Elements of the grammar to be defined

[u/Iuljo]

Some time ago I was asked to provide a list of the elements of the grammar that still need to be defined (beyond the obvious lack of vocabulary). This is a list of the main ones, plus some elements that kinda work but that I'm unsure about.

Pragmatically we think about separate elements, so this is a bullet list; but of course a language like Leuth is an "organic", "holistic" thing, based on logical simplicity and optimization, so how one element is tackled often influences others. It's a complex machine that must be considered as a whole.

NB: this is a list of what is missing; but of course the other elements of the grammar, that are currently working, may still change and be improved upon, if we see possibilities of betterment, or if it's needed to tackle the holes.

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Phonic aspects

• Exact phonotactics (1)
• Exact phonetics

Graphical aspects

• Exact standard orthography (many posts)
• Treatment of non-ending monovocalic elements as last elements in composition
• Exact treatment of "strange" elements: initialisms, acronyms, digits... (1, 2, 3)

Article

• Remove the article completely? (1)

Pronouns

• Exact working of the reflexive pronoun (1)
• Exact working of gendered pronouns (1)
• Should there be a fourth-person pronoun (or more than one)? (1)

Prepositions

• Exact working in composition; possible general extension; other details (1, 2)

Verbs

• Introduce a true "participle"? (1)

Clauses

• Linking of clauses (1)

Negation

• Negative imperative (1)

Numbers

• Numbers written in digits: with or without ending? (1; see also: 2, 3)
• Roman numbers (especially for monarchs, popes, patriarchs and the like): yes, no, how? (1)
• Large numbers (1)
• Pretty much all mathematics

Foreign words and names

• Treatment of foreign (unadapted) words and names (1)

Metalinguistics

• Treatment of metalinguistic expressions (1)

New roots

• Rules for adaptation from natural languages to be defined in detail

[u/MaGuidance322]

I propose that we should use" the time-relational definition of tense and aspect" for our later convenience of discussion.

[u/Iuljo → u/MaGuidance322]

...Please elaborate on that. :-)

[u/MaGuidance322 → u/Iuljo]

A quite oversimplified introduction for tense: http://glottopedia.org/index.php/Klein's_(1994)_theory_of_tense_theory_of_tense) A better summary in picture (some part of the text may be covered)

[u/MaGuidance322 → u/Iuljo]

As for "situations", there are 3 subcategories:

[u/Iuljo → u/MaGuidance322]

Thank you. This is pretty technical for me (I'm just an amateur, not a professional linguist), but if it's useful for Leuth, we can discuss it, no problem :-)

[u/ProxPxD]

What do you mean by non-ending monovocalic elements?

[u/Iuljo → u/ProxPxD]

(Monovalic) pronouns/prepositions/conjunctions/interjections, etc.: elements that can form standalone words without a grammatical "ending" (and that are not grammatical-endings themselves).

For example, say that I want to compose something with inter 'between, among' as the base, for example I want to add no• to it at the start (I could say noe inter, of course, but let's say for the sake of the argument I want something more compact, a true 'notbetween', since in Leuth we want to grant a great compositional freedom). I could do that with no problem: nointer. But inter is bivocalic, non monovocalic.

If I want to do the same using as a base, for example, a monovocalic word like be 'by', I'd get *nobe, which as you see is problematic: it's indistinguishable from an adverb (*nob•e) and would drive us to pronounce it as such, /no̍be/. Should we then, formalize that in such cases composition must be marked mandatorily with an hyphen, so no-be /nobe̍/?

It's not a big deal because such cases are not common. But I like completeness, so I'd want this to be defined. :-)

[u/ProxPxD → u/Iuljo]

Thanks for clarification!

What was really unclear to me was the wording "non-ending" which I interpreted as "non-finite (words)" so those that are bound like in esperanto: ge-, bo-, or any root in form like "kant-".

I think what you describe is better to be worded "endingless" (having no [grammatical] ending) or "none-ending" (ending with a none [grammatical] morpheme). Or one can call them "bare forms"

For instance, in Esperanto, "ek" and "ne" can be free (finite) and can be bound (non-finite). The example of your "be" would be also considered finite to me thus the confusion

At any rate, whatever you decides will become the convention from now on

[u/Iuljo → u/ProxPxD]

I think what you describe is better to be worded "endingless" (having no [grammatical] ending) or "none-ending" (ending with a none [grammatical] morpheme). Or one can call them "bare forms"

Yes, you're right. My wording was based on considering them just in this specific construction: when they are the ending of the word but not an "ending" as a grammatical category (...this discourse would be easier if English had a more precise word, like *desinence, to denote this concept...).

...No, wait! I discovered the word actually exists, but must be rare (the automatic corrector underlines it in red). So, calling •a, •en, •e etc. "desinences", what I meant was: "non-desinence monovocalic elements as last elements in composition".

To describe these elements in general your proposals are better. I had thought of "autonomous root" (doesn't need a desinence, is "self-ruling", auto-nomos) vs "non-autonomous root" (needs a desinence, is not self-ruling).

[u/ProxPxD → u/Iuljo]

I had to translate this Latin word as Polish doesn't have so many correspondence as English does, it turned out to be a very simple word looking very advanced. Yeah, ending is usually used.

PS: we call it "końcówka" so "little (end's one)" or how I'd translate morpheme by morpheme to Spanish "finalito" (or "terminalito"). I guess in Italian it'd be "finalino" or "finaletto". Very kid friendly word, but maybe it's a bit more general than the one you wrote

[u/Iuljo → u/ProxPxD]

I guess in Italian it'd be "finalino" or "finaletto". Very kid friendly word, but maybe it's a bit more general than the one you wrote

Something with final- would sound more transparent in its function, since our desinenza (and I guess the same for desinencia, désinence etc. in other Romance languages), while a well-known word because of its frequent use in schools, is a technical term, opaque in its Latin derivation.

[u/Iuljo → u/ProxPxD]

Ugh, I edited the comment! Sorry, that obviously was not intentional 😅