Re: Constructive linguistics

Thanks, Dave, for your comments regarding models that can be used for what
they model and the question of why conlangs can have features that natural
languages never have.

1.	I would be cautious about assuming mutual irrelevance between the
questions about the specification of grammatical rules and the question of
why natural languages don't have features that are easy to create in
conlangs.

Theoretically, the more scientific grammars for natural languages could be
written, the more generalizations could be made about the constraints on
natural languages, which in turn would prompt more theoretical models of
natural language.  If one or more of the latter could explain the
constraints on natural languages--say, in terms of cognitive or evolutionary
factors--you'd have at least a provisional answer to the question of why we
can do things in conlangs that are never done in natural languages, right?

Practically, what with the disappearence of so many languages, and the fact
that so many varieties of language have yet to be studied, and the fact that
more missionaries than academic linguists learn newly documented languages,
I'm not implying anything about the likelihood of success or failure in the
theoretical quest I've described.  Just that the questions mentioned above
might be related after all.

What is missing, I suppose, from the theoretical program is a good survey of
non-natural features found in invented languages.   I don't know that the
survey would be crucial, but wouldn't it be helpful in eliminating any
confusion between possible natural languages and possible languages?

2.	Your point about the widespread practice of reading each other's grammars
for features is *very* well taken.  I was way off base, there.  We do read
each other's works, but we read them more like cookbooks than assembly
instructions, checking around for features we find interesting and
inspiring.  I should do more of this.

I'm working on a language and wanted to do something creative with deletion.
Low and behold, I created mandatory deletion of any NP within a compound or
complex sentence that was identical to the subject of the first and/or
matrix clause.  Well, I put that device aside when I found out that Matt
Pearson's Tokana contained a very similar device called "topic deletion."
AFAIK, no conlanger claims a copyright on an isolated feature, but I still
let the idea go because I wanted
to do something different.

What I wound up with was a language that doesn't allow much deletion at all,
but has two kinds of third person pronoun:

a)  one third person subject pronoun with one invariant form, whose use is
mandatory where "topic deletion" used to be, and....

b)  a whole bunch of third person non-subject pronouns, each having a
different implicit number and semantic class.

Someone probably already thought of that one too, if it isn't an ANLDTEW.
But I'll stick with it anyway.

Jim

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