Re: Constructive linguistics

----- Original Message -----
From: "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...>

> 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.
I'm wondering if your sense of linguistics as a field, David, conflicts with
my sense of linguistics as a field--which to me has many branches that share
roots with anthropology, pragmatics, philosophy, and history.

> 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.
Actually, I think that divide is very strong in modern and contemporary
literature.  Look at James Joyce.  Could he have done what he did in
Finnegans Wake in the 1600s?  I rub shoulders constantly with writers in my
department who look down on "genre" writing, considered easy to grasp, dull,
bad, and caters to the masses and who elevate "literary writing" because it
is complex, difficult, obscure, caters to the intellectual few, and takes
narrative and rhetorical risks (which genre writing is assumed not to do,
being convention bound and "intelligible.").

> No, I don't agree with that at all--not even with the "generally" in
> there.
Ditto.

> 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.
Exactly.

> 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?
Good point!  What seems interesting is that an invented language is admired
by other language inventors for design purposes--not for usage purposes.
Scrutiny is certainly there.  (Should've thought of that in my previous
post.):)

  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*.
Well, starting with the Internet, for one thing.  That's something I've
always stressed.  Our conlangs have intelligibility to each other because of
this particular medium.  But I digress.

> 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.
Indeed!  And is that a linguistic point or a philosophical one?

  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.
LAUGHING OUT LOUD!   All good points, David!

> 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.
Agreed.

> (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.
Or a close proximation.

> 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.
Right.  There are spatial issues to consider, here, as well.  What makes a
miniature charming is that it is miniature.  An exact miniature replica of a
Green and Green mansion is charming.  What would be the point, though, of an
exact full-sized replica of a Green and Green mansion except to live in it?
or use it as a film set?  Invented languages don't take up space in that
way, or employ mimesis in that way.  You can't make an *exact* miniature of
Latin, for instance.  So the metaphor is faulty.

  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.
Gee, that was hidden by the window, and just now popped up as I wrote.   You
and I think alike!  Except that my sense of "exact" excludes even the
reduction of vocabulary and affixes.

We've talked before about the ludicrous fantasy of the "exact" map: one that
is the size of the land it maps.  Wasn't that Borges who came up with that?

> (3) No matter how good a model train is, a human can get on a model
> train and ride it.
Did you mean a human *can't* get on a model train?  I'm assuming you mean
the really little ones, as opposed to the little trains you ride around in
at theme parks. :)

Interesting stuff about Zamenhoff snipped.

> (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.
Well... you do it with a car below.

> 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.
Twinky reference swallowed, but with definite pleasure.

> 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.
Or, rather, they sometimes don't learn foreign languages to speak them.

 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.
Amen! :)

  Could
> that ever happen?  Maybe if a conlanger wins the lottery and
> were so inclined.  What are the odds on that, math people...?
I buy a ticket every week! :-\

Sally