Re: OT: Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT

> >Contrary to Mark Reed's reasonable views, I think that the Elvish
> >languages were intended to be realistic, and are realistic.
Let me just jump in here - to me, Quenya and Sindarin (I know too little
of the other languages to judge) seem quite realistic, but my knowledge
of natlangs is rather limited and I wasn't sure what criteria were being
employed.  I simply felt ill-qualified to defend the realism of
Tolkein's languages, but realized that there was no need to at least in
the case of the Elvish ones, since their fictional development path
bears little resemblence to that of natural languages.

MJR> Tolkien's writing is, as you said, mostly a means of getting the plot
MJR> into the reader's head.

JC> The occasional LotR .sig you see on my emails should indicate that
JC> I don't agree.

No, the occasional LotR .sig indicates to me simply that you're a fan of
the series.  :) I am also a fan of the series.  It's just that I don't
recall the style of the writing to be particularly artful.
Perhaps I simply haven't read it recently enough . . .


JC> But as you know (having read Hofstadter), N. by no means practiced what
JC> he preached.

True enough.

MJR> (IMHO, with the exception of the Hobbitagonists, Tolkien's characters
MJR> tended to have a fractal dimension closer to 2 than 3, admittedly in
MJR> large part because there were just so darn many of them.)

JC> Also because many of them are non-human, and (as Lewis said) wear their
JC> insides on their outside.  When you know that someone is a Dwarf, you
JC> already know quite a bit about them.

I disagree.  We know a lot about Dwarves, but as you said, that's a
stereotype.  We don't get much of a glimpse into Gimli's head.  Or
anyone else's other than the hobbits.

-Mark