Syntax

Overview

Parts of speech

OGTRTA recognizes six parts of speech:

Nouns are straightforward: a noun refers to a person, place, thing, or idea. However, verbs in OGTRTA are a little bit different from English verbs. OGTRTA has no adjectives or prepositions, so verbs fill the role of both.

OGTRTA's determiners include words like articles (e.g. "the") and some interrogatives ("which", "whose").

Pronouns function syntactically much like nouns, but have some restrictions. For example, they cannot take determiners. Also, their inflectional morphology may differ from that of ordinary nouns (exactly how it differs is left up to the individual language).

Conjunctions connect syntax nodes (phrases and sentences) as peers — i.e. without subordinating one node to the other. Conjunctions include such useful words as "and", "or", "while", "because", "so", and so on.

Particles nominalize an entire sentence in various ways.

Of these parts of speech, nouns and verbs are "open classes," meaning that speakers of a language innovate and borrow new ones all the time. Determiners, pronouns, conjunctions, and particles are "closed classes." Innovation in these parts of speech should happen very rarely.

OGTRTA aims to provide languages with a complete set of determiners, pronouns, conjunctions, and particles at the outset, so the only part of the lexicon you will need to design yourself is the nouns and verbs. OGTRTA also provides a framework for designing preposition-like verbs.

Word order

The basic word order in declarative sentences in OGTRTA is head-initial VO or verb-object. "Head-initial" means a word's modifiers typically follow it, and VO means the verb and its objects are always adjacent, with the verb first. The subject of a sentence can be placed before or after the verb phrase, yielding SVO and VOS word orders.

Additionally, OGTRTA is a reversible syntax: individual languages can reverse the right-hand side of all the syntax production rules, producing a head-final OV language.

VSO and OSV word orders are not directly supported. If you really want to make a VSO language with OGTRTA, you can probably figure something out, but this guide will not describe how to do it.

To keep things straightforward, this guide assumes a verb-object word order, and all the examples will use that syntax.

Valence

Every noun and verb in OGTRTA has a lexically-determined valence. The valence of a word is the number of complement noun phrases that must follow it (in verb-object languages) or precede it (in object-verb languages). Knowing the valence of each word enables the listener to parse OGTRTA sentences. In the formal syntax below, a word of valence n is denoted N/n (for nouns) and V/n (for verbs).

Metasyntax

The following notation is used in the formal description of OGTRTA syntax.

A -> B; // an A consists of B
A B     // A and B in sequence
A | B   // either A or B
A*      // zero or more As
A{n}    // exactly n As
A?      // an optional A
(...)   // grouping

Syntax Summary

S  -> DS                         // A sentence may be a declarative sentence
    | NP;                        // ...or it may be a noun phrase.

DS -> VP NP                      // A declarative sentence has a finite verb phrase and a subject
    | NP VP                      // ...and their order may be reversed.
    | DS CONJ DS                 // Declarative sentences can be conjoined...
    | VP* DS VP*;                // ...or surrounded by modifier verb phrases.

VP -> V/n VP* NP{n} VP*          // A verb phrase has an n-valent verb, optional modifier VPs,
                                 // n complement noun phrases, and finally some more optional VPs.
    | VP CONJ VP;                // Verb phrases may be conjoined.

NP -> PRN                        // A noun phrase may be a pronoun
    | (DET V/0*)? N/n VP* NP{n}  // ...or it may have an optional determiner followed by zero or
                                 // more 0-valent verb modifiers, an n-valent noun, zero or more
                                 // modifier VPs, and n complement noun phrases.
    | NP CONJ NP                 // Noun phrases may be conjoined.
    | IP DS;                     // A noun phrase may consist of an interrogative phrase followed
                                 // by a declarative sentence.

IP -> (IDET V/0*)? N/n VP* NP{n} // An interrogative phrase may be an NP with an interrogative
                                 // determiner.
    | IPRN;                      // ...or it may be an interrogative pronoun.

// terminal nodes

N/0  -> "bat" | "frog" | ... ;
N/1  -> "to see" | "to wish for" | ... ;
N/2  -> "to give" | "to tell" | ... ;
V/0  -> "swim" | "jump" | "green" ... ;
V/1  -> "hit" | "confuse" | "at" | "with" | ... ;
V/2  -> "give" | "tell" | ... ;
CONJ -> "and" | "or" | "because" | ... ;
PRN  -> "I" | "you" | ... ;
DET  -> "the" | "a" | ... ;
IDET -> "whose" | "which" | ... ;
IPRN -> "what" | "who" | ... ;

Examples

As stated above, noun phrases in VO OGTRTA are head-initial; modifiers follow the noun.

Multiple modifiers may be chained together:

Determiners precede the noun:

Modifiers may intercede between the determiner and the noun:

Modifiers may have complements (objects). Here the word mi "in" requires one complement:

Complements are noun phrases, so they can have modifiers of their own:

An adjective-like verb can be the predicate of a sentence without any need for a copula like "to be". Depending on the language, the predicate may be marked as finite (FIN).

The subject can come before the predicate:

Preposition-like verbs don't require a copula either.

However, in order to say that one noun is another, a copula is required:

The copula can be used to form appositives:

Then there are verbs that we think of as verbs in English:

Verbs can have adverb-like modifiers:

Adverbs can also be placed at the beginning of the sentence:

Some languages mark adverbs, allowing somewhat freer syntax:

Verbs can be nominalized, forming an infinitive. The imperative form of a verb is the same as the infinitive form:

Nominalized verbs can be the complements of other verbs:

...and they can be the complements of preposition-like words. Aspectual distinctions can be made this way:

Questions are syntactically noun phrases:

As such, they can be the complements of verbs:

A whole sentence can be nominalized:

When a question word is fronted, a resumptive pronoun can be left in its place:

Formal Syntax

Production rules, level 1

The complete set of production rules for OGTRTA is complex, so rather than dump them on you all at once, they will be introduced in stages. This section describes "level 1" syntax—the most minimal, stripped-down version of the grammar.

Sentences

A sentence is either declarative (making a statement about what is the case), imperative (issuing a command or request) or interrogative (asking a question). OGTRTA views interrogative sentences as a special case of imperatives, since they're making a request for information. So there are only two types of sentences in the formal grammar: declarative sentences, abbreviated DS and interrogative/imperative sentences, abbreviated IS.

Here is how we represent the idea that a sentence S is either a DS or an IS:

S -> DS
S -> IS

A declarative sentence DS consists of a verb phrase VP followed by a subject noun phrase NP.

DS -> VP NP

The subject can also be fronted:

DS -> NP VP

A sentence can be composed of multiple sentences, using a conjunction:

DS -> DS CONJ DS

An interrogative or imperative sentence IS is a single noun phrase (see the sections on imperatives and interrogatives for how this works).

IS -> NP

Verb Phrases

A verb phrase consists of a verb V with valence n (represented V/n), followed by n complement noun phrases (represented NP{n}).

VP -> V/n NP{n}

What's valence, you ask? The valence of a word is the number of noun phrases you need to put after the word to make it a complete "thought." For example, "Rachel skydives" is a complete thought, because "skydives" has a valence of 0, but "Rachel pokes" is not complete — "pokes" has valence 1 and requires an object. The noun phrases required by the valence of a word are called the word's complements.

All words in OGTRTA have a valence. Most nouns have a valence of 0, but nouns derived from verbs (infinitives) often have a valence greater than 0. Individual languages might also choose to give other nouns a nonzero valence, e.g. kinship terms. A word like "daughter" might require a complement specifying who the referent is the daughter of.

Note that valence is a grammatical concept, not a logical one. In English, a verb like "eat" can have either valence 1 or valence 0, and that's perfectly fine. You can say "I eat", or "I eat beans" and both are grammatical. In OGTRTA, every word must have a well-defined valence when it is actually used: there is no such thing as an optional complement. However, OGTRTA languages often have morphological affixes to modify the valence of a word, so your language can have both eat/1 and eat/0. The valence-changing affixes can also be realized as null morphemes, so eat/1 and eat/0 need not have distinct forms.

In any case, the important thing to understand is that valence is always about what words are required to be there, not about whether the action represented by a verb conceptually has a direct object or not.

Noun Phrases

A noun phrase consists of a noun N with valence n, followed by its n complements. The noun is optionally preceded by a determiner.

NP -> DET? N/n NP{n}

A noun phrase can also be composed of other noun phrases, using a conjunction:

NP -> NP CONJ NP

Or it can just be a pronoun:

NP -> PRN

The noun phrase at the root of an interrogative or imperative sentence often takes the form of an interrogative phrase followed by a declarative sentence:

NP -> IP DS

An interrogative phrase is either an interrogative pronoun IPRN, or a noun phrase with an interrogative determiner IDET.

IP -> IPRN
IP -> IDET N/n NP{n}

With just these syntax rules, we can already construct sentences of arbitrary length and complexity. Something's missing, though. Where are the adjectives?

Production rules, level 2

Recall that OGTRTA does not have adjectives as a separate lexical class. However, its syntax does have a concept of modifiers. A verb phrase can modify a noun by following it (either before or after any complements):

NP -> DET? N/n VP NP{n} VP

In fact, a noun can be modified by any number of VPs (zero or more), represented by VP*:

NP -> DET? N/n VP* NP{n} VP*

Words that we think of as adjectives in English are zero-valence verbs in OGTRTA.

A noun phrase that includes a determiner can have zero-valence modifiers between the determiner and the noun:

NP -> DET V/0* N/n VP* NP{n} VP*

This rule is optional, though, and individual languages can safely leave it out.

Verbs can also have modifiers, equivalent to adverbs in English.

VP -> V/n VP* NP{n} VP*