promiscuity & fidelity (was: Re: The philosophical language fallacy (was Re: Evanescence of information (was Re: Going NOMAIL: Honeymoon))

Rick Harrison, On 05/07/2008 00:48:
> The last thing I need is more langs anyway. I often wish I could be
> faithful to a single conlang but I have a wandering eye.
Have any of the surveys of conlangers conducted on this list over the years looked
at the quantity and longevity of our conlangs? Among us, there are faithful
monogamists, who work on the one language always. There are faithful
polygamists, who espouse many languages and never abandon any of them. There
are fickle polygamists, who espouse many and abandon many. And perhaps there
are (tho I can't think of an example) fickle monogamists, who work on one
language at a time but do sometimes abandon one language for another-- ah yes,
Matt Pearson would be an example. Among the polygamists we could perhaps
distinguish oligogamists, such as Tolkien and Dirk Elzinga, from the
pampolygamists, such as Herman Miller. But do we have any idea what proportions
of our number fall into which category? Would anybody care to set up an online
survey to enquire?

I am a faithful monogamist, tho were I an artlanger rather than the engelanger I
actually am, I might temperamentally tend towards a little faithful oligogamy.
I confess I view my conlang confreres' fickleness and pampolygamy with scant
sympathy and perhaps even occasionally a slight tincture of moral outrage...

--And.

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