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

Hi!

Some things got mixed up here .  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:
>> > Hi!
>> [...]
>>
>> > 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.  I presented the design
goals and said that the historical explanation is secondary at the
moment.  The above one-sentence summary is *meant* to be overly
simplifying and contradictory, of course.

>...
>> > 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.

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.

>...
>> >    - Isolating morphology.  For plausibly sounding verb forms,
>> >      I retain a few irregular forms.
>>
>> As you can see from TAKE I have no problem with a language having
>> isolating morphology   :)
>
> Nor do I.  But - the "Construction" boxes on Henrik's page reveal
> that the sound changes are secondary to a word formation mechanism
> which resembles those used by the authors of Latino sine flexione,
> IALA Interlingua, or, for that matter, TAKE.
The sound changes are not secondary.  I had a certain sound of a
Romance language in mind.  I want a sound and feel that I like, and
the GMP tries to formalise my aesthetic ideals.  Without the GMP, the
resulting words would be inconsistent -- I know myself. :-) I would
not manage to produce the sound I want.  Therefore, the GMP is one of
the design principles.  It is for trying to make the language sound
like I want it to sound.  The existing texts show to me that it works
quite weel as they do sound the way I want this language to sound.

But that's just the phonology.  The grammar structure is designed
differently and from a fauxlang point of view, and its historical
explanation is secondary and retrofitted.

>...
> This word formation mechanism has *nothing* to do with the kind of
> changes that happen in natlangs (or true diachronic conlangs),
>...
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
(this is not Qþyn|gài), and any proposals for good explanations would
be welcome. :-)

> so why, then, all that mumbo-jumbo about a Grand Master Plan and
> natural evolution of the language?
See above.  Two stories.

> .. I'm sorry, Henrik, but you are trying to do two vastly different
> things at once, and that usually doesn't work out well.
I really hope I made my goals more clear now.

>> > Following these goals, some structures might need some thinking to be
>> > retro-fitted to historical development...
>>
>> Precisely - that's what I was asking about. The verbs are so radically
>> reduced that I find I cannot make any useful comment without knowing how
>> these reduced forms were supposed to have developed from VL.
>
> Nor can I,
>...
You don't need too, it's secondary.

> except than saying that Henrik is falling between two stools by
> trying to create a conlang which tries to be two things at once
> which can hardly be reconciled with each other.
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.  The primary primary meta goal for me is to have fun, of
course.  And even if I don't seem to succeed in explaining how the
design goals fit together, they make perfect sense to me.

> I feel that Henrik's strengths lie in engelanging - he has made
> quite a few very interesting and original languages -
Thank you! :-)

> but when it comes to diachronic naturalistic conlanging, his results
> are unfortunately less brilliant.
What can I say -- it's good that you're sharing your opinion.

From both types of conlanging, I learned a lot.  Not that it really
matters for people looking at my conlangs, but diachronic conlanging
is good for me and I even like the results.  I know much more about
Latin and Germanic now.

Anyway, the goals I had for my engelangs were very ambitious, I think
and I was never completely satisfied.  It was another engelang, then
another, then another, etc., on my search for the ultimate engelang.
The results from Þrjótrunn are close to what I wanted when I started
-- the paradigms and the texts look confusingly like Icelandic I think
and that's what I wanted.  From my point of view, my engelangs still
need infinite thinking, and I currently enjoy Terkunan more.

So given the satisfaction, prepare to be bothered with more Terkunan!

**Henrik

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