Talk:Conlang/Advanced/Grammar

Alien Grammar?
What are other ways alien grammar may be distinguished from natural languages, and what are some Universals that may have to be part of alien languages? Are there any? Is it impossible to get rid of nouns and verbs when creating a conlang or is that possible. What are possible ways alien grammar may affect the way things are communicated or thought about. Would an alien language without nouns and verbs have to be shaped by adjectives or adverbs; and how would that probably look like? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.166.212 (discuss • contribs) 10:49, 8 April 2013‎


 * It's been suggested, with some passion, that conlangs should not assume some principles of "universal grammar" that have been devised, ad hoc, based on what has has observed amongst human natlangs. I actually have a partly developed conlang languishing in my files that has neither nouns nor verbs.  Another approach (sort of opposite to mine): some conlangs have a single class of words that serve the functions of both nouns and verbs.  And then there's Kelen, which has &mdash;in a sense&mdash; no verbs, only nouns.  Your questions are genuinely interesting and difficult (the difficulty is what makes them interesting, of course), and are the sorts of questions that could by explored by constructing one or more conlangs.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:12, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Other Parts of Speech
Could an alien language reject all the parts of speech used in human languages? Could they form different parts of speech beyond human imagination? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.166.212 (discuss • contribs) 23:07, 10 April 2013‎

Person
Has there been a language without person, and how might it be communicated? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.171.57 (discuss • contribs) 11:07, 17 April 2013

V2 word order
The V2 word order of germanic languages is not explained. Would be something to add in either advanced or immediate. Also the way the sentence is composited is different than in other languages. In german grammar the sentence is split into sentence parts (Satzteile) like predicate, subject, accusative object, dative object, adverbial etc. Only the english way of splitting the sentence (into noun phrases etc.) is explained in this book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 16:02, 10 September 2015

Content section on this page
I've written a small item here acknowleding the universal grammar hypothesis and pointing out that it doesn't have to constrain conlangs even if you accept the hypothesis. Imho the section wants improvement. It doesn't even mention grammatical universals, a separate but not unrelated concept; and really I'd like to give a more dynamic and inspiring account of the controversy, and more impassioned plea for breaking the rules &mdash; without taking sides, because really I think there's no reason a Chomskyist shouldn't create conlangs that violate precepts of universal grammar. It might also be appropriate to warn against falling into a rut, defining the discussion in terms of universal grammar versus violating it; although it's also possible that warning might be better placed elsewhere. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:35, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Improved, some. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:21, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Seems it could mention some approaches by name besides Chomskyism. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:51, 13 January 2016 (UTC)