This page is about the conlang 'Prominent Potato' (PP). This is my personal entertainment.

The aim of the language is to be as regular in grammar as possible. This is achieved by removing semantics from the grammar so that the grammar becomes just syntax, and by formalizing the syntax. This however does not make grammar minimal or poor, instead there are grammatical features that are either not widespread in natural languages or not used systematically.

For example there is no grammatical gender, no singular-plural distinction for nouns, no person, voice, tense, aspect for verbs. All this belongs to the field of word formation, and therefore semantics, which is deliberately irregular.

In turn, there is mandatory and explicit valency classification of roots and suffixes, and level classification of conjunctions, nouns, and adverbs. And so on.

Some call such projects loglangs, or engelangs. The influence of Lojban is obvious, but no successiveness and no copying.

I. Phonology and orthography

Letters include a, b, d, e, f, g, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, z, ŋ, ð, ʒ, ɣ, θ, ʃ. Capital letters are not used.

Letters are pronounced as in IPA. Some variation in the pronunciation of phonemes is allowed as long as the phonemic difference is preserved. E.g. /r/ may sound as [ɹ]; /x/ may sound as [h]; /ɣ/ may sound as [ʀ] or [ʁ].

Syllable structure is CV in the first and middle syllables, and CV(N) in the last syllable of a word where N is one of m, n, ŋ, r, l.

Consonants include b, d, f, g, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, x, z, ŋ, ð, ʒ, ɣ, θ, ʃ.

Vowels are pronounced as in Spanish. They include:

• monophthongs i, u, e, o, a;
• rising diphthongs ju, je, we, jo, wo, ja, wa;
• falling diphthongs uj, ej, ew, oj, ow, aj, aw.

Borrowed words and personal names that do not fit in these rules must be adapted by either throwing away offending sounds, or by inserting additional sounds to break up clusters. The default choices are 'ɣ' for hiatus and 'e' for consonant clusters.

PP is a syllable-timed language. The weak accent is on the first syllable. There is little to no vowel reduction. Intonation is used for emphasis.

II. Morphology

A word belongs to either open or closed class. Open classes are nouns, verbs, appositions, adverbs and gerunds.

An open class word consists of a stem and a part of speech suffix. Other suffixes if any belong to the stem.

A stem has a valency -- how many arguments a verb of that stem can take. Arguments include subject, direct and indirect objects, and complements, which are defined in the dictionary and are supposed to be necessary by meaning.

The last stem vowel marks the stem valence:

In order to switch argument places one may use the prefixes na-, ni-, and nu-. They shift the arguments to the left 1, 2 and 3 times, respectively, in a circle. E.g. one step of shift for valency of 4 means that the 1st argument becomes the last, 2nd -> 1st, 3rd -> 2nd, and 4th -> 3rd.

A word with the stem of valency of 0 may be verb or gerund. A word with the stem of valencies of 1-4 may be verb, gerund, noun, apposition, or adverb.

Part of speech suffixes:

Level marks the position of a word in a sentence, the further away from the verb, the higher the level. It is explained in III. Syntax.

Words can freely change from one open class to another. If derived from verb 'someone does it', the meaning of other parts of speech are:

• Noun: the one who does it
• Apposition: the one who does it
• Gerund: the process or action of doing it; to do it
• Adverb: in a way or manner of doing it; 'doingly' it

In the dictionary, words are given in verb form, and this is the default. Words belonging to only one class in English are changed as follows: 'apple' -> 'to be an apple', 'beautiful' -> 'to be beautiful', 'very' -> 'to be extreme', 'in'-> 'to be in'.

The difference between a noun and an apposition is that the apposition is a secondary noun describing the same thing as a main noun. It is similar to an adjective in English and is often translated as an adjective, but not always, e.g. 'He is handy farmer' is translated as an adverb if he is skilled in farming, and as an apposition if he is generally a handy person, and at the same time a farmer.

Numerals are positional, i.e. you pronounce each digit and symbol in one word. For convenience there are words for 3, 6, 9 zeros and so on. The syllable 'θa' in the end of a stem is reserved for numerals. So if a stem ends in 'θa' it must be interpreted as numeral.

Digits are:

A numeral stem ends in one of the following suffixes:

So the numeral stem has valency of 1. E.g. nituduθan - a number 12, saraθar - is in quantity of 63, ninibiθal - 11th.

III. Syntax

The sentence may consist of a verb phrase with or without arguments, of just one argument, or of an interjection. There must be sentence conjunctions between sentences. The word order is S / V / SV / VS / SOV / SVO / VSO / SO₁O₂V / SO₁VO₂ / SVO₁O₂ / VSO₁O₂ / SO₁O₂O₃V / SO₁O₂VO₃ / SO₁VO₂O₃ / SVO₁O₂O₃ / VSO₁O₂O₃. i.e. a verb can come before, after, or between its arguments, while maintaining the order of the arguments. Top-level adverb phrases can also appear anywhere before, after, or between a verb and arguments. Adverb phrases of levels 1-3 come strictly after the main word (noun, gerund, apposition, or adverb) and its direct arguments, if any. Appositions come after the main noun, its direct arguments, and adverb phrases, if any; there may be many appositions in a row. Conjunctions are not used with appositions.

Appositions share the level of main noun. Adverbs and arguments are one level below the main word. If a word is of level 3, it may not have dependent words.

All words of valency 2+ and gerunds of valency 1+ may have arguments just like a verb. E.g. 'to be a friend of mine' -> 'a friend me', where me comes without preposition as a direct object of noun.

All arguments are optional. If one is skipped, it is the last, if two, they are the two last etc. To skip the first argument while keeping others, one may use the stem shift.

Adverbs have comparative and superlative forms. Comparative phrase: mo ADV ke SENT le -- more X than Z [subsentence terminator]. Superlative phrase: nai ADV -- the most X.

Sentences, argument phrases, and adverb phrases of different levels use different conjunctions to enumerate things. They are:

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