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CONLANG  December 2004, Week 2

CONLANG December 2004, Week 2

Subject:

Soaloa - A goofy little grammar/syntax

From:

Gary Shannon <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Constructed Languages List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:13:53 -0800

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Soaloa - A Goofy litttle grammar/syntax

Dusting off some old projects I came across an
intersting tiny grammar/syntax that invented a few
years back and called Soaloa.

A very spartan overview: The language has 3 word types
(parts of speech, sort of) that I call type O, type L
and type SA.

The shortest possible complete sentence has the form
SOA where S is a type SA word, O is a type O word and
A is a type SA word.

Phrases or clauses come in two forms: OA and SOA.

A longer complete sentence is made by appending a
clause to the end of a shorter complete sentence
either directly, or with an intermediate linking word
of type L.

All possible 2-clause sentences are of these four
possible forms: SOAOA, SOALOA, SOASOA, SOALSOA.

Longer sentence are formed in the same way with all
sentences being of the form: SOA(L)(S)OA...(L)(S)OA,
with the group "(L)(S)OA" being repeated an arbiraty
number of times. (L) indicates that L may or may not
be present and (S) indicates that S may or may not be
present.

In spite of its simplicity I am inclined to make the
rash and unproven assertion that it is complete enough
a grammar that any sentence in any natural language
can be accurately translated into a single sentence in
Soaloa.

More details and a handful of sample translations at
http://fiziwig.com/grammar1.html

I'd love to take some difficult challenge sentences
and try to translate them into Soaloa to see if my
outrageous assertion can be falsified.

--gary

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