Re: Constructive linguistics

> I agree. In a linguistics course, a conlanging topic [1] could
> theoretically be useful for first-year students to demonstrate
> understanding of basic concepts and to practise analysis (let's
> imagine there were two major assignments: to construct a conlang and
> to review someone else's), but let's remember that only a very simple
> conlang can be constructed in ten weeks, or whatever time is
> allocated to the assignment.
Mine at Berkeley is ~14 weeks (we have semesters, which are generally
15 weeks long; mine started in the second week). The class (AUS
"topic") has exactly that as the midterm paper and final project. ;-)

I think David Peterson is working on something at UCSD that would be
similar, except he has the backing (and a prof) to make it equivalent
to an undergraduate intro linguistics class/topic. Hopefully it works
out well. ;-)

> Far more sensible and pragmatic: if you want to do conlanging at
> university, start your own conlanging student club.
... or for others whose universities are liberal enough to allow it,
start your own conlanging class.

(Are Berkeley and Stanford unique WRT this?)

(If you don't know how Berkeley's create-your-own-class system works,
visit www.decal.org for all the info.)

 - Sai