Re: Newbie introduction and question

On Sun, 24 Jan 1999, Daniel Seriff wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I'm a newbie, both to this list, and to conlanging in general. I'm a
> college senior majoring in music, and I've been picking up a heavy
> interest in languages over the past year or so. I've decided to give
> language construction a shot. I'm not a linguist or anything, but I've
> been picking up tidbits here and there on the subject.
>
> My question is this: Could someone give me a prioritized list of the
> steps one needs to go through to construct a viable language? I need an
> itemized list of decisions one needs to make about phonemes, morphology,
> grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc.
Hi yourself and welcome!

I think you'll find that there is no One True Way to achieve a "viable"
conlang.  Each person or group has a different agenda and different goals:
some wish to create whole and complete plausible languages with cultures,
and a scientifically acceptable planet and solar system to put them in.
Others need only a grammatical sketch and scant vocabulary for a fantasy
story.  Still others desire to tinker with various mechanisms of language
(tense, word categories, etc.) and concentrate on only those areas, thus
creating only partial languages.

You might first want to consider these sorts of questions _before_
starting work on the language itself.

Once you sort these things out, then consider what kind of people will be
speaking the language (or perhaps waving tentacles about in linguistically
meaningful patterns).  Are they human, saurian, caniform, lepoform, etc.?
This step will help settle what sounds they can produce and what sorts of
gesticulations can be made.

>From here it might be a good idea to generate random "words" using the
sounds these people can make.  Then consider what sorts of grammatical
elements and sytactical stuff you want to toy with.  Others can give
specific examples from their own langs; but you will want to think about
word order, inflection, agglutination, isolation, genders, word classes,
etc.  Taking all this data, apply some meanings to the words you've got,
and put them together in a meaningful way.

You may find that what you end up with is a sticky icky mess.  Figure out
what you don't like about it, and try again.  Eventually you'll come up
with things you like, things that surprise you, and sticky messes you can
live with!

To help you along each of these steps, you may want to consider what sort
of culture the speakers of your language have; since culture and language
are inextricably intertwined.  Being a music major, it might be a natural
for you to work out a constructed musical system as well.  (scales,
tunings, instruments, ensembles, etc.; keeping in mind how many and what
shape the mouth(s) is/are, how many fingers/tentacles, range of hearing,
etc.)

Note though, that none of this may work for you; and this is not meant to
be a rigid system like a chemistry recipe.  Rather it's more like a score
which you must interpret and make fit what resources you have available
and what moves you at the moment.

I hope this helps you at least a bit.

Padraic.

>
> Thanks very much,
> Dan Seriff
>