit').

Dmitry