Re: probably a bloody obvious question...

> From: Yoon Ha Lee
> Subject: probably a bloody obvious question...
>
> (Sorry I seem to be spamming the list.  Please, please feel free to tell
> me to shut up.  In my experience it takes over a month before one gets a
> feel for the dynamics of a particular mailing list....)
>
> When y'all design languages, do you have a checklist or template you work
> from?  I'm using the Language Construction Kit and Pablo Flores' pages
> for now--I find them an easy-to-use starting point due to my lack of
> experience.
The best template for conlanging I have ever run across is Thomas Paine's
"Describing Morphosyntax".  This text is meant for natlang field linguists
but works as well for documenting conlangs as well.
>
> But someday I'd like to make sort of a reader/learning grammar for
> Chevraqis, once I have more of the syntax hammered out (I'm evolving
> postpositions from serial-verb constructions in Aragis, which is fun but
> exhausting), but I'm not sure what's a good way to organize it.  I've
> seen a number of conlang pages that have grammars, but not so many that
> have coherent learning guides with examples, exercises, maybe even
> pictures.  Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough?
Yes, learning guides are a lot more difficult IMHO.  I made an attempt at
this for amman iar based on a number of TY texts, but the results were very
disappointing.  I think the problem is that you have to be very comfortable
with a language to know how to present it in a pedagogical fashion.
Teaching a language, as it turns out is a lot more difficult than describing
it.  I have become a lot more comfortable with amman iar since my last
attempt at this, so perhaps I should give it another try.  Attempts to
pattern it after other language teaching texts, however, is IMO still doomed
to failure.  Putting together the proper sequence of grammatical description
as well as ordering the material from simple to more complex is no easy
chore and seemingly very different for each language.  I may attempt a
"graded reader", however.  I can remember many years ago when I was first
learning German using one of these quite successfully.  The object of these
readers is to introduce new words, idioms and grammatical concepts in the
text in easily assimilated amounts.  New words and idioms are defined in
footnotes when first introduced, but no grammar was presented at all, the
expectation being that the reader had a grammar reference separately
available.  I remember being impressed with the way my reading skills
accelerated the further I got into the reader.

David

David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
    dbell@graywizard.net
    www.graywizard.net

"Wisdom begins in wonder." - Socrates