Re: [Conlangs-Conf] Conference Overview

David J. Peterson wrote:
>Incidentally, has anyone else who attended written up anything
>yet?
>=========================================================================
Hi David.  There's a ZBB thread here about the conference which includes my
own description (not nearly as detailed and eloquent as yours):
http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?t=16417&start=0

I present my post from that thread here for convenience' sake:

                         *****
Yeah, we all had a grand time. Hats off to Sai for pulling it all together.
We had our own rooftop penthouse with private terrace and stained glass
windows, some sort of part-time non-denominational chapel of sorts, which
gave the conference a nice sacrosanct sort of air. Sai was dressed in full
samurai drag and made introductory remarks while everyone stuffed bagels and
croissants into their gaping maws. Then Sally Caves from the Conlang list
got things going (did you know she invented the character of Reginald
Barclay on Star Trek?) with a witty-but-profound commentary on our art from
both a historical and contemporary perspective, which left everyone proud to
be a practitioner of the Ever-Less-Secret Vice.

John Clifford (a professor in St. Louis, Missouri) spoke next about
languages that attempt to reduce everything down to semantic primes. It was
funny because he would first start by discussing each system (such as
Weilgart's aUi language with only 31 semantic roots) as if he admired it and
like it was brilliant, then slowly start showing how the whole thing falls
apart and doesn't work. He went on to discuss Anna Wierzbicka's work with
the Natural Semantic Metalanguage and also talked briefly about Toki Pona.
He is a Loglan/Lojban expert but I found interesting some of his
non-conference remarks at dinner when he said how ironic it was that the
purpose of Loglan's creation had been to create a language that would test
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, but that Loglan and Lojban could not be worse
candidates for such a goal because they were based totally on Western logic.

Jeff Burke was supposed to speak next but didn't show (I hope everything's
alright, Jeff?)

I then gave my talk which was essentially an abbreviated reworking of my
Cognitive Linguistics thread here.

Lunch was catered out on the terrace where lively discussions were had by
all. Someone actually demanded I give some readings in Ithkuil (I brought
the paper version of my grammar with me) to see if I could actually
pronounce all those ejective affricates. Fortunately I rose to the challenge
(thank god I wasn't drunk!)

After lunch, Sai spoke about his ideas on a 2-D non-linear writing system
which he seems to define more by what it isn't than what it is....

Doug Ball (a PhD candidate in linguistics at Stanford and former student of
Sally Caves in Rochester NY) spoke on linear syntactical movements in
various natural languages which, though technical, is an important topic in
designing nat-lang style conlangs for increased realism.

David Peterson from UCSD and member of the Conlang list gave an interesting
presentation (peppered with amusing quips and witty side remarks) on how
traditional morpheme-based grammatical analysis is illogical and explained
and illustrated a lexical-based alternative in which instead of deciding on
individual morphemes for a conlang (e.g., my plural suffix is -X, my
inceptive prefix is -Y, my 3rd-person singular present subjunctive affix is
-Z), you should create whole paradigms for a category (e.g., drawing out a
grid or table for your case+number) and "filling in the cells" with whole
words. So that forms such as "cats" are not analyzed as "cat" + plural "s",
but rather "cats" is analyzed as a unified gestalt representing the
nominative plural form of the root CAT. (By the way, this is were the whole
"-s are cool" exchange took place.)

Matt Pearson then gave what for me personally was the most interesting talk,
an analysis of how case-marking in natural languages does "double duty" as
indicators of things other than case relations. Using these patterns from
natural languages, he then showed how his own experiments with case-marking
in his conlang Tokana had evolved as a natural progression toward areas
apparently NOT found in natural languages (such as using Dative case to mark
objects of telic, i.e., endpoint-oriented) acts or events). I found his work
fascinating because it was aliving embodiment of the sorts of metaphorical
extension of categories and schemas that cognitive linguistics talks about,
which he in fact acknowledged himself in his talk. It is the best example I
can recall seeing of how it is possible to create novel structures in a
nat-lang style conlang while still remaining naturalistic.

That's the conference in a nutshell. It was surreal to be in the same room
with so many people who INVENT LANGUAGES FOR GODSAKES!!! Especially after
toiling for so many years in my own dark little room, curled up with pencil
and notebook muttering geminated fricatives to myself, thinking that I must
be one of about three people in the world besides Tolkien weird enough to do
this. It was awsome!

Sai issued a challenge for someone to organize the next conference. I think
it's only fair that we have an East Coast venue (say the NY or New England
area) in order to get our east-coast contingent involved (and maybe even a
few of our British and Frankish friends?), eh?

--John Q.