Re: Phonology and Morphology

On Dec 20, 2007 9:54 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> wrote:
> I think it is actually Rick Morneau's fault who uses the term
> "morphology" that way, contrary to the way it is used in
> linguistics.  This is one of the terminological mistakes which
> have propagated like bushfire in the conlang community, like
> Justin B. Rye's use of "experiencer" for an intransitive subject.
> Any beginning conlanger should work his way through an introductory
> textbook of linguistics in order to learn the terminology (and a
> handful of useful facts about languages).
>
I haven't found that working my way through an introductory
linguistics textbook (and even having taken Intro to Linguistics in
college, getting an excellent grade) has done very much for my ability
to come up with the correct terminology on demand. It just doesn't
stick with me. My grasp of the concepts is good. The correct names for
those concepts tend to get away from me. I have to constantly check
reference sources, and sometimes that's a lot more work than I want to
do, so I make up a descriptive term that is meaningful to me (perhaps
to me alone) that I can remember and use a "cheat" when I have to
figure out what to use where in a sentence. My conlangs aren't a
consumer product, so packaging them for consumption is hardly a
priority.

Worse, most of my actual audience (rather than my ideal intended
audience), not only have no knowledge of linguistics, they barely
remember anything they learned in English grammar classes back in
school, so anything more complicated than "noun", "verb", "adjective",
"subject" and "object" tends to lose them. (I can't often persuade
them to learn my conlangs, but sometimes they ask how to say different
things, and they are kind enough to feign interest when I start
rambling about whether or not I should re-work nouns around a system
of genders that came to me in the shower the night before.)

Anyway, I'm coming out as Mia, Perpetual Linguistics Noob, to defend
others who may not use the right terminology or who might use some
strange terminology that works for them. I mean, it does kind of bug
me a little bit that the "long vowels" I learned in elementary school
aren't really "long vowels" at all, so I do understand the aggravation
of non-standard terms, but once you know what people are actually
talking about, I think, personally, that the content is more important
than the way it is expressed.

Honestly, I think my linguistics handicap is the same reason I can't
play card games. My memory seems to refuse to put some information
into the Long Term bin. The only card game I've ever learned to play
successfully is poker, and that's only after watching countless hours
of Celebrity Poker Showdown on TV and having the hands explained
*every single episode*. And I am still a little fuzzy about where
three of a kind falls in the hierarchy. I am co-owner of a game shop
these days that sells mostly trading card games, and I can't play any
of them. (Sad but true.) It's not lack of interest or lack of effort.
I'm just apparently too stupid for it.

M.S.Soderquist
Defender of Noobs

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