ELln

ELln is a constructed language developed for linguistic research and speculative fiction. It is designed to be highly regular, with a small set of morphemes and explicit grammar rules to facilitate learning and automated parsing. The name ELln is an acronym used by its proponents, standing for Evolutionary Lexicon for Logical Narratives.

Origins and purpose: The project began in the early 2010s by a collaborative group known as the ELln Initiative. The aims were to create a language that emphasizes clear semantic relations, ease of machine interpretation, and cross-cultural narratology.

Phonology and script: ELln uses a Latin-based orthography with diacritics to indicate vowel length and tone. The phoneme inventory includes vowels a e i o u and consonants typical of European languages. Syllables are open (CV) or closed (CVN). Stress falls on the penultimate syllable. Diacritics mark vowel length rather than phonemic contrasts in many dialects, while a small set of digraphs covers liquid and affricate sounds.

Grammar: The prototype grammar is largely agglutinative. Nouns mark number and case with suffixes; verbs encode tense, aspect, mood, and evidential stance via prefixes and suffixes. Basic word order is SVO, but discourse-driven fronting allows topicalization. Determiners are independent words; adjectives follow the noun; modifiers accompany head nouns.

Lexicon and writing: Root morphemes are designed to be universal-looking yet non-specific to any single natural language. The writing system primarily uses the Latin alphabet, supplemented by optional diacritics. There are several community-maintained dictionaries and grammars, with no single official standard.

Status: ELln remains a research artifact and fiction toolkit rather than an international auxiliary language. It is used in academic experiments on machine translation and in world-building media, with multiple independent resources reflecting divergent dialects.