Author Archives: matthewdeanmartin

1) People create incorrect proper modifiers constantly. 2) People give up trying to use proper modifiers and just use their native language for all proper modifiers. 3) li get dropped for 3rd person subjects. 4) People essentially invent new constructions … Continue reading →

So I have a syntax that relies on sentence templates like this: [subject] li [verb phrase] li [verb phrase] [Prep Phrase] [Prep Phrase]. Phrase are made of words and phrases have their slots. Then come along negation, emphasis, and uncertainty … Continue reading →

These are all unsettled, controversial ideas in toki pona. 1) kule lon palisa li pona tawa mi. 2) kule pi lon palisa li pona tawa mi. Prepositional phrases as modifiers. These are most obvious when they appear in the subject. … Continue reading →

If you don’t write code, you may feel like the wrong audience. So recently I’ve been on a kick of learning about object oriented library writing, especially for the most basic types. I notice that MSDN’s advice for writing basic … Continue reading →

Soooo, this toki pona project of mine. I’m parsing community generated texts. I’ve got incompatible goal. On one hand, I want a parser that will work. So if you type English, it should blow up. But if you type toki … Continue reading →

These things will make your grammar more complicated, but you can expect them to show up in any community generated corpus, like immediately Onomatopoeia. Fart noises and the like. In English, they get italicized and I’m sure someone has written … Continue reading →

toki pona has a few constraints, without which the game of toki pona is rendered silly. Foremost is that there are only about 125 or so morphemes (fairly non-bound). This isn’t as much of a problem and I think tp … Continue reading →

By the way, it looks like Dothraki has a published spec. Now on to other topics. As someone with the facial expressions of a robot, I’ve always been partial to robots and some of my earliest attempts at programming were … Continue reading →

Finally, I sort of have the time to do a quick review of the 5 word language. I’m a big fan of small languages (as in small vocab, small numbers of rules, small number of morphemes) This is really, 5 … Continue reading →

Barsoomian is public domain, unless it is the most recent movie version. But here is one that I just notice: Parrot from Doctor Dolittle: “Ka-ka-oi-ee, fee-fee” “Is the porridge hot yet?” Oh, boy. How shall we do an interlinear gloss … Continue reading →

I’m still reading about Esoteric Buddhism, so I’m no expert and may mis-speak. However, while reading about esoteric Buddhism, I got a bunch of fake linguistics ideas. Esoteric vs Exoteric Readings The exoteric reading is the way you’d read a … Continue reading →

So I’m working on improving my Russian. These things drive me crazy about learning materials: The pronoun pri means “during” (but also most of all other prepositions). And that counts and a definition. It is then followed by two, maybe … Continue reading →

Conlex– a sort of activity for people creating new (or reviving dead/nearly dead) languages by actually speaking them into existence. It entails create a language, especially the materials necessary for learners and then doing what it takes to get a … Continue reading →

In Hinduism, there was the idea that words said in a prestige language were magic. People at has some pre-Sassurian ideas about sound and meaning, namely that there was something doggy about the sounds d-o-g and something catty about c-a-t. … Continue reading →

Some American Indian languages “don’t have” comparatives. All American Indian languages are small community languages (well, were) and those typically are mindbendingly complicated. There are so many mechanisms for expression that some familiar mechanism in European languages might be missing. … Continue reading →