MODULE 3 Basic Grammar Developing Your Conlangs Basic

MODULE 3 Basic Grammar

Developing Your Conlang’s Basic Grammar This week your going to take the first steps to making your collection of words into a full, functional language. Because what a functional language needs, above all, is grammar. A system of stringing words together in a meaningful way.

The Basic Components of a Sentence • Verb (V)– the action taking place within the sentence • Subject (S) – the noun carrying out the action, also called the agent • Object (O) – the noun(s), also called arguments, the action is being done to/with/for/etc. The direct object is also called the patient

Word Order Options There are 7 options with word order • • SOV – “The boy the ball kicks” used in around 40 -45% of languages worldwide SVO – “The boy kicks the ball” used in around 35% of languages worldwide VSO – “Kicks the boy the ball” used in less than 10% of languages worldwide VOS – “Kicks the ball the boy” used in less than 5% of languages worldwide OVS – “The ball kicks the boy” used in less than 1% of languages worldwide OSV – “The ball the boy kicks” used in less than 1% of languages worldwide Unfixed – any of the above orders is grammatical, used in 5 -15% of languages I included the percentages so you would see how common the first two are compared to the rest. If you’re creating a naturalistic spoken language, this might be something you want to consider. However, all options are open and work perfectly well in the languages that use them, so as with a lot of things in conlanging, your imagination is the only limit.

To Clarify Unfixed Word Order Why does unfixed word order vary so much in percentage? It’s hard to pin down languages that truly have no fixed word order. Most languages actually employ all 6 options at some point, in different grammatical constructions. Languages originally thought to have unfixed word order, after further study, turn out to have more fixed order in complex sentences. Does unfixed word order mean a language requires a lot of agreement between components so everything makes sense? Not necessarily. Some unfixed languages do, but many have little to no agreement and still work fine. Context is key. If you think about the 6 example sentences, even if the word order on some seemed odd, you probably still understood them. Basic understanding of the world tells you that if something is being kicked, it’s probably the ball. In a different scenario, for example where it was a boy and a girl and therefore either could be kicking the other, likely the speaker describing the incident would have other ways to clarify who is kicking who beyond sentence order and agreement.

Head Initial or Head Final Related to word order, is head order. The head = the word that determines the semantic category of a phrase. A verb is the head of a verb phrase, a noun is the head of a noun phrase. Languages tend to lean either head-initial, putting the head at the beginning of the phrase, or head-final, putting the head toward the end. However, consistency varies in most languages. English is strongly head initial, but it plays a bit differently with its nouns. Smaller modifiers (color, size, etc) come first, while larger modifiers (clauses) come after. And compound nouns usually put the head noun last. Imagine a catphone. Now imagine a phonecat. One is a phone that looks like a cat or is somehow cat-like, and one is a cat that answers phones. Think about where that head noun appears. Compounding is an important way to build vocabulary, so keep head order in mind when considering this.

Is Head Order Related to Word Order? A little. Languages where V comes before O tend to be more head initial, while languages where O comes before V tend to be more head final. When considering this for your language, think about the overall word order you like. If you want your language to be OSV or OVS, it will probably lean more head final. If you go with VSO or SVO it will probably lean more head initial. But as with many things in language creation, those are not hard rules, just tendencies.

Exercise One • What will your language’s basic word order be? • Will your language lean more head-final or head-initial?

How Languages Grammar, the system that builds words and sentences, can be handled in a lot of different ways. Grammar can: • indicate which words in the sentence relate to other words in the sentence (or previous sentences) • ground the components of the sentence in time and space, • expresses whether something did or didn’t happen • question what happened, why and to whom • Demand action All of these things are part of human communication, but grammar doesn’t have to do all of them. In a natural language, it will at least do some of them. The question is how.

Inflectional Languages Inflectional languages use affixes, which includes prefixes, suffixes, circumfixes and infixes. Affixes are bound morphemes that attach to a root and change its meaning or role in some way. You don’t have an affix if the affix does nothing. Inflectional languages convey grammar through affixing. Affixes can range from each affix having a single meaning (agglutinating) to each affix having multiple meanings (fusional)

Where to Put Those Affixes? Suffixes (end of the root) and prefixes (beginning of the root) are the most common, with suffixes being the more common of the two. Many inflectional languages use mostly suffixing with some affixing. There are none that use mostly affixing, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Circumfixing means placing a two-part affix around the root. Note, these parts go together. Circumfixing is not just using a prefix that means one thing and a suffix that means something else on the same root. Infixing means putting the affix inside the root word. Note, if you’re constructing a naturalistic language, this is a hard thing to develop in a realistic way, unless you’re willing to start with a Proto-language. The natural development of infixing is complex.

What do all those affixes mean? An affix can pretty much mean anything in a grammatical sense. The real question is how much does it mean. Affixes in agglutinating languages have more limited meaning, while affixes in fusional languages can carry more weight.

Here’s an example Here are some words: Lanu means girl Pato means duck Bata means ball Toh means kick In this quick conlang, we’ll say verbs are marked for tense and, must agree with their subject in gender and number. Agglutinating lanu tohluk bata = the girl kicked the ball l – past tense marker u - animate gender k – singular Each morpheme is a separate affix and native speakers can tell you what each one does/means. Fusional lanu tohluk bata = the girl kicked the ball pato tohnup bata = the duck kicked the ball luk – past tense, animate gender, singular nop – past tense, other gender, singular You can’t separate these affixes, and still have meaning, and native speakers can’t tell you what each individual phoneme does/means.

What about particles? Fusional languages differ from agglutinating languages in the amount of meaning they packed into an affix, but people sometimes point to a language as fusional when really its just doesn’t express much grammar in its affixes. English is sometimes described as fusional, but it’s actually more isolating. Isolating languages use particles to carry grammatical weight in sentences. Think about the sentence, she walks. That “s” affix doesn’t mean present tense, feminine, third person, singular, it just means present tense singular. Same with “ed. ” English doesn’t mark gender outside of a few pronouns, nor is it concerned much with person or plurals. She walks, and it walks, but I walk and you (sing) walk. They walk and we walk … and now the word walk looks utterly meaningless to me.

Anyway … English is gradually whittling away it’s already minimal conjugation system, and growing more isolating. It uses a lot of particles. Particles are unbound morphemes, which, by some definitions are never inflected. A particle may have multiple meanings or grammatical uses, or only one. But they can be defined by native speakers, like any functional word. Let’s look at our quickie conlang again, but this time make it isolating. ken lanu toh lu tan bata = the girl kicked the ball lu – past tense particle ken – animate article (the) tan – inanimate article (the) Articles are not technically considered particles, because they can take inflection. However, they are useful in a largely isolated language, as they can carry pluralization.

Where can particles go? They can go pretty much wherever you want them to go. Typically they will stick close to the words they are modifying or most closely associated with in the sentence. But that varies. What it really depends on is what those particles mean and what they are semantically linked to.

Here’s our quick conlang again. ken lanu toh lu tan bata = the girl kicked the ball In a simple sentence like this, with only one verb, a past tense particle like lu could probably go anywhere in the sentence and still convey it’s meaning. If we agree that ken and tan are gender linked articles and there are only two nouns of two different genders, they can probably also go anywhere. So we could have: Lanu toh bata ken tan lu The big players in the sentence have strict word order, but the particles can go anywhere if you want them to. However, that changes as sentences get more complicated, or as particles get less specific.

Grammatical Rules “the girl will kick the ball, ” is grammatical English. “the girl kick the ball will, ” is not grammatical English, but it is understandable. But “girl kick ball the will, ” is absolute word salad. And not just because those two articles aren’t unique to either noun. lanu toh bata ken tan lu This made up sentence could also be word salad to a native speaker of this language. I don’t know, I haven’t decided. Every language has rules about what can and can’t be done. So, think about what is grammatical in your conlang, but also what isn’t. Remember, natural languages tend to be a mix, even if they lean more one way. So your conlang can use mostly inflections and some particles, or mostly particles and some inflections. It can be mostly agglutinating, but maybe a few affixes carry a bit more weight. Or mostly fusional, but some discrete affixes are still hanging on.

Besides Affixes and Particles, what else is there? Well, some languages use tone to communicate grammar. For example, a high tone might indicate past tense while a low tone indicates future tense. Like with infixing, I stress caution with using tones, especially for grammar in a naturalistic conlang. It can be hard to develop it right, again, unless you building up from a Proto-conlang. Some languages also grammaticalize shifts within the word. Not infixing, but changing the actual phonemes within the word. English has a number of these. Sink and sank, drink and drank. Semitic languages do something very similar to this, but their words are based around triconsonantal roots, around among which different vowels are placed to change meaning. Consonantal roots are another level of complicated. But if you really want to play around with something unique, these could be a fun challenge.

Digging In All right, you’ve got your sentence order and your head order. You’ve decided whether you’re using affixes or particles, and how much meaning will be packed into them. So, the next questions is, what could they mean? Anything? Everything! Here is a (mostly) comprehensive list of all the things that could be marked on the verb, noun or both.

(Mostly) Comprehensive List • Tense (past, present, future, distant past, near future, never gone happen future, gnomic=across all time) • Aspect (completed, not completed, ongoing, habitual) • Mood (declarative, subjunctive, imperative, negative) • Reflexivity (Did you seat yourself? Are you angering yourself? ) • Gender • Number • Person • Syntax (case, subject, object, prepositional object, transitive, ditransitive) • Location (to, from, at, by, on, under, etc) • Evidentiality (how does the speaker know the event took place; observation, hearsay, assumption) Before you panic, understand that no language does all, or even most of this. Languages will have things they get obsessed with, and other things they could care less about. English is exacting about tense, but it cares a lot less about gender. And not at all about grammatical evidentiality, for some reason.

Past Tense Nouns and Case Marked Verbs The stuff on that list can go pretty much anywhere. We already talked about how free you can get with particles. Affixes are pretty open too. Anything from that list, can appear on either the verb(s) or noun(s) in a sentence. Verbs can be marked to indicate how many objects they take. Nouns can be marked for tense. You could literally say “Past me walks to the store. ” But again, no language does everything, and certainly not on every part of speech. Redundancy is a thing, but it is far more common with agreement, that being gender, number and person, in the case of pronouns. So a language could mark both the noun and verb for tense, but it probably won’t. And languages are unbalanced. Languages that get really persnickety about nouns might not do anything to verbs. Or vice versa. Read over the list, think about how you want your conlang to work, and pick a few things you want it to mark. If you want more detail on the list, check out the Deep Dive into Grammar Power. Point. Otherwise, on we go.

Exercise Two 1. Does your language prefer particles or affixes? 2. If particles, describe what they mark and where they go in a sentence. 3. If affixes, describe what they mark and where they go (verbs/nouns). 4. If it has a few outliers, describe them (particles or affixes) what they mark and where they go. If you want to do a bit more worldbuilding, dig into the affixes or particles you just created, and think about how they evolved. All grammar came from something concrete. As an example, the “pas” in French’s “ne pas” used to mean step, like with your foot. It was part of a whole system that French used to express emphasis in negative sentences. Gradually, “il ne marche pas” went from the emphatic expression “he doesn’t walk a step” to just “he doesn’t walk, ” and “ne pas” became the official negative form. And in colloquial French the “ne” is starting to drop off, so soon the negative will just be “pas. ” That’s how grammar develops.