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Conlang Year, Day 92 prompt

Goal: Explore options for verb classes

Note: Classes can be based on transitivity, valency, and/or semantics.

Tip: Verbs may inflect differently depending on their type.

Work focus: Learn/Brainstorm/Try


Before making decisions about what kinds of inflections you want to occur with your verbs (e.g. subject agreement, tense marking, etc.), first consider whether you want all verbs to inflect the same way. You could choose to create verb patterns that differ depending on the verb’s transitivity or valency structure (e.g. perhaps intransitive verbs will occur with one form of negation while transitive verbs will occur with a different one) or that differ based on semantics (e.g. stative verbs will occur with one set of tense inflections while dynamic verbs will occur with another set). I’m calling these “verb classes,” though there may be other (and better) terms for these groupings that are used in linguistic research.

If you are interested in having verb classes like these, then start outlining the system you are interested in, such as making a list of the kinds of verbs that will appear in one class versus another. If the class is based on valency, a single verb may simultaneously belong to multiple classes if you allow transitive verbs to occur in intransitive patterns, and vice versa (e.g. “I ate” versus “I ate a peanut”).

At the very least, you can spend today going through all the verbs you have created so far, making sure you can find them all easily (you’ll be working with them soon!). If you find you don’t have very many basic verbs created yet, you can also spend the day creating a few more to get ready for the days ahead.