Re: OT: Tinkering versus creativity

Mark J. Reed, responding to Ray responding to Sai:
> On 6/29/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>> Good grief! If I ever get to that stage, it'll time for me to quit this
>> mortal coil. I have never yet been able to satisfy my curiosity
>> vis-a-vis natlangs - give me more!
>>
>> Many, alas, have little or no utility. Why should I bother to learn
>> Welsh? The monolingual Welsh speakers will be little kids - if I want to
>> speak with adults I can do so in English. Yet I have learnt some Welsh &
>> love the language.
>>
>> I am fascinated by any language as language, whether it now has only 5
>> living L1 speakers or, indeed, is no longer spoken or used.
>
> Ameyn!   I agree so wholeheartedly with the above sentiments that I'm
> willing to spend 20% of my daily quota on nothing but a "me too" post.
My interest in natlangs other than English (which is the focus of the entire
research component of my professional life) is only of the most casual and
superficial sort. So I'm not unlike Sai's reports of himself, in this regard. I
think it's quite likely that conlangers divide (to a pronounced but not
exhaustive extent) into (a) artlangers with a great interest in multifarious
natlangs, in language typology, and so forth, and with large and well-thumbed
collections of reference grammars, and (b) engelangers whose interests in
linguistics would tend to be abstracted from the specifics of particular
languages.

I note this not with any intention of making value judgements, but simply out of
interest in the conlanger landscape -- out of interest, as it were, in why
everybody who is here is here.

--And.

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