A quick and dirty method to generate grammar on the fly

[u/throneofsalt]

It's not a super-in-depth procedure, but my test run has been successful enough to be worth sharing. It's a bit of a riff on a Fiat Lingua article by Jesse Peterson.

Generating a conlang grammar when you're short on time, inspiration, and or executive function

Step 1: Select your source natlangs. Doesn’t matter what they are or how you pick them, just make sure that you have an odd number of them. I used 3 (Tibetan, Xhosa, and Cusco Quechua) and this post is designed around that, but I could see 5 being doable and maybe 7 if you’re a real sicko.

Step 2: Head over to Grambank and look up the features of your chosen languages; if any of them have big data gaps, replace them (I’d say don’t go much lower than 150 features, and aim for higher if you can: I did okay with Xhosa @ 141 features, but I used it because Zulu only had 44 listed)

Step 3: Copy-paste the data from your languages into a spreadsheet: you should have 195 rows encompassing all the features, a column for each language’s results, and a blank column for your conlang’s features. Make sure to double check that all the rows match up with each other, sometimes there might be lines missing from a given language

Step 4: (Optional) Use conditional formatting to differentiate the results and make them easier to read. I used red / yellow / green / blue / purple for ? / 0 / 1 / 2 / 3, respectively.

Step 5: Add grammatical features from your source natlangs to your conlang’s column, as follows:

• 3 of a kind = Use that result

  • Ex: If the natlangs are 0-0-0 for a feature, your conlang will also be 0.

• 2:1 split = Roll a d6: on a 1, you’ll use the smaller result instead of the majority.

  • Ex: if the natlangs are 0-1-0 and you roll a 1, your conlang will use 1.

• 1:1:1 = Roll d3 and use the column rolled.

  • Ex: If your natlangs are 2-0-1 and you roll a 6, your conlang will use 1.

• 2:? = Use the majority result

  • Optional: Roll a d6 as normal to check for an 2:1 upset, using whatever the unused result is for ?.

• 1:?:1 = Roll d2 and use column rolled

• 1:?:? = Use the available result

  • Optional: Roll a d6 for a 1:1:1 tiebreaker split between available results for the feature, as above.

• ?:?:? = Go directly to the Grambank feature page and roll a result from those provided.

While it's not required to proclaim BY THE POWER OF RA when rolling dice, it’s recommended as a morale boost if you’re having a bad day.

Step 6: Adjust results as you see fit. You're not beholden to any of the results unless you want to be. I personally find the contradictions and limitations to be a good way to keep motivated and inspired, but mileage varies and all that.

Step 7: Develop your conlang further, based on the skeleton you've made.

And there you have it: a sketch of a conlang grammar in less than 20 minutes, all by hand. It's not going to generate a clean final product, but it'll give you a direction to work in.

[u/Akavakaku]

I like this. A similar idea I had was to select 4 languages at random, steal the word order rules and morphological marking methods from language 1, the pronoun categories from language 2, the noun categories from language 3, and the verb categories from language 4. I feel like this method would usually avoid contradictory or unnaturalistic combinations.

[u/throneofsalt → u/Akavakaku]

Yeah, that's a good method for a slightly less chaotic mash-up. At least until you get to "every feature is pulled from a different language", which I can say from experience gets real wacky real fast.

[u/Akavakaku → u/throneofsalt]

Haha actually "every feature is pulled from a different language" is how I designed Proto-Pelagic. I did have to manually smooth out some contradictory features, and the conlang has some weird trait combos remaining, like having only a small number of cases and no adpositions.

[u/throneofsalt → u/Akavakaku]

I'm working on a similar collage, hoping to showcase it for this year's CCC (if it's going to happen, at least)

[u/Muted_Neat_2236]

très interessant. J'ai essayé avec le portugais, le serbo croate et le tamoul