Testnyelv

Testnyelv is a constructed language used as a research and demonstration tool for testing linguistic theory and language processing systems. It aims to be regular and easy to analyze, helping researchers focus on methods rather than the irregularities of natural languages.

Developed by researchers in computational linguistics, it serves as a language-agnostic testbed for grammar, morphology, and parsing algorithms. It is not tied to any culture and is intended solely for experimental use, with emphasis on transparency and reproducibility.

Phonology and writing are regular, with a small, non-tonal sound system and a Latin-based alphabet. Morphology is mainly analytic with productive affixes for tense, aspect, and case. Nouns may bear case markers; verbs carry tense or aspect markers; adjectives are attributive. The default word order is SVO, but morphology helps indicate relations.

The lexicon is neutral and expandable, with explicit glossing in documentation.

Testnyelv is used in academic settings to test NLP pipelines, machine translation prototypes, and language-education tools. Common resources include a reference grammar, starter lexicon, example corpora, and open-source parsers.

Status: it remains primarily a research and teaching tool.

See also: constructed language, experimental language, language testing.