Re: Subterranea

On Tue, 5 Apr 2005 23:17:15 -0700, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
wrote:

>Geoff wrote:
><<
>Specifically Time.
>What natural cyclical phenomena are there that operate detectably in an
>underground environment?
> >>
>
>I certainly can't say a thing about biology, but I have a few ideas
>for this.
>
>First, even though they can't see the sun or perceive its motion,
>they do sleep, right?  (A genuine question: I don't know if orcs
>need sleep.)  If they do, then a "day" would simply be from the
>time they wake up to the time they go to sleep.  Of course, not
>everyone will do this at the same time, so perhaps it can be set
>to a chief or king's sleep pattern.  And, indeed, it might change
>with every new chief or king.
>
>Another thing that happens with time is hunger.  If orcs eat,
>they'll invariably get hungry after a certain period of time after
>they've eaten.  And if they have big meals, then perhaps time
>could be based on meal times--especially if they involve large
>gatherings.
>
>And another way to perceive time is through age.  Of course,
>age happens gradually, and you can't perceive it the way you
>can the passage of the sun, but say there were an orcish philosopher
>who decided to write an anatomy of aging (like that old book
>The Anatomy of Melancholy).  He might reason that even
>after a week's time, specific signs of aging will take place.  Of
>course, he won't have the concept of "week" at his disposal,
>so he'll have to come up with his own term, which might be
>based on the type of change that takes place after a set period
>of time.  So even if they don't have time measures, they will
>have real measures.  So say that after a week an orc nail is
>said to grow a tenth of a centimeter--called a blick, or whatever
>in the orcish language.  Then a week would be a blicksgrowth,
>and a day would be a seventh of a blicksgrowth (or however
>he decided to divide it).  This could be the basic unit, or one
>might say, for a month, that an untended nail will grow 4/10
>of a centimeter, or a blork.  Now you have a period of a
>blorksgrowth.  And so on.
>
>Anyway, those are some ideas.  Having never thought
>seriously enough about how to lexicalize the passage of
>time (and, as a language creator, by all rights I should
>have), I'm not sure if these make sense, or could work.
>What do you think?
>
Very thought-provoking...
I may not use the direct egs you've given, but it's certainly something to
think about,

G