Grammar milestones

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thetha
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by thetha »

I've wanted to write a grammar for Kinál for a while but I'm never sure how to do it, like what should be there, in what order, etc.
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Ossicone
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Ossicone »

Theta wrote:I've wanted to write a grammar for Kinál for a while but I'm never sure how to do it, like what should be there, in what order, etc.
Is this what you're looking for?
Or depending on how in depth you want to go, Describing Morphosyntax is also a handy for grammar writing.
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by thetha »

I read that topic but it didn't get much further than phonology. What would you say usually comes directly after that?
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Ossicone »

Nouns and any case marking or morphology.
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Ànradh
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Ànradh »

I've made it to 3 pages. :p
I also have 31 nouns, 9 active forms of indicative verbs, 1 interjection, 1 numeral, and an interrogative marker.
Sin ar Pàrras agus nì sinne mar a thogras sinn. Choisinn sinn e agus ’s urrainn dhuinn ga loisgeadh.
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alexander
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by alexander »

Ossicone wrote:One of things I most appreciate in a grammar is good formatting.
This is a fantastic point. I've rewritten my grammars several times based almost entirely on formatting decisions.

My longest grammar is pushing 40 pages, but it grows and shrinks as examples come and go and constructions change.
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Khemehekis
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Khemehekis »

Theta wrote:My most active conlang, Kinal, has about 200 words.
Wrong thread.
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
Khemehekis
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Khemehekis »

Today I added some studd on poetry to my Kankonian grammar, including two poems. After I uploaded the revisions, I pasted the text of my webpage into Corel WordPerfect, and it comes out to 100 pages.

My grammar has reached the 100-page milestone!

Now is as good a time as any to look at it:

http://khemehekis.angelfire.com/basic.htm
Aszev wrote:The amount of pages itself is quite uninteresting, imo.
What would you propose as a quantitative measure of completeness?

The only other thing that comes to mind is the number of words it takes to write the grammar.
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Tanni »

Khemehekis wrote:Today I added some studd on poetry to my Kankonian grammar, including two poems. After I uploaded the revisions, I pasted the text of my webpage into Corel WordPerfect, and it comes out to 100 pages.

My grammar has reached the 100-page milestone!
Congratulation!

Khemehekis wrote: Now is as good a time as any to look at it:

http://khemehekis.angelfire.com/basic.htm
I especially like the second poem, even if I wouldn't like to catch owls.
I wouldn't like to catch owls looking stern.
The barn owl reminds me on an owl in my first grade textbook.
And owl is ''urmi'' in my conlang.
The barn owl reminds me on an owl in my first grade textbook.
I wouldn't like to catch owls looking stern.
I especially like the second poem, even if I wouldn't like to catch owls.

Khemehekis wrote:
Aszev wrote:The amount of pages itself is quite uninteresting, imo.
What would you propose as a quantitative measure of completeness?

The only other thing that comes to mind is the number of words it takes to write the grammar.
The number of grammatical features covered?
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Ahzoh
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Ahzoh »

How the fuck do people write grammars longer than 5 pages?
I can barely make one!
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Egerius
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Egerius »

Ahzoh wrote:How the fuck do people write grammars longer than 5 pages?
I can barely make one!
Set the font bigger than 6 points, go more into detail, present and explain irregularities, present some history of your language (both the real-world evolution and the in-world development)... There are endless possibilities.
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alynnidalar
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by alynnidalar »

Modern Azen hit 50 words! The fiftieth word was kel (lake), derived from Old Azen kṓl (lake, sea).
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Chagen
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Chagen »

Chagen wrote:Jesus, how big was that font? A page to a letter?
Jesus christ I have been on this forum since fucking 2011. I was a goddamn sophmore back then!

Wow, time flies. Goddamn does time fly.
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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qwed117
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by qwed117 »

Oh god, I don't even have grammar in my text*
Okay, so I do, but only for present tense- transitive+intransitive

It's basically english in Present, Spanish in other forms, and much other stuffing.
Ughhhh [:'(]
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Khemehekis
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Khemehekis »

Tanni wrote: Congratulation!
Thanks!
Tanni wrote: I especially like the second poem, even if I wouldn't like to catch owls.
I wouldn't like to catch owls looking stern.
The barn owl reminds me on an owl in my first grade textbook.
And owl is ''urmi'' in my conlang.
The barn owl reminds me on an owl in my first grade textbook.
I wouldn't like to catch owls looking stern.
I especially like the second poem, even if I wouldn't like to catch owls.
Ooh, you did a palindroem yourself!

So you remember that owl way back erom the first grade? I remember my first grade spelling book was pink, with a chick on the cover. Our teacher called it the "pink chick book".

Come to think of it, my grade four spelling book had an owl on the cover. (It was light blue.)
Tanni wrote:
Khemehekis wrote:
Aszev wrote:The amount of pages itself is quite uninteresting, imo.
What would you propose as a quantitative measure of completeness?

The only other thing that comes to mind is the number of words it takes to write the grammar.
The number of grammatical features covered?
That might be workable, except how would you count features in this segment of my Kankonian grammar?
The excerptal is used for body parts a person has more than one of when they appear with a possessive:

Fas aas e bwolwut na is.
There is something in my eye.

Amerina khafarkhen dumat na wan.
Amerina scratched her thumb.

The singular rather than the excerptal is used when which one of your eyes, legs, feet, etc. you are talking about is specified:

Is apsithien pumus utshi na is.
I raised my left hand.

Nor is the excerptal used when there is no possessive:

Ar wahazas umbe ufoyan zeksisites oba eueras hekhio!
Now you can change channels without moving a finger!

When an adjective describes both/all of the nouns referred to by an excerptal, the adjective comes after the excerptal noun. When the adjective describes only the one of the nouns referred to by the excerptal, it comes before the noun. So, "one of my blue eyes" would be "bwolwut wowum" (both of the speaker's eyes being blue), but if the speaker had heterochromia iridum and wanted to say "the blue one of my eyes", he would say "wowum bwolwut".
Is that one feature or four features?
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by eldin raigmore »

Khemehekis wrote:What would you propose as a quantitative measure of completeness?
Our usual measure (for completeness of the grammar) is;
How many of Rossman and Mills's "Graded Sentences for Analysis" can a user of your grammar gloss into your conlang by means of your grammar?
Edit: (And a different user re-gloss back into their own native language -- or English -- by means of your grammar.)
That's 1200 sentences total; but conlangers usually use an 800-sentence subset.
See:
http://www.potterpcs.net/gsfa/
http://www.arthaey.com/conlang/lhenazi/ ... /gsfa.html
http://archives.conlang.info/kau/guawae ... qhuen.html and ff
http://www.worldcat.org/title/graded-se ... c/17701851
http://www.amazon.com/Graded-sentences- ... B0008AULJC

If your grammar explains how to translate the 800-sentence subset, we'd say it's complete.

I don't think that anyone has proposed a measure for completeness of the vocabulary/lexicon.
I don't think anyone thinks they have a chance of coming close.

Your grammar should contain the "instructions" for coining new words and incorporating loanwords into your language.
(For instance, some loanwords have stress-patterns unnatural to your language; or have forbidden phoneme-clusters; or present problems when a speaker tries to inflect them using the native morphology. This is usually solved somehow. Most languages have a fairly Procrustean approach; English comes closer to just borrowing the word (nearly) unchanged.)

I'd say once you have the first 30,000-50,000 morphemes (or words?), you've probably got as far as anyone ever has.
Even auxlangs like Lojban and B.A.S.I.C. English have more on the order of 800 to 1200, IIRC.
You ought to be able to carry on most quotidian conversations with the first 3,000-5,000; some conlangs do come close (probably some exceed that and I just haven't heard about it yet).
Once you pass 100,000 you've probably got more than the average speaker can remember.
Past 225,000 you've got more than some so-called "Unabridged Dictionaries of the English Language".
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 04 Dec 2014 08:26, edited 1 time in total.
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Ahzoh
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Ahzoh »

eldin raigmore wrote:
Khemehekis wrote:What would you propose as a quantitative measure of completeness?
Our usual measure (for completeness of the grammar) is;
How many of Rossman and Mills's "Graded Sentences for Analysis" can a user of your grammar gloss into your conlang by means of your grammar?
That's 1200 sentences total; but conlangers usually use an 800-sentence subset.
See:
http://www.potterpcs.net/gsfa/
http://www.arthaey.com/conlang/lhenazi/ ... /gsfa.html
http://archives.conlang.info/kau/guawae ... qhuen.html and ff
http://www.worldcat.org/title/graded-se ... c/17701851
http://www.amazon.com/Graded-sentences- ... B0008AULJC

If your grammar explains how to translate the 800-sentence subset, we'd say it's complete.

I don't think that anyone has proposed a measure for completeness of the vocabulary/lexicon.
I don't think anyone thinks they have a chance of coming close.

Your grammar should contain the "instructions" for coining new words and incorporating loanwords into your language.
(For instance, some loanwords have stress-patterns unnatural to your language; or have forbidden phoneme-clusters; or present problems when a speaker tries to inflect them using the native morphology. This is usually solved somehow. Most languages have a fairly Procrustean approach; English comes closer to just borrowing the word (nearly) unchanged.)

I'd say once you have the first 30,000-50,000 morphemes (or words?), you've probably got as far as anyone ever has.
Even auxlangs like Lojban and B.A.S.I.C. English have more on the order of 800 to 1200, IIRC.
You ought to be able to carry on most quotidian conversations with the first 3,000-5,000; some conlangs do come close (probably some exceed that and I just haven't heard about it yet).
Once you pass 100,000 you've probably got more than the average speaker can remember.
Past 225,000 you've got more than some so-called "Unabridged Dictionaries of the English Language".
I shall accept this challenge!
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by eldin raigmore »

Ahzoh wrote:I shall accept this challenge!
Which one? Translating the 800 or 1200 sentences of GSfA?*
(*"Graded Sentences for Analysis")
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Ahzoh
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by Ahzoh »

eldin raigmore wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:I shall accept this challenge!
Which one? Translating the 800 or 1200 sentences of GSfA?*
(*"Graded Sentences for Analysis")
That and the vocabulary/lexicon numbers.
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DesEsseintes
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Re: Grammar milestones

Post by DesEsseintes »

Ahzoh wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:I shall accept this challenge!
Which one? Translating the 800 or 1200 sentences of GSfA?*
(*"Graded Sentences for Analysis")
That and the vocabulary/lexicon numbers.
That list is pretty awesome.

Hmm, should there be a thread? Ahzoh, what do you think?
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