Re: Conlang labels (wasR: Futurese, Chinese, Hz of NatLangs, etc.)

And Rosta <a-rosta@...> comunu:

> The three poles/apices can then be defined in terms of goals:
>
> artlang: purely aesthetic design goals
> engelang: objective relatively quantifiable *design* goals
> auxlang: goal of being used as an international lingua franca
>...
> It was me that initiated the debate about the category, but (iirc) John
> Cowan who came up with the term itself.
>...
> I think this misses the distinction between artlangs and engelangs,
> which is analogous to that between 'artistic' and 'functional'
> objects -- sculptures versus chairs, say. It is possible to design
> a chair with great artistry, but one is still serving functional
> objectives in a way that the artist sculptor is not. To locate
> a conlang away from the Artlang pole is not say that its design is
> executed without artistry.
Great stuff, And!  It's a category that is very important to me, as most of
my recent work falls into this area.

It's obvious that engelang didn't catch on as a term -- I see through Google
only one web site referring to it.  I've suggested a few alternatives and
have particularly liked any of them, but I'll try again:

funclang -- functional language ("designed for or adapted to a particular
function or use")

In keeping with your recent e-mail to me mentioning "arguably ly-adverb [is
an open class]":

Funkily yours,

Jeffrey

P.S. I have no idea why my last message posted to the list twice and hope it
doesn't happen with this message. (If it does, and you have an idea why, let
me know privately.)

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