Re: proposed conlang database

>Message: 2
>    Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 14:35:20 -0800
>    From: Garrett Jones <alkaline@...>
>Subject: Re: proposed conlang database
>
>http://conlang.alkaline.org
>
> >My conlang Lahabic is that world's Latin, and as such, more written and
>read
> >than spoken. And what about languages that the creators declare are
>extinct
> >reconstructions?
> >Furthermore, I am a student of the ancient languages Latin, Greek, and
> >Sanskrit, and therefore am not bothered by my lack of fluency in
> >pronunciation (vocabulary, however, does matter to me). Just because I
>have
> >trouble pronouncing a language shouldn't rule it out as a source or
>model.
>
<snip>
>I modified the "estimated * speakers" category to be labeled "estimated
>fluent users", "estimated familiar users", and "estimated fictional users".
>This category could hypothetically get really complicated if you think of
>all the possibilities, so i want to keep it under control. So, the first
>two
>categories are for real-world users and the last is for the constructed
>culture. The first two are for people to get an idea how many other people
>can converse in the language if they want to learn it themselves. The
>fictional users category is more of a conculture thing. It obviously
>wouldn't apply to auxlangs at all.
>
>I have modified the Vocabulary Source category. Here's how it looks now:
>
>A. Primary Vocabulary Source
>
>modified single natural language
>modified single artificial language
>blend of natural languages
>blend of artificial languages
>descendent of natural language
>descendent of artificial language
>a priori, categorical
>a priori, non-categorical
>mixed a posteriori/a priori
>unspeakable
<snip>
>I also
>added the descendent categories, for historical based languages and
>languages in artifical language family trees. Quenya would be an example of
>a descendant of an artificial language (descended from ancient elven,
>whatever it's called).
In that case, (Early) Lahabic (fictional) is the descendant of Gweinic
(fictional).
> >4. Language classification:
> >basic description:
>
> >language family:
> >Indo-European-like
>
>i was thinking more along the lines of the name of the fictional language
>family.
(Early) Lahabic is a member of the Gweinic Language Family, which includes
Maradic, Halnic, Qannic (Q=[N]), and Southern (all of which are sketched
very sketchily).
> >vocabulary source:
> >a priori, categorical
> >syntactic system:
> >VSO with topic fronting in interrogatives; cases: nominative, genitive,
> >dative (dative/benefactive/reflexive), locative (locative/instrumental),
> >accusative; aspects: aorist, imperfective, perfective; tenses: past,
> >present, future
>
>i added aspects & tenses to the syntactic system.
>
> >morphological system:
> >between agglutinative and declinational
> >design motivation:
> >fantasy, with historical precedents, cognates, and descendants
>
>The last thing i added is in the "current language status" section:
>
>-vocabulary size
This is a notoriously difficult number to compute. I may have 2000 words,
including every body part and tree-borne fruit or nut I could think of, but
how often would I be likely to use the word for 'walnut' or 'toenail'?
Furthermore, the agglutination in Lahabic and its 30+ prefixes are
complicating factors.
>-estimated date of useability: not necessarily when the language is frozen
>in development, but when people could learn the language and use it, and
>not
>worry about big things changing. Naturally, some languages will never be
>useable.
Well, you ('you' in general terms) _can_ write in Lahabic (although some
words are very long). As a 'classical' language, pronunciation is likely to
vary according to region, much like Mediaeval Latin.


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