Re: OT: What makes a good conlang? (was Re: Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT)

Hallo!

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 01:50:38 -0000,
And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:

> Jörg:
> > Hallo!
> >
> > On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 18:38:58 -0000,
> > And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > Contrary to Mark Reed's reasonable views, I think that the Elvish
> > > languages were intended to be realistic, and are realistic.
> >
> > It can be argued whether the assumption that languages of immortal
> > Elves change like human languages, only slower (or even that they
> > are like human languages at all), makes sense or not, but what matters
> > here is that Tolkien made that assumption (and we cannot falsify it
> > because there are no immortal Elves in the real world) and that
> > his conlangs perfectly live up to it.
>
> I meant that the languages taken out of context are realistic.
I agree.  One could pretty well imagine them to be spoken somewhere
on Earth.  It is more difficult to imagine the same for, say, Klingon,
Ebisedian or Tirelat (the latter would at least require a different
set of colour terms), let alone Ithkuil, Lojban or Morneau's language.
But what is more important in judging them is whether they live up
to the intentions the author had - which they do.

>       I
> used to find implausible the idea about the languages of the immortal
> Elves changing in the way natlangs do, but Tolkien does address this
> in _The Shibboleth of Feanor_.
Tolkien made the assumption that Elvish languages change in similar
ways as human languages chiefly to keep things interesting, I guess.
He of course *could* have decided that, given the extremely long
lifespans of the Elves, their language didn't change noticeably
during a few thousand years, but that would have spoiled the fun
of it all to some degree.  He wanted to explore language *change*,
and only later realized that there was a problem with the immortality
of the Elves, and elaborated on that in _The Shibboleth of Feanor_.

> > > I think verisimilitude is a major ingredient of what I most value
> > > in an artlang, too. How do you judge 'realism'? To me, it's mainly
> > > a matter of complexity, of scale, and of completeness. The more
> > > complex, the more large-scale, and the more complete it is, the
> > > more realistic it is.
> >
> > Not necessarily.  A brief sketch can also capture a small part of
> > an imagined reality quite well.  It may not look like a complete
> > natlang, but like a brief sketch of a natlang.  One should not confuse
> > quantity and quality, neither in conlanging nor in any other art, as
> > masterful haikus on one hand and Nazi monumental buildings on the
> > other hand demonstrate.  I'd always prefer a brief sketch which shows
> > masterful treatment of certain details over a complete conlang which
> > consists of a humdrum, obviously unreflected SAE grammar and a
> > randomly generated vocabulary.
>
> In my later reply to David I tried to explain what I meant. But
> essentially I feel that a conlang is an invented language, not an
> invented description of a language. So for the conlang to feel
> real, I need to know that there is more substance to it than
> a sketchy description. My intent is not to confuse quantity and
> quality, but to distinguish the blueprint from the building,
> or a vague sketch from a fully detailed blueprint.
I understand what you mean.  Surely, the conlang feels the more real
the more is known about it.  Of course, a blueprint is not a building,
and a sketch is not a blueprint.  A well-documented conlang with a
detailed grammar and an extensive vocabulary has a sense of reality
to it that a sketchlang lacks.  But still, for a language to feel
real to me it has to show some degree of naturalness.  If the
language is blatantly unnatural (say, a philosophical language),
completeness doesn't really help me imagine it actually being spoken
as an ethnic language.

> I too would prefer a brief sketch, or nothing at all, to a humdrum
> Euroclone.
As opposed to a language that is a "Euroclone" because the basic idea
behind the language requires it.  My conlang Germanech is very similar
to German and French and could be called a Euroclone, but that makes
sense because that is what one would expect from a Romance language
that evolved in the heart of Europe in intimate contact with
Germanic languages.  If I had thrown in, say, ergativity, I'd have
to explain how that feature arose.

>       But I still don't find the brief sketch *realistic*,
> unless one redefines realism as the art of creating realistic
> descriptions (-- I do like that too, though: it's something about
> Tepa and Kinya that particularly appeals to me).
As you say, it depends on what one understands as "realistic"
with regard to conlangs.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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