[conlang_learners] More about Voksigid

[Jim Henry]

Voksigid was an engelang created by Bruce Gilson, Jim Carter, John
Ross and others in 1991-1992.   It remained somewhat unfinished; the
vocabulary comprises 256 words and affixes, and the grammar pages,
though the syntax and morphology are described thoroughly at a high
level of abstraction, lack any example sentences.   The phonology is
clearly defined except for stress, though the presentation uses
multiple natlang examples for each phoneme and its allophones rather
than IPA.   It uses a purely ASCII phonetic orthography, with 24
letters representing 19 consonants and 5 vowels.  The vocabulary comes
from a variety of natlangs, mostly European.

Basically, Voksigid is a verb-initial active language with free
ordering of the phrases following the verb, each phrase consisting of
a preposition, a noun, and potentially one or more adjectives and/or
modifying particles.   Fairly specific case tags (prepositions) mark
the subject as well as the objects and complements.   Content roots
are always verbs (e.g., "katse" is defined as "to be a cat"); nouns
and adjectives are derived from root verbs with case tags used as
nominalizing suffixes.   I infer that  "katselen" would mean "a cat"
or "pertaining to (a) cat(s)" (depending on context), although use of
specific nominalizers is not discussed.  ("len" is defined as "subject
of a non-quantifiable statal predicate¨ and seems to be the most
appropriate of the case tags for this kind of nominalization.  "tor"
is "active subject", i.e. agent I suppose, so "katsetor" would seem to
mean "one who is deliberately being a cat".)

Some details of the grammar are underspecified and would have to be
(re)created based on the clues in the lexicon and grammar documents.
In particular, the definitions of the case tags aren´t always specific
enough to give the reader a clear idea of how they´re used.   However,
I think it would be quite possible for us to study the Voksigid
documents, discuss them, and come up with a more ample reference
grammar (with lots of example sentences) and lessons.   It would also
be necessary to coin more words based on the principles described in
the morphology document.  Voksigid was clearly not intended to be a
lexically minimalist language, given the kinds of concepts to which
root words are devoted in the extant lexicon; the small vocabulary is
due to the project having ended prematurely.

Figuring out the grammar from the terse documents on the Voksigid
website would take some time and effort, but once someone has done
that and written an expanded reference grammar and/or lessons, I think
Voksigid would be relatively easy to learn.  The hard part would be
getting used to the way case tags and nominalizers are used (and
perhaps the way relative clauses are formed); there´s no inflection,
much less irregularity thereof, and the phonology should be easy for
anyone who already speaks a European language (and many who don´t).

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/