The Language Code

Hey there.

Here is the Language Code. The goal of the code is to provide a quick
typological profile of a language.  By using the attribute/value schema
which was popular some years back (remember the Geek Code? I notice
some of you still append yours to emails), it should be possible to
give a typological overview without locking a language into categories
which might be misleading; for example, all languages exhibit some
degree of agglutination, but not all languages are "agglutinating".
It's not a finished product and I would welcome any comments you all
might have. I'm not sure if I remember exactly how the attributes are
to be interpreted, but looking at the sample codes at the bottom will
give you an idea of how it works. I'm sure that there are things which
can be added, particularly in the syntax section (such as adj/N, gen/N
RelCl/N order, etc).

-=[ The Language Code ]=-

T       type
        f       fictional
        l       logical
        x       auxiliary
        p       personal
        n       natural

P       phonology
        t       tonal
                c       contour tones
                        r       register
                        #       number of tones
                l       level tones
                        !       downstep/downdrift
                        #       number of tones
        p       phonemes
                +/-     allophony
                #       consonant phonemes
                #       vowel phonemes
        s       syllable template {c,v}

M       morphology
        a       agglutinating (+/-)
        i       isolating (+/-)
        f       inflecting (+/-)
        h       head-marking (+/-)
        d       dependent-marking (+/-)
        t#      number of distinct tenses
        a#      number of distinct aspects
        m#      number of distinct moods
        t/a#    number of distinct tense/aspect combinations (where a
                meaningful distinction between tense and aspect cannot be
                made) (also t/m, a/m, etc)
        c#      number of distinct cases

S       syntax
        b       basic word order {v,s,o} (may substitute dots when the
                terms s = 'subject' and o = 'object' are not meaningful)
        arg     argument alignment
                n       nominative/accusative
                e       ergative/absolutive
                a       active/stative
                h       hierarchical
                t       topic/focus
                s       split/mixed system

L       lexicon
        c       compounding/incorporation (+/-)
        d       derivation (+/-)
        #       number of words so far

English: Tn Pt*p++24,9(c)v(c) Mi++f+dt2a3c2 Sbsvoargn Lc++d+1000000+
Shoshoni: Tn Pt*p+++12,6(c)v(v/c) Ma++f+h++d+t/a13c3 Sbsovargn
Lc+++d++25000?
Tepa: Tf Pt*p+++11,4s(c)v(v/c) Mf++h+++t*a2c* Sbv..argh Lcd+600
Shemspreg: Tp Pt*p+22,5s(c)v(c) Mf+d+++t/a3c3 Sbsvoargn Lc+d++1000

--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie

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