Re: phonology, grammar and lexicon

Jack Hall wrote:
> Hi! I've created many conlangs, but one thing seems unclear, does it play any
> role in wich order you create the phonology, grammar and lexicon? And if it
> does, i know that first i will create the phonology but if it play any role, in
> wich order should i do the grammar and the lexicon? Regards
>
It's good to have a basic phonology before you start on the lexicon, but
the details can be refined later. A lexicon is never really finished,
unless you're trying for a limited vocabulary as a goal of the language.
Conventionally you might think that you need a phonology first, but if
you divide the grammar into morphology and syntax, it's usually the
morphology that depends more on the definition of the phonology. You
could design a language with a basic plan of the syntax (using
placeholder English words for instance) before you settle on a phonology
or a morphology. Still, phonology -> morphology -> syntax is a more
straightforward path.

In practice, the order of development can depend on the details of the
language. I haven't attempted a polysynthetic language, but I imagine in
that case it would make sense to work out the syntax first and take more
time to develop the complex details of the morphology. Even the details
of phonology can be put off, but I wouldn't recommend it. I was doing
fairly well with Tirelat until I got carried away with trying to redo
the phonology; the larger your vocabulary gets, the harder it is to make
fundamental changes to the sound system. But now that I've gone back to
Tirelat after working on Minza for a while, I've realized that I can
take all the different versions of Tirelat phonology as rough drafts for
a set of related Tirelat dialects.

I'm still working out details of the phonology (stress and vowel length)
even though the morphology is pretty well defined and hasn't changed
much. I've still only worked out the basics of the syntax, although my
lexicon has a pretty good number of words. There are aspects of the
grammar that only become apparent when trying to write in the language
-- either original writing or translations. Tirelat for instance has two
kinds of "adjectives", which have different syntax in their usage; one
class of adjectives ("identifiers" as I call them) can only modify
nouns, while descriptive adjectives can also be used as stative verbs.

So my recommendation is do things in whatever order makes sense for your
language (each language having different needs), but the best way to
know what makes sense for your language is to use it. It doesn't have to
be anything too complicated; "Wait for the green light" is one recent
example from Tirelat (even simple sentences make you think about the
details of your language and how it compares with more familiar
languages). I have a few practice sentences that I like to use with new
langs, like "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", or "The cow
jumped over the moon".

Reply