Re: interestin point re: "universals" & ConLangs (was Re: Appositives, more gender, careers
| From: | H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> |
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| Date: | Saturday, September 9, 2000, 12:42 |
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On Sat, Sep 09, 2000 at 12:11:50AM -0400, Jonathan Chang wrote:
> In a message dated 2000:09:08 6:09:47 PM, artabanos@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU writes:
>
> >You can, of course, break that language univeral (most universals are
> >statistical anyways). But what's the motivation for it? That's the
> >important, and interesting, thing about conlinguistics for me: coming up
> with novel, but reasoned, structures for a human language.
> >
[snip]
Usually, when I break a language universal (not that I know that many, not
being adequately trained in linguistics) or add a novel feature to my
conlang, it's for the sake of conforming to the philosophy of the
underlying conculture. I don't like just throwing something into my
conlang just 'cos it's the Cool Thing About Conlanging That I Discovered
This Week -- it has to reflect the conculture.
T