Re: How do diacronic conlangers work?

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

(...)
>- People usually have one language or dialect which was
>    there first in real time
Naturally, yes :)


>    and which often remains central
>    to the whole edifice, from which various imaginary
>    ancestors, daughters and siblings (what I call "stages" or
>    "nodes") radiate.
Hmm, fits me, but might not fit everyone else; IME when conlangers'
languages number dozens, they don't tend to be extremely proud of their
first efforts, at least if the result was a rather "complete" language
rather than something which is still undergoing activ development (as
opposed to revision!) of features.


>    - It is notably often *not* the protolanguage (the highest
>      node in the linguistic family tree) which was there
>      first in real time, but some later form which gets
>      labeled "classical" or some variety thereof.
Understandable, since older stages of conlangs are usually developed to
provide history into the "classical" stage, i.e. help make it seem more
natural. If the protolang were to be fleshed-out further, the diachronic
conlanger would be required to then chart out *its* history too, and you'd
have a yet older stage come into play.


>    - Effectively any piece of linguistic creation by an
>      historical conlanger has to be placed on a coordinatde
>      system where one axis is the conlanger's lifetime and
>      the other axis the history of the imaginary universe
>      where the stages are spoken.
So if real time is the X-axis and imaginary time the Y-axis, would you
expect rays emanating rightwards from the origin? An amplifying sine wave?
This may help to visualize the results, but I'm not so sure you could draw
any consequences from such a graph.


>      - The "central" stage tends to undergo less revision
>        than other stages.
>
>      - Changes to the "central" stage are likely to have more
>        and heavier repercussions on other stages.
Are you using these as a definition of "central"?


>-    Unlike real language history the protolanguage is a
>           secondary product made to fit its daughters.
Well, a little from column A, a little from column B. I develop most of mine
hand-in-hand, tho indeed the vision of what the daughter(s), ie the actually
"usable" languages (some of which may still be descendants of others) are to
look like, is the more guiding factor. Just revising sound changes does giv
plenty of leeway all by itself, but if they'd require a complete revamp, it
might not make sense to hang on to a certain proto-lang just because; at
least if said proto-lang has only one successor in development.

But this isn't specific to diachronic *con*langing, is it? Isn't that
exactly what the comparativ method is doing too (if in smaller scale, since
the end results are giv'n and cannot be modified as one sees fit)? A
reconstructed proto-lang will have to fit its daughters, and the result
won't necessarily be identical to the actual ancestor - altho there usually
isn't direct evidence of it, so we can't tell.

John Vertical

_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live Messenger - kivuttoman viestinnän puolestapuhuja.
http://www.communicationevolved.com/fi-fi/