Goal: Write an introduction to function
Note: Some sections may be partial for now as you continue to create more features.
Tip: Show nouns as they shift for all inflections the language marks.
Work focus: Solidify/Write/Share
Finally, today’s goal is to write a section introducing any inflections in your language that indicate a noun’s function. As in the past few days, if you don’t have any of these inflections, you can still write a section on how your language uses other strategies, such as a strict word order that indicates a noun’s role in the clause structure.
This section, in particular, will not be complete in its examples because we haven’t yet hit verbs and their inflections. That means you can’t provide full clause structures quite yet. You can provide the nouns and their forms, but the verbs will still be in their citation forms until you decide what (if any) inflections they will occur with.
Now that you have detailed all the inflections you’ve chosen to include in your language, it’s good to select example nouns and showcase how they appear when several inflections occur on them. For instance, if you mark both number and case, show how a noun looks when it’s singular nominative, plural nominative, singular accusative, plural accusative, and so on. The more you show different forms and combinations of possibilities, the more you will solidify the system—and the more you will potentially find areas you may need to tweak as you move forward.