Re: Old draconic grammar and such

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Geijss Streijde <gijsstrider@...> wrote:
>
> Hello, I've finished most of the grammar of the old draconic language,
> and would like to hear your comments on it.
>
> http://stridercorp.gethost.be/wiki/CW:Old_Draconic
>
> Geijss
>
This is a great start IMO! I'm impressed.

Three flaws I've noticed (all easily correctible):

(1) Your "Nouns" article talks about adjectives instead of about nouns.  Since
you already talked about adjectives in your "Adjectives" article this means you
don't really talk about nouns.  I expect this is a result of copying and then
editing?

(2) Your "[ ]  =  / /" sentences don't seem to make sense. "[ ]" is supposed to
be how it actually sounds (phones); "/ /" is supposed to be how the
speakers/listeners psychologically group these sounds into phonemes.  (I
assume, also, your romanization follows the "/ /" for the most part.)  You'd
use "< >" to set off a grapheme (a written character) to show how something
written corresponds to something spoken.  That may be the romanization; or,
if the dragons ever have their own script, it may also be their orthography.
(Note, though, if their orthography is a syllabary (a character per syllable, and
a syllable per character) or a logography (a character per morpheme, and a
morpheme per character), this may be less useful.  It's most useful if they
have a featurography or an alphabet; a little less if they have an abjad or an
abugida; a little less still if they have a syllabary; and not much use if they
have a logography/ideography.)

(3) You have a few spelling errors.

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In general I'm impressed by how thoroughly you've discussed the various word-
classes ("parts of speech") and the various accidents (such as case, number,
gender, definiteness, tense, etc.) you've discussed.

I also like that you appear to have spent about equal effort on all parts of the
language, rather than talking about the phonology and the phonotactics to the
point of boring the reader while leaving out the grammar altogether, or vice-
versa, or something similar.

And I like that you began with the idea already that sentences may occur as
parts of sentences.  And that you've already considered compound
participants.  Have you considered compound verbs?

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Things I'd like to see more of (this is not necessarily in any logical order):

* Where is it spoken, and how many speakers does it have?

* Typology.  In all the various typologies that are popular among conlangers,
which types is Old Draconic?  These can include:
** Morphosyntactic Alignment
*** Accusative, Ergative, Active/Stative, ... ?
*** Dative, Dechticaetiative, ... ?
** Subject-Oriented?
** Topic-Oriented?
** "Word"-Order Type? (OSV, OVS, SOV, SVO, VOS, VOS)?
** Head-marking vs dependent-marking vs other?  (Old Draconic appears to
be dependent-marking.)

(But I think your sentence structure and discussion of case makes it clear it's
an accusative MSA and makes the dominant "word-order" clear.  Nevertheless
I'd like to see you say so explicitly.)

* Verb Accidents.

** Your wiki article explains how tense is shown.  But you make no distinction
between "Absolute Tense" (Present/Past/Future, time relative to the act of
speaking) and "Relative Tense" (Simultaneous/Anterior/Posterior, time relative
to some other event also spoken of).  So I can't tell which you mean.  (Of
course in many languages they're both marked the same way; but it's
worthwhile knowing how to tell whether it means "absolute tense" or "relative
tense".)

** You don't mention "aspect", as near as I can tell.  Most languages have a
way of distinguishing at least between perfective and imperfective. This
needn't be done by inflecting the verb, however; it may be done by means of
an auxiliary, for instance.  Also for many languages the aspect is something
the listener is left to guess at unless it's both likely that he/she would guess
wrong and important to the speaker that he/she understands the true aspect.

** You don't mention "mood" or "mode" or "modality", as near as I can tell.
Most languages have some way of distinguishing at least between realis and
irrealis.  The preceding remarks about aspect also apply to
mood/mode/modality.  In particular, though, although most languages use just
one kind of strategy to mark tense and just one kind to mark aspect, often
several different strategies are used to mark mood/mode/modality.

** Illocutionary force, such as
*** Declarative
*** Interrogative
*** Imperative

** Various other mood-like accidents.  Naturally not every language uses all of
these.
*** Evidentiality.
*** Mirativity.
*** Validationality.

** Polarity: affirmative vs negative.

** Grammatical Voice

* Some discussion of Adverbs.

* Some discussion of Adpositions (Prepositions, Postpositions, Inpositions) if
there are any;
** And which kind is dominant?  Is it a prepositional language, a postpositional
language, an inpositional language, or a language without a dominant type?
(Of course this question is not necessary to answer if there are no adpositions
in Old Draconic.)

* Accidents of Adjectives (and possibly of Adverbs).
** Degree-of-Comparison: Positive, Equative, Comparative, Superlative.

* Agreement:
** Verbs agree in number with some participant.  How many? and which ones?
** Do verbs agree in gender, referentiality/specificity, definiteness, case, or
person, with any of their participants?  If so, how many, and which ones?
** Adjectives agree in case and number with the noun they modify.  Do they
also agree in gender or any other nominal accidents?
** Do adverbs agree in any way with whatever they modify?  If so, does it
make a difference whether that is an adjective, a verb, another adverb, a
phrase, a clause, or a sentence?
** If your adpositional phrases (if you even have any) happen to be head-
marking, adpositions may agree in some ways with their object noun-phrases.
Do they?  If so, how.

* Clauses in sentences.
** So far you have discussed only "complement clauses", clauses that take
the places of noun-phrases in a larger clause.
** What about "relative clauses", clauses that take the places of adjectives in
a larger clause?
** What about "adjunct clauses", clauses that take the places of adverbs in a
larger clause?

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Good work!

Thanks.

-----
eldin