Adjectives of dimension and position

It's always bothered me that words referring to dimensions and position in most natlangs (or those I've studied at any rate) seem kind of imprecise and ambiguous.

In English for example, for an object with an identifiably largest dimension, that dimension will generally be referred to as its "length", with the other(s) being variously described as "width", "breadth" or "depth".  "Depth", in turn, can refer either to the size of something in the negative vertical direction ("depth of a lake"), or in the usually-horizontal direction directly away from the point of observation ("depth of field"), or indeed the position of something underground ("depth of a tunnel"); "height" suffers from similar ambiguity.  As for "width", it can additionally refer to the size of something in any horizontal direction, regardless of whether that dimension is the largest or not ("width of a building"), or, in the case where there is no identifiable largest dimension, all three might well be described as the "width".

In short, it's a mess, and a few months ago I decided I wanted to do it much more neatly and unambiguously in Vetela.  Here's what I came up with (English glosses below are somewhat arbitrary):

There are three terms for size independent of the direction of gravity:

• aila "length": relative size in the noticeably largest dimension, if any (or the only dimension in the case of one-dimensional objects);
• kakua "thickness": relative size in the noticeably-smallest dimension, if any^[0];
• sueta "breadth": relative size in any dimension which is neither noticeably smallest nor largest.

And three relating to the direction of gravity (if any):

• vakua "tallness": subjective size in the direction of gravity of an object that extends above the reference point^[1];
• sukua "depth": subjective size in the direction of gravity of an object that extends below the reference point;
• lanima "width": subjective size in any horizontal direction.

(There is also the general term vooka "size/largeness", which refers to general size in any/all dimensions.)

Distinct from these, there is then a set of terms describing position rather than size:

• etiva "height": subjective position upwards along the direction of gravity from the reference point (i.e. altitude);
• utiva "lowness": subjective position downwards along the direction of gravity from the reference point;
• ouva "horizontal distance": subjective position along a direction normal to that of gravity;^[2]
• aana "distance": subjective position regardless of direction.

All of the above behave as unsigned-axis adjectives, so high/low degree are expressed with prefixes (see this post for more on that).  Two of them also have separate lexemes for low degree, however: liina ("smallness"; antonym of vooka) and kasina ("proximity"; antonym of aana).

[0] Note that while, strictly speaking, a 2D object's smallest dimension should be called its "thickness", humans generally conceptualise 2D objects as thin, flat 3D ones, so in concession to this it's acceptable to refer to a 2D object's smallest dimension as either kakua or sueta.

[1] Here "reference point" means the position from which the thing is being considered.  For example, a mine shaft might be said to be "tall" by someone at the bottom, or "deep" by someone at the top.

[2] Ouva is a rare word; in most circumstances, aana would be used instead, as it's rarely relevant to distinguish absolute distance from horizontal separation.  Ouva might be used to refer to downrange distance of a rocket, for example.

Gradable adjectives, axes and "signedness"

Another thing I've been meaning to write about for a while is how Vetela treats gradable adjectives^[0] - specifically, the way words are mapped onto different areas of an adjective's 'axis'.

First of all, in most languages, gradable adjectives often come in sets of at least two: large/small, hot/cold, etc.  For many everyday terms, Vetela does this too.  However, it also sometimes uses one word per "axis of meaning", with different degrees being expressed by prefixes.  For example:

Root	Adjectival
	Low degree	High degree	Extreme degree
teka "speed"	anteki "slow"	enteki "fast"	senteki "very fast"
kavua "mass"	ankavui "light"	enkavui "heavy"	senkavui "very heavy"

For adjectives of this type, the prefixless root merely states the presence of the property described by the axis, without making any comment about degree.  Or, to put that more clearly: describing an object as teki just means that it has a speed, be that fast or slow.  Similarly, putting it in the negative (tekúvi) doesn't mean that the object is "not fast" and therefore slow - for something to be described as tekúvi, it would have to have zero speed (or be something incapable of speed, such as an abstract concept).

The next thing to note is that there is a distinction between two classes of adjective:

• those whose axis of meaning ranges from "high negative degree" to "high positive degree", with an identifiable zero point in between (e.g. sad/happy); and
• those whose axis ranges from "zero" through "low degree" to "high degree" (e.g. small/large).

Since I'm a comp sci geek, I like to refer to these as "signed" and "unsigned" respectively. :)  The examples above were all unsigned; signed adjectives behave slightly differently:

    lesta: contentedness
    laulesti: sad
    kaslesti: neutral; neither happy nor sad
    leilesti: happy

The prefixes of degree (including an- and en- above) can still be added to the lau-/lei- forms:

    anlaulesti: slightly sad
    enleilesti: quite happy
    senleilesti: very happy

Again, an unprefixed root strictly speaking should be used only to refer to the property, making no comment about either degree or sign.  However, this can be unwieldy so the prefixes are commonly omitted in the informal language, with high-degree or positive-sign being assumed.

[0] Officially, there is no such word class as "adjectives", since Vetela has one main word class, all members of which can fulfil the same range of syntactic roles.  Calling them adjectives is convenient for the purposes of readability in this post, though :)