Transcript Creating a Language: Getting Organized Form a group of 4-6 individuals

Creating a Language:
Getting Organized
• Form a group of 4-6 individuals
– Give the group a name
• Exchange contact information with your
group members.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language:
Keeping a Project Book
• Use a notebook or folder to keep track of everything.
– By the end of the semester you should have:
• A title page (the name of your group)
• A jobs and names page (who did what?)
• An introduction page (general description of the language and the
experience of creating it)
• One page for each language-creating module
• Your final skit, with a translation
• A conclusion page (what you have learned about language from
this experience)
• Be sure to maintain maximum consistency between
all of the modules in(c) your
notebook.
Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language:
Jobs and Names
• Here is a list of modules and suggested job names:
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Cultural focus (ethnographer)
Consonants and vowels (phoneticist)
Phonemes, allophones, and conditioning (phonologist)
Base forms, affixes, allomorphs (lexicographer,
morphologist)
Sentences, structure (syntactician, grammarian)
Differences, politeness (sociolinguist, discourse analyst,
pragmaticist)
Kinesics, proxemics (non-verbal communication
specialist)
Writing system (orthographer, scribe)
Change (historical linguist)
• It is fine to invent alternative names!
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Cultural Focus
• Choose a cultural focus for your group
– Some previous foci include:
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Fishing
Sports
Shopping
Eating
Drinking
Dating
– Be creative!.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Consonants
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Your language will need some consonants
Begin by choosing 8 to 12 consonants to use
These can be as complex as you wish
Be sure you can pronounce each one
Use phonetic symbols (use the I.P.A.)
– do not use English spellings
• Put your consonant symbols into chart form
– use the workbook charts as models.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Vowels
• Your language will also need some vowels
• Choose between 4 and 6 vowels to use
– be sure you can pronounce them
• These should be simple vowels
• Use phonetic symbols (use the I.P.A.)
– do not use English spellings
• Put your vowel symbols into chart form
– use the workbook charts as models
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Phonemics
• Assume each of your sounds is a phoneme
• Now create a pair of allophones for one
phoneme:
– Choose one phoneme and create a variant
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– Convert two phonemes into allophones of one
• Your allophones should resemble each other
– same manner or place of production, e.g.
• Create a rule to describe the distribution of
the two allophones.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Base Forms
• Use the sounds on your charts to create:
– 9-12 thing words
• visible body parts, movable items, parts of the room…
– 4-6 action words
• sit, stand, give, touch, open, close, lift, put down…
– 6-8 descriptive words
• size, color, number…
– 2-6 people words
• you, me, I, we, he/she/it, you/y’all, we two, we three...
– 2-5 “function” words
• the, a, this, that, that-over-there, in, at, on, under
• Be sure you can pronounce your words.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Affixes
• Now add to your base forms by creating:
– an affix to derive one kind of word from another
• e.g. things from actions, or actions from things
– an affix to inflect one kind of word
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gender: male, female, neuter...
number: single, plural, dual, triple, inclusive, exclusive…
shape: flat, thin, round, square, oblong, 3-D, floppy...
time: now, soon, never, always, yesterday, today, tomorrow…
validity: witnessed, heard about, heard from reliable source…
comparison: strong, stronger, strongest...
– Remember to only use sounds in your charts!!
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
– Be sure you can pronounce
your words.
Creating a Language: Allomorphs
• If there’s time and you feel ambitious:
– develop a pair of allomorphs for one of your
morphemes
– develop a rule to explain where to use each
allomorph.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Sentences
• Using your words (base forms & affixes):
– Create a simple declarative sentence type
• Decide on word order
– SOV, SVO, VSO; adjective + noun? noun + adjective?
– Using your declarative sentence
• create a negative OR an interrogative sentence type
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insert a word
add an affix
change the order of words
change the intonation
etc
• (you can create both if you want to).
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Structure
• For each of your sentence types:
– Show the structure using slots and fillers
• AND, if there is time, and you are feeling ambitious:
– Show the structure using trees (and rules)
• In each case, give examples.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language:
Difference in Action
• Identify some different linguistic situations
– formal/informal, teasing/serious,
• And identify a ‘difference’ in your group
– male/female, Senior/Junior, major/non-major
• choose a way for your language to index
(mark, indicate, signal) these differences
– degrees of loudness?
– Specific words only used by one group?
– Specific words only used in certain situations?
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language:
Politeness
• Taboo a word
– Choose an existing word from your lexicon
• You will never be able to use it again
– Develop a reason for tabooing this word
• Create a euphemism for it
– Choose another word from your lexicon
– Or create a new word which suggests the tabooed word
• It should sound different from the tabooed word
– Develop an explanation for why this euphemism ‘works’
• Create a greeting
• Create a farewell.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language:
Kinesics & Proxemics
• Create two or three gestures:
– friendly, obscene, teasing, aggressive, etc.
• Create a proxemic system
– define degrees of space:
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Intimate
Personal
Social
Public.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Writing
(optional)
Create an orthography for your language.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language: Change
• Borrow a word from another group
– visit, send someone, invite someone……..
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What word did you borrow?
What does it mean?
Why did you borrow it?
Can you pronounce it correctly?
How does it affect your language?
– Phonology, new concept,…...
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language:
Presentation
• Prepare a short skit in your language
• Your skit should include:
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A greeting
A request or command for someone to give/do something to someone
A use of your tabooed word (and its euphemistic substitute)
A farewell
• Be sure to use your proxemic system in your skit
• Be sure to use your kinesic system in your skit
• Once your skit has been presented, present it again in English,
so your classmates can follow along
• Then please present a very short summary of the key features
of your language for your classmates.
(c) Harriet Ottenheimer
Creating a Language:
The Final Product
• Turn in your notebook for grading
– There should be:
• A title page
• A jobs and names page (who did what?)
• An introduction page (general description of the
language and the experience of creating it)
• One page for each language-creating module
• Your skit, with a translation
• A conclusion page (what you have learned about
language from this experience)
• Remember to maintain maximum consistency
between all of the(c)modules
in
your
notebook.
Harriet Ottenheimer