Re: Conlang paper

Due to a request, I have made a MS Word version of the paper available as
well.

 

http://www.jonathanlipps.com/enaselvai/conlang.doc

 

Jonathan

 

  _____  

From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU] On
Behalf Of Jonathan Lipps
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 11:30 AM
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Subject: [CONLANG] Conlang paper

 

Hi everyone,

 

I had to do a final paper / presentation for a class I’m taking this
quarter, and I chose to do it on conlangs. I did the presentation last week
(it went well—people seemed to get a kick out of the Babel texts for a few
conlangs), but I just put together the paper, which I pretentiously titled
“An Introduction to Constructed Languages”, and so I thought I would share
it for anyone who is interested in reading it, making comments on it, or
complaining about it. (At this point I’ve already turned it in so criticism
and review is more for me than my grade, but I chose the topic and wrote the
paper in the first place so that I might have something to present to the
conlang community).

 

As you will note if you read it, most of it is simply my idea of what a
conlang is and why I think conlangs are worth having around. I try to pull
in more or less everything I’ve learned about the craft over the past 8 or 9
years, but it is certainly possible or likely that many of the things I
state factually are in reality erroneous. I’d be much obliged to anyone who
would take the time to correct these sorts of errors, as ultimately I’d like
to have the paper up on the website for my conlang when it is finished and
I’d like it to have been “peer-reviewed” beforehand. Ha.

 

Lastly, I’m also interested in general thoughts about the “project” I engage
in the paper. If particular sins of omission or commission strike you, by
all means let me know. There may even be grist enough to discuss certain
issues on the conlang list in an OT way, particularly in my short section on
linguistics (since I’m not a linguist and am only hoping my professor
doesn’t realize this).  I am a philosopher, though, so you will all enjoy
the highbrow argument-speak which I have been trained to use, even in
day-to-day conversation. I tried to tone it down some for this paper, but
I’m not sure it worked.

 

The article is in PDF form, at
http://www.jonathanlipps.com/enaselvai/conlang.pdf - let me know if you’d
like it in another form. Oh yeah, it’s in English. Sorry!

 

Seúlon séleth,

-Jonathan