Re: Aesthetics

Hallo!

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:56:15 -0300, Edgard Bikelis wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I was wondering: as we surely are guided by some aesthetic principles in our
> conlanging, what are those principles we use? Maybe it's not a fecund
> subject, but let's give a try : ). As it's all subjective, care is needed
> when commenting, but it would be nice to hear what other people think is
> beautiful, and about what I think... or rather feel.
Sure, it's all very subjective.  That's the difference between
artlanging and engelanging, after all :)

> 1) On phonology, good vowels are [a@eEioOuy]; not sure about nasals. Good
> consonants are velars, alveolars, and labials (both dental and bilabial).
> Until recently I hated palatals... now I'm rather convinced that they are
> allowed to exist ; ). Glottal stop sounds very rude. Bilabial fricatives are
> prettier than labiodentals. I like aspiration. Alveolar tap is much better
> than retroflex. Retroflex consonants are hard for me to pronounce, but I
> think I like them, anyway...
I like spirants and front rounded vowels.  "Throaty" sound such as
uvulars and glottals should only be used sparingly.  An interesting
phonology is not one which includes every phoneme it could, but one
which does complex and plausible things with a moderate inventory.

> 2) On morphology, I can't help liking indoeuropean morphology, but the more
> regular the better. Ancient Greek is a mess, not so Latin, Sanskrit just a
> bit. I can't think about much more here...
Same to me!  IE-style morphology, but not too irregular.  But I like
fluid-S active-stative morphosyntactic alignment.

> 3) On syntax, I can just think of parataxis versus hypotaxis. Parataxis is
> beautiful, short, 'rhythmic', but hypotaxis, if not of Ciceronian style, may
> be so too.
Both have their virtues.

>       About rhythmic, it's too vague a word, and here I mean the
> reading memory, used to get the relationship between each phrase on a
> sentence, is not too heavily used. Herodotus is just right, not too short,
> not too baroque. BTW, I'm not still decided if indirect speech is neat or
> just more complicated than useful.
I have a preference for free word order with an underlying VSO head-first
pattern.  Among the IE languages, the Celtic ones have the most interesting
syntax, and Old Albic syntax is similar (which also makes sense
intrafictionally).

> Did anyone here ever wrote an 'aesthetic credo' before starting a conlang? I
> think it's exactly what I will do, and then redo everything.
Jesse Bangs once wrote a manifesto and posted it here:

http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0203b&L=conlang&T=0&F=&S=&P=27775

Of the three criteria he gives ("naturalness", "complexity" and
"creativity"), I whole-heartedly subscribe to the first one,
but that is just my personal taste.  Others have different tastes.
The others need qualification.  A well-crafted brief sketch is
certainly better than a humdrum euroclone with 7,000 words and
a 200-page grammar; it is also not a good move to add more
complexity without adding more depth; and I see no virtue in
avoiding similarity to familiar languages at all cost.

... brought to you by the Weeping Elf

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