Re: LUNATIC SURVEY: 2005

----- Original Message -----
From: Sally Caves <scaves@...>

> LUNATIC SURVEY 2005, by Sally Caves
>
> 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")
I am Paul Bennett. I also go by Darth Spacey elsewhere (for instance Livejournal
and AIM), for reasons not easily summed up in a single answer.

My current projects are Thagojian (once known as Wenetaic -- more properly the
two projects merged), Br'ga, and an unnamed romlang that I think I'm going to
locate on the island of Belle I^le, France some 500 years ago. I also kinda
keep Lizardman on a back burner. I did promise to start churning out
substantive content, but I'm overwhelmed by less important things.

> *2. Are you new to the Lunatic Survey or have you filled out a
> version of this survey before?
I don't recall doing so, but it's plausible. My memory is quite bad.

> 3. Do you have a website for you language/world(s)? If so, please
> list the URL address.
None.

> 4. What is your email address? name at hostsite dot whatever.
paul-bennett@nc.rr.com or paul.w.bennett@gmail.com -- I check the former much more often, but the
latter is a great way to get massive attachments to me. I have a pipe you could
drive a bus down, so no worries about file sizes.

> 5. What is your age? (vague answers allowed, but it is an
> important demographic)
I was born at 2:11pm local time on July 12, 1976 in Bletchley, England.

> 6. What is your gender?
Male

> 7. What is your nationality?
British Citizen, USA Permanent Resident ("Green Card" holder). This summer, I will
become eligible to start the multi-year process of applying for US Citizenship,
and I think I shall do so.

> Where do you live now?
Garner, North Carolina, USA (although it's a Raleigh, NC zipcode).

> 8. What is your native language?
English

> 9. What natural languages foreign to you have you studied
Heh. How long have you got? Some of the memorable ones are Serbo-Croat (as it was
called at the time -- the dialect in the book was more Serbian than Croatian
AIUI), Sumerian, Elamite, Ancient Egyptian, Russian, Mandarin, Quechua,
Sinhalese, German, Albanian, Polish, French, Spanish, New Testament Greek,
Modern Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian Arabic, Japanese (several times), Dutch,
Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Burmese, and many more. I never attained more than a
passing familiarity in any of them, though.

> or do you speak?
I have a passable ability in reading German. Ten years ago, I was fluent, but
hadn't used it since then until coincidentally it became convenient to do so
for my current job.

> 10. What is your level of education? i.e., your highest degree
> achieved or sought?
The English system is different to the American one. I have found it most
convenient to describe it as an Associates degree in Electrical Engineering,
and another in Information Technology.

> 11. What is your profession? Are you a professional linguist?
I am currently employed developing and testing a project for IBM to put Linux
onto Point Of Sale cash registers.

> If so, what also makes you a conlanger?
N/A.

> 13. If you are a student, what is your major or your area of study?
By means of evening classes, I am slowly racking up credit hours towards a degree
in Computer Science that I hope to take to the Master's level at least.

> 14. How long have you been developing your invented language(s)?
Good question. Wenetaic started some five years ago, around the same time as
Thagojian. The projects merged maybe two or three years ago. The other active
projects are younger.

> 15. At what age did you first start inventing a language?
Hard to remember. Maybe 12 or 13.

> Can you briefly describe your early efforts?
The language was Polyparlisho. It was an IAL founded on what I later learned to be
the principles described in "The Loom Of Language" and of the IAL Glossa.

> 16. What drew you to start inventing a language and/or constructed
> world? What was the inspiration?
Well. I started noticing that a lot of the languages I was exposed to shared
features (beyond the families I knew about (Romance and Germanic) -- it was
actually studying Serbo-Croat (as it was) that made me go "woah!"), and thought
"wouldn't it be cool if they were all relatable and related" and decided to try
and undertake that task.

> 17. Did you start inventing before you had heard of the list or
> after?
Significantly before.

> Before you had heard of Esperanto or Tolkien? (I name the
> two most common inspirations)
Yes, and no, respectively.

> 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 came out to my LJ friends as a Conlanger. I don't tend to discuss it much, though.

> 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 to any extent, at least not as expressed to me.

> *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?
Of course it's nerdy. I place no negative value on the word "nerdy", however.

> 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?
I have tried the guitar, the violin, the recorder, the ocarina, the zither, the
piano, the mouth-organ, the clarinet, the penny whistle, and a few synths of
variable levels of programmability. I pretty much suck. Using the most
programmable of the synths (a program called CSOUND), I attempted to compose
some nonatonic music (a scale of nine notes instead of twelve), which wasn't
really all that pleasing. I suspect that if I took a course in music theory I
might be able to grok at least some of it.

> 22. There has been a connection noted between linguistic and
> mathematical ability. Are you mathematically inclined or inclined
> towards computing in any way?
I love math, but I suck at it, too. I am going to try Precalculus again, though,
and see where that leads me, since I suspect I'll need Discrete Math and a few
other subjects to make serious headway in the aforementioned Master's.

I am a computer geek, though not one of the highest order. I have never
contributed code to an Open Source project, for instance, though I'm wracked
with guilt since I use such things every day. I am one of the types of
programmer who can (if pushed) learn a new language within hours, and I can
learn most application software in about the same time. I did learn perl via
the classicly geeky manner of buying an O'Reilly book and reading it cover to
cover, virtually non-stop.

> 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 have written fan-fiction (don't hate me), role-played a bit, squiggled a few
maps, and cranked out some pretty formulaic poetry.

> 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.
All artlangs. Two lostlangs.

> 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)?
Thagojian -- a posteriori (Proto-Indo-European)
Unnamed romlang -- a posteriori (Romance)

The others are a priori.

> 4. Do you have a script for your conlang?
Yes.

> What is it called?
The romlang uses a subset of Latin-1.

Thagojian has Thagojian Demotic and Thagojian Uncial. The Demotic is to the cuneiform
syllabary as Egyptian Demotic is to Egyptian Heiroglyphic. The Uncial is based
on Greek, Coptic and Hebrew.

> Could you provide me at a later date with a sample of it?
Here...

Demotic http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/darthspacey/beowulf1.gif

Unical http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v169/darthspacey/thagojian.png

> Is it on Langmaker's "neography" site?
Not yet.

> 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.
This is a complex question that I can't readily summarise the answer to. If I
could, I'd start churning out a reference grammar.

> 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?
They're all tiny, but some are more tiny than others. In theory, Thag and my romlang
can be embiggened by pumping a root list through a sound-change program, but
I'm doing both by eye right now.

> 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?
Nope. I may one day enquire as to whether they're compatible with Ill Bethisiad.

> *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.?)
Thagojians are X century farmers and merchants in the Levant.

The speakers of the romlang will likely be typical XVI century peasants.

Lizardman is spoken by ... uh ... Lizardmen, somewhere other than The Real Earth.

Br'ga is spoken by tropical-island-dwelling hunter-gatherers.

> *11. Are the beings who speak your invented language human or
> alien?
Human, aside from the Lizardmen

> If alien, what features have you given the language to make
> it alien or how have you restricted or expanded its phonology?
> vocabulary?
Lizardman has a restrictive phonology. The speakers have not got flexible lips, and not
a lot of range of motion in their jaws. Thus, the vowels are i, i\, M, 7, plus
length, and the consonants are all laminal/dorsal.

> 12. What do you write in it? Poems? chants? lullabyes? prayers?
> history? stories? recipes? Are any of these exhibited on your website?
Not much. I started a translation of Beowulf into Thagojian, but I think I placed
too strict a set of constraints on myself. I will try again, using free prose
instead of alliterative Homeric/Vedic meter.

I have started a passage of Cicero into the romlang, too, but that has kinda
stalled. I think I need to learna bit more Latin to do it effectively.

> 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, no, no, no, and no. I have discussed my wife and I learning a rare language to
allow us to talk completely freely in public. She would balk at Klingon, but
might be okay with one of the less well-known natlangs, or maybe Quenya or
something.

> 14. Have you made any soundbytes of your language?
No.

> Could you
> provide me at a later date with a sample of them?
It's plausible.

> *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.
All my romanisations are pretty transparent. I have digraphs with -s in the
romanisation of Thag that are etymologically palatalised consonants, though as
a dead language it's hard to say what the pronunciation really was. The glyphs
in Uncial are ksei, psei and zeta.

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

> *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?
Hecks, yeah. All the time. Tourette's syndrome can provide all kinds of fun ways to
blow off mental and/or psychic steam.

> *18. What on-line games do you play? (or devise?) Translations,
> Babel-text, Relays, etc.
I would participate in Translations and Relays, if I had a more complete
language to do so with. I took part in two relays. One I fouled up so very
badly for the person following me, and the other I had to withdraw from.
That'll learn me, as indeed it did.

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

> 20. Do you start and stop several different conlangs, or do you
> tend to stick with one and develop it over years?
I tend to have one main project that makes slow progress, and several side
projects that bloom and wither rapidly.

> 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 think that once you can be handed any random text, and translate it fluidly,
the language is complete.

> *22. Which came first: the conlang or the conworld?
Tough question. The world, I think, by a hair, or at least the rudiments of the
ecology of the speakers.

> C. PHILOSOPHY AND AESTHETIC:
>
> 1. What aesthetic features do you value in inventing language? Be
> specific as to phonology, structure, script, etc.
I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.

> 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.
Nothing consciously.

> 3. Is difficulty or obscurity a goal in inventing a language?
No.

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

> 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 am aiming for believability and plausibility in all my languages. They should
all be more or less able to be lostlangs (provided we make contact with
sentient reptiles within my lifetime).

> 6. Can conlanging be sexy? sensual? obsessing? how does it heal or
> harm you?
It can be an obsession. I think it maybe heals me.

> *7. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of
> obscenities?
Oh, very yes. Oh wait, are we talking conlang-wise here? Not really, in that case.

> 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?
Not even a bit.

> 9. How many of you have developed a rich vocabulary of magical,
> religious, or incantatory terms?
Thag is *going to* have a rich set of Christian terminology, but as yet nothing
much. There are different words for "to sing a secular song" and "to sing a
hymn". I might extend the latter to include "to take part in a ritualised
prayer".

> *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?
Meh.

> 11. Name a few of the words in your language(s) that you are most
> pleased with and are the most original to you.
Nothing comes to mind.

> 12. How do you sense that a word is "right" for its meaning?
I don't know. For Thag, I just dig through the AHD appendix, trying out the
mouthfeel of a few semantic candidates and see what fits the text so far and/or
just sounds right.

> How
> much do you labor at fitting a sound to its sense? Or don't you care?
Not really. I figure that if that theory is true, it will be expressed
automatically if I do nothing to help or hinder it.

> *13. Do you ever rely on a software program to build vocabulary?
I will, but not yet.

> Do those who don't think that's cheating? :)
Not in the slightest.

> *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 tend to view it as a craft. Individual efforts can be very artistic, but don't
ask me to define "art".

> *15. If it is, who do you think are its consumers?
N/A

> *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?
N/A

> *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?
N/A

> *18. Why or why not would you eschew the metaphors "miniature" or
> "model"?
I can stand "model" but not "miniature" -- the two terms do not mean the same thing.

> *19. Is a conlang more like a glimpse of something lifesize?
> (Irina's suggestion in 2001)
I think that depends on the completeness of the language.

> *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?
None.

> *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?
That's the whole goal of Thagojian, the romlang, and quite possibly Br'ga.

> *22. How much do you study other languages in order to discover
> what is natural in language?
A lot. I devour books like _Language Universals and Linguistic Typology_ and
_Describing Morphosyntax_, and I have even read Trask's dictionary
cover-to-cover. Greenberg is on my list, as are several other authors.

> Or to discover how you can stretch
> the boundaries of language to make it do things that are unnatural?
Not so much.

> *23. Can such a language function?
I think 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?
Yes. Every gedanken linguistics experiment is an exercise in conlanging, and some
concrete experiments are also.

> D. THE LISTSERV
>
> 1. How did you first hear of this list?
Altavista lead me to a few websites, and I think one of them mentioned or linked the
list. I really don't remember. I didn't realise at the time what an epochal
event for me it would be, so I neglected to really remember it.

> 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?
Off and on, for possibly eight or nine years. Jeepers. Has it really been that long?

> *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 ?
I was one of those fortunate to discover the value of N before it was announced.
I don't know how that happened, since I feel like I lurk more often than not.

> *4. For those of you who remember its inception, how has it
> changed over the past decade?
Not quite since the inception, but I have seen more people joining than leaving,
yet the dynamic has stayed almost the same, but in a good way.

> *5. How helpful has the list been in developing your language? In
> learning linguistic information?
More than I can possibly describe.

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

> *7. Do you peruse the websites of other conlangers?
On occasion. More so if there's good discussion in the days after a link is
posted, though, I'll admit.

> *8. Do you sense that people on this list are interested in your
> conlang and give you feedback on it?
From time to time. I haven't presented much beyond promises of future content, though.

> 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 have plowed into the start of the Teonaht lessons more than once, but sad to
say, little if any of it has stuck.

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

> *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?
None, really. I found Alan Wood's Unicode resources I think through the list.

> 12. Have you ever tried to introduce a friend to the list?
Nope.

> 13. Do you know of anyone who does this kind of thing but who has
> never heard of the list?
Yep. There's a Livejournal conlangs cummunity, just brimming with people who might
benefit from the list, but I'm scared of dragging the SNR down by issuing a
mass invitation.

> *14. What other lists do you frequent related to conlanging?
The LJ community. A bunch of the daughter lists.

> *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?
There are a plethora of daughter lists already. I think having them lets people
control their experience and workload more granularly, which equals greater
freedom, and if there's one thing I'm passionate about, it's freedom.

> *16. What Internet technology would you most like to see developed
> that would aid you in showcasing your language(s)?
Incorporate SIL Graphite and a Metafont renderer into every operating system.

> *17. What lists like conlang exist in other cultures and languages
> that you know of?
Uh. Others are more qualified to answer this than I am.

> *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 don't think that being well-known and being a community are mutually exclusive goals.

> *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?
Without a doubt.

> Do you?
A bit, not that there's anything wrong with that.

> 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 don't know. I would certainly be inventing a lot more naively, and I think that's a bad 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?
"I do that, too. I'm not some kind of monomaniac."

> *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. Fictional languages are bursting out of all kinds of entertainment sources.

> *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?
Tolkien would have been, I think, overjoyed by the concept of our list.

> *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 think it's clearly a natural human inclination that is not just stable, but rather growing.

> 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?
I have in the past released all my postings to this list under the GNU LGPL (see
www.gnu.org). I hereby re-affirm that. Basically, you can do what you like with
it, as long as you keep proper attribution.



Paul