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

Jörg Rhiemeier said:
>
> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 09:08:42 -0700,
> Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:
>
>> To my warped way of thinking
>> it's more interesting to build a conlang knowing
>> nothing about how languages are built.  After all,
>> every natlang in existence, past and present, was
>> initially created by people who didn't know the first
>> thing about linguistics.
>
> True.
I'm not sure what "create" is intended to mean when applied to natlangs here.

It occurs to me that maybe y'all are referring (by the word "create" that
I was wondering about above) to the *production* of language (of
utterances), not to the invention of a natlang code (that is, "parole" is
being created, not "langue"). Then again, maybe not.


>> Linguistics is NOT the study of how to build a
>> language, but is, rather, the study of how to describe
>> languages taht spontanesouly came into existence and
>> evolved in the absence of any planning or design.
>
> Yes.  Linguistics, as it is taught in universities, is not
> about *building* languages.  It is about understanding
> how languages work - languages that are usually the product
> of cultural evolution.
Similarly, musicology (especially ethnomusicology), as it is taught in
universities, is not about composing music. It is about understanding how
music works -- music that is usually the product of cultural evolution.

I wonder if it's relevant to conlanging, by analogy, that some composers
know a lot about musicology while some don't, and that there is an
infinite variety of ways to evaluate these composers' products, most of
which ways probably do not involve the composer's knowledge of musicology
(although some might).

Personal note: My beef has usually been with conlangers who insist that
they are operating well inside of natlang evolutionary space,
notwithstanding any amount of evidence to the contrary (e.g. deep center
embedding, phonological conditioning of open-class suppletive allomorphy,
pure ergativity, etc.). I'm becoming more mellow with age, however, and
now almost always leave everybody alone. :)


>> That's how I like to build my conlangs; just forging
>> ahead blindly, without plan or design, to create
>> something that can only be described with lingusitic
>> terms AFTER it has reached a certain level of
>> maturity.
>
> Well, I think some linguistic knowledge is indeed helpful
> in conlanging, but the bearing linguistic education has
> on conlanging should not be overrated either.
I couldn't agree more. Most linguistic education sucks, as nearly as I can
tell.


>> 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". If we choose to evaluate
conlangs on the basis of apparent erudition of their creators, then the
anarcholangs might lose. If we choose to evaluate them on the basis of
disregard for natlang evolutionary space, then the anarcholangs might win.
If we choose yet another strategy to evaluate conlangs, then it might not
make any difference whether or not any linguistic knowledge was used in
their creation.

This begs the question of whether or not there's a best way to give
meaning to the phrase "best conlang". I think not, because we create our
conlangs  in pursuit of a much too widely disparate choice of goals.


-- Mark

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