Re: Terkunan: rules for deriving nouns, verbs, adjectives

Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Some things got mixed up here .
It would seem so to me also.

> The design goals may be clear to me,
> but I seem to present them in a confusing way.  Sorry for my fuzzy
> explanations.
>
> Let's see.
>
> Jörg Rhiemeier writes:
>
>>>Henrik Theiling wrote:
[snip]
>>>>Yeah.  My goal of a plausibly Romance diachronical fauxlang that I
>>>>like is a bit hard to explain. :-)
>>
>>The problem I see with Terkunan is that it tries to be two things
>>at once: a diachronic Romance language, *and* a fauxlang with an
>>isolating grammar.  You cannot have both at once, I think, and end
>>up with something which is neither.
>
> But I am not trying to do two things at once.
Auxlangs like Volapük, Esperanto, Latino sine Flexione, Novial, Glosa
etc, etc (or even a fauxlang like TAKE) do _not_ have diachronic
development over the centuries. They are the creation of individuals or,
occasionally, a committee or group of individuals. It seems to me a
_diachronic_ fauxlang is a bit of a contradiction.

I presented the design
> goals and said that the historical explanation is secondary at the
> moment.
My own feeling is that if Terkunan is a fauxlang, then the historical
explanation of diachronic development should be ditched.

[snip]
>>>>The diachronical development is retro-fitted and secondary.
>>>
>>>That would seem to me to be making life difficult   :)
>>
>>AMEN.  What I see what Henrik is trying to do with Terkunan is
>>to make a language which has evolved from Vulgar Latin by
>>naturalistic sound changes, while at the same time appealing
>>to his taste for perfectly regular, simple engelangs.  And that's
>>the problem.
>
> I don't see the contradiction, actually.  The GMP is a helpful means
> to prevent chaos.  It does not contradict the fauxlangish goals of
> simplicity at all.  It helps me prevent making sloppy mistakes and it
> constructs the sounds I want.  It is very hard (for me) to do this
> without machine aid.  If fact, I always hated lexicon construction and
> wasn't very good at it (and slow) and a GMP in an aposteriori conlang
> is a great help.
I agree that the GMP is a helpful means to prevent chaos in the
diachronic development of a naturalistic conlang. But I do not see why
_simplicity_ per_se has to be fauxlangish. Surely pidgins and creoles
have similar simplicity.

> Also, Terkunan is *not* meant to be an engelang and I am *not* using
> engelang design goals at all.  The simplicity comes from a fauxlang
> point of view.  Engelang would mean that I'd question and reconstruct
> the whole tense/aspect/mood/case/whatevercategory system altogether.
> Instead, I want an isolating language with typical categories from
> Romance and in the best case, with analytical structures typical for
> Romance.
No European Romancelang has particularly analytic verb structures.
_Spoken_ French does best in this respect, tho the written language
retains quite a bit of synthetic apparatus. But Romance based creoles do
surely show the simplicity that you are aiming for, and those structures
have derived from Romance itself.
[snip]
>
> The construction of a conlang is different from that of a natlang,
> yes.  It always is: for a conlang, there is a person with design
> goals, even in diachronic conlanging.  But even if my grammar
> structures seem implausible, it does not mean they are impossible
Nothing is impossible in a conlang  :)

[snip]
>
> If this conlang really bothers you (and others?), I could have a poll
> about whether it's so disturbing that I should better remove it from
> the Internet.
No, that is not, I think, a good idea. I have to admit that I share much
the same misgivings as Jörg does and we are, I hope, trying to be helpful.

> The primary primary meta goal for me is to have fun, of
> course.
Absolutely.

> And even if I don't seem to succeed in explaining how the
> design goals fit together, they make perfect sense to me.
My own personally feeling is that it would be better to drop the
fauxlang idea and to seek the simplicity and isolating structure you
desire by designing Terkunan as a Romance-based creole *there*.

--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Entia non sunt multiplicanda
praeter necessitudinem.

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