Talk:Conlang

ZBB: Project Fix-The-Wikibook
Hello all! A bunch of members from the ZBB are joining me in Project Fix-The-Wikibook, where we are going to help update lots of the sections here. Project Members: we can discuss our work here :) - Kalor —The preceding undated comment was added 16:05, 9 December 2007.


 * It's me, Zoris, from the ZBB. Just want to say I've done a couple edits, really just to improve the quality of the writing. I plan to focus on improving the beginner sections to get beginners started on track. I also will work on the intermediate sections, but there are people out there who have more expertise than I, so I doubt I will be able to contribute much on the most advanced topics. Anyways, here I am. -Zoris (talk) 23:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Splitoff Project: Constructive Linguistics 101
Hello fellow conlangers. I am starting a similar project but with a significantly different drive. See here for the details.

The Overview and Style Guide should give all the relevant info.

The basic distinction is that this wikibook is (per below) *not* a linguistics textbook; it's more akin to e.g. the Language Construction Kit. Whereas my project *is* intended as a bona fide linguistics textbook... of a very innovative sort. It teaches constructive linguistics (rather than descriptive).

Take a look at the website and email me if you'd like to participate. -- Sai —The preceding undated comment was added 22:46, 4 October 2006.

Expert vs. Advanced
I think there needs to be some clarification of the exact differences between the Intermediate and Expert levels. I would consider Polisynthetic and Trigger languages to be in the realm of the expert. --Ingolemo 18:36, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * True. Personally I am finding these categories a bit too shaky. We should probably reorganize. By the way, please sign your comments . -- Maknas 18:21, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Ok. I'll move them down to advanced for the time being. --Ingolemo 18:36, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

IPA or SAMPA
I think it's best if we use one of the systems consistantly across all pages. We have a link to an IPA tutorial at the bottom of this page, but most of the articles are written using SAMPA. Can we use one or the other? --Ingolemo 22:07, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * We're using X-SAMPA because most browsers can't really display IPA by default. -- Maknas 02:45, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * How about adding a link toward the Wikipedia X-SAMPA article or something like that? The X-SAmpa/IPA chart would be a great addition too for explaining sounds!--Circeus 17:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * I agree. Whatever is decided, It needs to be introduced to the students before they take the intermediate course as all the articles in there already use SAMPA. -- Ingolemo 12:06, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Added the section. How about renaming it "Sound notation"? That way we could have "Beginner Sound Notation", "Intermediate Sound Notation" etc. --Circeus 12:23, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * X-SAMPA is hardly an advanced topic and I think it would be a little too overwhelming for beginners. I don't think it needs seperate pages for other levels. -- Ingolemo 19:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Okay, whoever that Vladisdead is, he needs to be pointed here! Now I've got to switch everything back to X-SAMPA. Damnit!--Circeus 23:11, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Oops. :) I really think it should be in IPA, but I'm not gonna argue. --Vladisdead 06:34, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm proposing, in a separate thread, to slightly amend this usage to CXS. Here.  Pi zero (talk) 13:08, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not a linguistics textbook
I think everyone, me included, tends to treat this as a linguistics textbook, explaining as many things as possible, and so forth. Well &mdash; it's not. It's a conlanging textbook. People come here to find out how to make their conlangs better, not how real languages work. -- Ran 02:39, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Agreed. The articles need to be less based about "the way things are (on earth)" and more about "the way things could be (in your conlang)". -- Ingolemo 12:27, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * And yet, I think we should always state weather a feature actually happens in a real language. Some people add some features based on this fact. -- Jotomicron 13:23, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * But keep in mind that "there are more things in heaven and earth than you dream of in your [conlang]". I.e. natlangs often turn out to be far more weird than the average beginner's conlang. Apart from which conlanging can provide an excellent 'hands on' way into linguistics for some people. (Marconatrix on ZB) 91.84.119.164 (talk) 05:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The situation is even more frought than that. Sometimes a really good way to get insights into the way real languages work &mdash; both for beginners and for linguists &mdash; is to build, or study, a conlang that works differently from real languages.  To design a conlang like that, you need to know how real languages work without being funneled into someone's notion of how real languages "have" to be.  There's an excellent discussion of conlang naturalness in the 2007 Smiley Award essay.  --Pi zero (talk) 16:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Glossing
Do we have a standard for format and abbreviations to use in glossing examples? If not already, what about the Leipzig Glossing Rules ? --Jim Henry 15:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Naming Policy
Now that there is some agreement as to the wikibooks naming policy, I think it would be a good idea to begin bringing the Conlang wikibook up to scratch on it. Unless anyone has any objections or someone beats me to it, I'll go ahead in about 2–3 weeks. Comments? Agreements? Objections? - Ingolemo 15:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I've finished converting. I don't know how to get the navigation template to show the SUBPAGENAME of the pages that are being linked to, so for the moment, it looks a little ugly. - Ingolemo 10:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Derivational morphology
Just wrote a stubby outline for Conlang/Intermediate/Grammar/Derivational Morphology; take a look and see what needs more work. --Jim Henry 19:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Words?
Maybe a list of the basic 1000 - 2000 words should be included? Or sample texts to translate, so that one knows when hir conlang is missing words that sie needs to include - or to decide on which words should they start on creating, etc. Nfwu 10:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

When will this book done?
I want to learn conlanging and I am waiting a long time, is there another ebooks or books that I can learn it from? &mdash; Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.125.89.181 (talk) 22:17, 11 April 2008


 * Material on conlanging is fragmented all over the web. If you're looking for a single introductory resource to get you up and running quickly, you might try Jeffrey Henning's Model Languages Newsletter.  You'll probably want to move on from that to broader and deeper coverage, and IMO for that a good branching-off point would be David Peterson's Notes on Language Creation.  (The second link from Peterson's preface is, in fact, Henning's newsletter.)  As for completion, or even semi-completion, of this wikibook, I wouldn't recommend waiting for it; the people with most expertise to contribute are most likely to have other demands on their time.  I suspect the wikibook will pull together gradually, in fits and starts, over a number of years.  Pi zero (talk) 23:01, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * so much time?? =( 77.127.126.85 (talk) 13:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Consider the range of scales possible for conlang projects; in this respect, conlanging is very like model railroading (which Henning compared it to). You can have lots of fun with a small project, but ranging continuously upward from there, a conlang project can become a lifelong hobby.  In fact, the more fun a small project is, the more likely it is to grow into a lifelong hobby.  Set beside that time scale, crafting a high-quality how-to book on conlanging &mdash; where none previously existed &mdash; isn't likely to take less than a few years, is it?  That said, I'd be happy to have overestimated how long it will take.  If the right people decided to make a big effort, it could be moderately complete by the end of this summer.  I'm guessing from the progress I've seen in the past year or so, and the seemingly (to me, anyway) formidable nature of the sections that haven't even been started yet.  Pi zero (talk) 15:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

WHEN WILL THIS BOOK BE DONE? 77.127.77.102 (talk) 15:17, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Ingressive airstream
I noticed that there was no section on ingressive airstream, I made a little one, but was wondering if it should be merged with clicks, or have clicks merged with it, since all clicks are ingressive? Ave matthew (talk) 16:13, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Since both sections are currently so small, for now I'd say there should be just one section; later, when there's a lot more material, it can be split up again if that seems important enough. The file should probably be called "Ingressive", since that's more inclusive.  The title, though, should probably mention clicks prominently, consistent with the style of the preceding section title, "Pharyngeals and their ilk".  Perhaps "Clicks and their kin" (but that may be a bit too folksy), or "Clicks and other ingressives"?  The content... at a guess, it'd probably work well to have a lead sentence on what ingressive means, then a subsection on clicks, then a subsection (or two) on other ingressives.  Pi zero (talk) 18:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Explaining the overall organization
The introduction to the Beginner section specifies three things: I have written lead sentences, trying to follow this pattern, for the introductions to the Intermediate and Advanced sections. Pi zero (talk) 13:29, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Minimal background: no prior knowledge of conlanging or linguistics.
 * Practical objective: allow the reader to build a conlang that isn't a relex.
 * What content is appropriate: basic principles of different aspects of language.

What to do with Intermediate syntax

 * I've moved this thread to the talk page for the section. &mdash; Pi zero (talk) 13:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Intermediate/Sounds
Here's what I've just done. The place of Intermediate/Sounds (Phonetics and phonology) in the outline was fraying, with a piece of it broken off into a separate file, and another effective subsection (on Sandhi) started separately; and Intermediate/Sounds also had more internal structure than other parts of the wikibook. I've tried to fix both problems at once, by splitting off virtually all the content of Intermediate/Sounds into separate files Intermediate/Sounds/*. (I also botched the job slightly, as I meant to rename Allophony to Sounds/Phones and bring in the surrounding content from Sounds, but instead I created a new page Sounds/Phones &mdash; which I plastered over by doing what I'd meant to do with Allophony but calling the file Sounds/Phonetics, and making Sounds/Phones a redirect to it. Ideally, Sounds/Phonetics should be moved to Sounds/Phones, destroying the redirect page.)  Pi zero (talk) 20:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed &mdash; Sounds/Phonetics is now Sounds/Phones. Pi zero (talk) 16:54, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

How to Contribute
I have made a surgical adjustment to the content of the How to Contribute section on the main page. Realizing this could be an extraordinarily consensus-sensitive element of the book, I considered for a long time before doing this (though I'd done some very modest rephrasing once before); but as I've struggled with the overall organization of the book, I've seen how the long-term trend throughout is toward bloating low-level sections with slowly but monotonically increasing detail. Finally I decided that something really had to be done to try to redirect the long-term trend. Pi zero (talk) 14:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation: Conlang or Conworld
Hey all, I found that all of the Conlang pages were in |Category:Conworld, rather than its sub-category, |Category:Conlang. I started recategorising, but then thought again, wondering whether there might be a reason why you might prefer having them in the parent category. Anyone object to this recategorisation? Cheers, --Swift (talk) 14:07, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm in favor of this change; it sounds like a great idea to me. Pi zero (talk) 04:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I spoke too soon. Here's a variant proposal. Replace with  throughout. Apparently, does the same thing as but makes it quite obvious that it's following a broadly practiced convention. Having just discovered this template, I'm comfortable enough with the implied standardness of the arrangement to do it myself, if I find time.

It occurred to me that I really should be a bit more informative in my response to your proposal, and I discovered that template in the process of further investigating the use of Category:Conworld for all pages of all Conworld books. All the Conworld books do seem to use that convention, which was implemented on 24 June 2006 by Jguk, though this book seems to be the only one of them that's really not a stub. Jguk, by the way, is no longer active. I found the template because the one exception to the convention seems to be page Conhistory (but not its subpages).

In the past few months that I've been working slowly-but-steadily on this book, I've been generally cautious in my changes &mdash; an example being that I didn't rock the boat on the Category:Conworld convention &mdash; partly because I was still learning my way around the book's organization, but also because there have been no other regular editors here in all that time (and some months before), so if I do something really stupid there's been no-one to catch it. About once a year there's a flurry of activity here, but it doesn't last too long, and then you can hear a pin drop. Pi zero (talk) 13:20, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * ✅ Pi zero (talk) 19:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I've done some recategorizing. I'm reforming category names project-wide, and book categories are now named in a way that identifies them unambiguously as book categories. There's some precedent for treating a book series category as a subject category, so I've created Subject:Conworld series, which now contains the series instead of making the various book categories subcategories of the book category for Conworld. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:55, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Statement of book objectives
I've replaced the statement of book objectives, at the top of the main page.

The old statement said that the purpose of the book is to help you make the language you'd like to make, rather than the language you already speak. There were two problems with that. It put rather too much emphasis on a negative objective &mdash; to help you not do something &mdash; and it was really too weak an objective to cover what is apparently being attempted here. The Beginner section alone should be sufficient to help you not create an accidental relex; and the positive part of the statement, help you make the language you want, is too vague to be informative to readers or authors.

After meditating on the overall organization and content of this book over the past several months of work, the new statement is what I believe to be the essence of it. I'd like to think it's a more sharply focused version of what the authors here have been doing, rather than just a reflection of my own biases (though I surely can't have entirely filtered out my own biases).

Since authors come and go here over a long timeframe rather than a short one, I decided to put up my new statement on the main page now, where it may do some good, and then invite discussion here on the talk page, rather than propose it here and wait for what could easily be many months. Pi zero (talk) 00:27, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Phonetic notation
Backstory: To my knowledge, there has been exactly one discussion of what notation to use, here. The consensus reached at that time was X-SAMPA. In the aftermath of that decision, the editor who was going to undo the stuff that had been changed to IPA never actually did so, and since then some other editors have done stuff using IPA rather than X-SAMPA &mdash; but no-one ever reopened the discussion, and the state of the book is inconsistent, with some places using X-SAMPA and others using IPA. Although one might take the more recent editors using IPA as a sort of "vote for IPA", one might also figure that their choice is largely white noise, since there's no evidence they were even aware of the earlier consensus decision, or they would have either reopened it or at least added a note to the end of it. In my own assessment of past authors' positions on this issue, the later editors' failure to acknowledge the earlier consensus inclines me to give them less weight.

There is another twist to all this: CXS, a.k.a. Conlang X-SAMPA. It's designed, by and for the conlanging community, to be more convenient than X-SAMPA. The rise of CXS seems to postdate the consensus discussion here.

My own preference is for CXS. As a short list of reasons &mdash; I don't claim this is all there is to be said for it, or even all of why it appeals to me, but these are summaries of the top reasons that occur to me just now &mdash; it's easy to generate (no special techniques, just standard use of a standard keyboard); it's easy to display (again, no special techniques, everything already knows how to display ASCII); it's easy to read (because the characters are familiar and they're reliably well displayed); and readers of this book have more call to use CXS than IPA, or even X-SAMPA, in communication with other conlangers.

I propose to use CXS for this book. The process of implementing this has five steps (well, six if you count this talk posting as one).
 * Add a notice to the main page that the book is being normalized to use CXS, with a link to this talk thread. This will both make other editors aware of the issue so they don't step in it (in retrospect, there should have been a notice put on the main page way back when the consensus was originally reached; cf. the main page of featured book Latin), and it will enable the  possibility of a real discussion.  Later steps of the process are likely to take some time, which should allow about as much opportunity to start a dialog as I can see profitably allowing (since I don't see any profit in deliberately delaying the process beyond the time it's going to take anyway &mdash; somewhat similarly to my much smaller redesign of the lead on the main page, discussed here).
 * ✅ Pi zero (talk) 02:50, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Revise Conlang/Intermediate/IPA and X-SAMPA accordingly. I'm putting this step before all other content changes, even though the next major step will be earlier in the book, because this page contains the most blatant statement of IPA preference in the book.
 * ✅ Pi zero (talk) 22:42, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Create a local table of sound files using CXS, to replace the external link now used by Conlang/Beginner/Sounds; I envision placing the new table in the book outline as an appendix. The external link needs to be replaced anyway, because a wikibook should be self-contained, and the use of an IPA table there has probably contributed to later editors assuming, without checking, that the book is going to use IPA.
 * ✅ although a second appendix on IPA (including comparison with CXS) has emerged as a new subtask now at the front of the queue. Pi zero (talk) 12:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Comb through all the other pages converting to consistent use of CXS.
 * ✅ afaik. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:17, 3 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Replace the tentative notice on the main page with a more definite one, saying that the book does use CXS.
 * ✅ --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:17, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Pi zero (talk) 23:08, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * For some reason, I've been under the impression that the original discussion settled on using IPA for phonetic notation. It was a while ago so my memory may be inaccurate, but I believe some discussion on this topic took place off-site and that's what was ultimately decided. I personally believe IPA to be the best option, but if you insist on CXS then that's as good a standard as any. Ingolemo (talk) 15:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Honestly, I'd like to try CXS on the book as a whole and see how it works. If it doesn't work out (though I suspect it will be fine), it should be remarkably straightforward to change later &mdash; because by the time I've finished with the IPA appendix, I mean it to give ascii HTML code for all the IPA symbols (including the ones that you can't easily get that for from the wikipedia articles).  Given that appendix, switching the book to IPA would consist mostly of doing those ascii-only substitutions, reversing the order of the two appendices and revising a few sentences in them, and rewriting "Intermediate/Sound notation".  Pi zero (talk) 00:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * (Okay, on reflection the changes to the appendices would be more extensive than that... but still straightforward, thought tedious.) Pi zero (talk) 02:34, 17 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Ultimately, I'm not concerned which notation is used, so long as we're consistent. I'll start converting some stuff to CXS Ingolemo (talk) 06:42, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Table of contents
I'm trying something different, which I'm hoping will simplify maintenance work in the long run &mdash; but the only way to know, really, is to try it out for a while and see. The idea is to have a single master file containing the "table of contents" data, in a format that is straightforward enough for technically unsophisticated authors, and is also usable by a set of templates that automatically generate both the visible TOC on the main page and navboxes for the top and bottom of each module. (Whether the format is simple enough is critical; most of the design time on this was to devise the simplest format that would do the job, and it may yet turn out to be the weak point at which the whole scheme fails.) When an author changes the master list, the visible TOC and the navboxes will all change automatically (once the caches clear) without any painstaking manual adjustment of navbox links. (Left to its own devices, the system might wait hours before updating the template calls that generate the TOC and navboxes; this can be made to happen immediately on a given module page, or on the main page, by making a no-change edit to that page.)

The documentation for the whole suite of templates is too technical; that's a point that will surely need improvement, but my initial priority was to preserve the information at all, deferring niceties of presentation.

For now I've set up fairly simple navbox templates ( and  ). More elaborate navboxes could be generated &mdash; well, I could figure out how to generate them, anyway :-) &mdash; but more elaborate doesn't necessarily mean better, so for now I've chosen something that's pretty similar to the pre-existing navboxes. (This whole arrangement really comes on line when the individual modules are converted to use the new templates, which I expect to do as I find time...)  Pi zero (talk) 15:42, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Awesome. Ingolemo (talk) 05:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

no links
the only links are links to the TOC and links on the TOC. All links are broken on the pages!--White wizard (talk) 15:36, 18 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Should be fixed now. It was an unanticipated side-effect of adding category markup to the navlist page.  --Pi zero (talk) 19:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned pages
Linking to these to take them off the orphaned page list. -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Conlang/Advanced/Sounds/Clicks
 * 2) Conlang/Advanced/Sounds/Ingressive
 * 3) Conlang/Appendix/IPA
 * 4) Conlang/Relex history merged --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

examples?
i dont know if this is a good idea, so stop me at any time (just give me a warning). I will make a new "step-by-step" section that will as it sounds be step-by-step, but with a small conlang being formed as an example. please comment. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Baconator (talk • contribs) 20:56, 25 September 2009.


 * Comment: We should be careful, I think, not to lead our readers into thinking of conlanging as following a recipe.  That would only produce conlangs that are relexes of a given pattern.


 * Questions (hoping to better understand what you have in mind): Would you say that the current Beginner section &mdash;which is the most complete material, so far&mdash; is, or is not, arranged in a step-by-step manner?  Where would you imagine such a thing fitting into the existing outline?


 * --Pi zero (talk) 22:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Never mind it, making a whole book for it. Trust me, it will work. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Baconator (talk • contribs) 12:19, 26 September 2009.

Alien Phonolgy
What are some examples of animal vocal organs, and how could I design alien vocal organs so that it could make sensible and consistent sounds? How could I even figure out the sounds its vocal organs would make up the language.


 * Commented at Talk:Conlang/Advanced/Sounds/Alien Sounds. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:03, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Languages not spoken
There should be a little more about sign languages, 'smell' languages, 'taste' languages, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.166.212 (discuss • contribs) 11:37, 10 April 2013‎

Person
Has there been a language without person, and how might some ideas be expressed in it because of it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.86.159.232 (discuss • contribs) 01:01, 28 April 2013

Book subdivision terminology
The three major subdivisions of the book are sometimes called "levels", but often called "sections" which can be confusing. So I'm going to go through the book finding places where they're called "sections" and chaning those to call them something else, usually "levels". --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Sonority
An explanation of sonority is missing. Please add it to the advanced or intermediate levels. Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 15:00, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I couldn't find it where I expected it to be. Me being stupid… Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 15:02, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * @Columbus240: Yeah, we did manage to slip it in, but, I'm wondering where you'd first expected to find it? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:33, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Maybe on it's own page. The concept of sonority seems more important to me, than just a small table at the end of a page. It influences (as far as I understand) a big part of how a language sounds, and how phonotactic rules are done (no 'p' after 'n', whatever). Maybe also putt it in an appendix, and/or mention how sonority influences language on other pages like syllables or phonotactics. Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 19:37, 25 August 2015 (UTC)


 * @Columbus240: I felt I was already pushing the bounaries of what belongs in the Intermediate level rather than the Advanced level as it was. What you're describing sounds Advanced, to me.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Would it be possible for you to add a page/draft about sonority to the advanced level?


 * The Intermediate phonology section was actually drastically cut back at one point because there was a massive glut of information about phonology and almost nothing about anything else. I don't remember if we cut anything about sonority at that time, but the existing stuff could certainly be improved. I would welcome an expansion of the syllables page, though I don't think sonority needs a page to itself.


 * As to writing a page about sonority in the Advanced level; honestly, if I'm going to do anything I'd rather focus on getting the Intermediate level finished. But there's nothing stopping you from adding that page; you seem to know something about the subject and you definitely care about it. We would welcome the contribution. Doesn't matter if it's not very good; even laying down an outline for a page can be helpful.


 * We need to sit down and decide on a structure for the Advanced level. The way I see it, while the Beginner and Intermediate levels have a sort of tutorial feel to them, pages in the advanced level should be more scattered. Since the Advanced level can assume Intermediate knowledge, it should just be a collection of essays about topics relevant to creating a language that go deep into those topics and don't try too hard to be in any particular order or to link up with one another. Less hierarchy and more just random useful stuff. Just some thoughts. Ingolemo (discuss • contribs) 21:36, 2 September 2015 (UTC)


 * It's a common pattern to have university classes on a subject start with an introductory class that gives the beginning student an overview, then a coherent set of intermediate-level classes that cover the various aspects of the subject, and then some advanced-topics classes (or even a single class called "advanced topics in [subject]") that offer a sort of grab bag of miscellaneous high-powered particulars. The advanced topics may vary from semester to semester depending on what the professors or their grad students are interested in.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:29, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Word generation and structure
The only part about making up words and is in the Basic level. I have no experience with it, so it would be helpful to me to also have it explained on higher levels. Today a language teacher of mine explained the etymology of a word (milk) with reference to the indo-germanic root m-l-k. How could a thing like this be done for a (family of) conlang? Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 19:43, 2 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I had intended to write about word formation and etymology a little bit in the intermediate section but, like everything else, I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'll see if I can do something. Might take a while. Probably won't be very good. Ingolemo (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

TODO List
Is there one being maintained? If yes where is it, if no, why not create one. It maybe would be easier to get organized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Columbus240 (talk • contribs) 16:05, 10 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't think there is one, no. There's a question of how to go about such a thing.  I think there's at least one device in-use on en.wb for "automatically" maintaining TODO lists, but I've found myself wanting to avoid any book that has such a thing because it seems to require some expertise to use it.  I don't want to have to learn yet another specialized tool in order to become more productive; specialized tools requiring expertise to use them are, I think, in general not ideal for wikis.  (I concluded some years ago that the wikis need a general tool for managing expertise &mdash; which, ironically but not surprisingly, could only be created in the first place by a wiki user with certain kinds of technical expertise.  The WMF being inherently incapable of doing such a thing right.  I'm actually working on that problem.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:18, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

taxa
Atm, the three major segments of the book are called "levels", and individual pages usually call each other "sections" but occasionally "chapters". The term "section" is usual wiki terminology for headings within a page, and "chapter" is an iffy usage for pages of variable size. Alternatively, the standard project-wide term for content pages within a book, though not (in my experience) used by most wikibooks, is "module". --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:17, 24 February 2019 (UTC)