The Language Construction Kit by Rosenfelder, Mark -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Contents

Introduction

For the impatient Using this book

Overall structure But how do I start? Don’t read this sentence! What’s it for? Typographical conventions Your brilliant conlanging career Web resources Acknowledgements

A naming language

A mini-grammar Hints for naming languages

The overall process

Sounds Lexicon Inflections Derivations Syntax Goodies Alphabet Feedback Models

Natural and unnatural languages Non-Western (or at least non-English) models

Am I done yet?

Sounds

Phonetic notation Consonants

Place of articulation Degree of closure More distinctions

Voicing Nasalization Aspiration Palatalization Labialization Glottal games

The consonant grid

Rhotics Laterals

Phones, phonemes, and allophones

Phonemes vs. letters Phonemes vs. allophones Allophones vs. dialectal realizations Phonemic analysis Cross-language comparisons

Inventing consonants Vowels

Height Frontness The vowel grid

Tenseness

Roundedness Other distinctions Diphthongs Vowel systems What makes an good phonetic inventory?

Stress Tone

Tone proper Pitch-accent systems Channels

Phonological constraints

Working backwards

Assimilation Alien mouths Orthography

Multiple transliterations Diacritics

Writing systems Acoustic phonetics

Word building

How many words do you need? Alien or a priori languages A few half-recognizable borrowings Borrowing existing lexicons Sound symbolism Derivational morphology On not reinventing English

Grammar

Morphology and syntax

How to use this chapter Grammaticalization

Fusional, agglutinative, isolating? Got nouns, verbs, and adjectives? What noun inflections are there?

Case

Case particles Ergativity Novel case systems Head marking

Gender

What is gender for? Is gender sexist?

Other possibilities for nouns Mass and count nouns

What verb inflections are there?

Person and number Bipersonal inflection Tense and aspect

Tense Aspect Interactions

Irrealis forms Other possibilities for verbs

I’m here for an argument What are the personal pronouns?

Other forms Do subject pronouns appear? Are pronouns necessary?

What are the other pronouns? Make your language count

Derivations

What about adjectives?

Comparatives Derivations

The articles Sentence order Noun phrase order You have yes-no questions, right? How about other questions? Negation Conjunctions and such Relative clauses Adverbials Transformations

Syntactic trees Asterisks mean don’t do that! Auxiliaries Relative clauses

Cases in relativized clauses Limits on relativization

Topicalization

Fronting Passivization Clefting

More comments on topics Causatives Anaphora Nominalization Question and negative formation

Semantics

The meaning of meaning

Meaning in pictures The structure of the lexicon Hierarchies Different dividing lines What gets a name? Intention and utterance

Reference mismatch and new senses More on speakers speaking

Some oddities of meaning Language and logic

Semantic change Metaphor systems

Metaphor as cognition Grammaticalized metaphor Perspective

Perspective on verbs

Categories and prototypes

Basic categories

Divisions of time Directions Names and titles

Given names Other names Nicknames Titles

Expletives and obscenities

Pragmatics

Deixis Implicature

Conversational maxims Lexical implicatures Presupposition

Speech acts Discourse structure

Turn-taking Adjacency pairs Pre-sequences Long turns Greetings and closings Repair Pragmatic markers

Narrative Politeness

Politeness strategies Cultural differences

Real-world knowledge

Frames and metonymy

Culture Style Poetry

Language families

Sound change

Notation

A language family

Proto-languages Dialects

The Sound Change Applier

An example Morphology After using the SCA

Cheap ’n easy language families Sound changes to get you started Irregular changes Going backwards

Writing systems

Preliminaries

Bits of writing Medium Direction Variation Conservativism Completeness Producing fonts

Alphabets

On starting with alphabets Consonantal alphabets Abugidas

Logograms

Extending the system Clarifying signs

Syllabaries Featural systems Punctuation

Kebreni

Phonology Morphology

Verbs

Aspect (imperfective and perfective) Volition Polite forms Positive effect Negative effect Subordinating form

Pronouns

Personal pronouns Demonstratives Interrogative pronouns Quantifiers and indefinite pronouns

Numbers Derivational morphology

Syntax

Parameter order

Indirect objects Verbs of movement

Noun phrases

Order The -te relativizer Existence and equivalence

Adjectives

Attributes Predicates Substantives Comparatives Adverbs

Conjunctions Locative verbs Questions

Yes-no questions Question words

Complex sentences

Sentences as objects Adverbial conjunctions Relative clauses

Example Sound changes Lexicon

Word lists

The Swadesh list

Adjectives Nouns Verbs Grammatical words

Sophomore list

Adjectives Nouns Verbs Grammatical words Courtesy

The Modern World Geographical terms

Geographical terms Human terms Useful adjectives