A Guide for Designing Neo Patwa

This page just lists some of the principles I used in designing Neo Patwa specifically. They could be used for future design or improvement of the language.

Learning from Creoles

Here are some generally accepted universals of
creoles.

• Generally lack inflection. This of course is true of Neo Patwa.
• Have serial or complex verbs. Neo Patwa adopts this.
• TMA markers, usually pre-verbal. Neo Patwa adopts this.
• Fronting is used. Neo Patwa adopts this.
• Pronoun insertion (or predicate markers). Neo Patwa adopts this.
• Wh words are bimorphemic. Neo Patwa adopts this.
• Wh words are either fronted or in situ. In Neo Patwa they are in situ.
• There are different complements for realized and unrealized. This could be done in Neo Patwa (though I haven't specified it), by using ale for realized and fo for unrealized.
• No grammatical articles, but possible to mark presupposed or asserted. In Neo Patwa this is cepela (presupposed) and wanpela (asserted).
• Existential and possessive verbs are same. Neo Patwa adopts this (tene).
• Adjectives are treated as verbs and require no copula. Neo Patwa adopts this.
• Locative and equational copula are different. This is not followed in Neo Patwa now, but could be done by using "sit" as locative copula.

Grammar Features

• Basic Syntax: Neo Patwa is an isolating language with SVO as the basic shape. This is very common among pidgin/creole languages.
• No Conjugation or Declension: Word order rather than conjugation or declension is used.
• No Linguistic Gender, Number, Conjugation or Case.
• No Syntactic Inversion: Word order is not changed in questions.
• Topic Prominence: Some topic prominence is allowed in the form OSV.
• Ending Particles: Certain ideas can be expressed by placing ending tags at the end of a sentence. Notably “ma” (interrogative), “la” (emphatic) and “ne” (quizzical).
• Serial Verbs: Verbs can be concatenated to indicate various ideas.
• Tense, modality, aspect: Verbs are preceded by markers for tense (anterior), modality (irreal) and aspect (nonpunctual).
• Noun Phrase: The basic order for a noun phrase is: diectic - quantifier - adjectives - NOUN - genitive - relative clause.
• Possession is marked by adding a particle, "di" before the genitive, and a relative clause by adding a particle (such as "ke") before the clause.
• Modification: Modifiers (adjective/adverb type words) are placed before the head word.

Rules for Choosing Vocabulary

The following basic philosophy has been adopted for the selection of words.

1. Choose words that are well known around the world. This includes terms like café, clinic, and boutique, which are commonly used, regardless of their origin.
2. Choose words that are distinctive; words expressing similar ideas should not be easily confused. In particular, since there is no modification of nouns or verbs, it is necessary to choose words that are not easily confused.
3. Choose words that do not use sounds that are difficult to pronounce. For example, the English word “sixths” would be a poor candidate. In general, I’ve tried to reject words with difficult sounds (r, th in English, for example), words with hard consonant clusters, and words starting with clusters like mb-, for example.
4. Choose words with fairness toward different languages. In particular, I have attempted to include terms from the major languages of the world: Chinese (Mandarin), English, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish/Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Japanese, Malay/Indonesian, French, German. Considering that a large number of those languages are Indo-European, I have tried to include others: Swahili, Turkish, Korean, Vietnamese, Telugu, and Tamil.
5. Within these languages, I’ve tried to select words that are used in creolized or pidgin forms.
6. When possible, I’ve tried to choose words associated with a certain culture. This applies to words that are close to being proper nouns, such as sushi or spaghetti.
7. While there is no specific rule concerning the length of words, I’ve tried to choose short words for grammatically important terms, two-syllable words for commonly used nouns, verbs and modifiers of various sorts, and longer words for special terms that are not frequently used. Most languages seem to follow a pattern like this, which is natural.
8. I have not used specific rules concerning sound symbolism, but one would presume that inasmuch as universal sound symbolism exists, it will be reflected both by my own biases and by the fact that the languages I have used will have their own biases.