Re: Conlang theses - meta

Sai wrote:
<<
"Simple" question:

Do you think one could do a conlang-related Masters' or PhD thesis?
Where? What degree? How would you deal with the probable (negative)
academia reaction?
 >>

Simpler answer: Yes.

Qualifying remarks: If you're interested in second language
acquisition, you can run experiments on L1 speakers of Esperanto.
Why?  Primarily because it's been done before.  A lot of work
has been done to show that late learners of a language have
trouble with inflectional morphology.  One study examined
the use of the accusative /-n/ in Esperanto.  The study was
done on a set of parents, each of whom were L2 learners of
Esperanto, and on their children, each of whom were L1
learners of Esperanto.  The study showed that the children used
the accusative /-n/ more consistently than their parents.  This
is supposedly evidence for poverty of the stimulus, because
the parents fail to master what the children master, even though
the children are learning Esperanto from the parents (and a
limited group of friends and relatives).

So, that's related to conlanging.

Probably not what you meant, though.

Essentially, though, the answer is "yes" iff the conlanging aspect
is tangential, and directly related to a core issue.  So, for example,
a grad. student in our department (UCSD) ran a computer neural
net simulation, where he made up some languages for the computer
to learn.  When I say "made up", the language consisted of 100
verbs, and 300 nouns, plus suffixes.  These verbs and nouns had
no meanings, of course, but they did have made up phonological
forms.  The point of the experiment was to see if a computer
could learn given word orders (plus or minus case marking) more
easily.  The results were rather interesting, actually.  Computers
learn SO languages much easier than OS languages.  But SOV
without case marking is almost impossible.

So if you come up with an experiment to test a hypothesis
that's very much a part of what's being studied, and can work
in a created language *somehow*, chances are you'll probably
be allowed to go forth with it and some universities.

The question is: What did you have in mind?  And if you have
something specific in mind, then the thing to do is to ask people
in linguistics departments in different places.  Just be prepared
for a lot of negative and incredulous responses.

-David
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"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
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