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Re: THEORY: Conlanging as reverse Sapir-Whorf?

From:nicole perrin <nicole.eap@...>
Date:Friday, November 26, 1999, 18:43
> Paul Bennett wrote: > > > > I've been talking off-list with Rob Nierse about the Gbwia version of the relay. > > We got onto the subject of understanding other peoples' conlangs, based on > > shared experience of having to explain far more than we had thought would be > > required to the person who followed us on the relay. We realised (I think) that > > the features of each of our conlangs had some degree of intrinsic "rightness" > > and/or "obviousness" within our own mind. > > > > I started thinking about Sapir-Whorf (we dont need to discuss the valididty of > > it -- we've only recently been through that game -- it's just a handy label for > > a phenomenon that exists, to a greater or lesser extent, within various scopes). > > I've come to the theory that conlanging express the exact reverse of this > > theory; i.e. "The way one thinks effects the type of conlang one produces". > > There's something bigger and deeper lurking there, but I'm only peripherally > > aware of it and certainly lack the terminology to describe it adequately. > > > > Anyone care to jump in and help describe/refine/refute this?
This makes me curious, do people on the list (who work on more than one conlang) find that most of their conlangs are similar to each other? I don't mean in obvious ways, but maybe you really like /p/ and all of you languages have it (or you really dislike it and none of them have it), or maybe they all have similar word orders, or are all isolating/agglutinating/analytic/polysynthetic etc? I know that my three favorite conlangs that I work on are all SOV and two of those are agglutinating, which I admittedly prefer, but I do try to mix in other elements to other conlangs. Also, my conlangs have totally different phonologies. But maybe that's just because otherwise I would feel guilty that my conlangs were only relexes of conlangs...<whimper>. Anyone else? Nicole