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Conlanging with constraints

From:Sai Emrys <sai@...>
Date:Saturday, February 16, 2008, 9:00
I'm considering a topic for a talk at a future LCC, about conlanging
with constraints.

A literary allusion that comes to mind is that of the Abbe in Count of
Monte Cristo, responding to the future Count's suggestion that as a
free man is inventiveness might have known no bounds, to say that it
were the bounds themselves that made him inventive.

Drushek, Kēlen, and Toki Pona are some examples that come to mind
offhand as being in some sense formed by the constraints within which
they flourish - voicelessness, verblessness, and complicatedlessness
(hee).

What are other examples?

How have you experienced your conlanging as being influenced (for
better or for worse) by constraints imposed upon it, of whatever
source? What constraints do you have, and whence derived? Why have you
imposed them? What constraints have you considered trying?

Please consider this a completely open-ended question (i.e. pretend I
asked you the right question to elicit the most interesting answer
:-P).

Thanks,
 Sai

P.S. If you would be interested in *giving* this talk, please contact
me at through the official lcs@conlang.org address. I'm not yet sure
whether I would like to do it myself (in a way that I'd be confident
was good enough), and I have no particular possessiveness about the
topic - I'd just like to see it explored in some depth at an LCC,
'cause I think it'd be interesting.

Replies

Michael Poxon <mike@...>
<li_sasxsek@...>
David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>