probably a bloody obvious question...
From: | Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> |
Date: | Sunday, August 20, 2000, 1:28 |
(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.
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?
I'm looking at my own natlang grammars, and the one I like best is
_Living German_ by R.W Buckley, copyright 1965 and probably very out of
print. The organization makes beautiful sense--it made transition into
an actual college intro German class absolutely trivial. But I think
this also depends on the two languages (to-be-learned and learner's)
you're working with. Another I liked is C.J. Cherryh's intro to Latin
(which she claims is unorthodox, but I wouldn't know; I picked up a
Wheelock today but haven't had a chance to start reading), which I also
found very natural to learn from, though I'm sure it's glossing over all
kinds of things. (You can find it at http://www.cherryh.com.)
Has this been discussed before? Is there a website on
teaching-grammar-construction that I missed? A FAQ I can look at?
Thanks in advance,
YHL