Re: My girlfriend is a conlanger!

Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Daniel:
> > (I *am* a fan of bouncing though. It just didn't seem
> > right at that moment. :)
> Are you, by any chance, short? I seem to recall you refering to yourself as
> physically small sometime or other on the list, and I'm nursing my grand
> sociological theory that says that bouncing around from joy and similar, well,
> motoric expression of feels is something primarily indulged in by people who
> are short and thin.
I'm not short, though I'm not tall either. I'm in between. 176 cm. That
would be 5'9" - 5'10". I *am* kinda slim though, weighing in at only just above
60 kg, that is ~135 pounds.

> Possibly cause they're less likely to break expensive
> stuff when doing it, perhaps because they're less likely to hit the ceiling
> with their heads, perhaps because some subconscious part of the brain believes
> that because they are small they must still be children and therefore should
> be behaving childishly.
Now that you mention it. Some of my friends like to bounce, but none
of them are above average height. None of my bigger friends are bouncy.
OTOH, we have people like Michael Jordan, who is HUGE, but still one
of the bounciest people ever. :)

> If someone points out that this is very possibly the most OT thing I've ever
> written to the list, I'll start develop a theory that relates peoples physical
> size to their conlang structure preferences. Perhaps the next poll could help
> me gather some data by asking for people's height and weight as well as some
> basic characteristics of their conlangs; basic syntax,
> accusativity/ergativity/other, presence of cases, etc.
You may have a point here. Though I think it's more of a personality
thing. I'm a bit schizo (not in the mental condition way) in that I am
both things at once. I like details, I like the whole. I want a minimalistic
grammar, I want millions of cool affixes. I have patience, I don't have
patience (my sister told me the other day: "You don't need patience,
because you understand everything so quickly anyway." :D ), I'm extrovert, I'm
introvert. (Aren't all people more or less like this?)

Wait a minute! This might explain why I love active languages so much!
They are "either or" languages! S can be marked as either A or P! Wow! :D

What are we gonna call this new law? NALF? The New Andreas's Law
of Freaks? ;) Or perhaps BEL, the Body's Effect on the Language.

I'm of average height and slim, does that make my languages slim
and average?

Piata: active, case marking only on S, no verbal agreement, no
adjectives, lots of particles, lots of TMA marking. SVO (I think).

> That sounds a wee bit defensive, doesn't it? If someone asked me what I was
> doing when conlanging on the comp and I felt like giving a more informative
> answer than "stuff", I'd say it in some matter of fact way. Say, "Developing
> the some sound changes for my fictional language". I figure that people would
> either take that as "I'm a jerk, and being around me is bad for your social
> standing", or take enough of an interest to ask further.
Well, I've tried that ("I'm working on a language") and no one really
cared, so I figured I could just say that I'm writing something. Because
I *am* writing lots of other stuff as well.

Daniel Andreasson

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