Re: an accidental conlang

This was supposed to go out last night, but I had exceeded my limit, and it
was bounced.  :(



> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gary Shannon" <fiziwig@...>
>
> Once upon a time about 30 years ago when I was in grad
> school (engineering) a good friend of mine (from the
> philosophy dept.) and I went on a camping trip for a
> week.  Our original intention was to get isolated from
> all civilization for a week and to communicate without
> using any language we already knew.  If we needed a
> word for something we would make it up and point at an
> object or pantomime an action to get the meaning
>  across.  Our hope was that at the end of the week in
>  the wilderness we would have invented some kind of
> minimal conlang.
>
Thirty years ago, huh?  I was hiding my conlanging, then.  Didn't even know
it was "conlanging."
>
> What we ended up with was far too primative to be
> called a language.  It involved more point-and-grunt
> than anything else, and we certainly couldn't discuss
> any lofty philosophical notions in our
> invented "language".
>
I'm glad you did this before The Blair Witch Project came out.  It might
have been difficult to talk about the mysterious piles of rocks, the noises
at night, the bundle with tooth or finger in it, that stupid compass.

> But ever since then I have been intrigued by the idea
> of creating a conlang in exactly the opposite way
> conlangs are usually created.  After all, natlangs
> were all created, as needed, by people who knew
> nothing whatsoever about formal linguistics.  Whatever
> worked to communicate an idea was kept and refined by
> usage, and hatever was difficult, confusing, or just
> didn't work was discarded.
>
> So the idea that I've had in the back of my mind is a
> collaborative conlang created by a group of people,
> but without any "planning" whatsoever.  Gramatical
> ideas are NOT discussed by the collaborators.
> Vocabulary is NOT discussed by the collaborators.
> Instead the collaboration happens by way of discussing
> other topics of interest EXCLUSIVELY in the newly
> developing language itself.
What you describe below sounds absolutely intriguing, Gary, but also
completely absorbing.  I'd love to be part of such an experiment, but worry
about the time committment.  Unless, of course, this is purely "theory."

> A minimal seed a a few hundred words would be
> generated entirely at random, but no grammatical rules
> whatsoever would be laid down.  There would be NO
> central authority to adjudicate disputes or pass
> judgement on what is or is not acceptable usage.
>
Pardon my failing memory (and failing it is), but who posted the website for
the minimal number of words needed for "adequacy" in a language?  It's on my
other computer, and I'm suffering from too much carpal tunnel syndrome to
get up and go in the other room, not to mention senioritis.  It would be
nice to be reminded of it, and have a bookmark for it.

> Collaborators would use the minimum vocabulary in any
> manner they saw fit.  As time went on a consensus
> would emerge, not by arguing the merits of the
> different grammatical approaches, but by watching to
> see which grammatical structuires emerged as the most
> popular ones in articles written about home gardening,
> photography, or stamp collecting.
>
> Not until the language had evolved a reasonably
> consistent consensus grammar and vocabulary would
> actual discussion of grammatical points be permitted.
> Even then, such discussions would be descriptive, not
> proscriptive.  The grammar and vocabulary of
> this "organic" conlang would never be changed by
> decree.  They would change only when popular writers
> of the language itself set the examples that were
> adopted by the community at large.
>
> To avoid biasing the language toward any one
> grammatical system the collaborators would have to
> come from diverse liguistic backgrounds. Otherwise
> the new language would end up being a relexification
> of English, or whatever the majority language was
> among the collaborators.
Well, since the majority of us on this list are native English speakers,
there might be a lot of jockeying for this position! :)

> In fact, it would very interesting to observe a small
> group of five or six people with no single language in
> common work out a system of communication based on
> a "seed" vocabulary of a few hundred random invented
> words not taken from any of their native languages.
> Kind of like growing a pidgin under greenhouse
> conditions.
I like that... pidgin as exotic plant.

>  Have the group meet a couple evenings
> a week and "chat" in their own unique evolving
> language.
Hmmm.  That requires propinquity.

> Or for that matter, have them get together in an
> Internet forum were the rule is that NO natlang or
> pre-existing conlang would be permitted in any post
> on that forum.
Better.

> That would be an intersting way to grow a conlang.
> Indeed!  Where's the fertilizer?
Sally