Re: Conlang Design Patterns?

It is a very nice idea. I am also a Software Engineer, and I have
always thought that conlanging in general is a form of Engineering too
(I like the term "Language Engineering"), as we always face trade-offs
to achieve our objectives. I encourage the appearance of catalogues of
design patterns for Language Engineering, and even, using Software
Engineering parlance, complete pattern languages.
By the way, a thought has occurred today morning. The "hard"
Engineering disciplines (Electrical, Computer, Civil, Aeronautic,
Mechanical, Chemical, etc.) share a common set of subjects in the
University (Calculus, Physics, etc.).
If the "soft" Engineering disciplines (Software, Language, Genetical,
etc.) evolved to become University courses, what do you think would be
their common set of subjects?
I was thinking about programming (for creating our own software
tools), database design (which is necessary for storing information
about conlangs), IA, text processing, translation systems and compiler
theory (including Chomsky, or Backus-Naur, notations), programming
languages and cell-oriented programming (the one found in Visicalc,
OpenOffice and Excel).
What do you think is missing in this list?

Antonielly Garcia Rodrigues

On 12/6/06, Caleb Hines <bachmusic1@...> wrote:
> I just had a wacky thought I'll share with the list. This is coming from
> a software engineer's perspective, so it may be the most applicable to
> other programmers, or those who are going for a more systematic approach
> to conlanging (not implying that these two groups are necessarily
> identical!). OTOH, it may be of general interest for those attempting to
> describe their language in a more rigorous way. The idea is...
>
> Has anyone ever tried applying the concepts of "Design Patterns" to
> conlanging?
>
> For those who don't know, design patterns
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_pattern_%28computer_science%29) are
> a technique used widely in software engineering to describe a specific
> solution to a recurring problem within a given context, and describe the
> design choices that are made to arrive at that solution.  They usually
> include a discussion of what the alternatives are, what the pros and
> cons are, what needs to be considered when applying the pattern, and how
> the pattern can be custom tailored. A number of software patterns have
> been described and cataloged, and they can be combined into a "Pattern
> Language" to describe a system as a whole. Patterns can be applied to
> systems other than software; they were originally invented for architecture.
>
> If there were a repository of Conlang Design Patterns, creating a
> conlang could be as simple as flipping through the repository, combining
> and modifying patterns as desired. Of course, you would always be free
> to add something unique that wasn't listed in a pattern.
>
> I'll give an example of what a sample "Conlang Design Pattern" might
> look like, using noun cases. I apologize in advance for any technical
> inaccuracies on my part.
>
> ~Caleb
>
> -------------------------------
> - Name: Noun Case
>
> - Classification: Syntactic Pattern
>
> - Forces:
> A sentence contains multiple semantic units in various relationships to
> each other. Some means of distinguishing these units from one another is
> needed. Nouns, especially, are capable of taking on several roles from
> sentence to sentence, and of having various relationships with verbs,
> other nouns, and other parts of speech. We would like to separate these
> roles from the noun itself, so that a noun can be reused in multiple
> roles. At the same time, we need to distinguish these roles to avoid
> ambiguity.
>
> - Solution:
> Establish a set of "cases" that represent generalized roles within a
> typical relationship. Then define a set of transformations (e.g. adding
> affixes) to apply to instances of nouns in order to indicate which case
> a particular instance of a noun belongs to.
>
> - Consequences:
> Because the role is encoded on the noun itself, word order becomes less
> important to the syntax.
>
> There are one or more sets of case transformations which must be
> created, along with the rules for applying them.
>
> In many implementations of Noun Case, there are multiple sets of
> transformations, which requires nouns to be classified by which set they
> use. This leads to additional information that must be determined for
> each noun, and possibly stored in the lexicon.
>
> It is often the case that two or more cases have the same
> transformation, which can lead to ambiguity, or at least requires
> context for disambiguation. (E.g. "-ibus" in Latin can be Dative pl. or
> Ablative pl.).
>
> Typically, at least one case (probably the most used case) will have the
> identity transformation. That is, nouns in that case will remain unmodified.
>
> - Variations:
> The number of cases can widely vary, depending on the number of
> generalized relations used in a given language. The minimum practical
> number is two, as seen in English nouns (there is no point in having one
> case -- it's the same as having no case), but many, many more are
> possible (e.g. Finnish has 15).
>
> Case is usually also applied to pronouns, although due to historical
> changes, the case system may be different between the two (as in English).
>
> There may be more than one "typical" relationship, (based on factors
> such as valency), leading to different sets of cases in different
> contexts, e.g. between transitive and intransitive verbs. How cases are
> applied in these differing contexts leads into different
> morpho-syntactic alignments.
>
> The inflection for case is often combined with other inflectional units
> (such as number and gender) to create fusional affixes. Alternatively,
> it could be isolated from the noun to form a set of particles
> (resembling adpositions).
>
> Combining Noun Cases with Adpositions could lead to a greater nuance of
> roles and relationships.
>
> - Related Patterns:
> Noun Case is an application of Inflection to the roles of nouns.
> Adpositions represent another way of signifying the roles of Nouns.
> Strict Word Ordering is yet another way to signify the roles of various
> parts of speech.
>
> - Known Examples:
> Widespread use, including Latin, and other IE languages.
>