In order for a language to be understandable and used,
such as the invented one of the four club members, it must have an established grammar
and syntax and vocabulary. On the level of grammar, in an invented language inflectors
that indicate relationship and possession and time would have to be decided upon. For
instance, will family and personal relationship be indicated by inflecting a proper noun
or by the existence of a unique vocabulary word like "Uncle"? Will there be many
indicators of levels of relationship indicated in inflection or will vocabulary indicate
levels, such as "my great-granduncle and my maternal cousin three times removed."
Another example is whether time will be indicated by inflectors as in "whilst" or by
unique vocabulary words in specific constructions such as "will have
been"?
On the level of syntax, what order of construction
will sentences take? For example, will the syntax follows a Subject Verb Object (SVO)
order as in "You close the window" as in English syntax? Or will the syntax follow an
Object Subject Verb (OSV) order as in "The window you make closed"? In addition, will
vocabulary be influenced by tonal qualities in which the tone given to individual
phonemes and morphemes may utterly change the meaning of the vocabulary word, for
example, one tonal variation indicating "cow" and another tonal variation indicating
"swim"?
These are some of the considerations you will give
an overview of to begin a 90 minute discussion of language and language use in an
invented language understood by only the four individuals who have invented it. You
might also start out your discussion by drawing attention to pidgins that have developed
into creoles and/or introducing research that reveals that when a generation is born
into an environment in which a pidgin has become a native language, having been elevated
by various circumstances from the status of a vehicular
lingua franca, it takes only one generation for the pidgin to take on a
full grammar and formalized syntax features. These topics amplify the principles of
language and language use in a discussion of a "secret code" understood only by its
inventors.
No comments:
Post a Comment