Re: Constructive linguistics

Jim wrote:

<<
I don't see the artlang becoming the subject of an academic discipline
any
time soon either.
 >>

I don't either, but that has more to do with the sociology of academia,
which is, it seems to me, not too different from the sociology of a
child's
playground with not enough balls and jumpropes to go around.

Linguistics could never even entertain the thought of allowing
conlinguistics
into the field because it's small and not as respected as it should be.
  I'm
sure that biologists and physicists still smirk at linguistics calling
itself a
science.  Those who divvy up funding do, as well.  Given that state of
affairs, could linguistics allow something so "pointless and trivial" as
conlanging to become a viable part of the field?  No more than model
train building could be a viable part of an urban planning department.

Jim wrote:

<<
As for the humanities, I think that artngs stand at odds with the aims
of
traditional literature, which generally aspires to express the most
individual outlooks in ways that make them interesting to a larger
population.
 >>

That's an odd summation.  I wonder how many writers (serious writers)
wrote so that everyone would read what they wrote.  That's easy to
believe in today's world, but not in the days of Milton and Spenser.
No, I don't agree with that at all--not even with the "generally" in
there.

Jim wrote:

<<
What we don't do is acquire significant expertise in each other's
conlangs.
There's nothing wrong with that.  I'd rather have some help in building
my
own conlang than spend two years learning to speak and read and write in
someone else's.  So would a lot of other people.
 >>

That's because the method of expression for a conlang is *not* a TY
manual.
What we show are on webpages.  We show nominal and verbal paradigms;
phonologies; syntactic structures; short texts.  This is our medium.
Now
ask the question: How many conlangers look at the phonologies of other
conlangs?  How many go through texts with interlinears?  How many
look at noun declensions and verb paradigms?  I know I do.  I look at a
*lot*.  I remember a lot, too.  I know without going to a webpage that I
like the look and feel of Ea Luna; that I like the intricacy of
Skerre's verbal
system; that the sentence structure of amman iar, though not usual,
strikes me as quite natural.  I could go on.  So, no, we don't learn
others'
languages; that's not the point.  The point is this: Through language,
one
communicates.  One can communicate in a straight-forward manner; one
can communicate in a flowery manner.  One can communicate using no
nouns; one can communicate using no verbs.  One can communicate
using a maximum or minimum of specificity.  The question is *how*.
THAT is what's interesting.  Given an infinity of experience, I find it
interesting to see what particular aspects of, say, an action a language
decides to focus on.  For example, one thing that no natural language
would ever encode on a verb is the color of a speaker's shirt.  But a
language *could*.  I find that interesting.  In fact, I find it more
interesting
than a stupid computer which can correctly predict why "We saw Sally's
pictures of ourselves" is grammatical, whereas "Sally's pictures of
ourselves
are interesting" is not.  That, I find to be incredibly uninteresting,
and
utterly pointless.  Yet THIS is what people study!?  THIS is what tax
dollars
get spent on!?  I'd rather see a department of model train building.

Jim wrote:

<<
Personally, I've always thought of conlanging as a craft, like
scrimshaw.
Or model railroad building, as Jeff Henning suggested?
 >>

I've always thought this was not a very good analogy for many reasons.
A short list:

(1) Model trains, as Jim points out, are intended to necessarily be
realistic.
Conlangs need not be.

(2) Realism aside, the goal of a model train maker is to make the train
and landscape look *exactly* like an actual landscape and an actual
train.
This is not the goal of a conlanger.  Even if a conlanger wanted a
conlang
that looked and felt like Latin, they would never design Latin.  That
would be pointless and not at all fun.  Yet, this is the goal of the
model
train maker--only to do so in a smaller size.  This doesn't carryover to
conlanging.  If it did, then a good conlang would look *exactly* like
Latin, to a T, only with fewer words, and maybe not as many affixes.

(3) No matter how good a model train is, a human can get on a model
train and ride it.  A created language, however, can be used.  It's
happened
before.  Look at Esperanto:  More than 100 years old, and still going
strong.  Further, people don't just communicate with it: It's the L1 of
quite a number of people (their L2 often being a language that only
one of their parents speaks).  And (and this is the icing on the cake)
Esperanto is a TERRIBLY created language!  Honestly!  Zamenhof had
some good ideas, but then he ran out, and just started creating affixes
or prepositions.  Like "je".  Butler, in his book "Step by Step in
Esperanto"
defines this preposition as follows:

"The preposition JE h as no definite meaning.  It may stand for any
prepositional relation implied by the context.  It is best to use when
no other preposition seems to meet the case."

In other words, people probably wrote in to Zamenhof, "How do
you say x, y, and z?", and so he just invented this, "Uh, if all else
fails, say this."  Ridiculous.  And yet, this language is more useful
for communication than any model train is for transportation.  In
fact, a language sketch with two words is better for communication
than a model train is for transportation.

(4) The main point of making a model train is imitation.  The main
of creating a language is creation.  Even if one is trying to make a
language that looks/feels like another specific language, the goal
is still creation, because imitation would be too easy, since you could
simply copy the real language word for word.  You can't do that
with a train.

If you want to stick with a transportational metaphor, a far better
analogy would be trick cars.  Ever seen a shown on MTV called
Pimp My Ride?  My cousin was actually on it.  He bought some
junky old VW bus (that had no vin number, by the way, and had
never been registered), and MTV had a crew take it to a custom
shop in LA and they "tricked it out", so to speak.  They painted
it, added a motorized surfboard rack, a plasma TV with a Playstation,
a blender (for some reason), a dryer (for clothes), a sofa, and a
little switch which caused a little sign on the side of his car to pop
out which says "CHILL".  The car still drives, though (unless the
battery dies, which happens frequently), and that is its purpose.
That's what language creation is like.  And here, they just refurbished
the car, so this would be kind of like creating a euroclone.  What
about creating a solar powered car?  A car with three wheels?  A car
with sixteen switches?  A two-storied car?  A car that was a gigantic
wheel?  Now this is getting more into what conlanging is like.
And you know what?  Sometimes these fancy cars don't get good
mileage.  Sometimes they can't move three feet.  So it is with
created language.

I also have a food metaphor I like (I call it the Twinkie  metaphor,
since that was what I was eating at the time that I thought of it),
but this serves just as well.

Back to the point about conlinguistics in academia, conlanging *does*
have something to tell linguistics, but maybe not as much, given
the main empirical questions of the field.  At the same time, though,
linguistics does have a few things to tell conlanging, but not as
much as I think one would assume.  Linguistics is the study of
languages, not language.  Many linguists know a lot about sounds,
semantics, morphology, etc., but they don't know a lot about
language, in my experience.  This is why I find attending a language
class much more useful and fulfilling than attending a linguistics
class, most of the time.  You learn more by doing.  And that's
what language creation is, like it or not: Doing language.
Languaging.  For this reason, if language creation were ever to
enter into academia, I think it should be its own department.  Could
that ever happen?  Maybe if a conlanger wins the lottery and
were so inclined.  What are the odds on that, math people...?

-David

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