User blog:Koppadasao/Why Delang breaks every rule known to conlangers...

I've been watching some of the Emperor's musings about the rules of language creation. As far as I can see I've broken every one of them...
 * 1) Start with phonology...
 * Oh, forget it. It's not the sound of the language one is creating, but a way of communication. Phonology flows natural as the dictionary are filled with words.
 * 1) Phonotactics
 * Phono-what's-he-saying??
 * Decide how vowels and consonants interact, I guess. Yeah, but still, if one is developing a way of communication, phonology and the interaction between vowels and consonants will flow naturally.
 * 1) Grammar
 * Oh, yeah, now your talking. No communication is possible without a set of rules describing how the structure of the language is. Syntax and Grammar is paramount.
 * 1) Semantics?
 * Isn't this all about building a vocabulary? How does one communicate ideas using the language? "Never mind", what does that mean? How can a mind be never? Isn't a mind always? How does such a strange construction of words mean "forget it"?

The Emperor stated that he's been working on his language for years before it was anywhere near what Delang is after just 6 months of development. After years of work, Umbrean is a language capable of communication, while Delang was constructed to be a language of communication from the first day of development.

When developing Delang, I started with the foundation, the grammar, not the decoration, the phonology. My first question was, how do verbs function? What do I need from the verbs? I needed a device to distinguish the tenses of the verb, and that was all: presence, future and past, no infinitive, no duration, no completion, just presence, future and past. Delang has only these tenses, so marzjy means walking, not to walk, it is simply the act of walking, and it is what's happening at the present time.

Nouns. As verbs tells about the act being done, either at present time, future time or in past time, nouns tells about the deed that was done. Delang is heavy on the verb-noun pairing. Most words in Delang consists of a verb accompanied by a noun. Verbs and nouns makes the communication, not phonology, but the words to be spoken.

When having decided that verbs and nouns should fit like hand in glove, the time was come for making some cases for the nouns. What did I need? Singular and plural, indefinite and definite, and a way of counting items. All this was put into the grammar of nouns, singular having indefinite and definite, plural having simple plural and numeric plural, the counting of items. Both type of plural also got a indefinite and definite, this being the hardest to comprehend in numeric plural. How do you count a beach? Do you count each and every grain of sand, or do you just make a number that means any number, except 1? And what is the difference between an indefinite item counting 3 numbers of it and a definite item counting 3 numbers of it?

A beach is just an uncountable numbers of grains of sand, so counting it would be meaningless, so numerical plural includes the number 0, while excluding the number 1. So, in numerical plural the number of items being ZERO, means that it is any number, just as Semitic language uses the number 40 to mean a large uncountable number. If you don't count it, one uses 0 in Delang, as one uses 40 in Arabic.

Next problem, the difference between simple plural and numeric plural. Obviously, if you count an item, it is definite, no matter how the grammar states it, indefinite numeric plural is more definite than simple definite plural. So, how about making the difference being specific items? The difference between a counted number of items, 3 books, in simple indefinite plural and indefinite numeric plural, distinguish between any books, counting 3 items, and 3 specific books. tri celibexin meaning 3 books, and trilibexin meaning 3 known books.

Last problem, the difference between indefinite and definite numeric plural. Having made the distinction between known items and unknown items, the only other possibility to distinguish between 3 known indefinite books and 3 known definite books, was distance. As such Delang has no words for this, these, that and those. While trilibexin means those 3 known books, katrilibexin means these 3 known books. Both accounted for, both placed in different distance from the speaker. All nouns are therefore countable in Delang. You can count everything, even, how strange it might seem, the uncountable.

With these musings about the foundation of Delang, place in November 2009, 6 months ago from the time this is written, I'll make my retreat from this blogpost with a saying of my one creation:


 * Authoring a language is NOT an act of rule making, but an act of rule breaking.