Re: Conlang test sentences

Here’s my two cents on conlang test sentences.   It’s rough, ready, and no
doubt incomplete.   Those among us who know more than I do about linguistics
than I do should feel free to correct my terms and analyses.



In my experience, you’ll need ways to express at least the following:



CLAUSES ABOUT STATES, PROPERTIES, AND RELATIONSHIPS



(x)        (is in a state)



x is or becomes available, extant, present, prevalent, apparent,
detectable....?

(existential verbs)



The sound came on.

There is a Santa Claus.

The genie appeared.

There is hope.

The footprints remained.



x has a property  (descriptive verbs)



(stable properties)



The ball is-red.

The rug is-shaggy.

The lake is-deep.

Water is-wet.



(not-so-stable properties)



The man is angry.

The dog is being noisy.

The towel is-wet.



note on descriptive verbs:    You don’t need ‘em.   Lots of languages, like
English, use copulas to link an argument that stands for an entity with
another argument that stands for an attribute.    “The toad is ugly,”
instead of nonce-English “The toad is-ugly,” where “be-ugly” is one verb.



(x)        (has a relationship with)     (y)



relationships commutative:   reversing the grammatical marking of the
arguments (for example, transposing word order or cases of arguments or
using inverse verb marking) does not change denotation (much)



Bruce Wayne is Batman.

Two plus two equals four.

The ball is next to the box.



relationships not commutative:    reversing the grammatical marking for the
arguments yields converse denotation (more or less).



The coat is under the table.

The worm is in the bird.

The bird has wings.

The coat belongs to me.

The buffalo is bigger than the dog.

I am called ‘Caine.’



CLAUSES ABOUT DOING AND UNDERGOING:



(x)        (does something)



(agents do things voluntarily)



The dog jumps.

The crowd booed.

The man turned around.



(agents do things voluntarily, with marginal control, or involuntarily)



The girl laughed.

The man sneezed.

The doctor hiccoughed.



(non-agents undergo things)



The teacher got sick.

The student fell.

The lady died.



The computer crashed.

The bomb exploded.

The fungus died.



(agents doing things or non-agents undergoing things?   i’m not sure.)



The fungus grew.

The sun shines.

The fire burns.



(x)            (experiences something)



The teacher fainted.

The student got-a-head-rush.

The artist experienced-esthetic-pleasure.



[All the latter three could be two-word “subject verb” in your conlang.]



(x)        (does something to or experiences)            ....



w)             something else

y)         itself or themselves (reflexive)

z)         each other (reciprocal)



Note on reciprocals or reflexives:    You don’t have to have a variety of
reflexive pronouns (myself, yourself, yourselves, herself...etc.).   You
could make do with only one.   Or, you could dispense with reflexive and
reciprocal pronouns altogether, and just mark the verb as reflexive or
reciprocal.   Or, you could put a reflexive or reciprocal adverb or particle
anywhere in the sentence you wanted to.    Or you could copy the subject,
and distinguish reflexives from reciprocals by where the copy of the subject
goes in the sentence.   Or, you could lexicalize reflexive and reciprocal
verbs, having, for example, three completely different words that
respectively mean “wash something else,” “wash oneself,” and “wash each
other.”   Or, [well, you get the idea].



(agents doing things)



The man washed the shirt.

The man washed himself.

The men washed each other.



The hunters shot the deer.

The hunters shot themselves.

The hunters shot each other.



(non-agents doing things)



The sun melted the ice.

The fire burned the house.



(x)            (experiences)              (y)



The woman sees the bird.

The woman sees herself.

The woman and the bird see each other.



The student knows (about) statues.

The student knows (about) herself.

The students know (about) each other.



MORE COMPLICATED CLAUSES



(datives)



The man gave food to the babies.

The man gave food to himself.

The men gave food to each other.





(here are some test-sentences whose classifications i’m not sure about)



The painting made me angry.

The general made me an assistant private.

The sun made the glue hard.

Pa named his boy Sue.

Futhor beat Huthor silly.

Huthor beat Futhor to a pulp.

The A’qhq people pound the roots to a thick paste.

He called me a traitor!



IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER:



1.         Your grammar doesn’t have to mark all the semantic distinctions I
’ve suggested above.   For instance, you don’t have to make different
sentence structures for (x) (does something) and (x) (experiences something)
if you don’t want to.   But you can if you want to.



2.         There will be a number of alternative grammatical structures you
can use in your conlang equivalents to the English examples listed above.
In the nonce-examples, as above, hyphenated English phrases stand for single
nonce-words.



English:    The cat sat on the mat.



nonce #1:            The cat             sat-on            the mat.

nonce #2:            The cat-nominative    sat-on   the mat-accusative,
dative, oblique, ....?

nonce #3:            The cat             sat                 the
mat-superessive case

nonce #4:            The cat             sat                 the mat
on.

nonce #5:            The cat             sit                  the mat
tense-past-on.

nonce #6:            The cat-sit         the mat-past
on.

nonce #7:            The cat             sat                 the cat
the mat.

nonce #8:            Change the basic word order on #’s 1-6.

nonce #9:            Make up more examples.



3.         You can make rules that vary the order of the constituents in the
kinds of basic sentences described above.    For instance, you could have
passive voice, predicate-first sentences, the same form for both, etc. etc.
etc.