Re: LUNATIC SURVEY: 2005
| From: | Tim Smith <tim.langsmith@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, March 23, 2005, 2:11 |
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At 01:41 PM 2/24/2005 -0500, Sally Caves wrote:
>LUNATIC SURVEY 2005, by Sally Caves
>
>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hi, Sally! Sorry to be so late with this. I hope it will still be
interesting and/or useful despite its non-timeliness. (Filling it out
certainly has been interesting and thought-provoking for me.) Because I'm
short of time, toward the end I've skipped over some of the questions and
just answered those about which I thought I had something interesting or
relevant to say.
I'm several hundred messages behind on the list, and I'm about to set
Conlang to nomail for a few weeks, because I'm leaving for a Pacific
Northwest vacation which will include Norwescon 28 in Seattle, where I'm on
seven panels, all of them conlang-related, and the majority of which are on
topics that I proposed (I've been doing some behind-the-scenes work for
Norwescon, helping to organize the linguistics track). Matt Pearson will
also be on some of those panels.
- Tim
>A. PROFESSION, DEMOGRAPHICS, INCLINATION:
>
>1. Who are you, and what is the name of your invented language or
>languages? Pseudonyms allowed. (Are you using one? asked "Sally Caves")
Tim Smith (not a pseudonym)
Conlangs: Xunáyu-ni-V'rach, Hwendaaru, Neo-Anglic, Meitzanathein, Naya
Vandi, various others not far enough along to have names
>*2. Are you new to the Lunatic Survey or have you filled out a version of
>this survey before?
Not new; have filled out a previous version of the survey (I think).
>3. Do you have a website for you language/world(s)? If so, please list the
>URL address.
No.
>4. What is your email address? name at hostsite dot whatever.
tim dot langsmith at worldnet dot att dot net
>5. What is your age? (vague answers allowed, but it is an important
>demographic)
55
>6. What is your gender?
Male
>7. What is your nationality? Where do you live now?
USA (both nationality and current residence)
>8. What is your native language?
English
>9. What natural languages foreign to you have you studied or do you speak?
Formally studied: Latin, German
Informally studied (very limited reading knowledge): French, Italian, Spanish
Speak with any degree of fluency: none
>10. What is your level of education? i.e., your highest degree achieved or
>sought?
MS
>11. What is your profession? Are you a professional linguist? If so, what
>also makes you a conlanger?
Computer programmer/analyst
Not a professional linguist
>13. If you are a student, what is your major or your area of study?
N/A
>14. How long have you been developing your invented language(s)?
Xunáyu-ni-V'rach: ~4 years, intermittently
others: longer, but even more intermittent
>15. At what age did you first start inventing a language? Can you briefly
>describe your early efforts?
I think I was about 13 or 14 when I first started _thinking_ about
inventing languages, but I don't remember actually doing much about it at
that time except to start acquiring data about lots of natlangs (going to
the library, taking out every "Teach Yourself X" or similar book I could
find and reading just the first few chapters of each, to get a rough
overview of as many languages as possible). I do remember coming up with a
noun declension for a non-human language. (IIRC, it had a trial number as
well as singular, dual, and plural -- something I thought was my own
invention, since I hadn't yet heard of any natlang with it.)
>16. What drew you to start inventing a language and/or constructed world?
>What was the inspiration?
I was inventing fictional cultures, planets, etc. before I started on
languages. The inspiration for conculturing was science-fiction, which I'd
been reading avidly since about fifth grade. What first got me interested
in fictional languages was, I think, a combination of three things, all of
which happened at around the same time: starting to take Latin in ninth
grade (my first real exposure to a foreign language); reading Robert A.
Heinlein's vague but tantalizing references to two Martian languages (the
one in _Double Star_ and the very different one in _Stranger in a Strange
Land_); and stumbling upon dictionaries and grammars of Esperanto and IALA
Interlingua.
>17. Did you start inventing before you had heard of the list or after?
>Before you had heard of Esperanto or Tolkien? (I name the two most common
>inspirations)
Decades before the list; after I'd heard of Esperanto; a few years before
discovering Tolkien (which happened to me at 17).
>18. Tolkien calls it a "shy art" and a "secret vice"; but that was before
>the Internet. How secret do you keep it from others outside this list for
>much the same reasons?
I talk to friends about it (especially fellow SF fans), but not a lot. My
reticence is mainly due to fear of boring people, not to fear of ridicule
or social marginalization.
>19. Yaguello has called it "pathological," influenced, unfortunately, by a
>lot of psychiatric writings such as _Le Schizo et la langue_. To what
>extent have you encountered such reactions by outsiders you had taken into
>your confidence?
Not at all -- but maybe that's because people are just being polite. (I
must admit that I'm fairly selective about who I talk to about this -- see
above.)
>*20. Do you consider it nerdy to be doing this? This is a term that gets
>tossed around a lot. Or actually sophisticated? Do you need to get a life,
>or is this your life? What is a life?
Yes, I consider this a nerdy thing to do, but I don't necessarily see that
as a problem. I'm sort of into "nerd pride".
>21. There has been a connection noted between linguistic and musical
>ability. Are you musically inclined? Do you sing and/or play a musical
>instrument? Do you compose music?
Yes, I'm seriously involved in music, as a singer (primarily Renaissance
and Baroque music), and also formerly as an instrumentalist (French horn,
classical and folk guitar, recorder). I've made some sporadic attempts at
composing, but haven't gotten very far with it.
>22. There has been a connection noted between linguistic and mathematical
>ability. Are you mathematically inclined or inclined towards computing in
>any way?
Mathematics: not really (although I'm much less innumerate than the general
population).
Computing: yes (both as a way of earning a living and as a source of
creative pleasure (see below)).
>23. What other passions do you pursue that give you creative pleasure?
>(painting, drawing, sculpting, calligraphy, model-building, novel or
>story-writing, role-playing games, map-making, book-making, poetry,
>web-designing, star-gazing or other?)
I do some writing, mainly "fictional non-fiction" (inventing concultures
and writing about them), but also occasional "real" fiction (but so far
only for pleasure and self-exploration, not seriously trying to get
published). I also find writing computer programs to be a creative outlet
(sometimes).
>B. FEATURES OF YOUR INVENTION
Note: My answers to questions 1-16 below refer to Xunáyu-ni-V'rach, the
conlang that I'm currently most involved in. The answers would vary for my
other conlangs, except for #1 (they're all artlangs).
>1. Pick the best term for the invented language you are currently invested
>in: auxlang, artlang, engelang, loglang, lostlang, philosophical language,
>or "other." etc.
artlang
>2. Is your conlang a priori (devised from scratch) or a posteriori (based
>on an existing natural language or drawing from a language class such as
>Semitic)?
a priori
>4. Do you have a script for your conlang? What is it called? Could you
>provide me at a later date with a sample of it? Is it on Langmaker's
>"neography" site?
No script
>5. Briefly describe the outlines of your invented language (syntactical
>structure--VO, OV, etc.; class or type--analytic, synthetic,
>agglutinating, incorporative, accusative, ergative, active, trigger,
>other, combinations, etc.), noting what you have done with it that is
>innovative in your opinion.
Syntactic typology: basically VO, head-modifier, right-branching, but with
fairly free constituent order (most frequent orders are SVO in main
clauses, VSO in subordinate clauses).
Morphological typology: in the process of evolving from isolating to
agglutinative -- a process that's gone much farther for nouns, which have a
fairly elaborate system of gender/number suffixes (which are derived from
classifiers and show traces of a much earlier fusional stage), than for
verbs, which are still almost purely analytic.
Syntactic alignment: accusative.
Unusual features: word order is unusually flexible for a language that
lacks nominal case marking; there is an unusually large discrepancy between
nouns and verbs in the degree of analysis vs. synthesis; tense, modality
and aspect are marked by clitic particles in Wackernagel's Position
(immediately after the first stress-bearing consitituent of the clause);
any lexical root can act as either a noun or a verb (the distinction being
marked by the presence or absence of a gender/number suffix).
>7. How extensive would you say your invented language is, now? How big the
>vocabulary? Do you provide a vocabulary list or taxonomy on your website
>if you have one?
Vocabulary: roughly 200 words (counting both lexical and grammatical morphemes)
On website: N/A
>8. How do you build vocabulary? Some people pull words out of the air;
>others build up a base of root words and affixes. Many do both.
Both.
>3. Does a constructed world accompany your invention(s)? What is it called?
Yes. The world has no particular name; it's our own, with a somewhat
altered history. The country in which the language is spoken is the
Commonwealth of New Atlantis, also known as Thalmad-i-V'rach (literally
"godland" or "country of the gods"; Xunáyu-ni-V'rach means "god-speech" or
"language of the gods").
>*9. Has your language and conworld ever served in a role-playing game or a
>world shared by other conlangers?
No.
>*10. Briefly describe your conculture (is it within the bounds of this
>world? on another world, etc.?)
New Atlantis is a society whose dominant religion is a form of neo-paganism
that could be thought of as a cross between Wicca and high-church
Anglicanism :), and whose kinship structure is matrilineal and
polyamorous. It exists in our own world, but in an alternate history.
>*11. Are the beings who speak your invented language human or alien? If
>alien, what features have you given the language to make it alien or how
>have you restricted or expanded its phonology? vocabulary?
They are completely human.
>12. What do you write in it? Poems? chants? lullabyes? prayers? history?
>stories? recipes? Are any of these exhibited on your website?
So far, all I've written is one poem and one valentine. But I hope to
eventually develop a liturgy for the New Atlantean religion, or at least
some significant parts of it.
>13. Can you speak your conlang? Are you fluent in it? Is this a goal for
>you? Have you tried to teach it to an intimate? a companion animal? :)
No, I can't speak it. (Well, I can speak isolated sentences of it fairly
well, provided that I think them out carefully in advance, and provided
that they can be expressed within the extremely limited vocabulary that
I've invented so far.) Fluency would be nice, but it's not a goal; if I
had the time and energy to become fluent in a foreign language, I'd
probably choose a natlang. I've never tried to teach it (or any of my
conlangs) to anyone, and probably never will.
>14. Have you made any soundbytes of your language? Could you provide me at
>a later date with a sample of them?
No, I've never recorded any of it. Maybe someday....
>*15. If you use Roman script, how recognizably "phonetic" is your writing
>system? In other words, do you use unconventional letters or letter
>combinations to represent sounds? Why or why not? I’m thinking, of course,
>of Etabnannery, for those who remember it.
I do use the Roman alphabet, with one diacritic (the acute accent). The
orthography is pretty phonetic; one of my design goals was to make it
possible for someone who doesn't know the language, but who's somewhat
linguistically sophisticated, to read it aloud, making intuitive guesses
about the pronunciation that won't be too far off the mark. This, of
course, makes for a rather small and uninteresting phoneme inventory.
>16. How many of you sing in your language and have invented songs for that
>purpose?
I have not, but I'd like to. I'd particularly like to develop some hymns
or liturgical chants for my con-religion, but I don't see this happening
any time soon.
>*17. How many of you, for entertainment or any other reason, resort to
>gibberish? (This is in response to Adrian Morgan’s question in December).
>Does it give you ideas for conlanging? (Have you ever fooled anyone?) How
>many of you have sung gibberish?
I do sometimes engage in a very limited sort of glossolalia, but I can only
do it in short "bursts" (say, one to three words), never anything that
sounds like a real sentence, let alone anything longer. This is one way I
build vocabulary, but it's very sporadic and undependable. I'm much more
likely to come up with "words" that I can't use because they don't fit the
phoneme inventory or phonotactic rules of any of my conlangs.
>*18. What on-line games do you play? (or devise?) Translations,
>Babel-text, Relays, etc.
None so far.
>19. Which do you prefer doing: devising phonology? script? structure?
>building vocabulary?
My favorite part of inventing a language is the syntax.
>20. Do you start and stop several different conlangs, or do you tend to
>stick with one and develop it over years?
I always have several different conlangs that I'm intermittently playing
around with at any given time.
>21. What do you think makes a "complete" conlang, if a conlang can attain
>completion? What are your goals for completion? When do you grow "tired"
>of your conlang, or don’t you?
I don't think a conlang can ever be "complete"; in fact, I don't really
think that "completion" is a meaningful concept for a conlang (or a
natlang, for that matter). But I do have a somewhat related concept: a
conlang can reach what I think of as a "takeoff point" where, although the
vocabulary may still be very limited, the grammar (that is, the combination
of syntax and morphology) is sufficiently well developed so that new
problems can usually be solved using existing features (perhaps by
combining them in new ways), rather than having to resort to inventing new
features. In other words, the grammar is approaching a limited sort of
completion, even though everything else about the language may still be
very primitive. It's very satisfying when a conlang reaches that point,
but, paradoxically, I often tend to lose interest in it soon afterward,
because building that skeleton of the syntax is the most interesting part
of the conlanging process for me.
>*22. Which came first: the conlang or the conworld?
Usually the conlang. (In fact, most of my conlangs have no
conworld.) Xunáyu-ni-V'rach is an exception. For it, the conworld came
first, and was interesting enough in its own right to keep me interested in
the conlang; that may be why it's become the best-developed of my conlangs.
>
>
>C. PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETIC:
>
>1. What aesthetic features do you value in inventing language? Be specific
>as to phonology, structure, script, etc.
I have definite esthetic biases, but I've never succeeded in building all,
or even most, of them into any one conlang.
1. I like freedom of word order (and not just at the level of major
constituents of the clause, but also within phrases, so that, for example,
within a noun phrase, a genitive or an attributive adjective can either
precede or follow its head noun).
2. I like at least a certain minimum level of morphological complexity. I
tend to find isolating languages rather boring. (This sort of goes along
with #1.)
3. I like a mix of head-marking and dependent-marking. The ideal would be
for all head-dependent relations to be redundantly marked on both the head
and the dependent. (This goes along with both #1 and #2.)
4. I like topic and focus to be clearly marked, either by the morphology,
the word order, or both.
5. In terms of the relationship between word order and pragmatics, I tend
to favor the old-information-before-new-information approach. This tends
to lead to a Slavic-like, topic-first and focus-last, sentence structure,
as opposed to a Celtic-like, focus-first structure. But ideally, a
language should allow for both approaches, so that the speaker could choose
on the fly whichever one suited his or her chosen discourse strategy of
that moment.
6. On the level of phonology, I don't like dense consonant clusters, but I
also don't like the other extreme of nothing but CV syllables. I like a
stress accent that can fall on the ultima, the penult, or the antepenult
(as in Classical Greek), but I like the choice among these alternatives to
be not phonemic (as in Greek) but determined by syllable types (as in
Classical Latin). I prefer mora-timed or stress-timed languages to
syllable-timed ones. I have a rather "European" idea of what sounds are
esthetically pleasing; I find "exotic" sounds (like clicks, glottalized
ejectives, etc.) interesting but not beautiful.
>2. What commonly applied aesthetics have you ever tried to avoid in your
>invention? This has been an oft debated question, especially when it comes
>to Tolkien.
I haven't done this (at least not consciously).
>3. Is difficulty or obscurity a goal in inventing a language?
Not normally, but I have given some thought to the idea of deliberately
designing a conlang to be very difficult for adult L2 learners to
acquire. (The idea is that it's the language of the ruling class of a
decadent empire, and fluency in it is an absolute requirement for any sort
of upward mobility, so its difficulty is one way of keeping the lower
classes in their place.)
>4. Is efficiency a goal in inventing a language? This question needn’t
>cancel out the previous one.
No. I want my artlangs to be neither more nor less efficient than
natlangs. (That's in theory. In practice, I sometimes can't resist
throwing in features intended to avoid ambiguities that are common in
natlangs, but I try not to overdo it.)
>5. How natural do you wish to make it, or is that a concern? Or rather,
>how unnatural do you wish to make it?
My ideal would be to invent a conlang so naturalistic that a trained
linguist could be fooled into mistaking it for a natlang. But I don't
think I'll ever achieve that. (However, I'd also like someday to invent a
really alien language -- one that could also be mistaken for a natlang, but
not a human one.)
>6. Can conlanging be sexy? sensual? obsessing? how does it heal or harm you?
Sexy, sensual, obsessing: yes to all three. I certainly don't think it
harms me (except maybe by taking too much time and energy), but I usually
don't perceive it as healing either. It does "feel good" sometimes, but it
can also be very frustrating.
>*7. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of obscenities?
I haven't. (But then, I haven't developed a rich vocabulary of
anything.) I have given it some thought. I strongly suspect that it's a
psychological necessity for all languages to have taboo words, but I'm not
sure what semantic domain they'd come from in Xunáyu-ni-V'rach -- certainly
not from the realm of sex (except maybe words for rape or pedophilia). I
definitely see Xunáyu-ni-V'rach as having a rich vocabulary of words for
sexual acts (as well as for the wide variety of types of relationships
within which such acts occur), but these words would have neither the
vulgar feel of our Anglo-Saxon terms nor the pedantic, euphemistic feel of
their Latinate equivalents.
>8. Can it be mystical? To what extent does conlanging fulfill a spiritual
>purpose for you? Or a magical one? Did it ever start out that way?
Mystical? I don't think so. Spiritual? Maybe. Magical? Yes. But don't
ask me to define how those terms differ in meaning.
>9. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of magical, religious,
>or incantatory terms?
I haven't, but I'd like to. As I've said before, Xunáyu-ni-V'rach is
closely bound up with an imaginary religion, and I've always been
fascinated by ritual, even though I personally don't believe in any religion.
>*10. How many of you have striven to invent words that express novel
>ideas, or are not expressed in any natural language that you know?
I haven't in previous conlangs, but in Xunáyu-ni-V'rach, I've begun to
develop a vocabulary of kinship terms, many of which don't have close
counterparts in any language that I'm familiar with. For example, in the
polyamorous, matrilineal kinship system of New Atlantis, there are two
kinds of "siblings": _sef_ (someone who has the same mother and may or may
not have the same father) and _sen_ (someone who has a different mother and
may or may not have the same father).
>11. Name a few of the words in your language(s) that you are most pleased
>with and are the most original to you.
_lumyel_ [lu'mjEl] (beautiful)
two words for "old": _xai_ [Saj] ("old" as opposed to "young", usually
referring to living things) and _chatam_ [xa'ta:m] ("old" as opposed to
"new", usually referring to inanimate objects)
>12. How do you sense that a word is "right" for its meaning? How much do
>you labor at fitting a sound to its sense? Or don’t you care?
I'm not consistent about this. Sometimes I really try to come up with a
word that "feels right" to me (and with many of these, I'm never
satisfied); other times I don't care. And I think my criteria for
"rightness" are just as inconsistent.
>*13. Do you ever rely on a software program to build vocabulary? Do those
>who don’t think that’s cheating? :)
I haven't so far, but probably will in the future. If I write the program
myself, I won't feel that it's cheating.
>*14. Is conlang a hobby, a craft, or an art in your mind? This has been
>hotly debated, so the question is not as weird as it seems. Can conlanging
>be considered an art? Why or why not?
I think it's all three. To me, a hobby is anything you spend significant
amounts of time and effort on but don't get significant amounts of money
for; it can be a craft, an art, or any of lots of other kinds of
activities. And the difference between "craft" and "art" is not well
defined.
>*15. If it is, who do you think are its consumers?
That's a good question, and one that's equally valid whether conlanging is
considered an art or a craft. I think the answer depends on how (or if) a
given conlang is disseminated. If, for instance, examples of it appear in
a published work of fiction, its consumers include everybody who reads that
work. More often, its only consumers are other conlangers. If it isn't
even shown to other conlangers (as most of mine haven't been), it has no
consumers (unless you count the conlanger's future self).
>*16. This question is directed as well at any auxlangers on the list. Is
>it an art, a political tool, both? And who do you think could be its consumers?
>
>*17. There has been some exciting talk recently (and over the years) about
>what a conlang is or is not. If you could pick a metaphor or write a
>descriptive phrase defining "conlang," what would that be?
>
>*18. Why or why not would you eschew the metaphors "miniature" or "model"?
>
>*19. Is a conlang more like a glimpse of something lifesize? (Irina’s
>suggestion in 2001)
>
>*20. There has been some invigorating discussion lately about what a
>conlang can do that most natural languages don’t (such as produce OSV
>structure, or eradicate verbs) What experiments have you made with your
>artlang(s) along these lines?
Hwendaaru is a trigger language with basically modifier-head,
left-branching syntax (including SOV dominant word order), whereas (as far
as I know) all the known natural trigger languages are strongly
head-modifier and right-branching, and most of them are VSO or VOS.
I've also played around with grammars with no finite verbs except a copula,
where lexical verbs have only non-finite forms (participles, gerunds, and
maybe infinitives), and, going to the other extreme, with grammars where
there are no nominals except pronouns and proper names, and the work that's
done by common nouns in most languages is done by verbs in
relative-clause-like constructions with pronouns (e.g., instead of a noun
"man" you have a verb "to be a man", and instead of a definite NP "the man"
you have something that literally means "he who is a man"). But so far,
none of these have really gone beyond the level of interesting
thought-experiments.
>*21 What do you think distinguishes a conlang from a natural language, if
>you think so at all? What would it take for a linguist to be fooled into
>thinking a conlang was a natural language?
I don't see how any conlang could ever be as rich, complex, and full of
nuance and subtlety as a natlang, even if one spent a lifetime developing
it (as Tolkien did). But you still might be able to convince a linguist
that it was a natlang, if it had enough idiosyncratic but realistic quirks.
>*22. How much do you study other languages in order to discover what is
>natural in language? Or to discover how you can stretch the boundaries of
>language to make it do things that are unnatural?
I've done a lot of reading about language typology and universals. As for
individual languages, I've continued along the path that I started when I
was younger: superficial looks at many languages rather than in-depth study
of a few.
>*23. Can such a language function?
>
>*24. There has been quite a bit of fascinating debate about the relevance
>of conlanging to linguistic study. We all know that linguistics can aid
>conlangers, but in what ways can conlangers aid linguists? Or does it matter?
Conlangers can do lots of interesting thought-experiments, exploring what
kinds of languages are theoretically possible that don't exist in the "real
world". However, from a linguist's point of view, this isn't really all
that helpful, because the real question is what kinds of languages can
actually function in real-world speech communities. For this, a conlang
would be useful only if it could somehow acquire a critical mass of native
speakers. So I think conlanging has to justify itself (if it needs
justification) in terms of art rather than in terms of utility.
>
>
>D. THE LISTSERV
>
>1. How did you first hear of this list?
From somebody I met at a science-fiction convention.
>2. How long have you been on this listserv or on other related listservs?
>Continuously? Infrequently? Off and on? More off than on and vice versa?
I first joined in 1995. Since then I've been off and on several times;
overall, probably more on than off, but not by much.
>*3. What is the appeal of being on a listserv and contributing to it? Do
>you think you contribute moderately or excessively, or not enough? Do you
>tend to lurk ?
The appeal is having an opportunity to talk about this stuff to fellow
enthusiasts, and sometimes to clarify my own ideas by the work of putting
them in writing. I tend to lurk for long periods and then contribute in
short bursts when something comes up that particularly interests me.
>*4. For those of you who remember its inception, how has it changed over
>the past decade?
N/A
>*5. How helpful has the list been in developing your language? In learning
>linguistic information?
Occasionally helpful in developing my languages (in being able to get a
response to an idea, to hear someone say that it doesn't sound totally off
the wall); more often helpful in learning linguistic information (I've
gotten some pointers to books that have turned out to be very informative).
>6. What books have you consulted? On your own, or because you heard of
>them on the list?
Bernard Comrie -- Language Universals and Linguistic Typology
Comrie (ed.) -- The World's Major Languages
William Croft -- Typology and Universals
Johanna Nichols -- Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time
Thomas E. Payne -- Describing Morphosyntax
Timothy Shopen (ed.) -- Language Typology and Syntactic Description (3 volumes)
Michael Hammond, Edith A. Moravcsik & Jessica R. Wirth (ed.) -- Studies in
Syntactic Typology
and lots of others, but those are probably the most important to me and
ones I'd most highly recommend to other conlangers. Several of them (I
think the Nichols, the Payne, the Shopen, and the Hammond et al.) I found
out about through the list.
>*7. Do you peruse the websites of other conlangers?
Very seldom.
>*8. Do you sense that people on this list are interested in your conlang
>and give you feedback on it?
Yes, on the rare occasions when I ask for feedback.
>9. Have you ever set out to learn at least a little bit of someone’s
>conlang, if only a word or two, or a phrase?
>
>*10. Do you peruse Jeffrey Henning’s Langmaker.com site?
>
>*11. What on-line techniques do you use to showcase your conlang, such as
>Audacity or other sound programs, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Fontography,
>and so forth? Did you hear of them on the list?
>
>12. Have you ever tried to introduce a friend to the list?
>
>13. Do you know of anyone who does this kind of thing but who has never
>heard of the list?
>
>*14. What other lists do you frequent related to conlanging?
>
>*15. What do you think will be the future of the list? I see it giving
>birth to alternate lists like Conworld, Lostlanguages, Romlang, etc. What
>improves the present list and its helpfulness or entertainment value?
>
>*16. What Internet technology would you most like to see developed that
>would aid you in showcasing your language(s)?
>
>*17. What lists like conlang exist in other cultures and languages that
>you know of?
>
>*18. There has been some terrific talk about CONLANG as a community. And
>yet so many of us seem to want the world to know of it and respect it. Is
>the CONLANG community enough?
>
>*19. In my 2000 on-line article
>(
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0003/languages.php) I suggested that
>the Internet "may provide a site that, with the impetus of competition and
>showmanship, encourages inutile and obsessive activity"; I was quoting
>Jeff Salamon’s article "Revenge of the Fanboys." Village Voice 13 Sep.,
>1994. He wrote that over ten years ago. Do outsiders still entertain such
>notions, do you think, about listservs like this one? Do you? To what
>extent has the list increased obsessive development in you? Would you be
>inventing as furiously as you are without the list or knowledge of other
>inventors?
>
>20. If asked whether it is not better to turn your linguistic talents to
>the learning and speaking of natural languages (a common response I’ve met
>with and aimed at criticizing introversion or solipsism), how would you answer?
>
>*21. In Elizabethan times there were the inkhorn neologisms. There were
>ciphers and pasigraphies. Today there is conlanging. Do you think the
>contemporary world is more open to language innovation or more closed?
>
>*22. What would Tolkien have done with such a community? He writes in "A
>Secret Vice" that language inventors "hardly ever show their works to one
>another, so none of them know who are the geniuses at the game, or who are
>the splendid ‘primitives’." He suggests that perhaps in a later time
>language invention will become respectable, and such things can be
>exhibited. Have we reached that time?
>
>*23. Is there a danger that over-exposure can make conlanging "banal"? To
>what extent is it exciting because it is a) considered disreputable,
>"corny" or "mad," or b) largely unknown to the world? Does it have a
>fizzle-out date? In other words, is it just a fad, or is it a natural
>human inclination that will stand the test of time?
>
>Finally, may I have your permission to use any of this material of yours
>for my academic work on conlanging? First name? last name? pseudonym?
>anonymous?
>
>
>Thanks!
>
>Sally Caves <mailto:scaves@...>scaves@frontiernet.net