The creator of Middle Pahran prioritized building the lexicon first, inspired by the importance of lexicon development.
Middle Pahran has a unique system of inflecting prepositions, divided into two classes with different functions and gender agreement.
Deep dives
Overview of Middle Pahran Language
Middle Pahran is an a priori artlang set in a fantasy world. It is the first human language created for this world, serving as a base for a family of languages in the southern region. The language originated from Old Pahran, a proto-lang that generates basic forms through sound changes. The focus is on documenting Middle Pahran, which currently has a lexicon of 981 entries covering 1,147 senses. The creator chose to prioritize building the lexicon first, inspired by David Peterson's advice on the importance of lexicon development.
The Role of Inflecting Prepositions in Middle Pahran
One major feature of Middle Pahran is its system of inflecting prepositions, which are divided into two classes. Class one prepositions are derived from older verb forms and show morphology similar to state-of-verbs, while class two prepositions are linked to alienable possession on nouns. Both classes exhibit gender agreement, but class one prepositions can also function as applicatives when attached to verbs. The creator has debated the presentation of the class one prepositions, considering whether to move some information to the dictionary and maintain a smaller grammar section.
Progress in Documentation and Grammar
The development of Middle Pahran involves a combination of lexicon expansion, morphosyntactic analysis, and phonological rule codification. The creator started with a focus on building the lexicon, adding around 10 words a day. Currently, there are 33 pages of grammar written, with an emphasis on the system of inflecting prepositions. In the process of documenting phonological processes, interesting discoveries were made, such as finding minimal pairs for back unrounded vowels, providing more justification for distinguishing vowels in the romanization. Overall, progress is steady but slow due to time constraints as a graduate student with limited availability.