Re: How to...

 >I'm trying to develop my Teinvard-grammar to a more advanced level. It can
 >handle simple sentences like "Marlo eats food" etc., but I need it to be
 >waterproof. How should I proceed the testing and development of the
 >language? Do you have any good methods?

        Find someone else to learn your language.  They will start
asking difficult questions almost immediately. :)

        Seriously, though, this is an interesting question.  I once
tried to write a prototypical primer, which could be used by anyone to
ensure a nice development of their language.  This turns out to be
hard because people create such different languages.

 >Maybe a couple of grammaticaly really advanced sentences that I can use to
 >test the grammar? Which steps do you follow in the creation process (of the
 >grammar)?

        My own process isn't very formal.  But, your email gives me an
idea...

        Starting with things like "Marlo eats food" a list of 50-100
sentences embodying increasingly complex facets seems like an awfully
good tool.  Just these few take you down many interesting syntactic
and potentially morphological paths:

        1. Marlo eats.
        2. Marlo eats food.
        3. Marlo eats tasty food.
        4. Marlo eats food which is tasty.

Then, much further down the list, there could be complex sentences
which require you to think about that Heavy-NP lifting, er, shifting
issue, etc.

--
William Annis  -  System Administrator -  Biomedical Computing Group
"When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do
towards other humans."                       Marcus Aurelius  VII.65