Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Nowicki" <andrew@...>

> Joe wrote:
>
> J> I think the most important thing about language
> J> is it's flexibility and ability to add new concepts.
> J> By that token, pheronomes are not languages,
> J> and Conlangs are.
> Latin does not change, so according to you it is not
> a language.
Oh for pity's sake.

> Eamon Graham wrote:
>
> EG> Not quite so.  Latin expands all the time: from mideval times to
> EG> modern times Latin expands its vocabulary.  New words are coined or
> EG> derived (often from Greek) for science (especially), religion and
> EG> philosophy.  In that sense, it's changing, even if it is not a
> EG> spoken "living language."
>
> OK. I was wrong.
Quite.  Latin was a living language for centuries with evolutions and
registers and additions to its vocabulary.  Look at all those people it
conscripted into its armies!  Comparing it to an animal language because it
is now "unchanging" is just plain off.

Even if Latin weren't being used in the Vatican or for Finland's broadcasted
Nuntii Latini, it would still not serve your purposes.  There are many old
languages that we still read and which, in their time, were changing and
expanding.  The nature of human language is to evolve.  The languages that
don't are dead.

> Latin does change a little, but there may be
> human languages which are frozen in time for religious reasons.
Go out and research it, Andrew, instead of making these blanked statements.
This doesn't further your argument that they can be compared to animal
languages, though.

> Some social animals may also use languages which do not change.
One of the definitions of human generative grammar is that within the
parameters of any given human language, dead or alive, big or little, new
statements can always be generated.

You might be able to say that bees generate "new" statements about where a
flower patch is, but we have no evidence that they generate statements about
the size and dimension of their beehive, or which lucky drone is going to
get to mate with the queen, or how they hate the bear that's coming to steal
their honey. :)  You CAN say that in Latin.  And in Sanskrit.  And in
Teonaht.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."