Re: Relexes Pt. 1: Defence

Quoting Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>:

> In the final analysis it might be difficult to find a
> conglang that is not a relex of SOME language, whether
> Latin, English, or Urdu.  Is there really such a thing
> as a novel grammar?
Some of the weirder grammatical features that have been posted of this list
very possibly have no natlang precedent; I've certainly never heard of any
natlang with a case system like Ebisedian's, for instance, and I do hope my
split-evil scheme isn't used in any natlang.

But more to the point, while a more naturalistic conlang's grammar will
probably contain no unique features, the number of possible combinations of
attested features is so humongous compared to the paltry few thousand
languages in existence that the odds of creating a grammar exactly identical
to that of some preexisting language is small, as long as you don't actually
copy the grammar of of one (ie, make a relex of it).

                                                            Andreas