Re: Difficult language ideas

On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 10:03:06AM -0400, Leigh Richards wrote:
> Hi all, I'm Leigh. I've lurked for a while, but I haven't posted
> before.
Welcome!


> I've toyed with a few conlangs over the years, and now I'm
> brainstorming on a language for a conworld of mine.
Cool.


> Design goals:
> 1. As unambiguous as possible, especially in full sentences; it's easy
> to clarify any ambiguities.
This is rather difficult to do and still be naturalistic (providing
that's a goal, of course). You could make things such that sentences may
sometimes be ambiguous, but there is always a way to completely
disambiguate (e.g., by including optional specifiers that clarify the
meaning, where such specifiers may sound verbose or burdensome when the
audience already knows enough context to infer the right meaning.)


> 2. Hard to learn, and easy to say the wrong thing. Small and subtle
> changes have a large impact on the meaning, and it's unpredictable in
> that guessing something new from what you already know will rarely
> work.
>
> It is a status language of sorts and effectively a conlang itself, so
> it isn't meant to be simple or naturalistic. It can change, but it
> takes a concerted effort by the speakers because outside forces keep
> it from changing otherwise.
Ah, I see. Sorta like an official prescribed language rather than a more
spontaneous one?

As for small changes having large impact on the meaning, maybe introduce
a lot of idioms and idiosyncrasies which requires a lot of cultural
background to correctly infer the meaning of?

A native speaker please correct me if I'm wrong, but Russian has some
expressions that are not easily inferred (you have to learn them
directly)---at least for an English speaker. E.g., there is no verb 'to
have'; instead you say 'with me is ...' (У меня есть ...); and you don't
say 'I like X', but 'X pleases me' (X нравиться мне); and 'I need X' is
stated as 'X is necessary to me' (X нужен мне), etc.. Of course, these
examples are easily rationalized, but in your conlang, you could have a
lot of calcified expressions that no longer make any sense when taken at
face value. The last expression in Russian (X нужен мне) also has a
variant where the 1st person pronoun is nominative, but it sounds
stilted. You could make your conlang such that the "straightforward" way
of saying something sounds stilted, or just plain odd, to a native
speaker.

Other examples in Russian include the verb 'to learn' (учить), which can
mean *either* 'learn' or 'teach', depending on the cases of the argument
NP's.


> I don't know a lot about the normal languages of the area, but I think
> they'll be similar to the Andean languages.
>
> I have a few ideas, but my knowledge of linguistics is fairly limited.
> So I'd like your input.
What are some of the ideas you have? It'll be fun to discuss them.


> Suggestions? Things to include? Things to avoid?
[...]

What about an unusual syntax/typology that is internally consistent but
very strange relative to known natlang typologies? Such as...

<shameless plug>
... the Tatari Faran case system, which has no concept of subject or
object, but marks nouns with one of three cases according to semantic
relationship with the verb:
	http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/fara/cases.html
</shameless plug>

As for things to avoid... this depends on your tastes (and goals),
really. I personally dislike languages where every syllable is assigned
a meaning---using this method it's very easy to make an extremely
difficult language (e.g., every syllable in a sentence completely
changes the meaning of all subsequent syllables, so that, for example,
'zapukelsu' could mean 'I like the little dog' but 'zepukelsu' means
'There will be a thunderstorm tomorrow'). The problem with this is that
a little background noise completely annuls any consistency in
communication.

A better approach, IMHO, is to introduce a lot of idiosyncratic
expressions that must be learned on a case-by-case basis, and form an
essential part of everyday language (so that unless you learn all the
weird exceptions you have no chance to communicate effectively). You
could even have (con-)historical reasons for these things, to make it
more 'plausible': say for example that the correct way to say 'I am
hungry' is something like 'children in Taza are starving', because some
major historical event makes the literal expression 'I am hungry' very
rude.


T

--
They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work. -- Russian saying

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