What have you accomplished today?

[Torco]

I recommend Blust’s The Austronesian Languages as starting point, which has a lovely section on historical phonology

oooo, neato. also, it's free! thanks a bunch.

WTF?! Is this the same language as in the accidental ergativity thread?

yup, that one... the only one I've touched in a bunch of years. wanna see the messy notes?

Hey, congrats!(...)

thanks, man. I don't think my french is good enough to browse through dense linguistics papers, but I'm gonna try anyway . ¿got something on hand? I'll check with a grammar prof friend if she has anything on spanish.

[Qwynegold]

yup, that one... the only one I've touched in a bunch of years. wanna see the messy notes?

OMG spreadsheets are not for writing that kind of stuff!

Today I started working on the dictionary of Omni-kan, although I should probably have waited until I've finalized a bunch of other stuff. The dictionary has like 7 entries so far. But that's partly because it took a lot of time to set the dictionary up. I'm doing glosses in four languages. Japanese was probably a mistake to choose, because I have no idea if my Japanese translations of example sentences are correct.

[bradrn]

I recommend Blust’s The Austronesian Languages as starting point, which has a lovely section on historical phonology

oooo, neato. also, it's free! thanks a bunch.

You’re welcome! (The ANU Open Research Library has lots of similarly excellent books, especially for that part of the world… my favourite is probably Hyslop’s Lolovoli grammar, but there are many others.)

WTF?! Is this the same language as in the accidental ergativity thread?

yup, that one... the only one I've touched in a bunch of years. wanna see the messy notes?

Aargh! I cannot think of a worse program to write a grammar in than a spreadsheet.

[Torco]

want me to write the next one in PowerPoint ?

na but seriously, spreadsheets are cool: they most resemble the blank page in that you can put text (and tables, which are a very useful part of a grammar) wherever you want. you don't have to worry about WYSIWSM conventions: That being said, I don't suppose this method is for everyone -hell, maybe even anyone other than me lmao, I *am* a messy dude- but the lack of structure feels very liberating to me, and frees the mind to just do the thing. I've been doing spreadsheets for conlanging since i was a kid, too. also, you can just build little functional things in there, like a dictionary (i.e. a cell that looks up whatever you inputted in the cell below and gives you the word in your conlang) with a little bit of bodging.

For conworlding I tend to just make a big document, like normal people.

[Qwynegold]

but the lack of structure feels very liberating to me, and frees the mind to just do the thing.

Well, that's good. But they're really awful for writing sentences in. You instinctively want to click at the end of a sentence, but nope! You have to click the cell where it starts. And then you have to click again to get the cursor to be where you want it to be. And the width of your lines is not automatically adjusted. And a part of your text gets covered if you enter something in the next cell.

[Ares Land]

thanks, man. I don't think my french is good enough to browse through dense linguistics papers, but I'm gonna try anyway . ¿got something on hand? I'll check with a grammar prof friend if she has anything on spanish.

Some resources:
http://irom.wn.uw.edu.pl/wp-content/upl ... ancais.pdf
http://bbouillon.free.fr/univ/hl/Fichie ... s/pron.htm

That one was written in 1931, but still fairly readable, I think:
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Grammair ... n%C3%A7ais

[Vardelm]

wanna see the messy notes?

So I have 2 thoughts about this:

na but seriously, spreadsheets are cool: they most resemble the blank page in that you can put text (and tables, which are a very useful part of a grammar) wherever you want.

I *am* a messy dude- but the lack of structure feels very liberating to me, and frees the mind to just do the thing.

1) If this is working for you (and apparently it is) then AWESOME! Run with it! Run fast! It's great that you're accomplishing things with the method.

2) GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS THIS WAY???!!!!!!

you can just build little functional things in there, like a dictionary (i.e. a cell that looks up whatever you inputted in the cell below and gives you the word in your conlang) with a little bit of bodging.

Spreadsheets for dictionaries make sense. Using it for a grammar makes you a nutter!!!

want me to write the next one in PowerPoint ?

Actually, yes. I think that would be better!

[Ares Land]

The spreadsheet format makes a lot of sense, because conlanging drafts mostly consists in tables.
(I use MediaWiki for the same purpose, mostly because I like the look of the tables).

Spreadsheets are also nice for conjugation paradigm; you can use them to run a large number of words through inflectional paradigms, run those form through the SCA and then try to make sense of the results.

[Vardelm]

The spreadsheet format makes a lot of sense, because conlanging drafts mostly consists in tables.
(I use MediaWiki for the same purpose, mostly because I like the look of the tables).

Yep. Yokai right now consists of about 6 large, empty tables, so I do the same. All of my conlang files are Google Docs plus posts here, so my tables are just in a Doc.

Spreadsheets are also nice for conjugation paradigm; you can use them to run a large number of words through inflectional paradigms

OK, this I'm interested in. How detailed can you get with this? Is it just simple concatenation, or can you get into things like "if stem ends in a consonant, prefix is -ABC, otherwise -BC"? If so, how are you doing it?

[Ares Land]

Spreadsheets are also nice for conjugation paradigm; you can use them to run a large number of words through inflectional paradigms

OK, this I'm interested in. How detailed can you get with this? Is it just simple concatenation, or can you get into things like "if stem ends in a consonant, prefix is -ABC, otherwise -BC"? If so, how are you doing it?

I only use Excel for concatenation. Any other rule I handle as additional sound change rules, or just do by hand.

But you can do fairly complex rules with a spreadsheet. Taking your example, for instance, you'd have verbs in column A and a list of consonants in cell, I don't know, B1 (in real life I'd put the list in a separate sheet), the formula would be something like this:

=IF (ISNUMBER(RIGHT(A1,1),B1)), A1&"ABC", A2&"BC")

[Vardelm]

I only use Excel for concatenation. Any other rule I handle as additional sound change rules, or just do by hand.

But you can do fairly complex rules with a spreadsheet. Taking your example, for instance, you'd have verbs in column A and a list of consonants in cell, I don't know, B1 (in real life I'd put the list in a separate sheet), the formula would be something like this:

=IF (ISNUMBER(RIGHT(A1,1),B1)), A1&"ABC", A2&"BC")

Nice. I'll have to look into this at some point. I've been planning on using VulgarLang to document my conlangs when they are more complete since it can do inflection w/ Regex. Having it in my own format in a Google Spreadsheet might be good since I would have more controls over how things are working in the background.

[Torco]

I wouldn't know how to set up a sound change applier in excel, but I've seen (no joke) entire businesses run on highly sophisticated excel sheets: accounting, payroll, inventory, order management: people will use vbasic, auxiliary sheets that are not really human-readable, macros, spreadsheets are wack yo. I think someone managed to port Doom to excel.

Actually, yes. I think that would be better!

heresy

oh, oh, if you're cozy with regexes, google sheets can match them and replace them and all sorts of things.

EDIT: the year is 2029, the spreadsheets have become sentient

[quinterbeck]

na but seriously, spreadsheets are cool: they most resemble the blank page in that you can put text (and tables, which are a very useful part of a grammar) wherever you want. you don't have to worry about WYSIWSM conventions: That being said, I don't suppose this method is for everyone -hell, maybe even anyone other than me lmao, I *am* a messy dude- but the lack of structure feels very liberating to me, and frees the mind to just do the thing.

100% agree with this. I also default to spreadsheets for conlanging. Nearly everything I have done on Leima is contained in a single excel document, started in April 2014 and continually added to since then.

[bradrn]

Spreadsheets are also nice for conjugation paradigm; you can use them to run a large number of words through inflectional paradigms, run those form through the SCA and then try to make sense of the results.

My old SCA has something very similar: a paradigm builder letting you do exactly this. Here’s an example:

Code: Select all

[copy into ‘Prefixes’]
zhaa woo yaa
zh w y

[copy into ‘Roots’]
wabih
shiizkoh
waal
di
zhiim
zo
beeshim
gzhoom

[copy into ‘Suffixes’]
aa soo * wim

Which gives you this output:

Code: Select all

zhaazhwabihaa
zhaazhwabihsoo
zhaazhwabih
zhaazhwabihwim
zhaawwabihaa
zhaawwabihsoo
zhaawwabih
zhaawwabihwim
zhaaywabihaa
zhaaywabihsoo
zhaaywabih
zhaaywabihwim
woozhwabihaa
woozhwabihsoo
woozhwabih
woozhwabihwim
woowwabihaa
woowwabihsoo
woowwabih
woowwabihwim
wooywabihaa
wooywabihsoo
wooywabih
wooywabihwim
yaazhwabihaa
yaazhwabihsoo
yaazhwabih
yaazhwabihwim
yaawwabihaa
yaawwabihsoo
yaawwabih
yaawwabihwim
yaaywabihaa
yaaywabihsoo
yaaywabih
yaaywabihwim
(…skip very many…)
zhaazhgzhoomaa
zhaazhgzhoomsoo
zhaazhgzhoom
zhaazhgzhoomwim
zhaawgzhoomaa
zhaawgzhoomsoo
zhaawgzhoom
zhaawgzhoomwim
zhaaygzhoomaa
zhaaygzhoomsoo
zhaaygzhoom
zhaaygzhoomwim
woozhgzhoomaa
woozhgzhoomsoo
woozhgzhoom
woozhgzhoomwim
woowgzhoomaa
woowgzhoomsoo
woowgzhoom
woowgzhoomwim
wooygzhoomaa
wooygzhoomsoo
wooygzhoom
wooygzhoomwim
yaazhgzhoomaa
yaazhgzhoomsoo
yaazhgzhoom
yaazhgzhoomwim
yaawgzhoomaa
yaawgzhoomsoo
yaawgzhoom
yaawgzhoomwim
yaaygzhoomaa
yaaygzhoomsoo
yaaygzhoom
yaaygzhoomwim

Sadly, the documentation is on the old board, thus inaccessible (though progress continues on this issue). But as it happens, I am currently building a new SCA, and intend to include a more powerful and standalone version of this paradigm builder as part of it.

The spreadsheet format makes a lot of sense, because conlanging drafts mostly consists in tables.

They do? Obviously I draft very differently from you. (Then again, my current conlang is an isolating one… and hmm, my agglutinating language drafts had a few tables in them, though I’d hardly described them as ‘mostly’ tables.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Is writing a tiny fragment of poetry in something an accomplishment?

[Qwynegold]

Is writing a tiny fragment of poetry in something an accomplishment?

Well, the initial post states that there is no minimum limit for what's an accomplishment. Also, isn't it harder to write poetry than normal text?

[Ares Land]

My old SCA has something very similar: a paradigm builder letting you do exactly this. '...) But as it happens, I am currently building a new SCA, and intend to include a more powerful and standalone version of this paradigm builder as part of it.

I'll be glad to test it then!

They do? Obviously I draft very differently from you. (Then again, my current conlang is an isolating one… and hmm, my agglutinating language drafts had a few tables in them, though I’d hardly described them as ‘mostly’ tables.)

Yes, I suppose it must be something to do with how my mind works Even with an isolating proto-language, the parts of the grammar I end up using a lot are the tables.

[bradrn]

They do? Obviously I draft very differently from you. (Then again, my current conlang is an isolating one… and hmm, my agglutinating language drafts had a few tables in them, though I’d hardly described them as ‘mostly’ tables.)

Yes, I suppose it must be something to do with how my mind works Even with an isolating proto-language, the parts of the grammar I end up using a lot are the tables.

Really? What tables are there to make for an isolating language?

[Vardelm]

Yesterday's accomplishment was gathering a list of suffixes and syllable codas from several natlangs and other sources to serve as inspiration for noun class suffixes in Yokai.

I did this with my other 3 conlangs and I'm happy with the result. I find that I can't just pull words or affixes out of thin air; I need something to start with, twist it around a bit, or combine it with other words/affixes to get to my final result.

Really? What tables are there to make for an isolating language?

Combinations of words/particles where the meaning changes depending on what & how they are combined, perhaps? Maybe different words/particles that mean roughly the same thing, but are used in different contexts? Tibetan, for instance, combines tense & evidentials, which makes a table useful.

[Ares Land]

They do? Obviously I draft very differently from you. (Then again, my current conlang is an isolating one… and hmm, my agglutinating language drafts had a few tables in them, though I’d hardly described them as ‘mostly’ tables.)

Yes, I suppose it must be something to do with how my mind works Even with an isolating proto-language, the parts of the grammar I end up using a lot are the tables.

Really? What tables are there to make for an isolating language?

They're more like 'lists in tabular format' I suppose! Pronouns, various anaphora, sentence slots and particles that can appear in them, measure words, etc.