Re: Art is when someone says 'Now' -- or is it?

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 5:54 PM, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:

> With conlangs, publishing is, essentially, the web.  And
> since few if any will notice that the definition for a given
> word changed, we can keep tinkering forever without
> constraints.  If grammars and dictionaries for conlangs
> became marketable entities, they would become canon.
> It's much harder to change a definition if it's been published
> in a print volume owned by thousands of people than
> if the dictionary exists only on your computer and/or
> website.  If such a thing did happen, conlangs would
> suddenly feel like bounded projects--if anything, similar
.......
> must still function.  Think of Klingon.  Okrand could
> publish a new dictionary with new words, but do you
> really think he could change a significant part of the
> grammar, or maybe suggest that new word for "language"
> be tlhIS, not Hol?  How would all the Trek fans worldwide
> react?  I honestly think his change would have no
> effect--they'd stick with what was already established.
> In a sense, the language's history has more power at
> this point than its creator.
Indeed, that can happen even while a conlang exists
only on the Internet, with nobody paying the author
anything.  A few years ago Sonja Kisa published
a revision of the Toki Pona lexicon on her website,
which narrowed the senses of some words.
Some people, though, have continued to use words
in the more extended sense they were originally defined
with.  The essence here is whether people other than
the creator are already using the conlang, not whether
anybody is paying the author or the corporate
entity the author did the conlang as work-for-hire for
to get dictionaries and textbooks.

> To sum up: I don't think what we've stumbled on here
> is an inherent difference between artforms by any means.
> Rather, it's a byproduct of the artform's status in the world,
> and could easily change if its status in the world changed.
Are you sure that this is purely arbitrary based on an artform's
cultural status and the way it's published to its audience?
I suspect that even decades or centuries in the future, when
all or nearly all publication is electronic and the marginal
costs of producing revised editions is near zero, you'll find
relatively many conlangers who keep working on their
magnum opus throughout their whole life, never considering
it finished, and relatively few novelists who do the same with
their major works.  Even if novelists had the opportunity to
do the same as conlangers, I suspect relatively few of them
would want to because of the nature of their artforms.
Not none by any means, -- probably more in absolute
numbers, as novel-writing will probably always be
more popular than conlanging -- but relatively fewer.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/

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