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How to create a language
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Analogy is a process of sound change, but also of grammar change, produced by very special causes, so I decided to treat it here, instead of in the Sound Change section.
Analogy is the creation of a new form (of a word, in this case) by influence of other similar, analog forms. Analogy is quite a fruitful device, and it's probably one of the major word-creators in languages. Let's see an example.
Latin derives from Indoeuropean (a language which we know existed and was spoken some millennia ago, and which has been reconstructed based on its daughter languages). In Indoeuropean, nouns had case (probably lots of them). The word for honour was reconstructed as honos, honosem in a certain case.
Now, as Indoeuropean changed into Latin (and also Greek, Germanic, Sanskrit,
etc.) some sound change took place. In particular, the /s/
sound
between vowels gradually became voiced (/z/
) and finally gave an
alveolar trill, /r/
(this change is called rhotacism). This
only happened when the /s/
was intervocalic, and not in any other
position.
(Before) (After) *honos -> honos *honosem -> honoremThis, as you see, produced an irregularity; the root form of the word split in two forms, honos- and honor-. All languages have some irregular forms, but this one (and many others of the same kind) probably wasn't accepted by speakers. Now put your hand over the "Before" column and hide it, ignore it. Speakers couldn't know anything about the sound change, which is a subtle and unconscious process (and not studied in those times). What could you do with the irregular pair honos-honorem?
The solution came by analogy with the many words which hadn't changed form (I don't know enough Latin to give an example), and with the same root. They had honorem and also honoris, perhaps even honorificum and so on, so they began saying honor instead of honos. That's analogy.
Of course, no language ever takes analogy so far as to regularize its whole grammar.
A related form of analogy appears when people create words out of elements they had, based on other similar words. English is quite prolific in this respect. Having words like pulverize or finalize, English speakers have created analog forms like idealize, nationalize, hospitalize and hundreds more. If you're creating a language, probably analogy will be the best tool to increase your lexicon.
This section is a general one which will mention and summarize the main grammatical devices found on languages, i. e. how a grammar is managed at the practical level (on actual words).
We already seen most of these devices in a way or another. Here's a brief list of them:
/t/
alternates with /l/
and
/p/
alternates with /w/
(this is voice alternation but
also involves other contrasts).