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Re: proposed conlang database

From:Garrett Jones <alkaline@...>
Date:Thursday, March 14, 2002, 22:35
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.
>2. Current language status: >current development status: >usable within cultural context >estimated fluent speakers: >on Earth, none, due to unpredictable allophonic changes >'there', maybe 10,000 second language speakers >ADDED:estimated fluent readers: >on Earth, one >'there', maybe 30,000 second language readers >estimated familiar speakers: >on Earth, none >'there', maybe 40,000 second language speakers >ADDED:estimated familiar readers: >on Earth, one >'there', maybe 120,000 second language readers
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 i added "Primary" to the section's name to emphasize the fact that it means the source of most of the vocabulary, not necessarily all of it. Esperanto, for example, is mostly a blend of natural languages, but it has a few a priori words (the ki- question words). I removed the "blend of *unrelated* natural languages" because i didn't see a need for distinguishing between related and unrelated, but i added "blend of *artificial* languages". 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).
>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.
>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 -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. see the full latest version here: http://conlang.alkaline.org