Re: proposed conlang database & my classification

http://conlang.alkaline.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
Behalf Of Herman Miller
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 7:12 PM
To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Subject: Re: proposed conlang database & my classification


>I haven't been following the discussion, so I might be missing something,
>but the two main languages I'm currently working on, Tirelhat and Ludireo,
>don't seem to fit well into any of these subcategories. I'd classify
>Tirelhat as personal or artistic, certainly not auxiliary or experimental.
>But it's clearly not intended as a secret language (or I wouldn't have it
>on a web page), and it isn't designed to be the language of a fictional
>population. Currently, I've only used it for translations, but eventually
>I'd like to do some original writing in it. So it's really not easy to
>categorize.
i have created a category "hobby language" under the personal category; this
should suit your language, and probably my personal one too.

>Ludireo would probably end up in the artistic category, but it really
>belongs in the international subcategory. But it's definitely not an
>auxiliary language. Who'd bother learning words borrowed from 40 different
>languages?
it sounds like it is of artistic *motivation* but international *vocabulary
source*. That's why there are the two different sections. For vocab source,
your language would probably be primary 1.1 (Indo-European languages) and
secondary 1.2 (Non-Indo-European languages). Tell me if i'm not quite
understanding the classification of Ludireo. The international category
means its use is intended to solve communication across different cultures,
it's not really referring to the source of the vocabulary.

>Also, what would you do with auxiliary fictional languages that are spoken
>both by humans and aliens?
I assume the auxiliary in that description applies to its classification in
the fictional world. The classification in my system applies to the
real-world design motivation, which in this case would be
artistic->scifi/fantasy. The alien category would be for languages just
spoken by aliens; the general sci-fi category would hold a fictional
auxiliary lang spoken across species (including humans).

>"Multiple language sources" can mean two different things: individual
>words from different languages (like Esperanto or Ludireo), or words
>created by blending the sounds of words from more than one language (like
>Lojban). It might be nice to distinguish these, although there are
>probably few enough languages of the second kind that it wouldn't matter
>much.
I created two categories out of the blend (derivation method) category at
your suggestion:

-source blend (words borrowed multiple language sources)
-word blend (words blended from multiple sources)

>"Random" implies generating vocabulary or assigning meanings automatically,
>by computer or analogous methods like rolling dice or shuffling decks of
>cards. My own language Tilya is an example of this approach, as is Mark
>Line's Classical Yiklamu. I think the word you're looking for is
>"arbitrary".
I created two categories out of the random (derivation method) category:

-arbitrary generation
-automated random generation

Thanks for your suggestions, they were helpful. Any more would be welcome.

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http://conlang.alkaline.org

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