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Re: an accidental conlang

From:Rachel Klippenstein <estel_telcontar@...>
Date:Friday, June 18, 2004, 18:14
Gary Shannon ha tera a:

> 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.
> 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've done something similar, though not to that extent. It's a game I used to play with my siblings - we'd decide that we wouldn't use English to communicate, and invent words and try to communicate them to each other. We never did it for more than about an hour at a time, though.
> 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.
I'd be very interested in the same thing
> 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.
> 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.
> 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. Have the group meet a couple evenings > a week and "chat" in their own unique evolving > language.
> 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.
The problem with doing it the internet way, I think, would be that it would be hard to get the initial meanings of words established, because you can't use point-and-enact methods... no, wait, that's not such a problem, because you're starting with some predefined words.
> That would be an intersting way to grow a conlang.
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Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>