[Shoebox] YASP (Yet Another Shoebox Plug)

I have been gradually replacing the manually generated interlinear
translations on my website with interlinears generated out of Shoebox.  In
addition to my embarrassment in discovering so many errors in my manual
interlinears, I was somewhat disconcerted to find that Shoebox had an
apparent greater facility and understanding of amman iar morphology than I,
its creator, did.  In any event, this experience, however disheartening,
caused me to renew my recommendation that Shoebox become one of your
conlanging tools.

In addition, as I replaced the amman iar interlinears, I also included a
nathya translation for every example.  While amman iar is the language of
literature, liturgy and the court of amman, nathya is the preferred tongue
of the common man.  This language, related to amman iar, is beginning to gel
in my mind for the first time.  Although I have not included nathya
interlinears on the website, I have created a Shoebox lexicon for nathya and
each of the example translations have been Shoebox interlinearized.  It was
this process that catalyzed the gelling of the language in my mind.
Previously, nathya translation had been somewhat ad hoc affairs lacking real
discipline, consistency and structure.  Shoebox enforced the kind of
discipline that allowed me to discover how the language really works.
Shoebox is not only useful for documenting a well understood language, like
amman iar, but seems to be proving useful for solidifying thoughts about
fuzzily understood languages like nathya.

I think I am about ready to prepare a formal description of nathya, but
rather than write a long reference grammar at this time, I think I will take
a cue from a recent thread an attempt a graded reader.

Stay tuned.

David
David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
    dbell@graywizard.net
    www.graywizard.net

"Wisdom begins in wonder." - Socrates