Week 4 Workshop: Ordering the sentence

Fix your word order, then work out what follows from it — questions, negation, and the first sentence of your language anybody can read

18 March 2027

Before the session#

Watch as much of the first season of Game of Thrones as you have time for. You are listening for how much Dothraki you are given without subtitles, and what the show expects you to pick up from context alone.

In the session#

The first hour is the interlinear gloss — three lines, the words, the morphemes, the translation. It is the standard notation of the field and you will use it in every remaining assessment in this course, so we cover it properly now.

Then word order, chosen and written down. Then the two things people forget: how you ask a question, and how you say no. Both look simple and neither is straightforward. Some languages move the verb, some add a particle, some only change the intonation, and a language that does all three inconsistently is a language you have not designed.

Afterwards#

You now have sounds, words and an order to put them in, which means for the first time you can write a sentence and somebody else can parse it.

Write one. Gloss it. Post it. It is the first thing in the semester that will be legible to a stranger, and none of it existed four weeks ago.