Jack Hall wrote:
> Hi! I've created many conlangs, but one thing seems unclear, does it play any 
> role in wich order you create the phonology, grammar and lexicon? And if it 
> does, i know that first i will create the phonology but if it play any role, in 
> wich order should i do the grammar and the lexicon? Regards
> 

It's good to have a basic phonology before you start on the lexicon, but 
the details can be refined later. A lexicon is never really finished, 
unless you're trying for a limited vocabulary as a goal of the language. 
Conventionally you might think that you need a phonology first, but if 
you divide the grammar into morphology and syntax, it's usually the 
morphology that depends more on the definition of the phonology. You 
could design a language with a basic plan of the syntax (using 
placeholder English words for instance) before you settle on a phonology 
or a morphology. Still, phonology -> morphology -> syntax is a more 
straightforward path.

In practice, the order of development can depend on the details of the 
language. I haven't attempted a polysynthetic language, but I imagine in 
that case it would make sense to work out the syntax first and take more 
time to develop the complex details of the morphology. Even the details 
of phonology can be put off, but I wouldn't recommend it. I was doing 
fairly well with Tirelat until I got carried away with trying to redo 
the phonology; the larger your vocabulary gets, the harder it is to make 
fundamental changes to the sound system. But now that I've gone back to 
Tirelat after working on Minza for a while, I've realized that I can 
take all the different versions of Tirelat phonology as rough drafts for 
a set of related Tirelat dialects.

I'm still working out details of the phonology (stress and vowel length) 
even though the morphology is pretty well defined and hasn't changed 
much. I've still only worked out the basics of the syntax, although my 
lexicon has a pretty good number of words. There are aspects of the 
grammar that only become apparent when trying to write in the language 
-- either original writing or translations. Tirelat for instance has two 
kinds of "adjectives", which have different syntax in their usage; one 
class of adjectives ("identifiers" as I call them) can only modify 
nouns, while descriptive adjectives can also be used as stative verbs.

So my recommendation is do things in whatever order makes sense for your 
language (each language having different needs), but the best way to 
know what makes sense for your language is to use it. It doesn't have to 
be anything too complicated; "Wait for the green light" is one recent 
example from Tirelat (even simple sentences make you think about the 
details of your language and how it compares with more familiar 
languages). I have a few practice sentences that I like to use with new 
langs, like "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", or "The cow 
jumped over the moon".