Re: a 12th century conlang

Herman Miller wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Mar 1999 20:50:36 -0800, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> wrote:
>
> >Yes indeed.  I mentioned her in my talk about all us guys, theone I gave in
> >Florida a few days ago.  She, or someone else,
> >apparently collected a list of nouns, 1011 of them, in something
> >called the _Lingua Ignota_.    These range  from God
> >and His angels to the lowly cricket.
>
> Mizarian mice, on the other hand, revere crickets. Of course, in Disney's
> rendition of _Pinocchio_, the distinction between "angel" and "cricket" is
> somewhat blurred.
That's quite true.  I even made up a cricket song, back when I was composing
things on my electronic piano (no sampler though, no way to record).  Crickets
are divine in Teonaht mythology too.

> >in _Exemplaria_ 3.2 October (1991): 267-298.   I critiqued
> >his "generalizations" about invented languages; he's too ready
> >to modify his findings with words like "always" and "never":  ex.
> >"Every imaginary language is a _bricolage_."
>
> Hmm, I can't find that word in my French dictionary, which probably means I
> need a better one. What does he mean by "bricolage"?
  It's a real trendy word nowadays in literary criticism.  It appears to mean a
mish mash of things, an eclectic collection, the kind of stuff you find on a
collectors shelf, much of it "kitsh."  Don't ask me why everybody and his
uncle's cousin in literary theory just has to jump at the word and replicate it
to the point of banality.  At any rate, invented languages are collections of
the parts of real languages.  It's supposed to show that he thinks of invented
languages as doing violence to real languages, replicating them by taking them
apart,
or some such thing.  He talks about the "impoverishment" of natural languages
and other such nonsense..

Sally