Re: Lahabic Syntax

> From: Anthony M. Miles
>
> These daily translations made me realize that a hadn't thought
> sufficiently
> about Lahabic syntax. Here is the (almost) completed system. It owes some
> influence to the discussions on Nur-Ellen and Boreanasian.
> Lahabic is VSO, prepositional, nominative/accusative.
Anthony, absolutely!!

<mount-soapbox>
Nothing beats translations to prove out the syntax of your conlang.  Even
the simple Aesopean Morals that I have been doing can reveal subtle holes.
I recommend that everyone do as much translation as possible.  Even if your
lexicon is not up to the challenge, use English morpheme place-holders.
While lexis is tedious and time consuming (although requiring a creative
mind), syntax is the real difficult part of conlanging, IMNSHO.  Coming up
with a theoretically sound syntactic system is one thing, but making it work
can be a lot harder than most people imagine.  I can remember struggling for
nearly a year trying to get a satisfactory relative clause system to work
for me.  Nothing proves whether your syntactic systems work better than
exercising them through translation.  Try expressing predicate adjectives
and nominals, various genitive/possessive constructions, subordinate clause
including subject and object complements as well as relative clauses,
attributive clauses, locative clauses, possessive clauses, existential
clauses, et.al.  There's more to syntax than simple sentences.  Translate,
translate, translate and when you're done, translate some more.  Your
conlang will improve with every translation.
</dismount-soapbox>

David