Ideas & goals

• Mainly experimenting with syntax & vocab
• no phonemic changes (Be able to pronounce in most English accents)
• A deconstruction
• Make it still comprehensible English
• Maybe add some extra features that add more if you know how the language works (Like the habitual be)

•==========================•

¿What to do?

• Look into the most “weird” foreign vocabulary, syntax grammar concepts to English speakers
  • https://youtu.be/mmTpi112pQw?si=w-J5mjaKVTUH2Wsh
• Look into evolution of split ergativity
• How many levels of subordination is English?

•==========================•

Lang Inspo

French

• Vocabulary
  • Passe (I like how “on a passé” means “happened”)
  • prendre (like take in English but used in more contexts )
  • longtemps (Cool grammatically but “longtime” may sound a bit awkward)
  • est en train de (means “in the process of” dunno how the English equivalent would be but it’s cool)
  • aussi (means both “also” and “so” as in “so green”)
  • à nouveau (means “again”, translates to “at new”)
  • même (means both “same” and “even(if)”)
  • tous les jours (means “everyday” but translates to “all the days”)
• Syntax
  • SOV reflexives (especially when there’s three involved)
  • Negation sandwich

•==========================• Artifexian Notes

• WORD ORDER
  • 3:11 Secondary word orders in subordinate clauses
  • 3:33 Alternate word order constructions in English
  • 4:58 Hawkins Universal
  • 6:34 English modifier order
  • 7:35 more word order stuff
  • 7:38 Word Order Evolution
• WORD ORDER FU
  • Word order evolution chart, Goes with this spreadsheet
  • SOV word order evolution chart
• FREE WORD ORDER

•==========================•

Changes/ removing from English

Remove

• maybe remove it (makes everything seem more alive)(If we want split ergativity we may need to keep it. Or we could do a he/she vs they thing, pretty funky.)

Change

• Redefine he/ she to not be based on gender (idk what to change it to tho, they could become the new inanimate nouns)
• Evolve towards a head-final language (postpositions yey!)
• Change the adjective order
• Experiment with new phrasal verbs
• Add a causative
• change “ex-“ prefix to “out-“ (“exclude” -> “outclude”)

Keep

• Did/ Do for yes/ no questions
• Phonemes & Accents

•==========================•

English grammar

Word order

• free word order depending on context
  • look into the word ordering patterns of regular English (like vso for question)
  • What if vso for every question?

Nouns

• no case -> split ergativity
  • old English used “-en” for accusative (probably)
• no gender -> 3 gender (1 animate, 2 inanimate)
• 2 numbers (keep unchanged for now)

Verbs

• 12 tenses (could simplify and change some constructions)
  • Add habitual be

Adjectives

• experiment with which words are “-er” words and “more x” words

•==========================•

Gender Ideas

Animate - They Inanimate 1 - He Inanimate 2 - She

Plural is all “they”

I think it would be best to keep male and female.

Usually we use “it” to refer to a fly in the house but since we’re replacing “it” with “he/she”, tye fly would have to be gendered and somewhat humanised. Cute fly friend.

Idk if it’ll count as a gender system, I’ll have to experiment with adjectives.

We’ll use french gendered nouns for now

Book - masculine Towel - feminine

The blue dog The bluend bookem The bluette towelem

The black dog The blackand bookem The blackette towelem

Masc - -and / -nd Femme - -ette / -tte

•==========================•

Case Ideas

• Dog sleeps
• Dog likes dogen
• Dog likes their kennel
• The dog’s kennelem
• Dogs sleep
• Dogs like dogens
• Dogs like their kennels
• The dogs’ kennelems
• Nominative - unmarked
• Accusative - -n / -en
• Absolutive - unmarked
• Ergative - ???
• Genitive - ‘s (change possessive to genitive)

—————————————

• They sleep
• They like them
• He sleeps
• Him likes he
• They like he
• Him likes them
• Dogs like their kennels
• Kennelems like their dogens
• Blue dogs like their bluend kennels

•==========================•

Tense Ideas

• Present
  • Present simple - I do
  • Present continuous - I am doing
  • Present habitual - I be doing
  • Present perfect - I have done
  • Present perfect continuous - I have been doing
• Past
  • Past simple - I did
  • Past continuous - I was doing
  • Past habitual - I did do
  • Past perfect - I had done
  • Past perfect continuous - I had been doing
• Future
  • Future simple - I will do
  • Future continuous - I will be doing
  • Future habitual - I will done doing
  • Future perfect - I will have done
  • Future perfect continuous - I will have been doing