Re: Concosmic Conlocation (was; Re; Back!)

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, J. Barefoot wrote:

> On related note (because I personnally don't know where this middle ground
> may lie), how do you (pl.) justify having humans on another planet speaking
> your conlang?  I, too, have been unsatisfied with these options; the best
> seems a distant planet, but I don't like outrageously violating the human
> "innate grammar" / "universal grammar" / "typological universals" or
> whatever you want to call it, and separate evolution of human stock seems
> farfetched. I recall that the Yisians, who lived on the distant world
> Okainai, orbiting a star whose name I forget, were mostly human-looking, but
> they were descended from kidnapped early humans who had been the victims of
> genetic experimentation by a more advanced race. Lame, I know. It's the
> "poor man's science fiction" approach. Sigh. I know someone out there has
> come up with something better...
>
        This is exactly the problem I have with the speakers of my
conlang.  It's already unlikely enough that there is another planet out
there somewhere exactly like Earth and even more unlikely that a
life-form exactly like humans evolved on such a planet.  At the same
time, although the Movari probably are human, many of the beings
that also inhabit their world (e.g., the "deathless" and the lansokari)
aren't, and probably aren't of an Earth origin at all.  Furthermore, the
physical geography of their world is significantly different from
Earth's, and neither I nor the Movari want to deal with the inhabitants
of the "real" world.
        However, I think I have a solution, at least for my
purposes.  Since my fictional world was made primarily for
story-telling, I think that I'll let the scientific details of the world
remain undefined unless they are pertinent to the story that is being
told.  This is the way that Tolkien did it, at least, and if it's good
enough for him, it's good enough for me. :)

Later,
Adam
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             myth@inquo.net |
http://www.inquo.net/~myth/ |
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