Need help creating a simple, consistent, minimal grammar.

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persona
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Need help creating a simple, consistent, minimal grammar.

Postby persona » 2016-02-01, 18:40

I want to create a language, but I am having a lot of trouble with the grammar. I love Toki Pona's grammar. It is simple, minimal and makes sense. The problem is, whenever I try to create my grammar it keeps ending up very similar to Toki Pona's. What ideas do you have for a simple, consistent, minimal grammar that isn't the same or similar to Toki Pona's? Can a grammar even be simpler than Toki Pona's and still be easy to understand?

I'm not expecting you to write a full reference grammar, just maybe give me some ideas for certain parts of the grammar and maybe compare them to Toki Pona's way of doing that. But, if you want to write a reference grammar then I'm not stopping you :wink:.

One last thing. I don't like prefixes or suffixes. I want to keep all words on their own, like Toki Pona.

Thanks!

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linguoboy
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Re: Need help creating a simple, consistent, minimal grammar.

Postby linguoboy » 2016-02-01, 19:13

The more "minimal" a grammar is, the more similarities it will show with other "minimal" grammars. There's really no way around that. It's like you're saying "I want to write a song for acoustic guitar which uses only three chords that doesn't sound like every other acoustic guitar song which uses only three chords."

Toki Pona is a very sophisticated attempt to come up with a fully functional minimalist conlang. I really doubt even a talented amateur is going to be able to do much better than that.
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razlem
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Re: Need help creating a simple, consistent, minimal grammar.

Postby razlem » 2016-02-01, 23:25

What ideas do you have for a simple, consistent, minimal grammar that isn't the same or similar to Toki Pona's?


I want to keep all words on their own, like Toki Pona.


There appears to be a disconnect here....


Aside, as far as your question. It depends entirely on the goal of this project. If it's to be used in the real world, then you have to decide the balance of information vs minimal grammar. You can have a working language with only 5 words if you wanted to *really* be minimal. But if the people you're introducing this to want to be able to use it in their daily lives (which will include things like literature), you'll need fairly complex rules regarding grammar; people like expressing themselves in creative ways.
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