Talk:Conlang/Beginner/Grammar

Fancy shmancy words
One thing that struck me while writing the Intermediate Grammar section is that this section introduces the distinction between morphology and syntax, but I don't think it should; after all the Beginner Sounds article doesn't mention the word "phonology". I propose that we remove the definition paragraph and attempt to re-target the sections as something like "Word Properties" and "Arranging Words" respectively. Anyone got any thoughts? Ingolemo (talk) 10:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hm. Well, there is another side to the question.  When I was going through these Beginner sections, and one of the things I was particularly doing was pruning technical terms, I pondered for some time over the word "morphology".  (The word "syntax" didn't bother me; I think its technical meaning is pretty much in line with general usage.)  Eventually I put together a case in favor of keeping "morphology/syntax" here, but didn't write it down at the time.  As I recall, it went something like this:


 * The word "morphology" comes in handy several times in this section; there does come a point of diminishing returns, at which eliminating the last few specialized words creates ambiguity and/or awkward verbosity and makes things harder for laymen to understand. It's a relatively painless term in itself; and it's one of the major taxon names of the subject (as opposed to narrow terms like "evidentiality" and "case"), making it potentially very helpful for a beginner to already know when approaching more advanced materials &mdash; as when trying to follow the gist of a more advanced discussion, or when tackling the spate of narrower technical terms in the Intermediate section.


 * Having left "morphology" in place here, I also let stand the even gentler preview of the term that occurs in Beginner/Words, where it occurs exactly once, as the title of the first of two subsections (the second being "Vocabulary"). --Pi zero (talk) 14:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I see your point and having thought some more, I think I agree.


 * However, I would like to note that when I asked five laymen friends to explain to me what they thought the word "syntax" meant, they were unable to do so. The best response I got was "it's something to do with grammar" but he was unable to elaborate further. Perhaps it would be prudent for us to get a person who is not familiar with the subject to read through it and determine whether the terms are acceptable? Ingolemo (talk) 21:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)


 * A few thinking points. (These aren't meant to complicate the actual act of asking someone to look over the material and tell-me-what-you-think.)
 * It's not clear to me that the common usage status of "syntax" is necessarily a tipping point on this. We define both "morphology" and "syntax" here, and in effect by doing so we are also approximately defining "grammar"; so we're not actually relying much on the reader's prior knowledge of them.  Big taxon names, all, and they're a matched set, too.
 * That leads into the potentially deep question of what level of knowledge we expect from the readers of this section. We do assume that the reader won't be uncomfortable with in-context use, without explicit definition, of terms like "subject", "object", and "auxiliary verb".  I'm not actually proposing to open that can of worms, but it's something to keep in mind when choosing a lay test audience for the material, and certainly when interpreting the results of the test.
 * In having the material vetted by a layman, one really needs to think through carefully what kind of feedback to ask for. It would, for example, be pretty biasing to ask them to see if they thought the terminology was too technical.
 * High-quality victims, er, test subjects may not be easy to acquire in large numbers, and a given subject is really unfamiliar with the material only once. So one ought to be fairly selective about the version of the material that one spends such an opportunity on.
 * I can't say I'm really surprised to hear the reactions you got on the word "syntax"; it's not the first time I've found that parts of my idiolect are products of my atypical background.
 * BTW, the title you chose for this talk thread appears to be an instance of reduplication. --Pi zero (talk) 04:10, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I too do not think that "syntax" (or any other single word) is necessarily problematic. I was mostly just using it as an example to point out how we (with our particular biases) may not be the best people to evaluate it's usefulness to our target audience. You've already convinced me that, as things stand, there's no pressing need to simplify the vocabulary beyond it's current state.
 * I must admit that I'm in no position to actually do any testing. It's hard enough to get people IRL to be interested in my own conlanging, nevermind to go through the effort of critiquing a meta-article... :) Ingolemo (talk) 14:16, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The word "syntax" is a somewhat exceptional example, actually. My formal training is in computer science, rather than linguistics &mdash; but for trained computer scientists, "syntax" is what a parser analyzes.  Modulo automated parsing, I should (ideally) be able to identify with non-linguists trying to break in to conlanging.


 * But I too would be hard put to actually do any testing. Pi zero (talk) 21:39, 28 May 2009 (UTC)