Re: How to write down a language design?

At 06:42 PM 11/3/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>Thank you, dear fellow conlangers, for your replies! :-))
>
>Even though some of you thought that I was referring to
>an external reference grammar, I actually meant the personal
>notes which a conlanger makes to keep track of his/her
>invention.
>
>So far my notes consist of mere bits and pieces - mostly
>examples and test sentences which I compiled into a big
>text file. The major problem arose when I changed my
>inflectional system - I had to redo all my sentences
>and was about to get confused with some ideas, thinking
>hard how I had designed them before I partially changed
>my mind. This way of keeping notes is natural to the
>design phase but it is such a mess that I have to do
>something against it. ;-)
>
>Ok, you have convinced me: I'll write a reference grammar
>- for anybody who will desire to read it but firstly and
>most neccessarily for myself. Obviously I should precisely
>explain to even myself how my language works. Since I came
>up with a very strange way to represent the meanings of
>nouns, verbs and sentences, I should probably make sure
>that I document my little thought experiement quite well.
>
>So, thanks for your comments! I shall go and begin my
>reference grammar now. :-))


When I have made changes to my languages, I never redo what I had. I simply
mark it as a previous version, and work out new examples around the change.
I always work on paper, though, so it is just a matter of getting out a new
piece of paper, and filing the old one away.  I imagine I would get
confused if I were doing it in one big text file too. Perhaps it would be
helpful, whether you are writing a reference grammar or otherwise, to save
your work in separate files by topic -- for instance, one file about verbs,
another about adjectives, etc. You can always merge your files in the end,
and it gives you smaller pieces to edit as you go.

Mia