The focus has been on basic declarative clauses, or independent clauses that state information. This chapter shifts the focus to discuss other types of clauses. The first section explores strategies for forming questions, including yes/no questions and wh-word questions, and the second section focuses on grammatical strategies for giving commands. The third section dives into features of joining clauses, introducing complement clauses and relative clauses, while the fourth section compares coordination and subordination strategies as methods for joining clauses. By the end of the chapter, you will be ready to create more complex clauses in your language.

The first section of this chapter introduces and defines what constitutes a “basic word” within a language and connects the notion of basic words to issues related to world-building. The second section identifies key considerations you need to make as you describe your speakers and construct a world for them, and the final sections ask you to focus on how your speakers meet their basic daily needs and the words they might need in their language to communicate about those needs. At the end of this chapter, you will be asked to provide more detailed information about your speakers and conworld and connect those pieces of information to a beginning list of basic vocabulary in your language.

This chapter explores ways you can expand information provided in noun phrases, with the first half focusing on grammatical specification and the second half on semantic modification. The first section investigates the types of determiners that occur in languages, including articles and demonstratives, and the second section focuses on possessive forms and the types of relationships they can reflect. The final two sections introduce modifiers that can occur within noun phrases, including adjectives and adposition phrases. You will decide if your language will have any adjectives belonging to its basic vocabulary and set a foundation for the shapes modifiers take within noun phrases.

The first section of the chapter introduces you to the world of pronouns, beginning with personal pronouns, whose (typically small) forms can inflect to indicate a wide range of grammatical information: person, number, class, and case. The next section focuses on other pronouns, including demonstrative, reflexive, and indefinite forms. The chapter ends with a discussion of verb agreement to demonstrate how verbs can inflect to agree with at least one argument in the clause and connects verb agreement inflections to pronouns and their use. By the end of this chapter, you will have developed series of pronouns for your language and made your first major decision about verb inflections.

This chapter focuses on foundational grammatical concepts, first discussing the basic difference between content and function lexical categories before moving on to morphological language type, grammaticalization, and inflectional marking. The information investigated in this and the next four chapters is so interconnected that the material, as it is presented, is a bit like a spiral. One section will introduce you to a specific concept with a handful of other concepts and then a later section will return to that initial concept while discussing other related concepts. This material will continue to be presented using a spiraling method, linking the major grammatical concepts of this and the next four chapters. The grammatical decisions you will make at the end of this chapter focus on how much grammatical information is packaged within a single word unit and how constituents beyond the subject, object, and verb are typically ordered in clauses.

This chapter explores the transformative role of knowledge and technology in Europe’s economic history, with a special focus on the Industrial Revolution. It examines how the transfer of scientific and technological knowledge contributed to economic growth and convergence between European countries. The chapter highlights the role of education, institutional frameworks and innovation in facilitating the diffusion of technology across borders. It also considers the factors that limited convergence, such as disparities in institutional and educational development. By tracing the evolution of technological and scientific advancements, the chapter provides insight into the processes that allowed Europe to lead global economic development during the Industrial Revolution and beyond.

This chapter explores the globalization of factor markets, particularly focusing on capital and labour, and how international monetary regimes have influenced these markets throughout European history. It discusses the evolution of capital markets and the role of different monetary systems, such as the gold standard and Bretton Woods, in facilitating cross-border capital mobility. The chapter also examines the impact of migration on labour markets, exploring how the movement of people has shaped economic outcomes in Europe. It highlights the benefits of globalization, such as increased efficiency and economic integration, while also acknowledging the challenges, including inequality and labour market disruptions.

This chapter examines the historical evolution of trade and globalization in Europe, focusing on the forces that have shaped trade patterns over time. It explores the impact of technological advancements, such as improvements in transportation and communication, as well as the influence of political decisions on trade policy, including cycles of protectionism and free trade. The chapter also discusses the economic benefits and challenges of globalization, analysing how trade has contributed to economic growth while also creating winners and losers within and between countries. The chapter argues that while globalization has generally increased economic efficiency, its effects have been unevenly distributed.

This chapter introduces strategies for building new words from existing pieces in the language. The first section introduces the concept of lexical gaps, some of which may be filled by expanding the lexicon using word-formation processes. The second and third sections discuss the two most common word-formation processes, compounding and derivation. The fourth section introduces conversion and semantic extension, which are methods for expanding a lexicon without creating new word forms. The chapter ends with a discussion on borrowing (though borrowing will not be appropriate for every conlang). By the end of this chapter, you will expand the vocabulary of your conlang to include words that have been derived and/or compounded and will consider how you might expand the definitions of existing words to include new meanings.

This chapter begins the focus on grammar, which includes all the information (or “rules”) necessary to generate new, meaningful utterances in a language. The basic introduction provided in this chapter provides the foundation you will need for all the upcoming chapters. The first and second sections introduce major concepts like grammatical form, grammatical function, word order, and headedness. The third section provides a sample walkthrough of how to work with linguistic data sets to analyze a language’s grammatical patterns, a skill that is useful for conlangers to develop a stronger understanding of grammatical structures. The fourth section models the decision-making process you will follow as you make initial decisions about your conlang’s grammar.

Verbs are typically the most grammatically complicated and diverse constituents within any clause structure. The information presented in this chapter is not intended to be an exhaustive resource; rather, my goal is to introduce foundational concepts that can support your own research of additional features. The first section introduces tense and aspect, two key types of inflections that occur with verbs, and mood and evidential marking are introduced in the second section. The third section explores negation strategies and auxiliary verbs, while the fourth dives into valency-changing inflections, including the passive voice. By the end of this chapter, you will have made decisions about marking verbs in clause structures and will be able to translate basic clauses into your language.