21 Putting it All Together: A Conlang Project for Teaching Beginning Linguistics (has project stages 1 and 2)

The Constructed Language Project is the major project and major graded work in this course. Please make sure you complete all parts to earn a grade (incomplete earns no grade!). This will likely take you a few hours. You may need to review lectures and videos again to be able to complete the work.

This is both a formative and summative assessment.

• It is formative because you don’t have to be perfect to earn an okay grade and you get to revise as you move through later projects—it is about learning.
• It is summative because you are demonstrating how well you have learned the content so far.

Purposes:

• To begin world building for the culture your language will be situated within (Course Outcomes aligned: 1a, 1b, 1g)
• To decide the orthography (writing system) for your language (you will only use it in this stage!). [Articulate the differences between orthographies]. (Course outcomes aligned: 1d, 3a,
• To decide on a ‘sound’ for your language. [Discern between phonetic features of sounds] (Course outcomes aligned: 1e)
• To practice developing arguments (4b, 4e)

Instructions: 

• Answer the questions below/do the work indicated.
• If a question has 2 parts, make sure to answer both.
• Type (or copy) your answers directly in to the forum message body (don’t attach a link or document). Tip: write up your assignment in a separate document and then copy and paste it into the forum message space. This will avoid your forum post ‘timing out’.
• Title your post with the name of your language and a descriptive term about the culture. For example: Klingon—warrior peoples!
• Remember:
  • Label your questions and number them to match this prompt.
  • Check the rubric to help you understand how to pass the activity.
  • You are creating a brand new language. This cannot be a combination of two existing languages. You are not describing languages that already exist.

Part A: About your language and culture group

Answer these questions in one sentence each.

1. What is the name of your language?
2. What is the name of your culture group? (might not be the same as your language name)

Part B: About your species and culture group

Answer these questions in a few sentences each.

1. What is your species like (must be humanoid, but can be cat people, insect people, flower people, anything your imagination can come up with, so long as they are humanoid and have human like vocal apparatus). Note: you can choose a sign language, but this will be sooooo much more work for you.
2. Where does your community live? Draw a map and describe the location and environment.
3. Who are the surrounding peoples?
4. What major conflicts are occurring in your community?
5. What is interesting about your culture group? (Think about how their culture relates to their environment or species or the conflicts occurring).

Part C: About your writing system

Answer these questions in a few sentences each:

1. Which orthography (writing system) does your community use? How does it suit your intended community or your learning?
2. What orientation will your writing system take (top down or bottom up, left to right or right to left, or something else (spiral, 3d)? Why did you choose this orientation for your writing system? How does it fit with the materials your community has to write on/with? (This should relate to the environment your culture group lives in, as described in part B).
3. Provide examples for at least 5 symbols for your language and the words they are found in/represent. What does the symbol represent (a specific sound, a specific syllable, or a specific word). Translate the word in which/for which this symbol is used into English. (Bonus tip: if you start thinking now about words that might be meaningful in your group’s culture, that is really helpful for later stages!)

Part D. About your language’s sound system

Answer these questions in a few sentences each:

1. How do you want your language to ‘sound’? How does this connect to your culture and your species?  
2. Which sounds will help your language sound this way? List at least 10 sounds using the IPA symbols. Describe each of these sounds using the linguistic terminology indicated in our lectures (the three characteristics of consonants and the three characteristics of vowels).
3. Why did you choose these sound? How do they represent your species or culture? What do the sounds have in common?

Part E. How did your language originate?

Answer these 2 question in one well-developed paragraph each!

1. How did human language originate? Use the information from our lesson ‘Where did language come from’ to support your answer. Make sure to cite to the lesson to indicate which bit of information you use comes from which of the authors cited in the lesson.
2. How did your language originate? Decide whether your language originated independently in your species or from an earlier species that your species evolved from. Make sure to provide evidence (biological and cultural related to your group) to support your answer.

Note: a well-developed paragraph has this structure:

• Sentence 1: answer the question clearly
• Sentences 2-3: define terms, provide background context, etc.
• Sentences 3-5: provide evidence (from our class lectures and videos) to support your answers.
• Sentences: 5-6: explain why this is important to know (or if in an essay, transition to the next paragraph).
• How to cite! See our guide to citing and referencing in course resources. Quick take: list the author last name and year of publication in parentheses right after you use or mention that information in a sentence (not at the end of the paragraph).

Part F. Review your classmates’ conlang plans!

Once you have posted your original post, you will see everyone else’s posts. Read the posts of at least 2 classmates. Respond to those two classmates with answers to the following questions. Try to choose classmates who don’t already have reviews (don’t everyone review the same conlang—help the class!).

Note: while it is tempting to just say “everything is good”, that is not as helpful to your classmates or to your own learning as giving meaningful feedback, both positive and negative. Please take this seriously.

1. What is something really cool, interesting, or surprising that you like about the proposed conlang?
2. How might their culture and language influence each other? Offer another feature of their culture that they could develop to help show this connection between their language and culture.
3. Assess their writing system. Do their example symbols illustrate the writing system they say they do?
   1. If yes, suggest an additional symbol and word (with translation) that would be important to their culture.
   2. If no, explain what is wrong with that section and how to fix it. (Note, this means you need to make sure you understand how writing systems work—go back and re-watch the lecture and videos.)
4. How well do the sounds they have chosen reflect their species or culture?
   1. If really well, what other 3 sounds would help? Why?
   2. If not well, which sounds would you suggest (at least 3) that would help reflect their species or culture? Why would these be good choices?
5. Do their descriptions of sounds match the IPA symbols they chose?
   1. If yes, suggest at least one more sound with the IPA symbol and the description that fits well with their chosen sounds.
   2. If no, explain where the misunderstanding is AND how to describe the sounds they have chosen (based on the IPA symbol) using linguistic terminology.
6. How well do they understand the debate and evidence for how human language developed?
   1. If not, where is the misunderstanding?
   2. If they’ve really understood it well, how can they use that information in their discussion of how their conlang originated? Suggest an addition to this section.
7. What are you especially looking forward to learning about their conlang as it develops?

Project Stage 2

Step 1: Revise (and highlight)

Step 2: Write stage 2