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

Hallo!

On Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:37:52 -0000,
And Rosta <a.rosta@...> wrote:

> David P:
> > Joerg wrote:
> > <<People who follow their intuition often create better and more
> > realistic art than people who try to be exact.>>
> >
> > The only caveat I'd add to this is that, with visual art, for example,
> > there's little chance of someone being influenced by anything other
> > than their own intuitions if they choose to follow simply their own
> > intuitions. In conlanging you run the risk of emulating your L1, or
> > any other language you know.
True.  My earliest conlangs were pretty much modelled after the Latin
I had learned in school, though the morphology was more regular
than that of Latin.

> >      So I'd say it's important to draw a
> > distinction between the instinct of what sounds right/makes sense,
> > and what sounds right/makes sense *within* the framework of the
> > language one's inventing.   After all, I think we've all probably
> > seen examples (and, indeed, I've *been* an example) of someone doing
> > something because they think it sounds/feels right, and what they do
> > ends up emulating English, or some other known languages, almost exactly.
>
> As words of advice to a novice conlanger that all makes sense, as
> does Teoh's rejoinder that anti-L1ism can result in gratuitious
> and grotesque ("frankenlang") exoticism (-- I remember the time when
> 98% of the artlangs on this list were ergative...).
Yes.  The wave of ergative artlangs in the 1990s is reminiscent
of the frequent appearance of dirigibles in alternative-history
stories.  People tried to be different from what they were used to,
and ergativity was an obvious option.  A few conlangers pioneered it,
and then everybody jumped onto the train, before people got bored
with ergative languages, and started making active and trigger
languages.

> But advice to novice conlangers apart, I think that similarity to
> one's L1 (or other well-known language) is an irrelevance (to
> What Makes a Compelling Conlang). The important thing is to think
> out, and feel out, one's conlang thoroughly.
Yes.  There are conlangs which result from deep meditations on the
structure of the creator's L1, or some other well-known language.

>       Similarity to L1
> is a risk not because similarity to L1 is a bad thing, but
> because it can let you lapse into not thinking and feeling
> out your conlang thoroughly. But there are also many other ways
> in which you can lapse into not thinking and feeling out your
> conlang thoroughly.
Very true.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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