Re: the Maligned Art

On Sat, 7 Nov 1998, David G. Durand wrote:

> This is arguable (though I agree with you). It's arguable for the reasons
> Sally notes in her response to you -- there are many differences between
> artificial and "natural" languages: at least the "authorship" of conlangs
> is much smaller, the lack of an active speaker base (typically), etc.
>
> However, she missed your point, which I'll venture to re-state.
Well, thanks, David, for getting us back on track here in a series of
missed points; it wasn't so much that I missed Simon's point, as that I
ignored it in order to grumble at him churlishly about how he'd missed MY
point.  And ME such a champion of tolerance!  Yry myeebish... (me all
blushing).  Philosophically, he expressed an idea I'm in favor of
supporting, that languages are languages whether invented or arrived at
"naturally";  argumentatively, he missed what it was I was arguing against
in that last post: that we are entitled to call our "fictional" languages
languages within the context of this listserv.  But you're right.  This is
an important and deep issue, what fundamentally constitutes a language,
and not to be glossed over in the heat of the fracas.

> We've
> entered the realm of philosophy here, and you are taking the point of view
> that a language is an abstract object, or concept, or mental system,
> (depending on your other philosophical beliefs) -- something that exists
> independent of it's speakers, etc. You, and I, (and maybe Matt) think of
> the formal properties of a language: the completeness of its semantics --
> the grammatical features required to to compose required new semantics from
> the building blocks determined by the author, and so on.
>
> This is probably the sense of "language" that makes the most sense for me.
>
And for me, David.  But I also put a lot of stock in the spoken quality of
a language.  I want to hear that constructed language of mine, I want to
hear yours, and Matt's.  As the technology becomes more available, I hope
that more of us will break out of our shyness and share the physical
qualities of our languages with each other.

Thanks for the memorable words.  Share your languages. Speaking of which,
I've thrown a few more words up on the Teonaht-English site.  Some of you
might have noted the little untranslated song I shot up as an experiment;
it's sung by my creations as a protest for not getting their language
done.  Work is tedious, and very headache-ful.

Sally
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Sally Caves
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teoeng.html
htto://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teoreal.html


Li fetil'aiba, dam hoja-le uen.
volwin ly, vul inua aiba bronib.

This leaf, the wind takes her.
She's old, and born this year.
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