Re: OT: Tinkering versus creativity

On 6/27/06, And Rosta <and.rosta@...> wrote:
> But to engineering, and hence to engelanging, novelty is genuinely of value --
> it is a step forward in knowledge and understanding and achievement. I infer
> from your comments that you have an engelanging-type interest in exploring
> the limits of how language could work, and in that light, your judgements
> make perfect sense to me. (And like you, and for broadly similar reasons, I
> find I have comparatively little interest in the great majority of conlangs,
> much though I like and esteem their creators.)
I think that's accurate of me. I have to some extent gotten bored with
languages as languages; perhaps I've studied one to many natlangs.
Dunno why really. It doesn't mean that I don't appreciate the artistic
side, of course.

So yeah, I'm mostly interested in conlangs as... technology, I suppose
you could say. 'Language tech' sounds like a familiar phrase from
somewhere.

For that matter, there seems to be a difference in how I view natlangs
vs conlangs. Natlangs I rarely look at from this (technological)
perspective. Perhaps because they have established cultures and
utility; that is, because learning X will let me communicate with Y%
more of the world that I may want to communicate with. Conlangs, alas,
lack this feature. (Let's not start on the IALs...)

Nevertheless, I also have a neophilia in art proper; e.g. I tend to
dislike repetetive music, and quickly desensitize to art that is "more
of the same". Perhaps this is a symptom of lacking sufficient depth to
appreciate the fine distinctions; perhaps not. Hard to say.

Anyhow, I think it's still a useful distinction to make, though as
pointed out above, it's a very gray scale when you try to figure out
what is "new". Proximately new perhaps? You could define it in that
way...

 - Sai

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