Grammar Experiment Suite

Matthew McVeagh | my conlangs

I'm inspired by the notion of a 'suite' of conlangs created by Jörg Rhiemeier as described on FrathWiki at http://www.frathwiki.com/Suite. "A series of engelangs which explore the effects of varying some parameter in their design" would fit what I'm intending here. I'd like to create a single common phonology and basic lexis and then vary the grammar and word formation for each language in the suite. Each language would focus on a different issue to explore, or I might combine a few in the same language.

Current planned languages in this suite include:

• 'Vanilla'

  A simple, more naturalistic version of the language, without the extremes of the other versions.

• Omnitrans

  A language in which all verbs are (mono)transitive – intransitive, ditransitive, copulative verbs are reworked to be transitive.

• Verbjunct

  No conjunctions – all conjunctional semantic content is affixed to the verb.

• Inposition

All dependents and particles are incorporated within heads and content morphemes.

• [unnamed]

  Syntactic argument slots are based directly and transparently on underlying semantic roles, and grammatical marking then mirrors that.

• Classswitch

  Verbs become nouns and nouns become verbs.