What is a conlang? (Was: Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?)

On Tue, Apr 22, 2003 at 06:58:46PM +0200, daniel andreasson wrote:
[snip]
> Reading the replies to Andrew in this thread is very enlightening
> as to conlanging in general, what drives us, what motivates us
> as conlangers. What is conlanging? What is its inner spirit? How
> do people on this list feel about conlanging? Why are we conlanging?
> What is a conlang?
[snip]

A conlang is simply a constructed language, one built deliberately by one
or possibly more person(s), as opposed to a natural language, which arose
spontaneously. This is, by necessity, an imprecise definition; I have
heard people who claim that Indonesian or Tagalog are actually conlangs
and not real natlangs. Where to draw the line between the creative
invention and adaptation (or mutilation) of words and grammatical
constructs in a pidgin or creole or even through the course of natural
change in a natlang, and a conlang created by calculated over-arching
design, is not an easy question.

So for my purposes, I will stick with my imprecise definition, that a
conlang is a language constructed deliberately, rather than arising more
or less spontaneously from a culture or society.

Having said that, I consider conlangs as being subdivided into two main
categories, as I've already briefly touched on in my (more tongue-in-cheek
than upset) response to Andrew. These are the auxlangs, which are intended
for use as an international vehicle of communication, etc., and the
artlangs, which are created just for artistic purposes with no intent to
be widely used by real people. Of course, this is also imprecise; one
*could* argue that some conlangs do not fall in either category. But
that's OK, we're not talking about mathematics here, we don't need to
cover all cases.

Now personally, I do not really care about the intent of a particular
conlang; I think the world already has enough natlangs to suit its
communicational needs, we don't need more. (Besides, language is the least
of the problems with human communication. [1]) Like Dirk, I am mainly
interested in the linguistic aspects of conlangs, and in particular, the
aesthetic beauty of it. Dirk is interested in phonologies, how sounds
interact with each other; I am interested in grammar and how different
grammars behave differently.

Some painters paint because they need to make a living; others because
they just want to. An ex-coworker of mine left her high-paying position in
the company for art school, definitely not for financial or practical
reasons---she just loves art. As far as conlangs are concerned, I admire
them as linguistic masterpieces rather than as power tools.

For this reason, I am definitely an artlanger. There is no need for
Ebisedian to exist, in a pragmatic sense. An eccentric language with a
very unusual grammar---why would anyone want to spend the energy to learn
something that difficult? The only reason it exists is because I have a
conworld which needs its own unique language to be complete. And why the
conworld? I don't know. That's like asking Monet, why paint? Or, to
(ab)use Andrew's analogy, why Linux, when there is already Solaris and
Windows? (And good ole, honest-to-goodness MacOS?) Today, Linux has become
a very useful tool; but that was not the reason Linus started it in the
first place. If he had considered the usefulness of writing a Unix clone
back then, there would probably be no such thing as Linux today. [2]

And lest anyone misunderstand, and think that I am only interested in
trivial 'toylangs', I think it is more analogous to theoretical
mathematics. Just ask any number theorist why they're in that field. It's
definitely not because they're trying to solve a real-world problem. It's
because they just love numbers, and they love the beauty of mathematical
constructions. And mathematics is by no means trivial. Some applications
come out of it once in a while; but that's not the reason the
mathematicians are doing it. Similarly, artlangs (or any conlang for that
matter) can grow to become a non-trivial tapestry of comparable complexity
and utility to natlangs. Whether they are actually used by anyone other
than the conlanger(s) is of course another question, which to me is
irrelevent.


[1] I left out this train of thought in the paragrph because I'm not
really that interested in it, and because it has the potential of yet
another flamewar. But IMNSHO, communication problems arise not because of
language, but because of different thinking. People speak differently
because they think differently, not the other way round. Unifying language
without resolving differences of thought is curing cancer with Tylenol.

[2] Just in case there is any doubt about it: I am an active developer in
the Linux community, and there has been no other OS on my home desktop for
at least 4 years. Just in case some people get it in their heads to accuse
me of maligning it.


T

--
Philosophy: how to make a career out of daydreaming.

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