Re: Classifying my languages.

Hey Carlos,

Well, I have very much enjoyed your contribution to
Tokcir/NGL, which has been very insightful, practical
and solid. And you knows how cranky and capricious _I_
am, so that's something of an accomplishment lol :).
So I was pleased to read the rundown of your languages
:). Some comments below...

--- In conlang@y..., Carlos Thompson <chlewey@C...>
wrote:
[...]
> Anyhow, some of the projects I can remember are:
>
>   Rithian: my first conlang, it begun as a way to
make a language for my
> current conscript which was intented as a
cryptoscript (not too good,
> two different guys have broken it despite I went a
little more than one
> sign per letter), and it was some kind of
crypto-language.  It was
> supposed to be used by the secret megacorp that I
would built some day.
> (conmegacorping?) so it was not quite a personal
language, not actually
> a fictional language or a conculture related one,
was not supposed to
> solve any communication problem and had no designed
goals.

OMG, a corplang!! That's what I suggested a lablang
that moves beyond its design phase becomes (jokingly),
but I think you have a real corplang lol.

>   Chleweyish: It begun as a way to have a language
where "Chlewey" would
> be read as it is supposed to be read, and then to
put everything I had
> learned about Colombian Signed language in a
spoken/written language.
> As a design goal I stated that Chleweyish should be
a personal language
> with a minimalist structure.
>
>   Biwa: I was experimenting with two ideas: a split
ergative (or split
> active) language and a phonology with certain
characteristics.  All this
> would have suggested a language with a history but
who would have been
> designed in its final form.  A language like should
have been spoken by
> some people but I never took an aproach to say who
this people was.

Okay, I'm going to ask, what's a split ergative? :)

[...]
>   Interlect: this should be the ultimate
international auxiliary
> language.  Well. not realy.  But it should be
consistent in what I
> believe an IAL should be.  I begun with a definition
of the goals, and
> then begun to invent and see if the language fulfit
those goals.

Okay, this is no doubt opening a can of worms, but
what do you think an IAL should be? Do you have any
site on Interlect? I ask, because this idea has been
playing in my mind for a while now, ever since I got
back interested in Esperanto. Esperanto periodically
attracts my interest because I think the idea is neat
(I'm afraid I'm not terribly idealistic about these
sorts of things, the excitement in an idea like
Esperanto is more elemental for me...), but it
disillusions me and puts me off *every time* because
of the many things that irritate me about it, starting
with the built-in sexism.

I've been following the Futurese debate on this list
with some interest right from the first post (which
arrived not long after I started getting the digest).
That's gotten the little wheels in my mind turning,
although this thing I've been chewing over for a long
time.

I see a couple major salient meta-issues in conlang
design. I think conlangs "succeed" or "die" (I mean in
a sense of a language living or dying - speakers,
users) because of issues extraneous to their design
goals and features. Structural issues will limit a
language's growth, possibly, but the main real issues
are political and social - a good gimmick will give
you far better mileage than good design, although of
course one should try and have good design to help win
the alliegance of some "men of words" and for personal
satisfaction. I mean, look at Klingon. Gimmick,
gimmick, gimmick. Make it "fun", make it stir the
imagination somehow, and you will probably accomplish
a lot more than good, honest folks who pack their lang
with lots of "IAL goodness" lol :). Which means that
auxlanging pretty much has to be just for fun, I
think, anything else is a recipe for frustration by
the caprice of human affairs.

The other problem I see historically has been the
issue of authority versus schism. Too much personality
and drama. Ugh.

On a meta level, what I would be interested in seeing
sometime is constructing a very broad statement of IAL
principles for a hypothetical language, and design it
by a committee of people who were interested in
working based on those principles. You know, get "buy
in" from a number of different people. Basically, set
down the form of the language, fill in its specific
systems and vocabulary, and at some point "launch" it.
At that point, the role of its creators becomes merely
to be cataloguer and "service providers", collecting
information on current usage and recording it, and
offering a standard which people can choose to use -
the standard, in other words, instead of being an
authoritarian structure becomes more of a suggestion,
a service that people hypothetically using the
language might gravitate towards because it was a good
service and using it provides needed order. It's
important the lang doesn't get too invested in
anyone's ego - that's a tall order! :/ In order to be
popular and attractive, the creation-turned-standards
committee would as much reflect real-life usage as
prescribe or reccommend a mode of it.

Beyond that, my personal pet IAL belief is that it
should abandon the notion of optimisation. Not minimal
phonology, not minimal vocabulary, not minimal
ambiguity, not minimal grammar rules, not simplest
possible syllable structure. Pick a livable
middle-of-the-road on everything so it's gotta be
kinda easy at least. Since the gimmick or the
perceived need is what truly matters, people will make
the effort to pick up some difficult stuff anyway, and
I think all those optimisation thingies are a bit
doubtful in their benefits past a certain point. I
think it should be a priori vocab rather than cater to
people familiar with certain language families
(although items may have natlang inspiration, just
that it's not specifically a goal). It ought to be
"naturalistic" in the sense of seeking natlang
precedent in some way for the features it
incorporates. Higher precision than natlangs ought not
to be a goal in my opinion, and neither ought
minimalism of expression. At the same time, I think
that natlangs accumulate some painful elements that
they don't strictly need but which are the detritus of
history. Whatever form the language takes, it ought to
be much more regular than a natlang and less
elaborate.

Finally, on the gimmick front, it should have beauty
as a goal. Which is pretty bloody subjective. Rather
than as an official goal, people working on it ought
ot be trying to apply a sense of personal linguistic
aesthetics to their contribution. It's for fun so it
should be fun to do, which is one reason why not to
push it to "optimising" limits but give a bit of
lee-way.

Any language constructed on the basis I envision would
be completely dependent on luck and possibly good
advertising to achieve any real-world success. So the
reason for doing it would be just for fun and the
principle of the thing. Tactically speaking, it might
be useful to seek a niche for the language where it
can possibly survive and be known among a
subculture... if it had some source of life, who
knows, it might find itself in the right place at the
right time someday to take off in its real intended
function, as an IAL.

The reason why I've been speculating on these lines is
because the methods we have worked out to prosecute
NGL have been surprisingly successful in getting
actual progress out of normally very individualistic
people. It makes me wonder if there are some generally
applicable principles here that could be exploited to
successfully combine the abilities of several
conlangers, thereby getting around the IAL-poison of
authoritarian possessiveness over the product combined
with the product being tainted with the weaknesses of
its inventor (everyone has some). Of course many
things produced by committee are shit. But I can't
help wondering about it.

>   Tokcir (NGL): well, this is not a project of mine
in the sense that it
> was not my idea, I wasn't in the beginning and I am
not the only one
> doing that project.  I am not still sure which are
the goals, but Tokcir
> is definitively a language I like.  I know what NGL
is not: is not an
> IAL, is not a loglang, is not a concultural
language, nor a fictional
> one... I do not think it would count as a
en(j/g/ge/gi/dZ)lang.  Not
> quite a lablang either.
It's just a conlang :). It's possibly being pulled in
several directions at once, but the product is quite
interesting, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time
working on it :). I only wonder if it will ever have
an accepted verb system, and what will happen to the
project when and if it does have a single accepted
verb system (i.e., becomes a single, unified
language)... because that will give it more of a clear
slant in some direction.

Stephen

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