Re: CHAT: BOOK/CHAT: FW: Lunatic Lovers of Language

On Fri, 25 Sep 1998, B.Philip.Jonsson wrote:

(commenting on Yaguello's Lunatic Lovers of Language):

> That book is mostly a viscious slander of the idea of IALs, based in a kind
> of natlang-mysticism that isn't a bit better than the worst excesses in the
> IAL field (which undeniably exist, alas.)  As for artlanging: if it is
> lunacy, then it is lunacy to paint houses on canvas, as compared to just
> painting houses.
>
> /BP
The term "lunatic" as I understand it from the book (or "mad" or "fou" as
And Rosta has suggested) is not a term that Yaguello is leveling at
all inventors of languages; rather the book seems to me to be a kind of
history of the *reception* with which language inventors have been
given by the public at large, and a critique of that reception.  But
granted, I haven't yet gotten to: "Sleeping Beauty Still Asleep:
Artificial Languages, Prisons of the Mind," in which it remains to be seen
whether she endorses the lunacy that she seems to celebrate in the early
part of the book.  I don't really care whether she does or not; in fact,
her indictment of language invention would serve my purposes just as well,
since I want to talk about the sanity of language invention.  Okay, here's
her comment in the closing chapter:

"Languages seem destined to split up into dialects: ironically enough,
artificial languages aiming for universality are themselves also victims
of this conflict.  In the first place, a great many projects never got
beyond the stage of idiolects becausee their inventors wree quite
unable to to interest anyone else in them [notice the emphasis on the
INVENTOR's failure].  Here we enter the domain of "private languages"
which borders, at the far end of the continuum, on language pathology
(the invention of languages by people with psychiatric disorders)."

Hih hih hih hih hih hih hih hih hih!  O Hyaguello, ta pharroka.
                                        (O Yaguello... what an asshole)

You've got a point BPJ.  This is useful.
Sally
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Sally Caves
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http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html

                        Mr. Book: "Shut it down!"
                        _Dark City_

                         Christof: "Cue the sun!"
                        _The Truman Show_

Tehwo tsema brondi laz obil hea nomai pendo
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