Re: LUNATIC SURVEY: 2005

Sally Caves writ:

>LUNATIC SURVEY 2005, by Sally Caves
[some questions snipped/clipped to reduce post size]

>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")

Mike Ellis; Rhean, Omurax and Tolborese; (yes).

>*2. Are you new to the Lunatic Survey or have you filled out a version of
this survey before?

I did, in 2003.

>3. Do you have a website for you language/world(s)? If so, please list the
URL address.

http://suzsoiz.free.fr ... right now only the Rhean language has a
description online. There should be some Tolborese stuff soon, as well as
some info on the various cultures.

>4. What is your email address? name at hostsite dot whatever.
nihilsum ear hotmail point com (there are scripts that can harvest email
addies for spammers from "x at y dot com")

>5. What is your age? (vague answers allowed, but it is an important
demographic)

Twenties.

>6. What is your gender?
Male.

>7. What is your nationality?  Where do you live now?
Canadian (Anglophone); Canada.

>8. What is your native language?
English. (A lot of family members speak Dutch too, which I probably should
get around to learning more of)

>9. What natural languages foreign to you have you studied or do you speak?
Japanese, also a little Spanish and French (but not enough)

>10. What is your level of education? i.e., your highest degree achieved or
sought?

College (for the Japanese)

>11. What is your profession? Are you a professional linguist? If so, what
also makes you a conlanger?

Let's just say "labour"; No; Creative outlet.

>14. How long have you been developing your invented language(s)?
Rhean has existed since 1998 or earlier. An older conlang called Barse was
around 1994-96 but abandoned. Before that it was only writing systems, not
languages.

>15. At what age did you first start inventing a language? Can you briefly
describe your early efforts?

Started by making alphabets and codes for English when I was nine or ten.

>16. What drew you to start inventing a language and/or constructed world?
What was the inspiration?

First conworld was for a story I was working on from age 12 right up to 16.
It went through several wildly different incarnations before being scrapped.

>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)

Before the list; before Tolkien. But Tolkien was a source of inspiration after.

>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?

Very. "Closeted" conlanger.

>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?

Contempt. It's now on a need-to-know basis. So far, nobody needs to know. I
won't share it with anyone unless they were to blurt out somehow that
they're doing it as well.

>*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?

Sure it's nerdy. There are art nerds, guitar nerds, language nerds... I'm
one of all three and people know that. Everyone has their 'obsession' to
some degree.
This, though, is seperate from life. It has to be, for the reasons above.

>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?

Guitar. But lately I've been letting that atrophy to develop the 'art' side
of things for career purposes (and yes, right now time is finite enough that
it's one or the other).

>22. There has been a connection noted between linguistic and mathematical
ability. Are you mathematically inclined or inclined towards computing in
any way?

Oh Yad no. I had to take math twice to pass it in high school (with a 55%;
pass is 50), and to this day I have the strange ability to add a column of
figures three times and get three different results. As for computing, I can
learn interfaces quickly and thoroughly for the things I need to use
(animation software, recording software, photoshop etc) but coding is
tedious and frustrating and I swore off it after my short experience with it
in high school.

>23. What other passions do you pursue that give you creative pleasure?
Drawing, writing, animation, music.

>B. FEATURES OF YOUR INVENTION
>1. Pick the best term for the invented language you are currently invested
in (...)

Artlangs all. Fictional natlangs?

>2. Is your conlang a priori or a posteriori?
from more to less a-posteriori:
Rhean (very) --> Tolborese (somewhat) --> Omurax (not very)

>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?

Rhean uses a modified Roman alphabet. Omurax has its own script, but there's
no image files of the revised version of it. Tolborese uses a modified
(vertical) version of the Omurax script.
I will provide a sample of both of those scripts if you like.

>5. Briefly describe the outlines of your invented language (...), noting
what you have done with it that is innovative in your opinion.

Rhean:
Very OV and head-final. Very Indo-European but somewhat Turkic as well.
Sound is mostly based on Slavic and Turkic languages. More agglutinating,
somewhat fusional. Accusative. Some structures were taken from Japanese. The
language uses prepositions despite the otherwise overwhelmingly head-final
syntax.

Tolborese:
Agglutinative, Ergative. Mostly head-inital, but the "object" usually
precedes the verb. A lot of applicative structures make it almost-trigger
but not quite. Uses Bantu-style noun classes, but more often than not the
class is *not* marked on the noun itself but on some other word that must
agree with it. Mostly prefixing morphology instead of suffixing.

Omurax:
Ergative, but verbless. (Honestly, the language became verbless before I had
internet access and discovered that everyconlanger and his dog had tried a
verbless language. Really!) Fusional for noun cases, which it has 12 of.
Cases inspired by Finnish, phonology by modern Greek. Script written
right-to-left. Mostly head-initial. No prepositions; trying to do away with
adjectives as well.

>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?

Rhean is the most extensive, having a vocabulary nearing 3300 words. The
grammar is fleshed out enough that all I ever seem to add anymore is the
occasional vocab item from a translation. Some sisterlang/dialect ideas are
in development, as well as an ancestor and at least one
kick-in-the-ass-cousinlang.
Tolborese recently got a grammar overhaul and the structure is mostly usable
but it needs a lot more vocab. Same with Omurax.

>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.

Bit of both. More of the former, but when I coin a new word I like to make a
couple of cognates from the same 'root' so the new word seems more
legitimate. That way it's a bit like doing the latter.

>3. Does a constructed world accompany your invention(s)? What is it called?
It doesn't have a name, which causes difficulty now and then. It's a
parallel Earth that shares no 'history' with our own. I'm not sure if the
biological history is any different but the human cultures are completely
seperate.

>*9. Has your language and conworld ever served in a role-playing game or a
world shared by other conlangers?

Nope.

>*10. Briefly describe your conculture (is it within the bounds of this
world? on another world, etc.?)

Oy... there's a lot of history there. The Rheans showed up in what is now
Rhea at last 2500 years ago. The people who would later become the Omurax
and Tolborese were already on the same continent (what continent it is
though, I don't know. The landmasses could be completely different, but that
has disturbing implications on evolution, which I'm trying to keep the same
as our world). I won't go through all the history of that continent, but the
Rheans went from scattered chiefdoms to a united kingdom to an
intercontinental imperial superpower which is "currently" falling apart. The
Omurax and Tolborese are both "dead" cultures, in that the languages I'm
developing for them were spoken almost a thousand years before modern Rhean.
They've both been revived in the modern world: Omurax by cultists, Tolborese
by political/racial extremists. Modern Rhea is a constitutional democracy
(after a revolution or three) in a century-old cold-war with its neighbour
the Ishtol Republic. That Earth is a very paranoid, dangerous place to be,
and it's the background for a comic book series I hope to publish someday.

>*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?

Human.

>12. What do you write in it? Poems? chants? lullabyes? prayers? history?
stories? recipes? Are any of these exhibited on your website?

Not enough native texts. There are a couple of ritual pieces for Omurax and
some "news articles" and even advertisements in Rhean, but nothing really
website-worthy yet.

>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? :)

I'm grammatically fluent in Rhean but the vocabulary eldues me and I have to
look things up most of the time. With Omurax I struggle to phrase things
because of the verblessness. Tolborese is much newer so I can't say anything
at all in it yet.

>14. Have you made any soundbytes of your language? Could you provide me at
a later date with a sample of them?

There's an idea. But I'd prefer to do a native text instead of a translation
so it could be a while.

>*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.

Very phonetic, with a couple of exceptions. The Rhean orthography was
regularised by edict about a century "ago" and has of course lagged behind
the spoken language a bit, and behind the regional dialects a lot. Rheans
who don't speak the "standard" Mavrius dialect proudly spell in eye-dialect
(the way Scots like Irvine Welsh sometimes do).

>16. How many of you sing in your language and have invented songs for that
purpose?

Mmmmno. But I may make a national anthem.

>*17. How many of you, for entertainment or any other reason, resort to
gibberish? Does it give you ideas for conlanging?

Yes! There's a lot of ideas to be found in gibberish.

>*18. What on-line games do you play? (or devise?) Translations, Babel-text,
Relays, etc.

All three of those.

>19. Which do you prefer doing: devising phonology? script? structure?
building vocabulary?

Structure. Morphosyntax. Scripts. Somewhat less, vocab. The reason why my
langs have unremarkable phonologies is that it's the area that interests me
the least.

>20. Do you start and stop several different conlangs, or do you tend to
stick with one and develop it over years?

I've stuck with Rhean since it was begun. The other two have been on
"hiatus" several times. There seem to be a lot of one-lang conlangers and a
lot of many-sketch conlangers and not a lot inbetween. I guess I'm one of
the former trying to force myself to behave like the latter for a while.

>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?

Haven't gotten there yet.

>*22. Which came first: the conlang or the conworld?
The world.

>C. PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETIC:
>1. What aesthetic features do you value in inventing language? Be specific
as to phonology, structure, script, etc.

Rhean started as gibberish, meant to LOOK vaguely parallel-Slavic-Turkish to
the reader. But this caused it to have a particular sound-flavour that I
keep in mind when devising new words.
Omurax and Tolborese were also begun with a sound-flavour in mind, and they
adhere (mostly) to theirs. For both the latter two I wanted to get away from
what I'd done in Rhean. I find head-final structures (like Japanese) very
logical, so I tried to go against that inclination and do stuff that's
counter-intuitive to me.

>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.

Tolkien I avoid for sure. He had his tastes and they worked well for him,
but I don't like the idea that Tolkien's elf-sounds are the objective
standard for pleasant phonology. I find it a little TOO "mellifluous", too
liquidy and lacking in articulation. It's like an itch that doesn't get
scratched.
Omurax comes close to that, with few clusters and it's got [T], but it
should have enough stop+liquid groups and stop+s groups to avoid that.
Aiming for more 'mediterranean' sound than Elvish, for sure.

>3. Is difficulty or obscurity a goal in inventing a language?
Kinda.

>4. Is efficiency a goal in inventing a language? This question needn't
cancel out the previous one.

Sort of. I like it when I discover that some translation excercise works out
to a very short phrase in Rhean. I like conciseness, but also flexibility.
It's nice to have two or three ways to say the same thing.

>5. How natural do you wish to make it, or is that a concern? Or rather, how
unnatural do you wish to make it?

Rhean I wanted more natural. Naturalistic, at least. But It's not very
likely for as many ripped words to show up by pure coincidence in a world
completely seperated from our linguistic history as they have in Rhean.
Never mind the Roman alphabet.
And it's probably extremely unlikely for a human culture to have a language
devoid of syntactic verbs, like the Omurax. Ah well.

>6. Can conlanging be sexy? sensual? obsessing? how does it heal or harm you?
Obsessing, for sure.

>*7. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of obscenities?
A few in Rhean. Not as rich as it should be.

>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?

Conreligioning does that, somewhat. But I haven't given all my personal
beliefs to any one culture/religion. I try to make them agreeable to me in
some ways and disagreeable in other ways.

>9. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of magical, religious,
or incantatory terms?

Not yet. Omurax is gonna need those.

>*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?

A few. ("striven"?)

>11. Name a few of the words in your language(s) that you are most pleased
with and are the most original to you.

Rh:
fkivad - Rhean for "crowd", often used for "hey, everyone!"
unteg'ak - drive (vehicle etc). I like it because its spoken form is [untSak].
ok - bowl; not enough monosyllables in Rhean.
obveb - rectangular, oblong, straight-sided; it just sounds exactly like
what it means.

Om:
vamontax - an act worthy of gratitude
ran - extant, present, being. It's a useful word in a verbless language,
especially in the translative: rasú "into existence" is found whenever
something comes into being or is made

Tb:
ngagegelengaanibandi - a monster Tolborese word I once used to demonstrate
the verbal system. It means something like "I/we aren't about to go to work
for you/them in here"
gazang - Tolborese for cannabis sativa

>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?

It's very important that words sound "right" and I can't explain what makes
that happen. This often results in opaque derivations from real-world words.

>*13. Do you ever rely on a software program to build vocabulary? Do those
who don't think that's cheating? :)

I've used Henning's Langmaker program to generate words, but NEVER to assign
them to needed vocabulary items. Most of the words it gives are unusable,
but now and then I'll see one that screams what it's meant to mean (that's
how "obveb" above came to be).
Making a list of definitions you need and letting the computer make words
for them with no regard to how they sound, that would be 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?

It's a hobby and an art. But I have a very broad definition of "art". Art
does not mean high art, or even quality art. Pornography, for example, is art.

>*15. If it is, who do you think are its consumers?
Other conlangers. It's still very "esoteric" -- in the "small, obscure,
inward-looking" sense, not the mystical one.

>*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?

Pass.

>*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?

If you're talking about Andrew Nowicki's "nobody has made a 'real conlang'
tirade of some time back, I was annoyed that he dodged having to eat those
words. His first assertion was that we hadn't made "real conlangs" but that
got tangentified into whether a conlang was a "real language". Argh.

>*18. Why or why not would you eschew the metaphors "miniature" or "model"?
Neither of these bother me. Here's a metaphor: peeing in the woods next to a
three-hundred-foot high waterfall. That's a conlang next to a natlang. I
don't mean to demean the Vice at all, but I accept that all the effort I put
into it will never ever produce anything of a size and importance even close
to what is shaped by a ceaseless torrent of speakers over millenia.

>*19. Is a conlang more like a glimpse of something lifesize? (Irina's
suggestion in 2001)

That has definitely been my approach to conlanging and conworlding. It feels
more like discovering a world than putting it together.

>*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?

Omurax is verbless. Tolborese's structure results in most transitive clauses
turning out OVS (by accusative standards). Rhean is SOV, but the OV part is
strong enough to produce a lot of OVS sentences if the subject is added as
an afterthought.

>*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 said this in the "my three assertions" thread: having been constructed. I
think it's possible, if difficult, to make a passable fake natlang. If the
whole Piraha thing did turn out to be a hoax after all, it could be just that.

>*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 looked at a lot of natural languages just to see what's out there. So
now, it bothers me to see people assume that other languages are based on an
"internal English" that people have to "think about" in order to turn into
their own language via all those pesky grammar rules. I find few statements
as powerfully stupid as "there are no rules in English".
And other conlangs have shown me how far the boundaries can be stretched
past even what natural languages are capable of. Ithkuil is incredible.

>*23. Can such a language function?
Apparently so.

>*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?

I can't think of any. I've always considered lingustics a science, focussed
on revealing what's in the world (in this case, the human mind) and how it
works. And conlanging is an art. The flow of knowledge is gonna be
overwhelmingly one-way.

>D. THE LISTSERV
>1. How did you first hear of this list?
When I got internet access, I started finding things on different
constructed languages. This led to finding the Relay games and the sites of
their participants, which interested me more than anything. The relay sites
of course linked to the Conlang list. My first post here was to ask if I'd
found the right place for the relays, and the response was something like
"did somebody say Relay?"
... so they threw a relay.

>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?

That was 2002 I think.

>*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 ?

There's a lot of info on linguistics on this list. You can learn a lot just
by lurking, which is what I do most of the time.

>*5. How helpful has the list been in developing your language? In learning
linguistic information?

Very. Very very.

>6. What books have you consulted? On your own, or because you heard of them
on the list?

Describing Morphosyntax! Heard of it on the list and managed to buy it from
a guy in Phoenix for only fifteen bucks (or something). Also, grammars of
various natlangs are incredibly useful to consult.

>*7. Do you peruse the websites of other conlangers?
Yes. A lot.

>*8. Do you sense that people on this list are interested in your conlang
and give you feedback on it?

I've gotten some very helpful feedback from the list. Probably should post
more. Once I got an email in Rhean. Was that ever a spooky feeling.

>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?

Yup. If I had unlimited time I'd learn a few of them. But I don't. The one
I've learned the most of is Ebisedian. Its sheer weirdness hooked me.

>*10. Do you peruse Jeffrey Henning's Langmaker.com site?
Yes.

>*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?

I've posted a website. That's about it. Tried my hand at fontography, and
the results weren't great.

>13. Do you know of anyone who does this kind of thing but who has never
heard of the list?

I have a suspect... who might. Like I said above, if he doesn't say anything
I'm not gonna.

>*14. What other lists do you frequent related to conlanging?
I recently joined the Zompist Bulletin Board. Langmaker2 list on Yahoo, and
also the artificiallanguages2 list (smaller community, very dormant list).

>*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?

I subscribed to those just to read them. Haven't posted yet because I don't
have any relevant material. The fragmentation isn't that great; it might be
a factor in the increased OT content. People with a posteriori languages
seem to take them to the relevant splinter-list. Ah well.
Maybe an interface like the ZBB would be helpful...

>*16. What Internet technology would you most like to see developed that
would aid you in showcasing your language(s)?

It's all over my head anyway.

>*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?

My impression is that there really aren't that many of us out there. When
you find a list like this it's easy to think "wow, I'm not alone! This stuff
is huge!" but you realise, it's not THAT huge.

>*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?

I would be developing the languages and cultures, for sure. But I'd never
have put the site up if I didn't think there was anyone who read that kind
of thing.

>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?

The two aren't exclusive.

>*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?

More open.

>*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?

At the very least, we have a venue. We can discuss this stuff with others
who are interested in it, without annoying or wasting the time/attention of
those who aren't.

>*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?

Who knows? Maybe we're all just going increasingly nuts.

>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?

Sure, if I get to see it.

>Thanks!
You are welcome!

M

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