Re: Babel text evolution game

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Peter Bleackley wrote:

> I'd like to try an experiment in language evolution.
>
> I've translated the Babel text into a very simple isolating conlang. I'd
> like people to take tuns at suggesting plausible evolutionary changes, and
> reworking the text accordingly. Can anyone suggest a suitable forum for this?
>
> Pete
>
I think this looks like quite an interesting and amusing project.  I think
it would be amusing to allow branching, to build up a whole language tree
from your original proto-language.

One possible way to run this would be to allow people to propose evolutionary
steps from the language (and various daughter languages).  If there are
multiple incompatible proposals for daughters of a given language, then you
just have two different descendents.

For example,

PROTO:   aj lajk down@ts = I like donuts

Proposals:
	PROTO>A: jajk duns
	PROTO>B: melajki dodow
	B>C: dud melajtS
etc.

Then you'll end up with a nice little tree
    PROTO
     |----A
     |----B
		  |----C

I would suggest that you give a standardized format for the texts/grammars,
exemplified perhaps by your original proto-language.  Then people can just
send you their proposals in this format and you can post on some web-page or
other.

--Apollo