Re: conlang survey

I think there were a few people on the list asking
about a conlang survey, so I decided to repost it.

No, it's not multiple choice, although some questions
are just yes/no.  I tried on the other questions to
leave it as open-ended as possible.  And yes, I missed
something things like trigger languages, but then
again, I knew I could included everything
linquistically possible on the survey, so the
questions are meant at least to stimulate some sort of
answer.

So, if you look over this and don't like it, feel free
to just throw the whole thing out and start typing me
your own grammatical sketch.

Language name, creator's name, realative date of
creation (just any old number will do), country and
first language of creator, purpose of conlang
(auxlang, conlang, loglang, . . . ).

Phonetics:  number of consonants, number of vowels,
presence of nasalization, tone and how many, where the
accent generally falls.

Morphemes:  presence of allomorphs, mutation,
assimilation, prefixes, suffixes, infixes,
suprafixation, dicontinuation, exclusion, total
fusion, subtraction, reduplication.  Is the conlang
agglutinating, isolating or fusional?

Nouns and such:  subclasses of nouns (common/proper,
abstract, things that may not be expressed explicitly
in affixes), presence of cases and how many and what
kind, kind of possession (alienable, inalienable, no
distinction, etc.) presence of gender, number,
articles, demostratives, adjectives, quantatives.  Are
comparatives expressed by affix, word order or both?
Do pronouns express gender, number, declension?  Are
there indefinite pronouns, possessed pronouns?
Others?  Are prepositions bound, unbound?  How many
prepositons (approximate).  Presence of clitics.  Is
derivational morphology mostly by compounding words or
by affix or both?

Verbs and such:
Are person, number, object expressed with the verb?
Are there static verbs (to be)?  Is the object
incorporated into the person marker (making a
phonetically different affix like in the Native
American languages)?  Is transitivity marked for
transitive, intransitive, bitransitive or other?  Is
the person inclusive, exclusive, no distiction?  Kind
of gender.  Are past, present, future expressed?
Recent, remote?  Is mode express, what kind?  Is voice
expressed?  What kind?  Manner?  Aspect?  Please list
what kinds of manner and aspect the conlang expresses
in its verbs.  Presence of adverbs, pro-drop.  Can
nouns, adjectives, adverbs be changed to verbs and
vice versa?

Presence of adjective, adverbial clauses and relative
pronouns.

Sentences:
Does the conlang have an ergative or accusative
system?  Word order and is it free or strict?  Are
adjectives, adverbs and prepositions before or after
the modified word?  Is the word order changed in a
question?  How many (approximately) conjugations are
there?

Other:
What is the number base for the numeral system (10?
12?)?  Presence of idioms, irregular forms of nouns
and verbs.  Is the language syntax very predictable,
or are there many exceptions?  How much literature has
been produced and what kind (I'm not talking about
translations, but stuff you wrote yourself).  Is there
a history and dictionary of the conlang?  Script
invented?  Other conlangs produced by the creator of
this one.

If you could summarize your conlang in a sentence,
what would you write?

On my servey, I knew I couldn't possibly cover
everything that conlangs will be, so I included a long
notes section.  If you want to provide any other
information about the conlang, just keep typing!

Thanks a lot all!

Heather

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