> Sally Caves wrote:
>> A. PROFESSION, DEMOGRAPHICS, INCLINATION:
>
>> 1. Who are you, and what is the name of your invented
>> language or languages?
>
> Jim Henry: my main current conlang is gjax-zym-byn (/gj&'zUmbUn/).
> Some languages I've worked on in the past include Thaurilarau and
> Llegisia.
>
>> *2. Are you new to the Lunatic Survey or have you filled
>> out a version of this survey before?
>
> I don't think I've done this before; I'm active on CONLANG-L
> only intermittently.
>
>> 3. Do you have a website for you language/world(s)? If so,
>> please list the URL address.
>
>
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
>
>> 4. What is your email address?
>
> jimhenry at pobox dot com
>
>> 5. What is your age? (vague answers allowed, but it is an
>> important demographic)
>
> 31 years
>
>> 6. What is your gender?
>
> Animate. Oh, ... male.
>
>> 7. What is your nationality? Where do you live now?
>
> American. Duluth, Georgia (near Atlanta)
>
>> 8. What is your native language?
>
> English
>
>> 9. What natural languages foreign to you have you studied
>> or do you speak?
>
> I can read French well and ancient Greek not so well. Can't
> speak either.
>
> Using a broader definition of "natural language", I speak
> Esperanto about as fluently as English.
>
>> 10. What is your level of education? i.e., your highest
>> degree achieved or sought?
>
> Bachelor's degree
>
>> 11. What is your profession? Are you a professional
>> linguist? If so, what also makes you a conlanger?
>
> Network programmer and software tester. No formal
> education in linguistics.
>
>> 13. If you are a student,
>
> no.
>
>> 14. How long have you been developing your invented
>> language(s)?
>
> I think I developed my first skechy conlang in 1989, shortly
> after reading Tolkien (specifically the Book of Lost Tales -
> I didn't find the Silmarillion until much later). I started
> work on gjax-zym-byn in February or March 1998.
>
>> 15. At what age did you first start inventing a
>> language? Can you briefly describe your early efforts?
>
> I was probably 16 when I developed an Elvish language
> used for names in a fantasy story I was writing. The
> phonology was very Englishesque, and there was no syntax
> to speak of, but the morphology was eerily similar to
> Esperanto, which I had not at the time heard of.
>
>> 16. What drew you to start inventing a language and/or
>> constructed world? What was the inspiration?
>
> Tolkien.
>
>> 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)
>
> I had developed three or four very sketchy conlangs
> that were all vocabulary and no grammar between about
> 1989-1995. In 1996 I discovered this list through
> Jeffrey Henning's homepage. After I started studying
> linguistics on my own, I developed several more naturalistic
> conlangs for a world I was working on with my brother.
> In early 1998 I started working on the language I now
> call gjax-zym-byn.
>
>> 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 don't keep it secret as such. I often try to keep quiet
> about it for fear of boring people, but when obsessed
> about it I will occasionally bend my brother's ear about
> the semantic or grammatical issues I'm working through.
>
>> 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?
>
> None, AFAIR.
>
>> *20. Do you consider it nerdy to be doing this? This
>
> Yes. Not necessarily a bad thing.
>
>> 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, yes, no, and no.
>
>> 22. There has been a connection noted between linguistic
>> and mathematical ability. Are you mathematically inclined
>> or inclined towards computing in any way?
>
> Interested in math, not very good at it. I'm a reasonably
> good but not brilliant programmer.
>
>> 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?)
>
> Writing fiction, mostly in English, occasionally in Esperanto,
> sometimes even in gjax-zym-byn. Map-making. Collagerie.
>
>> B. FEATURES OF YOUR INVENTION
>
>> 1. Pick the best term for the invented language you are
>> currently invested in: auxlang, artlang, engelang, loglang,
>> lostlang, philosophical language, or "other." etc.
>
> Mix of artlang and loglang. Parts (the postposition system,
> the conjunctions) are designed to be concise, symmetical
> and thoroughly cover the possibilities with as few phonemes
> as possible. The root noun set is deliberately idiosyncratic.
>
>
>> 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)?
>
> The root vocabulary is mostly a priori, but some words
> (~180 out of >700) are derived from words in Finnish,
> Latin, Malaysian, English, French, Greek, Esperanto,
> and a few other source languages (though often with
> Volapukesque deformation to fit the phonotactics).
>
>> 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?
>
> Yes; it's based on the lowercase Esperanto alphabet,
> with a bunch of additional letters for phonemes
> not found in Esperanto. No, I can't conveniently send
> samples. I don't have a scanner.
>
>> 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.
>
> Postpositional, agglutinating; fixed word order within phrases,
> free arrangement of phrases within sentence, though OVS order is default.
>
>> 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?
>
> The dictionary contains >1400 words, about 700 root words and 700
> compounds (some included because they are unobvious or idiomatic, some
> simply to give examples of how certain affixes are used). It only
> lists 34 out of the 306 spacetime postpositions, but the rest are
> obvious. The tab-delimited dictionary is the most up to date part of
> my website, though I'm working on updating other parts.
>
>> 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. I try to create a word from existing root stock
> if possible, but will sometimes create new root words to replace
> unweildily long compounds. Both the initial design of gjax-zym-byn
> and my Esperanto writing style were influenced by Claude Piron's
> _La Bona Lingvo_.
>
>> 3. Does a constructed world accompany your
>> invention(s)? What is it called?
>
> Thaurilarau, Llegisia and others were designed for the Caligoi:
>
>
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/caligo/caligo0.htm
>
>> *9. Has your language and conworld ever served in a
>> role-playing game or a world shared by other conlangers?
>
> My brother and I roleplayed in the Caligoi a lot for several years,
> but that period did not overlap much the the time I was working
> on languages for the people of that world.
>
>> *10. Briefly describe your conculture (is it within the
>> bounds of this world? on another world, etc.?)
>
> A completely different planet, probably in a different universe.
>
>> *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?
>
> The speakers of Thaurilarau, Llegisia, etc. are nonhuman,
> but the languages I designed for them aren't particularly alien.
>
>> 12. What do you write in it? Poems? chants? lullabyes?
>> prayers? history? stories? recipes? Are any of these
>> exhibited on your website?
>
> I did the Babel text and the native creation myth in Thaurilarau.
> In gjax-zym-byn I've written a great deal -
> journal entries, story notes, stories, translations of several
> Bible passages, and most of my development notes on the language itself;
> but only a tiny proportion of all that is on my website.
> Most is in paper notebooks.
>
>> 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? :)
>
> Yes, fluency in gjax-zym-byn is my goal. I am fairly fluent in
> writing and reading it, much less so in speaking it (I deliberately
> made its phoneme inventory large and exotic, to stretch myself).
>
> gjax-zym-byn was designed for my personal use; starting in
> 2000 I've been using it intermittently for my journal, especially
> for recording dreams.
>
>
>> 14. Have you made any soundbytes of your language? Could
>
> No.
>
>> *15. If you use Roman script, how recognizably
>> "phonetic" is your writing system? In other words, do
>> do you use unconventional letters or letter combinations
>> to represent sounds?
>
> The script is pretty much one-to-one phonemic, except that one
> letter represents nasalization of all the vowels in the word rather
> than a specific phoneme.
>
> However, the ASCII representation is a superset of X-convention
> Esperanto using many additional digraphs with "x" and "q" to represent
> phonemes not found in Esperanto. Even I have some trouble reading it,
> which is partly why I've mostly been working in paper notebooks.
>
>> 16. How many of you sing in your language and have invented
>> songs for that purpose?
>
> gjax-zym-byn is not euphonious enough for that, unfortunately.
>
>> *17. How many of you, for entertainment or any other
>> reason, resort to gibberish? (This is in response to
>
> Me.
>
>> Adrian Morgan's question in December). Does it give you
>> ideas for conlanging?
>
> Not especially.
>
>>(Have you ever fooled anyone?)
>
> Fooled anyone into thinking what?
>
>>How
>> many of you have sung gibberish?
>
> Me.
>
>> *18. What on-line games do you play? (or
>> devise?) Translations, Babel-text, Relays, etc.
>
> I've occasionally contributed a gjax-zym-byn version
> of some short text people are rendering into their conlangs.
>
>> 19. Which do you prefer doing: devising
>> phonology? script? structure? building vocabulary?
>
> All of the above, at different stages of a project.
>
>> 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 gjax-zym-byn longer than any previous conlang.
> But I haven't worked on it or even used it continuously
> for the last seven years. It's been intermittent, though I've
> never gone a whole year without doing something with it.
>
>> 21. What do you think makes a "complete" conlang, if a
>> conlang can attain completion? What are your goals for
>> completion?
>
> My goal for "completion" of gjax-zym-byn is to think fluently
> in it, only rarely needing to coin new root words.
>
>> When do you grow "tired" of your conlang,
>> or don't you?
>
> I didn't grow tired of the Caligoi languages so much
> as get more interested in gjax-zym-byn.
>
>> *22. Which came first: the conlang or the conworld?
>
> My brother created the Caligoi and I started helping
> him develop them years before I started seriously
> developing its languages.
>
>> C. PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETIC:
>
>> 1. What aesthetic features do you value in inventing
>> language? Be specific as to phonology, structure, script,
>> etc.
>
> I like imaginative case/role marker systems that don't duplicate
> nominative/accusative or ergative/absolutive languages. I like
> isolation and agglutination. Script: I generally prefer curves to
> angles. I like splitting up semantic space in surprising ways.
>
>> 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.
>
>> 3. Is difficulty or obscurity a goal in inventing a
>> language?
>
> Not for me. For gjax-zym-byn, I wanted to optimize for high
> exoticity and high learnability.
>
>> 4. Is efficiency a goal in inventing a language? This
>> question needn't cancel out the previous one.
>
> Sort of, yes. One of the things I am most dissatisfied with about
> gjax-zym-byn is how verbose it often is. I have tried different ways
> to work around this without major redesign.
>
>> 5. How natural do you wish to make it, or is that a
>> concern? Or rather, how unnatural do you wish to make it?
>
> I want it to be exotic, but not so unnatural that I can't
> learn to think in it.
>
>> 6. Can conlanging be sexy? sensual? obsessing? how does
>> it heal or harm you?
>
> An object of obsession, certainly. In fact...
>
> ...ok, I'm back.
>
> Writing my journal in gjax-zym-byn, I find I can sometimes be more
> honest with myself than when writing in English.
>
>> *7. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary
>> of obscenities?
>
> No.
>
>> 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?
>
> I use gjax-zym-byn for prayer, though not nearly as much as English
> and Esperanto.
>
>> 9. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of
>> magical, religious, or incantatory terms?
>
> gjax-zym-byn has a good basic theological vocabulary, but I would
> hesitate to call it "rich" yet.
>
> Thaurilarau had some interesting terminology for concepts
> in the religion of its speakers.
>
>> *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?
>
> Yes, that's one of my favorite aspects of conlanging.
>
>> 11. Name a few of the words in your language(s) that you
>> are most pleased with and are the most original to you.
>
> {keq'pax} /k@'p&/: happy bewilderment. This is a mutation
> of an Englishesque word my brother coined, "kamestra".
>
> {pwiqm} /pwIm/: liquid water. Not original conceptually, but I like
> the onomatopoeic quality.
>
> {geq'diqm} /g@'dIm/: a wake-sleep cycle measured from one waking to
> the next.
>
>> 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?
>
>> *13. Do you ever rely on a software program to build
>> vocabulary? Do those who don't think that's cheating? :)
>
> I used scripts to generate random words for some languages, but found
> the results unsatisfactory. In gjax-zym-byn every word has been
> hand-crafted, sometimes adapting a foreign word to gzb phonotactics,
> more often from scratch. I tend to reuse certain phonaesthemes, so
> words in /pw/ are apt to involve something pleasant and words in /G/
> or /q/ may be something unpleasant or dangerous, but this isn't a
> classificational language like Ro.
>
> If someone matches randomly generated words to a preexisting word-list
> (one they didn't create and haven't hand-edited much if any)
> I suppose I would consider that cheating, as being a kind of relex.
>
>> *14. Is conlang a hobby, a craft, or an art in your
>> mind? This has been hotly debated, so the question is
>
> All of the above.
>
>> not as weird as it seems. Can conlanging be considered an
>> art? Why or why not?
>
>> *15. If it is, who do you think are its consumers?
>
> If the language itself is the work of art, then only those who (to
> some extent) learn it could be considered its consumers. So most
> conlangs would have no consumers. But a well-designed *presentation*
> of the language (reference grammar or graduated lessons) can also be a
> work of art; any such is likely to have a number of other conlangers
> as its consumers.
>
>> *18. Why or why not would you eschew the metaphors
>> "miniature" or "model"?
>
> Those terms fit some conlangs very well: my own Llegisia, for
> instance. A more fully developed conlang is no longer just
> a model, though.
>
>> *19. Is a conlang more like a glimpse of something
>> lifesize? (Irina's suggestion in 2001)
>
> Depends on the conlang, I reckon. Thaurilarau (or my web presentation
> of it) would fit.
>
>> *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?
>
> gjax-zym-byn has an open-ended set of postpositions. It has verbs,
> but many sentences consist of only postpositional phrases with no verb.
>
>> *21 What do you think distinguishes a conlang from a
>> natural language, if you think so at all? What would it
>
> Its history, of course. Some conlangs might be well-developed and
> naturalistic enough that they have no difference from natlangs per se
> except their short history; most of course are too small, too
> regular, or too unnatural to be mistaken for a naturally evolved
> language, but these are not inherent properties of conlangs.
>
>> *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 studied the first elements of many languages. Lately I've been
> trying to find out more about postpositional languages, especially OVS
> and OSV languages, to validate or correct my design decisions
> w.r.t. gjax-zym-byn.
>
>> *23. Can such a language function?
>
> I don't know yet. Sometimes I can write in gjax-zym-byn fast enough
> that I hope I will be thinking fluently in it in just a few more
> months. Other times I despair, thinking I must have included some
> hopelessly unnatural feature that I am trying futilely to learn to
> use.
>
>> *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?
>
> It seems to me that one could study the limits of the human linguistic
> capacity by designing almost but not quite naturalistic conlangs and
> then seeing whether people can in fact learn to think in them and
> speak them fluently. That way, you could distinguish between
> universals of natural language evolution and universals of the way the
> human mind/brain work. The Lojban project seems sort of like this,
> and gjax-zym-byn is similar in some ways; but these hardly seem like
> true scientific experiments since we're changing many variables at
> once and have no control groups. A real experiment would involve two
> or more conlangs identical except for the one feature whose
> naturalness we're trying to determine; one might be a regularized
> relex of some natlang unfamiliar to the experimental subjects, the
> other would be the same but for one weird feature. The learners would
> not pick which conlang to learn or know whether they're attempting
> something most linguists think is impossible.
>
>> D. THE LISTSERV
>
>> 1. How did you first hear of this list?
>
> From Jeffrey Henning's homepage.
>
>> 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?
>
> Intermittently (more off than on) since 1996.
>
>> *5. How helpful has the list been in developing your
>> language? In learning linguistic information?
>
> It was pretty helpful in the early stages of gjax-zym-byn,
> and invaluable in my linguistic education.
>
>> *7. Do you peruse the websites of other conlangers?
>
> Yes.
>
>> *8. Do you sense that people on this list are interested
>> in your conlang and give you feedback on it?
>
> Sometimes, not often.
>
>> 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?
>
> I learned Toki Pona pretty thoroughly last summer, but quit using it
> during a long illnesss in the fall.
>
>> *10. Do you peruse Jeffrey Henning's Langmaker.com site?
>
> Occasionally.
>
>> *11. What on-line techniques do you use to showcase
>
> HTML.
>
>> 12. Have you ever tried to introduce a friend to the list?
>
> I mentioned it to a linguistics-inclined sf author I met
> at Worldcon last year; I don't think she showed up here,
> but I'm not sure because I went nomail myself shortly after.
>
>> 13. Do you know of anyone who does this kind of thing but
>> who has never heard of the list?
>
> I've heard of someone - a friend of a friend of my brother's
> - but haven't met him yet.
>
>> *14. What other lists do you frequent related to
>> conlanging?
>
> I used to be active on the Toki Pona list. Plus various lists
> relating to Esperanto, of course. I subscribed to use_your_conlang
> but it's been mostly inactive.
>
>> *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?
>
> The schisming of the list into more specialized lists may not be a
> good thing. The smaller lists tend to lack enough subscribers to keep
> steady conversation going.
>
>> *16. What Internet technology would you most like to
>
> I'm still figuring out how to represent gjax-zym-byn satisfactorily in
> Unicode.
>
>> *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?
>
> I would like to be sure that everyone who does conlanging knows
> about the list, even if they then choose not to subscribe.
>
>> *19. .....
>> 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?
>
> Some of my most active periods of work on gjax-zym-byn have been in
> during periods when I wasn't subscribed to CONLANG. But
> the list has been helpful in pushing me to flesh out aspects
> of the language that I might otherwise have overlooked.
>
>> 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?
>
> I don't see it as either/or. The time I spend conlanging is taken
> away from reading fiction, rather than from studying Greek. But I
> don't think I've gotten that response from anybody yet.
>
>> *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?
>
> I reckon so. The audience for conlangs will always be small
> compared to the audience for narrative fiction, but it's large
> enough now to make it worthwhile to spend time editing one's
> grammar, lexicon etc. to make it fit for public
> consumption.
>
>> *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?
>
> I find that, over time, I am less likely to be interested in reading
> through another conlanger's entire online grammar. This is probably
> because in many cases I've seen most or all the features before, in
> natlangs or other conlangs. But then I discover something like
> Ithkuil and my faith in humanity is restored. :)
>
>> 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?
>
> Yes, you may use my name.
>