What constitutes/is required for a complete grammar?

[BluEmber]

I've been conlanging off and on for a while now, but I'm finally getting back into it. My question is what "checkboxes" do you have to mark to have a functional, complete, fleshed-out grammar? This may be too vague of a question, but I'd like, at the very least, some direction for my next conlang. If it is, indeed, too vague of a question, what parts of the grammar should I visit to ensure my conlang can translate (the majority of) full sentences?

Thanks for any helpful replies.

[HolyHandGrenade!]

Most conlangers don’t “complete” their language (by which I mean it is developed to their satisfaction). Most either just lose interest (like me) or work on it for years and years (like Khemekis or however you spell it). I would suggest maybe start translating. It will inevitably reveal holes in your grammar and lexicon. If it’s helpful, here are some basic grammar concepts every language needs: word order, tense, aspect, mood, alignment, head-vs-dependent marking, role marking, & different types of dependent clauses.

[Creyeditor]

My Kobardon grammar has 43.5 pages, my word list has 15 pages. There are still gaps and I feel like I need to coin new words and make new decisions about the grammar everytime I translate a new sentence. Other people seem to have less of a problem. I might just be overthinking stuff. My grammar includes the following sections.

Spoiler:

Contents
1 Introduction 5
1.1 Typological Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2 External History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3 Diachronic Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Areal and Genealogical Affiliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Sociolinguistic Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Phonology 7
2.1 Consonant Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Vowel Inventory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Pitch Accent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4 Phonotactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.5 Word-level Allophony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.6 Phrase-level Allophony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.7 Prosody and Intonation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3 Parts of speech 14
3.1 Precategorical Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2 Particles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3 Pronouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4 Morphology 17
4.1 Derivational Infixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2 Nominal Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.3 Verbal Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.4 Adjectival Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.5 Adverbial Inflection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.6 Compounding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5 Nominal Syntax 24
5.1 Basic Nominal Word Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.2 Adnominal Possessors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.3 Relative clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.4 Prepositional Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.5 Attributive Adjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6 Verbal Syntax 29
6.1 Basic Verbal Word Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.2 Ditransitive verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.3 Conative Alternations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
6.4 Differential object marking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
6.5 Object Splitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6.6 Indirect cognate Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
7 Clausal Syntax 33
7.1 Basic Clausal Word Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.2 Copular Clauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
7.3 Negation and Polar Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7.4 Simple Adverbs and Adverbial Phrases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7.5 Content questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
7.6 Optative Inversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
7.7 Passive Voice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
8 Sentential Syntax 41
8.1 Basic Word Order in Complex Sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
8.2 Embedded clauses and Action Nominalizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
8.3 Cleft sentences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
8.4 Causatives and Resultatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

There are also additional sections between the grammar and the word list that deal with vocabulary.

Spoiler:

9 Nominal Lexicon 44
9.1 Body Parts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
9.2 Common animals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
9.3 Relational spatial nouns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
9.4 Proper Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
10 Verbal Lexicon 46
10.1 Verbs of movement and caused motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
10.2 Modal and Phasal verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
10.3 Verbs of Perception and Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
11 Adjectival Lexicon 48
11.1 Numbers and Quantifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
11.2 Colors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Of course, the sections depend on what you use your conlang for and what kind of stuff exists in your conlangs's grammar.

[Eivuhekoi]

Grammar "completeness" as far as I know is kind of weird in that it really doesn't exist from what I can tell. Basically, I have had this similar problem but in a more "what should my grammar contain" manner. As a result I've yet to ever actually write a proper grammar document for any of my conlangs, except for a few speedlangs made for events where grammar was needed.

I personally was thinking of looking like grammars for natural languages to see what kind of things I should work on for my current conlang, a long over due rework of my first proper conlang that has now dragged on for almost a year if I can recall correctly. So, like, that could be one option to find "grammar checkboxes"?

Also,

My grammar includes the following sections.

I will be stealing some of these chapter topics into my conlang's documentation, sorry.

[Creyeditor]

No need to be sorry. Glad to be of service to the community.

[Khemehekis]

Most conlangers don’t “complete” their language (by which I mean it is developed to their satisfaction). Most either just lose interest (like me) or work on it for years and years (like Khemekis or however you spell it).

Khemehekis.

You left out the scrapper type. Those who lose interest (like you) are sandboxers. Scrappers, on the other hand, want to keep their conlangs, but they keep finding one or more fatal flaws in each language they create: it's too newbish, it's an unworkable kitchen sink conlang, it's an English cipher, it's unnaturalistic, I don't like the sound of it, the orthography is ugly, etc.

BluEmber, check out this:

https://www.frathwiki.com/Khemehekis_Conlanger_Taxonomy

You seem to aspire to be what I call a completer. But there are 19 other types on the list (including nonlangers -- non-conlangers who hang out with conlangers). As for me, I'm a filler. I've kept working on Kankonian and all the other languages of the Lehola Galaxy because I'm creating my tongues for my galaxy and each of my concultures needs a language to speak.

[Eivuhekoi]

Based on that wiki, I reckon I would either fall under "loyalist" or "scrapper" personally. The reason for why it's these 2 very much opposite types is that while I have one conlang that I have been working on, the lang is now in it's third iteration since the first one was so bad it never got to a "working" stage, and I realized later that the second iteration was also kind of bad.

[Khemehekis]

Based on that wiki, I reckon I would either fall under "loyalist" or "scrapper" personally. The reason for why it's these 2 very much opposite types is that while I have one conlang that I have been working on, the lang is now in it's third iteration since the first one was so bad it never got to a "working" stage, and I realized later that the second iteration was also kind of bad.

Hmmmm . . . this sounds like a replacer.

[Eivuhekoi]

Based on that wiki, I reckon I would either fall under "loyalist" or "scrapper" personally. The reason for why it's these 2 very much opposite types is that while I have one conlang that I have been working on, the lang is now in it's third iteration since the first one was so bad it never got to a "working" stage, and I realized later that the second iteration was also kind of bad.

Hmmmm . . . this sounds like a replacer.

I think you are right, because:

Similar to TNT'ing an unsalvageable Wikipedia article, a replacer razes the language of the Empire of Samphoria and, after its destruction, erects an entirely new Samphorian language.

is basically exactly what I have done with Avát, or Núhenre now. The name in the language keeps changing though, however the English (and my native language) name for it has remained "Wanderish" consistently.

I, like, still considered it to be the same language in my head, which make it kind of hard to post about it anywhere as I am not sure if it should go in the same thread as the old one, or a new post entire due to how little the new iterations share with the old one.

[lsd]

it is also important to remember that:
you don't need a complete grammar for a language to work perfectly...
just as linguistics is not necessary to speak a language,
nor to learn a language,
linguistics is not necessary to build a language...

[BluEmber]

Thanks for the replies, these tips will definitely help me.

[BluEmber]

Most conlangers don’t “complete” their language (by which I mean it is developed to their satisfaction). Most either just lose interest (like me) or work on it for years and years (like Khemekis or however you spell it).

Khemehekis.

You left out the scrapper type. Those who lose interest (like you) are sandboxers. Scrappers, on the other hand, want to keep their conlangs, but they keep finding one or more fatal flaws in each language they create: it's too newbish, it's an unworkable kitchen sink conlang, it's an English cipher, it's unnaturalistic, I don't like the sound of it, the orthography is ugly, etc.

BluEmber, check out this:

https://www.frathwiki.com/Khemehekis_Conlanger_Taxonomy

You seem to aspire to be what I call a completer. But there are 19 other types on the list (including nonlangers -- non-conlangers who hang out with conlangers). As for me, I'm a filler. I've kept working on Kankonian and all the other languages of the Lehola Galaxy because I'm creating my tongues for my galaxy and each of my concultures needs a language to speak.

I would say I struggle with being a perfectionist (IRL and in conlanging ), I try to create a language I can be happy with but always hate it down to it's guts once I've gotten halfway into developing it. I want to keep the same language, but it isn't good enough so I'm always trying something different. I really am trying to stick with one project and stick with it until it's "complete" enough to my liking. It's difficult to find the proper time to work on my project, unfortunately.

Thanks for this list though, it's a helpful insight.

[lsd]

just give your conlang a chance...
its singularity, even if it displeases you at first sight,
could bring you a lot if you give it enough time to develop sufficiently...
when you love foreign languages,
it's also for the unpleasant things they present,
when you finally manage to make them your own...

[Khemehekis]

I would say I struggle with being a perfectionist (IRL and in conlanging ), I try to create a language I can be happy with but always hate it down to it's guts once I've gotten halfway into developing it. I want to keep the same language, but it isn't good enough so I'm always trying something different. I really am trying to stick with one project and stick with it until it's "complete" enough to my liking. It's difficult to find the proper time to work on my project, unfortunately.

Thanks for this list though, it's a helpful insight.

Ah! A perfectionist!

You're welcome.