Does the grammar make sense?

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conlangernoob
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Does the grammar make sense?

Post by conlangernoob »

Here is a list of grammatical features in a language which I just started. Am I missing something? Is it realistic?

Basic
Word order: free
How does inflection work? 4 ways: infixes, reduplication of last syllable, vowel changes and prefixes.
Noun inflections
Noun cases: ergative, absolutive (unmarked), vocative, possessive, and dative.
Noun numbers: Singular (unmarked), dual, triple, and plural.

Verb inflections
Verb tenses: Past, present, future (unmarked).
Verb aspects: Perfect, continuous, perfect continuous, and habitual.
Verb moods: Indicative (unmarked), imperative, interrogative, subjunctive, potential.
Evidentiality: Direct knowledge, nonvisual sensory, inferential,
All verbs can be negated.

Pronouns
Three persons, subject/object, human/animal/object, inclusive/exclusive we, no gender as well as a bunch of non-personal pronouns.

Other
Base 5 numbers, and no articles.

Thanks,

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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by Creyeditor »

I don't see a problem, but of course there is (always) a lot to add. Some examples from the area of syntax:
  • How do you form existential sentences, e.g. 'There is a swamp eel.'?
  • How do you express predicative possession, e.g. 'I have a pet swamp eel.'?
  • How do you express comparosons, e.g. 'My hand is more serpent-like than a swamp eel.'?
  • How do you form embedded clauses, e.g. 'I fear that my hand will seem to hold a swamp eel.'?
  • How do you form relative clauses, e.g. 'the swamp eel, that bit me.'?
Also, free word order in natlangs usually means there are complex rules about what word orders are linked to what kind of pragmatics/information structure. So there's that, but free word order looks like a good start.
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by Salmoneus »

conlangernoob wrote: 01 Feb 2023 00:03 Here is a list of grammatical features in a language which I just started. Am I missing something? Is it realistic?
Oh, conlangs are always missing something. The more you look at languages, the more complicated you realise they are. The potential danger in an overly 'simple' conlang is that if the creator hasn't specified some detail it's often because they're just assuming things work the same way as in their own native language (or another language they've studied). That said, obviously with finite time we have to accept that conlangs don't get truly "finished", and it's also perfectly fine to only one to go into so much depth, particularly depending on the purpose of the language (otherwise you can end up falling down endless rabbit holes).

That said, this seems a solid basis for a language; it looks like you should be able to handle basic sentences. Crey has some suggestions for more complicated things to think about; an organic way to find gaps in your language is just to translate a variety of texts - you'll be surprised how often you find something that you're not sure how to translate.

In general, your language seems very... grammatically heavy. Highly synthetic, with lots of categories marked. This is actually very common in conlangs made by inexperienced people (we tend to go "hey, cool thing, I'll add that too!" and the language gets more and more stuff). However, there's nothing inherently wrong with it either. Some real languages are this 'heavy', or even more so!
Basic
Word order: free
How does inflection work? 4 ways: infixes, reduplication of last syllable, vowel changes and prefixes.
Noun inflections
Noun cases: ergative, absolutive (unmarked), vocative, possessive, and dative.
Noun numbers: Singular (unmarked), dual, triple, and plural.
As Crey says, saying "free word order" is more the beginning of a discussion than the end of it: if you say "you can say either XYZ or YZX"... well fine, OK, but then how do people actually decide which to say?

This actually fits in with the lack of articles. A big part of language that conlanger often overlook is information structure, which is a fancy way of saying "how the language directs the attention toward certain things, and how it implies correlations between different things". Articles are hugely useful as a way of structural information: if I say "the man opened a letter", the articles there are saying "don't worry about the man, you already know about him, but this letter, that's new information, we've not talked about this yet". And maybe the letter is interesting and maybe it isn't (some languages have additional articles to specify this; English doesn't generally, but we can use phrases like "a certain" to really emphasise "this letter is going to be important!"), but we shouldn't get it confused with other letters we've heard about, or get distracted thinking to ourselves "wait, letter, am I meant to know about a letter!?"

Now, articles are only one way to structure information, and many languages don't have them. But without articles, you need other ways to do the same job. Actually even WITH articles you need other ways too, but they become more important without articles. And word order is another big way languages structure information. Even English does this, but our fixed word order makes it complicated, and highly marked, but that's basically what's happening in a sentence like "it was the taste of the fish that he really hated" (vs "he hated the taste of the fish") - the marked word order is employing what's called "focus" to set up a premise (he hates something about the fish), raise a question (what does he hate about the fish?), answer the question (he hates the taste) and also reassure the listener that the question has been fully answered (the taste isn't just one of the things he hates about the fish, it's THE thing). If word order is free, it's likely that word order is being used for information stucture more extensively than it is in English.

There are, however, other options too. Some languages explicitly use particles to point to different elements in the sentence and explain what sort of information they are. Others mark the verb to show what sort of statement is being made - so, for example, alongside mood, some languages have a marker that basically says "woah! this is totally news to me!", and others have one that says "you won't know this, pay attention!".

A lot of information structure stuff comes under subjects like "topic" and "focus". Topic is what a sentence is "about", and is usually old information (though not necessarily) that you're going to talk more about, whereas "focus" is the most "interesting" thing in the sentence and is almost always new infomation - and there are various different reasons somethign might be interesting.

------------

Anyway, back to your conlang!

Infixes are interesting and potentially complicated - where does the infix go, is it the same in all words, and how does it interact with the phonology of the language (eg how it works with words that are a bit unusual in shape).

Reduplication is also interesting, and underused in conlangs. Initial reduplication is much moe common than final reduplication, though I can't remember how much more common it is. There are some strong trends in what sort of reduplications are present and what they might be used for, might be worth looking up. And again, reduplication can get complicated with words of unusual shape.

Ergativity is a nice change from most real languages, without being unrealistic. It's often complicated - many languages aren't completely ergative - but it can be simple if you prefer.

More generally, think about what each case can be used for. A first question might be: does quirky case exist? Quirky case is where some nouns take the "wrong" case for some reason, either to signify something or simply because a certain verb demands it. For instance, maybe some verbs take objects in the dative. Or maybe some subjects are in the dative!

The dative is a particularly vague case. What is it used for? Its often used for the third argument of a verb that has three arguments (I sent Bob a letter)... but which verbs are like that in your conlang? Do ALL trivalent (having three arguments) verbs include a dative argument, or do some use a different case for their third argument? Can you change a bivalent verb into a trivalent one - and, if so, what happens to case assignments? In most languages, if we remove an argument from "I sent Bob a letter" it will be Bob - we'll keep the letter, with the same case as before ("I gave a letter"). But in some languages, it's more common to remove the letter: "I sent [something to] Bob". In which case, does Bob keep his dative case, or does he switch into the object case (the absolutive in your language)? Note that not all verbs have to pattern the same way - English has a few verbs that work the 'wrong' way. So "I sent a letter to Bob"/"I sent Bob a letter" > "I sent a letter [to someone]", but "I fed cabbage to the pigs"/"I fed the pigs cabbage" > "I fed [something to] the pigs", NOT "I fed cabbage [to something]". If you follow me. And note also that English has two different constructions - one with a third core argument, and one that instead puts the recipient into a prepositional phrase. Does your language have both constructions? If so, what's the difference?

Dative cases can also 'govern' the nouns in prepositional cases (so can any case). Do nouns in prepositional cases take a case, and if so which? Is it always the same case?

[while we're at it: do you have prepositions? How many? What do they mean? These aren't specific questions you need to answer, just examples of questions to think about. English is actualyl very rich in prepositions; some other languages prefer to put that ifnormation in the verb instead, or in a noun. [eg "I walked around the house" (information in preposition), vs "I circumambulated the house" (information in verb), vs "I walked the perimeter of the house" (information in noun).]]

What counts as "possession" for the purposes of the possessive case?


These are just some examples of questions to be thinking about.

--------

Oh, I guess a big issue: you don't mention anythign about adjectives, adverbs, and other things that modify nouns and verbs (qualifiers, for instance).
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by conlangernoob »

Thanks for the advice! Second thing: Here is what I have for my phonology so far:

There are eleven consonant phonemes in Proto-[Undecided]: h (12), p (9), b (28), k (46), g (13), t (33), d (47), f (4), v (10), s (30), z (15), m (37), n (74), l (59), y (33), r (67).
Monophthongs: a (119), i (89), and u (70)
Diphthongs: ai (40)
Stress is ultimate.
Syllables come in two forms. There are no consonant clusters.
CV
CVC

Obviously it isn’t complete, but, so far, are there any glaring errors (or non-glaring errors) I’ve made?

Thanks,

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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by Khemehekis »

conlangernoob wrote: 01 Feb 2023 00:03 Noun numbers: Singular (unmarked), dual, triple, and plural.
You might want to know that when you're talking about grammatical number, you say trial, not "triple".
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by Arayaz »

conlangernoob wrote: 01 Feb 2023 18:20
There are eleven consonant phonemes in Proto-[Undecided]: h (12), p (9), b (28), k (46), g (13), t (33), d (47), f (4), v (10), s (30), z (15), m (37), n (74), l (59), y (33), r (67).
Monophthongs: a (119), i (89), and u (70)
Diphthongs: ai (40)
Stress is ultimate.
Syllables come in two forms. There are no consonant clusters.
CV
CVC
The lack of velar fricatives bugs me a bit, considering that you do have labial ones, but overall, it's a pretty good inventory. I feel like you may have forgotten to allow syllables that are just vowels (according to this phonology, words can't start with vowels).

You should flesh out more about the stress. Is it uniform? Is it still ultimate in borrowings? You might also want to think about your final-syllable reduplication. Does the stress go on the reduplicated part? It seems strange to stress an affix.

You shouldn't have to specify that there are no consonant clusters ─ just say that CV syllables are allowed, and words can also end with a consonant. (I have several languages with this structure.)

I assume that the numbers after the phonemes are frequencies. If so, I notice that /d/ is more common than /t/, which may just be due to the sample size, but is a bit annoying.

/y/ is a vowel, not a consonant ─ you're probably thinking of /j/.

Do you have any allophonic rules? (e.g. nasal assimilation, intervocalic voicing)

The velar stops seem to be a bit too common, but it's fine.

Overall, this is a pretty good, if not interesting, phonology. It needs a few more details to be fleshed out, and there are some oddities of it that may be mistakes. But it's not bad.
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by conlangernoob »

I revised the grammar and the phonology a lot.

Here is a link to all I have so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2P ... 77zqOA/pub

Obviously, I’m not done (I haven’t came close finished the grammar and haven’t even started on the lexicon), but I have a few questions:
How feasible is it to combine the demonstrative and question pro-forms?

Is it realistic to have an [s,] sound but not a [z] sound?
Is the way I organized my document for Proto-[Undecided] the best way to organize? Any elements I’m missing?
How do I realistically add versions of personal pronouns for other cases without using the normal case inflection
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by Imralu »

conlangernoob wrote: 05 Feb 2023 01:40Is it realistic to have an [s,] sound but not a [z] sound?
That depends. Do you find Spanish realistic? What about Tongan, Tok Pisin, Mandarin and Swedish?
conlangernoob wrote: 05 Feb 2023 01:40Here is a link to all I have so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2P ... 77zqOA/pub
"Sorry, the file you have requested does not exist. Make sure that you have the correct URL and that the file exists."
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific, AG = agent, E = entity (person, animal, thing)
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by Arayaz »

conlangernoob wrote: 05 Feb 2023 01:40 I revised the grammar and the phonology a lot.

Here is a link to all I have so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2P ... 77zqOA/pub

Obviously, I’m not done (I haven’t came close finished the grammar and haven’t even started on the lexicon), but I have a few questions:
How feasible is it to combine the demonstrative and question pro-forms?

Is it realistic to have an [s,] sound but not a [z] sound?
Is the way I organized my document for Proto-[Undecided] the best way to organize? Any elements I’m missing?
How do I realistically add versions of personal pronouns for other cases without using the normal case inflection
1. I don't know of a natlang precedent, but it's not unimaginable.
2. Absolutely. That's very common. But it would be odd if you had other voiced fricatives. Though with /v/ it might be allowable, considering that it's labial (therefore easier to voice) and could have come from fortition of a glide.
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by eldin raigmore »

Imralu wrote: 21 Oct 2023 06:17
conlangernoob wrote: 05 Feb 2023 01:40Here is a link to all I have so far: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2P ... 77zqOA/pub
"Sorry, the file you have requested does not exist. Make sure that you have the correct URL and that the file exists."
That’s what I got, too!
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by Imralu »

Arayaz wrote: 21 Oct 2023 15:222. Absolutely. That's very common. But it would be odd if you had other voiced fricatives. Though with /v/ it might be allowable, considering that it's labial (therefore easier to voice) and could have come from fortition of a glide.
It wouldn’t be that odd at all. Just out of the languages I mentioned earlier, Tongan and Swedish both have /f v/ and /s/ without /z/. In both cases, /v/ developed from [w].

Both [ð] and [ɣ] easily develop from stops and [ʒ] easily develops from [j]. In fact, /j/ in Swedish is generally pronounced [ʝ] by a lot of speakers and /r/ can also be pronounced [ʐ] in some areas, so if you up the fricativisation process, you could easily end up with a descendent of Swedish having quite a full fricative series like /f v s ʂ ʐ ɕ ʑ h/ without /z/.
Glossing Abbreviations: COMP = comparative, C = complementiser, ACS / ICS = accessible / inaccessible, GDV = gerundive, SPEC / NSPC = specific / non-specific, AG = agent, E = entity (person, animal, thing)
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by veles »

Your list of grammatical features for your new language seems comprehensive. It covers word order, inflection, noun and verb inflections, pronouns, numbers, and more. It's a realistic start for a conlang.
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Re: Does the grammar make sense?

Post by eldin raigmore »

I agree with what Veles just wrote!

Also: conlangernoob, it’s been about 9 months since we’ve heard from you about your conlang!
Last we heard from you on this thread, was February this year!
Do you have anything else to tell us?
I’m pretty sure all of us would be interested!
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