Re: Are conlangs fictional?
| From: | Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, March 23, 2002, 17:56 |
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Christoph Grandsire wrote:
>I guess the arguments in the Elfling list come from a confusion of those
>two
>meanings. Probably the tenants of the two views are both right, they just
>take "fictional" with a different meaning.
>
>So in short, if "fictional" means: to be used in a fictional setting, than
>Tolkien's languages are fictional. But if "fictional" means: without any
>reality outside of a fiction (the common meaning), then no, Tolkien's
>languages
>are not fictional. They may not be complete, we may lack information on
>them,
>but they can still be used to compose poems and the like, not only by
>Tolkien
>but also by other people, and for this reason are as real as can be.
Since, I wrote my original mail, said discussion as largely degenerated into
a discussion of the meaning of the word "fictional". One of my honoured
opponents cited a web dictionary that gave "related to litterary fiction" as
one of the meanigns of "fictional". Tolkien's languages, and many other
conlangers' are undoubtly related to litterary fiction, and thus "fictional"
in this meaning. Still, he seems to claim that Tolkien's languages are
fictional in the same sense as his stories, a few I still cannot understand.
Andreas
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