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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Metaphor

Rick Morneau is a long-time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay is about the use of metaphor in ALs, why they should be avoided, and how they can be avoided.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Vocabulary Design

Rick Morneau is a long-time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This is a very brief introduction to a word design system. For a comprehensive treatment of the same topic, read the monograph Lexical Semantics.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Transitivity

Rick Morneau is a long-time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay discusses how changes in transitivity are accomplished among natural languages, and how the apparent flexibility of a system like that of English is not only uncommon, but also not really flexible. For a much more thorough treatment of transitivity, read the monograph Lexical Semantics.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Opposites

Rick Morneau is a long-time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay discusses one approach to dealing with words of opposite meaning. For a much more thorough treatment of opposites, read the monograph Lexical Semantics.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Anaphora

Rick Morneau is a long-time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay discusses anaphora and how they can be implemented without ambiguity in an AL.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Syntax

Rick Morneau is a long time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay discusses syntax, and how certain aspects of syntax can differ among natural languages. It also teaches how to use a modified version of Backus-Naur form to define the syntax of a language, and provides a complete syntax for an AL that is extremely flexible while also being extremely simple and easy-to-learn.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Universals: Recommended Reading

Rick Morneau is a long time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This article provides a brief description of linguistic universals, and then recommends some books that discuss universals in much more detail.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Arabic Morphology

Rick Morneau is a long time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay discusses how to design a language with a morphology similar to Arabic and other semitic languages.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Morphology

Rick Morneau is a long time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay discusses how to design the surface morphology of a language (i.e. the “shapes” of words) such that the words are easy to pronounce as well as computer-tractable.

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English Language Essays

Designing an Artificial Language: Phonology

Rick Morneau is a long time language creator who lives in rural Idaho. In the early 1990s, he wrote a series of essays on language design that proved to be quite influential in the early language creation community. Their quality has endured since their original publication, and continue to be read and enjoyed by language creators the world over.

Abstract

This essay discusses how to select the phonemes of a language based on what the language is intended to accomplish, and on how much pronunciation difficulty is acceptable.

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