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Conlang Year, Day 131 prompt

Goal: Plan the structure of NPs with multiple modifiers

Note: Decide what the order will be when there are multiple modifiers and/or inflections.

Tip: A template can help keep phrases ordered and consistent.

Work focus: Organize/Plan/Structure


Plan out how you are going to handle noun phrase structures that involve multiple modifiers and/or inflections. It’s important to figure out how all the elements will come together to build a consistent approach to creating phrases. It can help to create a structural template to show what constituents occur where relative to one another (e.g. does an adjective occur before or after a demonstrative in a noun phrase with both?). You may want to consider combinations such as…

  • article + adjective + noun (e.g. “the steep hill”)
  • demonstrative + adjective + noun (e.g. “that tall tree”)
  • adjective + nominal modifier + noun (e.g. “fast reindeer herds”)
  • demonstrative + adjective + adjective + noun (e.g. “this big green tree”)

If you have inflections in your noun phrases (e.g. case, number, class), also consider where they occur relative to all the other pieces of information. Play around with multiple combinations until you land on a structure you’re happy with.