Re: Linguistic knowledge and conlanging (was Explaining linguistic...)

--- "Mark P. Line" <mark@...> wrote:

<snip>
> >> The best conlangs are the result of the same kind
> of
> >> linguistic chaos and anarchy that forged all the
> >> natlnags.  IMHO. :)
> >
> > I think it cannot be generalized either way.
>
>
> I have to agree with Andreas on this one. There are
> just two many ways to
> give meaning to Gary's phrase "best conlangs".
<snip>

I guess what I had in mind for "best" was the most
"naturalistic" or natlang-like conlangs.  I suppose
that this would apply best to conlangs created to be a
part of some conculture as opposed to conlangs
"designed" to be auxlangs, or to be "better" than
natlangs in some way.

I've often heard conlangers talk about "introducing"
irregularities into their conlangs to make them more
naturalistic.  But if a conlang is born out of a
somewhat chaotic or anarchistic process then
irregularities will be a part of the mix right from
the beginning.

Take for example my own fledgling chaos-lang
experiment "Madjal". (Web page
http://fiziwig.com/corpus.html is being re-built even
as we speak, so look for it to be revamped and updated
later this weekend, including many new contributed
sentences in the corpus.)  Already it has five
different ways of forming plurals and a half-dozen
ways fo conjugating verbs, and the question of
"correct" word order is very much up in the air.  And
in fact, at this point it might or might not be an
inflecting language.  There are hints of inflection in
it, but it is not universal yet.  Who knows where this
chaos will lead?


--gary