Re: Difficult language ideas

On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 05:32:04PM -0400, Leigh Richards wrote:
[...]
> On 9/19/06, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> wrote:
> >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?
>
> Hmm. That gives me an idea. It isn't a language likely to develop many
> idioms, but it could very well have taken idioms from various
> languages throughout the years and turned them to its own purposes. I
> like that.
OK. But based on what you wrote, it seems that the speakers of your
language are out to deliberately obfuscate their speech (or at least
raise the barrier to learning as much as they can). I think the idioms
idea is still applicable: they can take advantage of experiences or
knowledge privy to the "in-crowd", even if they don't have a rich
cultural heritage as such---e.g., if they are being persecuted, there
may be stories or rumors passed between them, with a mutual
understanding on the "actual" significance of the events (as interpreted
by one of their own), such that instead of describing something
explicitly, they refer to said events in some way that seems meaningless
or even completely the opposite to the outsider.

You could even turn the names of such events into verbs or adjectives,
or something else (this is actually attested in natlangs). An outsider
would recognize the reference to the event, but have no idea what it
might denote when used in that way.


[...]
> >What are some of the ideas you have? It'll be fun to discuss them.
>
> I'm still in the brainstorming phase, and my ideas have been pretty
> general so far.
>
> As far as phonology, there will be sounds unused and/or non-phonemic
> in the normal languages, maybe some complex rules for sandhi, possibly
> overlapping to an extent. I haven't thought it out, but there's
> something about Aymara's vowel elision that wants me to work it in in
> a non-intuitive way.
Complex sandhi can significantly obfuscate a language to non-native
speakers. Even better if the result of the sandhi looks superficially
the same as another completely unrelated utterance. E.g., off the top of
my head, ze + bafa + vor -> zi bofa mor, but 'zi', 'bofa', and 'mor' are
themselves actual words with meanings completely unrelated to the first
phrase (when they are intended, the sandhi turns them into something
else, like 'ze mofa bor').


[...]
> There will probably be deliberate obfuscations too. They don't want
> people to know what they're saying unless they already know the
> language. Idioms translated literally from other languages will work
> well here. Perhaps certain things that always depend on previous
> context, and others that can never do so.
Context is a powerful tool for obfuscation, when used correctly. :-) The
use of idioms and such can be understood as the sharing of a large
amount of static context. Additional obfuscation can come about by also
taking advantage of dynamic context. Yet another example off the top of
my head: say there are two adjectives, mara and tyona, that mean exactly
the same thing, except that mara implies a congenial tone and tyona
implies a hostile tone, and this implication causes another word in
subsequent conversation, say huftan, to mean opposite things. Or, the
use of one or the other constrains the set of adjectives that can be
used in subsequent discourse, so that if I described something as
'mara', then I have to use 'huftan' later instead of 'para', which goes
with 'tyona'.  If I used the wrong word, I'd still be understood, but
would immediately stick out like a sore thumb ("Aha! He swapped his
adjectives: foreigner!").  Think of it as cross-clausal harmony, if you
will.


> On a similar note, the writing system will be deliberately ambiguous,
> and take a lot of context to even begin to understand.
[...]

Maybe even use implied context to determine what a text means: say the
mapping from language to writing is not 1-to-1, so that, given a piece
of text, it can be read in several ways, and by itself you have no way
of determining which version was intended, unless you knew something
about the speakers that most foreigners don't know. A simple natlang
example is irony: without knowing that something was meant ironically,
it could be completely misinterpreted. Now make this an integral part of
your writing, and it becomes extremely difficult to interpret to
non-natives.


T

--
Latin's a dead language, as dead as can be; it killed off all the
Romans, and now it's killing me! -- Schoolboy