Re: How to write down a language design?

At 22:23 1.11.2003, Harald Stoiber wrote:

>How do you keep notes of your creations? Especially I am talking about
>the case of an unusual grammar and/or syntax. Which way do you prefer -
>tons of examples plus explanations? Or some more abstract description?
With my Great Apriori Family Project I have a huge
Filemaker Pro file known as "The Glossary"
where all words and morphemes are listed in the
Protolanguage as well as in the various
dialects, and their use (primarily in Sohlob) are
explained in "Usage" and "Comment" fields.  The Idea
is to eventually work out a Reference Grammar, but
this Idea mainly stays in the realm of Ideas.
(No, I'm a Mentalist rather than a Realist, in case
anyone wonders :)  In addition there are scattered
Charts of Inflection, various Charts and perl programs
containing Sound Changes, and sketches of phonemic
systems of different dialects at different stages.

(Note that all the Capitalized Nouns imply Concepts
that are not as Glorified as I make them seem.
That's why I like that the first person singular
pronoun is capitale tantum in English :-)

With my aposteriori projects I am for some reason
more prone to flesh things out with essays on
various grammatical topics, which all theoretically
are drafts of chapters-to-be of the Ref Grammar.
The difference is probably because I have a clearer
idea of the language system as a whole than I have
with the apriori stuff.  I have radical changes of
mind more often with the apriori stuff too, which
makes it even harder to unify all the usage notes
and comments into a coherent description.



/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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