Re: Conlang beginnings

---Christopher Peters <alpha_leonis@...> wrote:
>
>         How do other conlangers create their languages?  Me, I'm not
exactly
> new, but still quite inexperienced in the art.  To date, I've never
> created what I would consider a "complete" conlang ... mostly I've
> played around with certain linguistic features to see where they would
> take me.  I've looked around briefly at certain nat- and conlangs I've
> had access to, studied a couple of them a bit more in-depth, and off
and
> on I read this list (mostly off ... I just came back after about a
> year's absence).
   You know, I don't know of anyone who has created a "complete"
conlang...there are always more words to be added, and I find that
most conlangers, if they don't put their language in a rusty cabinet
drawer somewhere, are always tweaking or refining the grammar. Correct
me if I'm wrong, but Tolkien never really "finished" Sindarin and
Quenya, no? I read somewhere that even in his later years, he kept
making some changes to his languages (although they were relatively
minor, so that intrepid souls can go back over his notes and
reconstruct the languages to some degree of accuracy.)
   As for myself, I have three conlang projects that are no where near
complete. Enamyn, my pride and joy, is still struggling for existance.
Espanglish (a future mix of English and Spanish) was placed in storage
when I shelved for the next couple of years the book idea that spawned
it. I will add a word or two to Cleansed English whenever the mood
strikes, but since that is a fairly difficult process, I don't get
inspired much.
   But you were asking about creation: after being on this list for
two years, the general impression I get is that people start of with
one really interesting idea; in Enamyn's case, it was noun tenses.
Then they start fleshing out the phonology, then the morphology and
syntax, throwing in a few words along the way to test sample
sentences, until they have a fairly stable structure on which to add
vocabulary. A writing system might evolve alongside the rest, or they
may just decide to use a pre-existing script. But as I am fond of
saying, there are no rules in conlanging except for the ones that you
make up. However you want to approach creation is the best approach.

>         My current project, called Ricadh, is about the most
complete project
> I've ever worked on.  I used Jeffrey Henning's Babel Text as a
source to
> get my mind focused on one particular set of rules that I could
> legitimately call a language.  It's gone through quite a few revisions
> in the process ... what I have now is very different from what I
started
> with, especially in phonology.
   Nothing wrong with that...Enamyn was originally going to be
agglutinating, but becoming more fusional; it added three sounds to
the phonology (weird--I just realized that I'm talking as if Enamyn is
self-creating...perhaps it is...), the orthography changed four times
(I've now settled on something that is practical, pleasing, and
original, although I still want to incorporate a vertical script to go
with the horizontal script), and the vocabulary keeps getting wiped
out with each new revision. Not that there is a large vocabulary to
lose. My design goals have changed considerably in the past two years.
At first, I wanted a rational, philosophical language. But the more I
thought about it, the more I wanted a "distressed" language: archaic
features, irregulars, things like that.=20

>         What I find the most interesting ... disenheartening
sometimes ... is
> the fact that many rules that I've created for Ricadh, which I thought
> were original (I _did_ come up with them independently), already exist
> in some natlangs.  And in general, I've come to understand that my
> "creative ideas" are more or less standard fare in the art.  But, I
keep
> going, and for the first time I have pages worth of documentation
for my
> first Real Conlang [tm].  (Nope, no web page, unfortunately ... I'm in
> the process of moving between countries.  But it's certainly
mailable to
> anyone willing to critique.)
   Well, I'd be happy to look it over. Can you just email it to me?
And don't be disappointed that natlangs already have your good idea. I
discovered a language (Panare, a Cariban language of Venezuela) that
has some basic elements of noun tenses. From Thomas Payne (revered
author of "Describing Morphosyntax"):
___
   We have analyzed Panare as having three participles, a "past=20
   participle" (like the -ed/-en participles of English), a "present=20
   participle" (like -ing)  and a "future participle." The last means=20
   that the thing referred to is "destined to be." Here are some
   examples:

      yamasa'      "Hit thing" PAST
      yama=F1e      "Hitting thing" PRESENT
      yamase'=F1a  "Thing destined to be hit." FUTURE

   These are all nouns, but they are based on a verb root (ama
   "hit"). So in some sense this might be considered a tense
   system reflected on nouns. But, significantly I think, it
   only occurs on nouns that are derived from verb roots. This
   is a well-installed part of the morphology of Panare -- much
   more productive than ex- in English.
___
So even though something similar to my idea exists, I still take
comfort in the fact that a.) it is original, in that I had no clue
about Panare until six weeks ago and b.) my system is much more
complex and integrated--the _entire_ tense system is carried by the
nouns. Besides, to be frank, I have seen very few conlang innovations
that don't already exist in natlangs. But that's like complaining that
you can't use blue in your paintings, because other artists have used
the color blue. It's not the part that makes the language original,
it's the whole.
   :Peter
=3D=3D
 _____      _____________________________________________________
   |  \   O) ...for Christ plays in ten thousand places,         )
  _|__/    | Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his         |
 / |eter   | To the Father through the features of men's faces.  |
 | |       | -Gerard Manley Hopkins, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire" |
 \___lark  (_____________________________________________________(O

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