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Re: Inverse relay: quality of documentation

From:Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date:Friday, November 28, 2008, 20:55
On 11/27/08, kaleissin <kaleissin@...> wrote:
> I'd love to be in the next inverse relay but I doubt the documentation > I have on Taruven is sufficient. Therefore, I'd like a more in-depth > discussion of what level and breadth of documentation is needed to > participate: > > * A minimal number of words/meanings in the lexicon?
I wouldn't set an arbitrary minimum here. Some conlangs are intended to be lexically parsimonious. But if your language is intended to have a small or closed root vocabulary, you should give a rules and examples for how more complex meanings are expressed with compounds, derivations, phrases etc.
> * Descriptions of which features of the language?
As David said, a description of basic and some more complex clause types, and word classes and how/whether each of them inflect.
> * How many details per word?
The definitions should written to be useful to someone learning the language, not just to remind you about what you meant by the words. Several of the questions I sent Lars when I was working on my Urianian text had to do with which sense of an English word he meant to use in his glosses, for instance.
> * Examples? (Sample texts or fragments?)
Sample texts are good, although a sufficiently large number of sample sentences in the grammar might make them not absolutely necessary. The more material someone has to practice and test their knowledge of the language on before the relay starts, the better.
> * Teach-yourself-style tutorials?
Nice, but probably not as important as making the reference grammar as thorough as possible.
> I propose a test for sufficient-ness, a short text that someone else > than the author of the language was capable of translating into the > language, that is: a non-relay translation game. Then the translator > can vouch for the quality of the documentation at least. > > Oh and of course, I hereby offer to translate a tiny text of my > choosing into one - 1 conlang. Just to get things started, ya' kno'
Let's say we know that the five languages used in Inverse Relay #1 are well-documented enough. So we might want this kind of test for languages that weren't used in that relay and which look like they might be well-enough documented but might not. What about point me to the Taruven website, if any, or email me offlist with other Taruven materials, and I'll see what I can do about writing something in Taruven? And you can pick one of the languages offered by other people who want to participate if this kind of pre-relay documentedness test seems necessary for them. Again: who all is interested in participating? I think so far David, Arthaey, Amanda, Kaleissin, Eugene, Ina, Jim Taylor and I are all that have said they're interested. That gives us five languages (at least) that haven't been tested by someone else translating into them (at least not in this kind of game). -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/

Replies

Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>
taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...>