Re: Conlanging techniques

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Bjorn Kristinsson wrote:

> share. Like, do you use computers much and what software do you use? Do you
> follow the now-surely-famous The Language Construction Kit guidelines? Or
> what? I personally have found it very difficult making up a whole phonetic
> system with restrictions and the lot before starting with the actual
> lexicon, and likewise I find it difficult forming a grammar after making up
> a lexicon, but then it's not easier at all doing it the other way around :P
Heh.  I'm probably one of the least qualified.  To a certain extent I use
the LCK and _Describing Morphosyntax_ by Thomas Payne (wonderful book).

With Chevraqis, and probably what I'll do in the future, I started with
names from a conculture/novel (it's important to me that names "sound
right"), extracted what sounds I was using, decided it made for a pretty
darn lousy phonology, and modified the sound-set.  Then I worked
backwards toward a phonology for the ancestor tongue, which I suppose is
one of my "primary" projects when I have time (rarely...<sigh>).

I suppose it might depend, too, on what aspects of conlanging interest
you.  Phonology interests me though I'm not any good at it.  I seem to be
the only conlanger who's spoken up who actually *likes* vocabulary
creation (not so much churning out words, but figuring out shades of
semantics and connotations and idioms), so that generally comes fairly
early after I've figured out phonology and some very, very basic
morphology.  Syntax beyond basic word order (SOV or free or whatever)
tends to get pushed off until the last; it just doesn't interest me in
itself.  (Maybe that's why Chevraqis is almost free word order?)

I suspect it's technically easier to start with a phonology for an
ancestor-tongue and then work from there, but I want to work toward a
result, which for me means having to work backwards somewhat.

As for grammar: for a while, after I had a very basic idea of what
grammatical features I wanted in Chevraqis (inflecting, SOV/free word
order, triconsonantal morphology, active case system, etc.) I started
filling in details in approximately the order that I imagined you would
encounter them in a "textbook" teaching the language to an
English-speaker.  I confess looking at some of my own grammars and
textbooks helped with that, though a "good order" for teaching a language
does seem to depend quite a lot on the language.

Hope this is remotely enlightening,
YHL