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Re: CHAT: The Conlang Instinct

From:nicole perrin <nicole.eap@...>
Date:Thursday, December 2, 1999, 22:38
J. Barefoot wrote:
> > >From: Gerald Koenig <jlk@...> > >Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> > >To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...> > >Subject: The Conlang Instinct > >Date: Wed, 1 Dec 1999 18:02:46 -0800 > > [snip stuff on the always-fascinating subject of synesthesia] > > >Now, does anyone see the need for a personal gender system here? I > >wonder how Pat Duffy would like seeing a year as a single long vector, > >or 12 month-vectors head to tail, as in my vector tense grammar? Can > >natlang grammar do violence to the mind of a conlanger? Do language > >universals work for conlangers, or are they a secondary layer as > >suggested in a way by Ed Heil to me. Are conlangers langesthetes? Are > >our internal perceptions of language non-standard yet fully functional? > >I've always been able to get my A's in English in spite of a tremendous > >inner dissatisfaction with much of it. Maybe conlangers have an > >extra or idiosyncratic mapping of language in the brain. That is the > >direction of research in synesthesis. Synesthetes are finding one > >another on the web. Perhaps we need a test to exclude anyone who tastes > >languages that start with a-u-x. I might not be here either. > > > > > >Abnormally yours, > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Jerry | Without careful communication > >Gerald Lea Koenig | jlkatnetcomdotcom There is boundless demonization. > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > That is so interesting! I have thought for a while that my perception of > English may be "non-standard but fully functional." Perhaps we should ask a > new "lefthand/righthand/goatee/hair color/sexual orientation" question: What > is your personal writing style like in your native language? Does it ever > get you into trouble, i.e., do pedantic proofreaders ever give you grief > about perfectly grammatical sentences that run to five clauses or more? > Obviously, as a group we must be very "verbal" people, independent of > "right-brain/left-brain dominance". So I guess we should ask: Do you > consistently and spontaneously do quirky things with your native lang? Did > you do this before you were consciously a conlanger?
I speak and write such a non-standard variety of English. It's infiltrated by almost everything - French, German, and my conlangs! My written style is totally grammatically correct, always, but I use a lot of so-called run-on sentences, and even though they're grammatical, readable, and make perfect sense English teachers still give me problems about it. So do my friends: "You can't make a sentence seven lines long! You just can't do it!" But in my colloquial spoken English, I consistently insert foreign grammatical constructions, pause, and hesitantly ask, "Can you say that in English?" I do it to my friends all the time and they think it's the funniest thing. Sometimes I even forget English words and start inserting French instead - lately I haven't been able to come up with "translation" for the life of me and consistently say "traduction" instead - I really feel stupid about it too, but it's fun to have a quirky idiolect. My careful spoken and written English is so ultra-grammatical people have trouble understanding it though, a huge contrast to my colloquial speech.
> > On a related but far-fetched subject: At a very early stage of deveplopment > of Asiteya, I had created a verb "yasan" - to dwell. Months later, having > forgotten about its existence, I needed a word for house. Rolling sounds > around on my tongue for a while, I found "yasi" tasted just right. > Unrelated events of creation, related words. It makes me think, perhaps > these languages are already fully formed, deep in the subconscious, waiting > for the intellect to discover them. Has anyone else had expereinces like > this?
No, but I do find words have the right color and texture for particular meanings. And I always associate letters and numbers with color - and the colors haven't changed since I was about five. I think Nik is right about this though - I don't think the language is fully formed, but I think subconsciously you remembered something about "yasan" (something obvious or something more underlying) and it made you come up with "yasi," which was correct for the same reasons. Nicole