OT: [CONLANG] Re: † † † Re : What makes a good conlang? (was Re: Super OT: Re: CH AT: JRRT)

And. wrote:

<<
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...).

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. 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.

(I believe I practise what I preach here, and I delight in
discovering congruences between English and my conlang. I also
rely heavily on my English intuitions during the design process.)>>

What you've described is, I believe, the ideal state (though your last
statement contradicts what I'm about to say), which is a state where your L1 becomes
just another language, which your free to be influenced by, in the same way
you'd be influenced by Chichewa or Japanese or anything.   For example, in
Kamakawi, I loved the what I consider to be exotic quality of English phrasal
verbs, where the meaning depends on the combination of a verb and a preposition,
and the result may be a phrasal verb that doesn't resemble the semantics of the
base verb, and doesn't have the functionality of the preposition.   I thought
that this would be a neat derivational process to use in a language, so I
borrowed it into Kamakawi (though it was modified).   So I think this is the
ideal.

Now, what did you mean by "I also rely heavily on my English intuitions
during the design process"?   I'm not saying this is a bad/good thing: I just don't
know what you mean.   Could you explain?

-David

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