I won't reply to the latest posts, but thank you all! I've rewritten my thing again, and I can finally present to first question. *sigh* I'm writing in OpenOffice Writer, and tables and formatting and such are hard to copy-paste here, so things in
italics are just descriptions of what's in my document. I hope you can make sense of everything.
Regarding oligosynthesis though, I'm already ahead of you.
Features marked with
orange in this text are very unusual or somehow exceptional or noteworthy. You probably shouldn't select those on a whim. A conlang with several orange features is probably going to be pretty bad, unless you know what you're doing. Features marked with
red are not attested in natlangs. These features should not be selected if you are going for a naturalistic conlang.
1 Level 1 questions
1.1 Morphological type
An overview of the traditional division of languages into morphological types is given below. But bear in mind that in this template, we have divided things up slightly differently. This is because no natlang is truly 100% of any category, and because some of these types are not mutually exclusive. For example, a language could be both agglutinative and fusional (e.g. Navajo).
In the following sections you are asked to grade things on a scale. Think of these numbers only as vague guidelines. It's impossible to actually measure how much of any type a given language is. As you develop your conlang, you might discover that it doesn't really correspond to the grades you had decided upon here. If so, stop and think whether you are happy with what the conlang has turned into. If yes, simply change your gradings. Only if the conlang is not pleasing to you, should you make changes to the conlang itself to make it better match your original design plans.
Isolating/analytic languages
↗WP
The terms isolating and analytic are often lumped together (see the Wikipedia link for further discussion). These languages have few morphemes per word; a perfectly isolating language would have one morpheme per word. In other words, isolating languages do not have much inflection. Instead, grammar is expressed through functions words and word-order.
Fusional languages
↗WP
In fusional languages one morpheme can code for several different grammatical categories at once. For example in English, the -s at the end of verbs codes for present tense and third person and singular all at once. Furthermore, in fusional languages grammatical categories may also be inseparable from the word root. Grammar may be expressed for example through grammatical tone or through ablaut. Words in fusional languages typically carry only one, or very few affixes simultaneously.
Oligosynthetic
Oligosynthetic languages are not actually attested among natlangs, so choose this option only if you are not aiming for a naturalistic language. In an oligosynthetic language all words are made up from a very small number of morphemes with very wide-ranging or vague meanings, which are combined together to form some form of compound words.
Agglutinative
↗WP
Agglutinative languages use inflection to express grammar. Typically, an affix in an agglutinative language codes for only one kind of grammatical meaning. In agglutinative languages words can carry several affixes at once.
Polysynthetic
↗WP,
↗Polysynthesis for Novices
Polysynthetic languages are like agglutinative languages, except more extreme. They tend to form very long words by stacking lots of affixes on the same word. One typical feature of polysynthetic languages is noun incorporation, the phenomenon in which a noun gets “rolled into” a verb structure.
Non-concatenative
↗WP
In non-concatenative languages grammar is expressed by modifying the word root. In Semitic languages a word typically consists of three consonants, and different vowels are placed at different places between the consonants when the word is inflected. This kind of language is called a tri-consonantal root language. Note that tri-consonantal root languages are very much associated with Semitic languages, and are not found in other families. Note however that there are also other ways to express non-concatenative inflection than through the Semitic setup (see the link above).
Ways of expressing grammar, and associated morphological types
Function words (prepositions, postpositions, conjunctions, particles, etc.) → isolating
Word order → isolating
Affixes (suffixes, prefixes, circumfixes) → agglutinative, polysynthetic, fusional
Infixes → non-concatenative
Noun incorporation → polysynthetic
Ablaut (changing the vowel in a word, e.g. goose-geese) → non-concatenative
Grammatical tone → non-concatenative
Initial mutation (modifying the first consonant of a word, like in Celtic languages) → non-concatenative
Transfixation (inserting different vowel patterns into tri-consonantal roots) → non-concatenative
Reduplication (full or partial reduplication) → non-concatenative
Truncation (the removal of a part of a word as a form of inflection) → non-concatenative
1.1.1 Degree of synthesis
Choose your conlang's degree of synthesis by putting a ✗ on the scale below. 1 means that the average number of morphemes per word is 1, or close to 1. This makes the language definitely analytic. 3 stands for a “reasonable” number of morphemes per word, making the language agglutinative, and 5 for a “large” number of morphemes per word, making the it polysynthetic. 2 and 4 are borderline cases. For example English could probably be a 2, because English uses very little affixing.
Scale with values 1 (analytic), 2, 3 (agglutinative), 4, 5 (polysynthetic).
1.1.2 Degree of exponence
This category corresponds to what is traditionally called fusion. It deals with how many grammatical categories morphemes express on average. 1 means that each morpheme typically only express one grammatical category. 3 means that the language is very fusional, with many morphemes expressing two or more grammatical categories at once. 2 is kind of middle of the road. If you have chosen to have an analytic language (degree of synthesis: 1), then you will likely have 1 here as well. Though one could imagine an analytic language with function words that express several different grammatical categories at once.
Scale with values 1, 2, 3.
1.1.3 Degree of concatenation
Decide to what degree you want morphemes in your conlang to be fused to the word root. 1 means no or close to no non-concatenative features. 2 means slightly non-concatenative (e.g. English with its ablaut in nouns and verbs and some noun-verb pairs only distinguished by stress as in ˈrecord – reˈcord). 3 means very much non-concatenative (e.g. Arabic). If you have chosen to have an analytic language (degree of synthesis: 1), then you should probably choose 1 here, because without inflection you can't have non-concatenative features.
Scale with values 1, 2, 3.
If you have chosen grade 2 or 3, describe in what way your conlang will be non-concatenative. Will it have infixes, ablaut, grammatical tone, initial mutation, reduplication, truncation? Will it be a
triliteral (or some other number) root language? Note that this last option is very remarkable unless you are doing some sort of Semitic descendant language in a future or alt-history setting.
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1.1.4 Degree of oligosynthesis
Decide if you want your conlang to be oligosynthetic. Some languages have a relatively small number or word roots, but an extensive set of derivational morphemes allowing them to derive lots of words. Nāhuatl and Blackfoot have been described as being oligosynthetic because of this reason, though nowadays the consensus is that there are no oligosynthetic natlangs. Grade 2 here could be used for languages that function similarly to Nāhuatl or Blackfoot.
Scale with values 1,
2,
3.
If you have chosen grade 2 or 3, describe in what way your conlang is oligosynthetic or oligosynthetic-like. If you also have chosen your conlang to be fusional (degree of exponence: 2-3), explain how you can combine these two features.
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What do you think of this?
