Re: Hello...

On Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 02:25:49AM -0500, David Stokes wrote:
[snip]
> My name is David Stokes. I've been reading the list for a couple of
> weeks now, but this is my first official post.
Welcome! Hmm, I wish my conlang were more developed... right now I haven't
developed it enough to greet you in native tongue yet :-(

[snip]
> It is not finished, but then it sounds like conlangs are never finished.
Nope, they are never finished. They just keep getting better... :-)

> Please take a look and let me know what you think of it.
Will do, when I get the time.

> One thing I found when working on Diom is that I was too close to it. I
> repeatedly found myself paralyzed when I'd come up with something, then
> say "No, thats not right." and erase it. I was making it up so it would
> seem like I could do anything I wanted. But it felt like there was an
> already existing correct language out there and I was just trying to
> find out what it was. Does this happen to the rest of you ?
Hmm. I find that when something similar happens to me, it's mostly because
of the level of internal consistency that I wish to have in my conlang. I
don't want it to be an arbitrary hodgepodge of divergent linguistic ideas;
I want to have a deep inner consistency. Which *could* be a reason why
I've been stuck at a dead-end for the past few weeks... :-P

> So now I have decided to set Diom aside for a while and work on some
> other projects. These will give me chance to try out some other ideas.
> Then maybe when I go back to Diom I can progress a little more easily. I
> will discuss these other projects in future posts.
Hmm, good idea. Maybe I should do that too. :-)  You only see trees until
you look at the forest from outside.

> A short biographical note -- I was born and raised in Austin, Texas. I
> currently live in Bloomington, Indiana. I studied astronomy as an
> undergrad, philosophy as a grad student, then ran out of money and now
> work as unix sys admin/digital map maker. I speak Russian, German, and
> have just started teaching myself Japanese (haven't gotten very far with
> that yet). I had one intro linguistics class as an undergrad, and so may
> be a bit naive about some points of linguistic theory.
[snip]

Don't worry. The only thing close to a linguistics class I've ever had is
a 1st-year course on introductory classical Greek. I'm not a linguist, not
even by a long shot, just a computer science major who's interested in too
many things other than computer science. ;-)


T

--
2+2=4. 2*2=4. 2^2=4. Therefore, +, *, and ^ are the same operation.