Re: Are conlangs fictional?

 --- Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen:
> > How much more fictional could they actually be?
> You see? Confusion on terms. What do you mean in
> this case by "fictional"?
>
> It seems that people are giving two different
> meanings to the word "fictional": "used in the
> context of a fiction (which doesn't mean it cannot
> exist outside of this context)" or "existing only in
> the context of a fiction (meaning that apart from
> what we learn of it in the fiction, there's nothing
> else)", and argue because they take different
> meanings as primary.
>
> Christophe.
Zark! It seems you have almost convinced me! You are
absolutely right, of course, it's just a matter of
definition.

But it still feels wrong somehow.

In the first case: if Einstein is mentioned in a
story, this definitely doesn't make him fictional.
While fictional Prof. Sickbock and Dr. Lupardi appear
only in stories and thus are fictional.
However, if one of those fictional bad guys suddenly
appears on paintings or in other stories by other
artists, they remain fictional. I could make a drawing
of them, but it won't make them more real. Even if
they were conceived by their authors much earlier, and
even if those authors had an entire world in mind in
which they would appear, they would still be
fictional.

In the second case fictionality means, that
something's existence if limited to the book (or
painting or whatever) were it appears. If you apply
this criterium to languages, is would mean that the
only fictional languages are those that exist only
within the limits of a book or fictional setting
(Hergé's Syldavian would be a nice example of this),
languages that in most cases have nothing but a name.
But what about OUR languages, most of which are more
than just a name and a few sentences?

Literature can be divided into fiction and
non-fiction. The latter tells stories that have really
happened and discusses their background, while fiction
is made up by the author. This division could be very
well applied to languages as well: non-fictional
languages are those language that exist or have
existed, fictional languages are those made up by
somebody (no matter what it is used for).
This works better than comparing languages to visual
art, music (is there "fictional" music?), spaceships,
or parrots.

Yours,
Jan



=====
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought,
wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that
happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great
comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J.
Michael Straczynski

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