Conlanging can be overwhelming for even the most experienced conlangers—especially in the beginning stages of a new project when swirling swarms of ideas create a flurry of possibilities. I break the process down into daily prompts for a yearlong experience. One year, one conlang. Join me in making this a Conlang Year!
Goal: Enter adpositions in your dictionary Note: Include relevant grammatical information. Tip: Also add any lexical sources you created! Work focus: Solidify/Write/Share Now that you have written a section on adpositions and their use in your language, you need to take time to enter any adpositions you created in your dictionary. Each adposition should have…
Day 64, March 4 Goal: Enter adpositions in your dictionary Note: Include relevant grammatical information. Tip: Also add any lexical sources you created! Work focus: Solidify/Write/Share Day 65, March 5 Goal: Consider different types of possession Note: You can use different strategies for different types. Tip: Your strategy may involve case and/or word order. Work…
Goal: Write an introduction to adposition phrases Note: Highlight any required case-marking for particular adpositions. Tip: Different cases can result in different meanings! Work focus: Solidify/Write/Share Solidify the work you’ve done on adpositions by writing an introduction to a section on adpositions in your language’s documentation. I say “introduction” because there will likely be a…
Goal: Consider how adpositions and case will interact Note: You may want a preferred order for multiple adposition phrases. Tip: Strict word order can correlate with strict phrase order. Work focus: Organize/Plan/Structure If you have a case-marking language, you need to consider how your new adpositions will interact with those cases. Common lexical sources for…
Goal: Create sources for new adpositions Note: These sources are often nouns or verbs. Tip: The source you choose affects position. Work focus: Create/Make/List Today’s goal is to create lexical sources for adpositions. Once you create the lexical sources, you can reduce the forms to create the grammaticalized adpositions, such as having meho “belly” reduce…
Goal: Explore ideas for more adpositions Note: Even languages with extensive cases have adpositions. Tip: Drawing diagrams helps with spatial adpositions. Work focus: Learn/Brainstorm/Try Now that basic nominal inflections are covered, it’s time to expand other strategies for expressing relationships for noun phrases. Adpositions are grammaticalized function words that provide relational information—they indicate the relationship…
Goal: Update your dictionary to include all forms Note: Be sure all the words you created made it in the dictionary. Tip: Some dictionaries have entries for affixes. Work focus: Solidify/Write/Share One problem I frequently encounter is that I note the lexical sources I want to use for grammaticalizing a particular inflection but then forget…
Goal: Organize and clean up your dictionary Note: Include all the inflected forms you need for nouns. Tip: Consistent formatting is really helpful. Work focus: Organize/Plan/Structure Yesterday’s focus was on selecting which inflections should be included in the dictionary entries (e.g. as part of the head word). Today’s goal is to actually make that happen!…
Goal: Select any nominal inflections to provide in the dictionary Note: Common inflections provided include number and case. Tip: If it’s unpredictable, list it! Work focus: Organize/Plan/Structure So far, your dictionary entries are likely headed by the base form of the noun. If you created any inflections that affect that base form when used in…
Day 57, February 26 Goal: Select any nominal inflections to provide in the dictionary Note: Common inflections provided include number and case. Tip: If it’s unpredictable, list it! Work focus: Organize/Plan/Structure Day 58, February 27 Goal: Organize and clean up your dictionary Note: Include all the inflected forms you need for nouns. Tip: Consistent formatting…
