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Re: What defines a conlang?

From:Sai Emrys <sai@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 27, 2005, 18:04
Re ASL:

What Chris was probably referring to originally was the Abbe' Sicard's
LSF, which was French using the locally preexisting sign language's
signs. Rather like SEE, for French.

I'd say SEE and LSF are a posteriori conlangs of a sort; they're
certainly not natlangs but not entirely constructed either (since the
grammar / structure / etc is from one language, and the words [as
signed] are from another, and there's not much to it that's not from
one of the two).

LSF then migrated here to blend with homebrew sign via Gallaudet, and
thus the pidgin that Adam winced about so. :-P

And now ASL is starting to re-blend with SEE and plenty of borrowed
English fingerspellings (I've seen native Deaf-of-Deaf-parents people
using the backwards-J "ing" and the hook-s "'s" signs, eg, without
even blinking.) So I'd say it has a pretty strong conlang blend in
that mix even these days.

 - Sai