Re: New Survey: Celtic Conlangs (and other lunatic pursuits)

Well here, finally, is my respense to Sally's survey, which has taken
me a quite unreasonable length of time to complete.

I'm going to answer this, but I should first mention that I'm not much
of a conlanger - I have only one language, which after several months of
work can't even produce a valid sentence, or its own name (I refer to
it, when necessary, by the codename LC-01).  On the other hand, I have
most of a script.

Sally Caves writes:
 >
 > PART I.  FOR CELTIC CONLANGERS:
 >
 > Have you based your conlang(s) wholly or partially on a Celtic
 > language?

No.

 > PART II: INSPIRATION BY TOLKIEN (tangential to the questions on
 > inspiration by Celtic languages):
 >
 > How many of you were inspired to invent a language because of your
 > exposure to Tolkien?

In part.  I reread LOTR in anticipation of the first of Peter
Jackson's films, and it was while I was looking at Appendix E that I
first thought "You know, I'd quite like to make a language".  But this
was the culmination of other factors which had awakened my interest in
language design over

 > How many of you based your conlang on one of Tolkien's languages,
 > or your conculture in Middle Earth?

I did not. (Incidentally, as others have noted obliquely, "How many
of you have ..." is an odd way to phrase a question in a
questionnaire.  That's a question we can only answer collectively - as
individuals we have no more idea than yourself.)

 > How many of you have a constructed world, and, if so, does it
 > include some of the races we associate with Celtic or Scandinavian
 > mythology? (Elves, Dwarves, medieval societies of humans, Faeries
 > or Fays?  Selkies?  Wizards?)

I do not.  I have a vague idea of a bureaucratic standards
organisation developing a standard language, but nothing beyond that.
If I ever do create a world, it probably will not feature such races.

 > How many of you were inspired to examine Welsh, Hebrew, or Finnish because
 > of your examination of Tolkien?

I was not.

 > How many of you were inspired to invent a conlang or a conculture because of
 > some influence OTHER than Tolkien?

The single greatest influence of which I am aware - on my initial
desire to create a conlang - was Ursula K. Le Guin's _The
Dispossessed_, and the language Pravic described within.  The use of
computers to create arbitrary words and names particularly appealed to
me, at that time, for reasons I find difficult to explain.  To free
oneself from phonaesthetic judgements influenced by existing languages
and start again with a completely blank slate...  well, I don't know
if it makes much sense, but it captured my imagination at the
time. (This idea is principally mine, and Le Guin should not be blamed
for it.)  Also the reflection of Anarresti attitudes in Pravic usage
was appealing, although I found the specifics linguistically naive.

(Oddly enough, _Always Coming Home_, by the same author, aroused no
special interest in artificial languages when I read it some years
before, despite the more thorough realisation of Kesh than Pravic.  It
did, however, inspire me to undertake the one prideworthy piece of
woodcarving I have done in my life.)

 > How many of you were inspired to invent a language because you engage in
 > Role-Playing Games?

I was not.

 > How many of you were inspired to invent a language because you heard of this
 > listserv?

I was not - I discovered the list shortly after becoming interested in
the idea, and was shocked that a conlanging community could exist
without my having become aware of it.

 > How many of you are members of the Mythopoeic Society, or the Society for
 > Creative Anachronism, or other High Fantasy Groups?

I am not.

 > PART III:  NON-CELTIC CONLANGERS:
 >
 > In the discussions I've witnessed on Conlang in almost five years, I've
 > observed that many conlangers have deliberately avoided "Tolkienesque"
 > languages, and even Indo-European languages as models for conlangs, and
 > especially the "Celtic."  Why?  Boring?  Overdone?  Trite?  Too pretty?
 > Too Western?  Or none of the above--just more interested in something else?
 > <G>  I don't want to give the impression that I think we conlang only
 > because of Tolkien, and that anything we invent has to be INSPIRED BY or a
 > DEPARTURE from the "Great One"; but in this question I'm eager to see some
 > eschewal of or at least indifference towards the Tolkien, the "Celtic,"
 > and/or even the Indo-European model.
 >
 > What is your name and what do you call your conlang?

Tim May; LC-01, until it's complete enough to give itself a name.

 > So what is unappealing about the Indo-European model for conlanging?  Or
 > Tolkien's Elvish?

There's nothing wrong with Indo-European per se, but I don't have a
sufficiently objective view of human language as a whole to really
appreciate the features that make IE languages interesting.  I'm
blinded by my familiarity with English.  As for Tolkien's Elvish, I've
never studied it in detail, but And Rosta's comment about "unrelenting
mellifluousness" matches my general impression.

 > How did you start conlanging?  What was your initial inspiration?
 >
 > Did you know about Tolkien's inventions?  Read the books, the appendices?
 > etc.  Or not?

As it happens, I think I've covered these above.  I've been aware of
Tolkien for most of my life.  My parents were fans, particularly my
Father.  I've read _The Hobbit_, _The Lord of the Rings_ and _The
Silmarillion_, and I've looked around in the appendices, although I
didn't necessarily read every word of them.

 > What language types have you modeled your language(s) after?
 >
 > What features of these languages or language types appeal to you?

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by "language types", but I've
drawn some inspiration from Semitic languages (triconsonantal
morphology); Japanese (use of nouns to limit the number of
prepositions, some aspects of the script); Tibetan (case roles (as
interpreted by Scott Delancey, whose theories are hardly universally
accepted)); and Tzotzil (mostly the idea of posessive prefixes, but I
haven't finished reading the online grammar yet).

(Most of the features mentioned above aren't really implemented yet in
LC-01, though.)

 > Some of you, and I'm thinking in particular of a conversation I had
 > with And Rosta, are not interested in producing a language that is
 > "mellifluous"--that "mellifluousness" is a thing to be avoided in
 > your conlang and especially as it is associated with Tolkien's
 > Elvish or copiers of Elvish.  Is this so?  Why?

I don't _dislike_ mellifluousness (which doesn't seem to be a very
well defined concept).  How a language sounds is of some importance to
me, although not the most important factor, and I wouldn't want to
create a language that I thought sounded unpleasant.  But I find it
difficult to imagine what a `pleasant' or `unpleasant' language would
sound like.  Certainly my tastes differ from those of Tolkien, who
seems to have succeeded in creating in the Black Speech inscription on
the ring a truly detestable sequence of sounds, by his own standards;
I think it sounds rather pleasant, and certainly more interesting than
Quenya or Sindarin.  Possibly not the best language to write love
poetry in, and it's unfair to make a judgement on such small samples,
but our reactions seem fundamentally different.

What I'm trying to say here is that while I do want to create a
pleasant-sounding language, I have no clear idea as to what features
make a pleasant language, but I do know that Tolkienesque
mellifluousness is not for me, as it was for Tolkien, the keystone of
linguistic euphony.

I also suspect that assembling beautiful sounds and excluding ugly
ones would not, ultimately, produce any great beauty as a whole, but
only a facile prettiness - that the beauty of a language is not only
more than the sum of its parts but must include ugly elements within
it.  But this is just a hunch, and subjective anyway..

 > For how many of you, though, is beauty and/or efficiency a factor
 > in your language?  Or elegance?  How would you define these terms?

These are all important, although defining them is difficult.  The
beauty of the sounds of the language, or of written text, is largely
imponderable.  Although I suspect that a language that requires no
unnecessary effort - that strikes the right balance between
ease of pronunciation and density of expression - cannot fail to be
beautiful, there is also beauty to be found in the baroque and the
ambiguous.

Efficiency is extremely important. But even if you can define it, it's
very difficult to say whether a feature will make a language
"efficient".  It'll almost certainly make some utterances easier, and
others harder.  All you can do is guess, and try to make easier the
kinds of speech you'd like your speakers to use a lot of.  But yes,
it's important to me.  I'm trying to create a perfect language for
human communicaiton.  Since that's a ludicrous goal, let's just say
I'm trying to make the best language I can, and that makes most
definitions of "efficiency" you can think of in a language goals.

 > For how many of you is the "exotic" a desired feature of your
 > invented language?

In truth, it probably is.  But what I aspire to is a sufficiently
objective viewpoint that my aesthetic appreciation of a linguistic
feature is uncoloured by its relation to my native tongue.  Many
conlangers would consider a language which made no significant
departure from English to be uninteresting, and lacking in creativity.
But to avoid a feature because it is found in English is equally to
allow one's language to be defined by English.

That said, I tend to do exactly that.  I have not achieved a universal
viewpoint, and I tend to seize on any interesting new feature that I
come across.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing - one reason I
conlang is in order to learn linguistics, and to progress towards an
unbiased view of language I must familiarise myself with those
areas which I now find exotic.  But ultimately I would prefer to be
able to take things on their own merits.


 > How many of you invent a non-human language?  And if so, how alien
 > are its sounds and constructions?

I have not done so, in part because I doubt my ability to work
realistically with a truly alien set of sounds and constructions.

 > Do you prefer inventing an a posteriori language or an a priori
 > language?  In other words, how many of you invent a language
 > wherein you base it closely on a natural language (Arabic, Tagalog)
 > or a combination of languages, and how many others of you invent a
 > language from, well, scratch?  (if that can be done.)

A priori.  I have thought it would be interesting to develop a
language from Sumerian, but that will have to wait.

 > How many of you invent a language based on a particular type (Ergative,
 > Accusative, Trigger, etc.)?

I'm not sure that I understand the question.  Do you want to know how
many have made languages of each type, or how many set to make
languages specifically because they wanted a language of that type?
(Any language must be of one of these types, even if it's the "etc.")

LC-01 does not fall neatly into any of these categories.  Its core
case roles are based on the thematic relations of Theme, Location and
Agent.  All verbs encode an argument structure relating a theme to a
location (often metaphorical - a "location" is often better thought of
as a "state"), although it may be impossible for one of these to be
expressed, making the verb intransitive.  An agent is something which
causes the theme to be in the location.  This is based on Scott
Delancey's theories about case roles - he thinks these are the roles
underlying all language, and that Tibetan encodes them on the
surface.  I first picked it up because it feels rather satisfying as
an analysis of English, and I thought it would be helpful in producing
a truly regular system of nouns derived from essentially verbal roots
- which it has, although I haven't worked the system out in its
entirety.

 > To what degree is difficulty and irregularity of language important to you
 > in your conlang?  what natural language eccentricities (or efficiencies) do
 > you like and try to reproduce?
 >
 > To what degree is accessibility, efficiency, and regularity important to
 > your conlang?  What natural language "faults" are you correcting?

I prefer to aim for the second set... I'm trying to produce a
maximally unambiguous, concise, and expressive language which is
nonetheless easily speakable by people.  Regularity is desirable
unless there's a strong argument against it.  I intend to try to avoid
structures which might lead people to think in ways tending to
perpetuate errors, although I'm uncertain whether such "Whorfian
effects" are really significant.

 > How many of you invent logical languages?

Logical unambiguity is an important concern;  however, it is more
important to be speakable than to be logical.

 > How many of you invent IALs?

I don't, although many of my aims coincide with those of auxlangers.

 > How many of you have invented non-Tolkienesque or non European
 > concultures and what are they like?

I have not.

 > How many of you started out by pulling words out of the air,
 > originally?  How many of you have chosen a more methodic form of
 > vocabulary building?  I.e., how have you gone about setting up the
 > framework for your words and your grammar?  (I started out pulling
 > words out of the air.)

Methodical.  If anything too methodical - I have almost no vocabulary
and most of what I know about the syntax has to wait for the
morphology to catch up, and the morphology's getting held up by the
need to reexamine the phonology.  I wish I could pull words out of the
air sometimes, but that just wouldn't work for this.

I may or may not end up randomly generating roots.  Despite what I
said above about _The Disposessed_, I probably would change generated
forms that sounded wrong to me, but perhaps less than others.

 > PART IV:  THE LUNATIC SURVEY REVISITED (because we are all "fous du
 > langage," according to Yaguello and other French critics.
 >
 > Why do you conlang?  Who will speak it?  Read it?  What's the
 > point?  What's the beauty?  what's the intellectual draw?

It's an interesting way to learn about human language.  There are
things you can learn through trying them out that you don't,
necessarily, through study of existing languages.  It is pleasant to
construct a complex system that functions.

 > To what would you compare a conlang?  Is it a miniature?  Is it a
 > model?  Is it a tapestry?  Is it an act of obsession and madness?
 > <G> Or is it a communicable language?

Possibly all of these.  A model may be the best metaphor - a working
model of a real - though not actual - language.  It has the pleasing
property, this model, that with work it can approximate the real thing
increasingly closely, approaching the status of a real language
asymptotically.

 > If it is a communicable language, to whom do you speak it?

When it becomes speakable, I may foist basic conversational ability
onto my brother.  I'm sure I'll speak to myself in it.  Possibly to
our cats, although they're innatentive listeners (not all cats, just
these individuals).  I'd love to have people to speak it some day, but
unless I was more successful than I have any right to expect, I'd
think them a little odd for not preferring to learn Lojban or Quenya.

 > To what extent is the opacity or "alterity" of your language
 > something that pleases you?  In other words, the sounds and the
 > script have, even for you, a quality of being foreign, and this
 > delights.  Comment?  (I know that when I make maps of cities, and
 > imagine myself in them, they delight me because they are both
 > familiar and foreign at the same time.)

It is pleasant.  To see a familiar thing from a new angle... yes,
that's part of the appeal.

 > This is a difficult question: how is it that a word sounds "right"
 > to you?  We recently discussed this.  To what extent are you
 > finding righter, better words for the world in your conlang?
 > (Perhaps unanswerable).

I'm not sure if this is even important to me, and if it turns out to
be I doubt I will be able to explain it.

 > How many of you are fictive map-makers, designers of fictive floor
 > plans, fictive yachts, fictive star-ships, world-builders,
 > calligraphers, cartoonists, etc.?  (These pursuits have been
 > associated with conlanging.  I've done most of them.)

I've done many of these, but little recently.  I'd like to do some of
them again, but I'd want to do them _right_, for which I would need to
know more than I do at present.

 > How many of you have a special script in your conlang?

I do.  It's the most complete part of the language, although still
liable to change.  It's quite nice, although a somewhat uneasy
compromise between a universal phonetic script and a specialized
phonemic orthography for LC-01, and possibly too featural for its own
good.

 > If you use Roman script, how recognizably "phonetic" is your
 > writing system?  In other words, do you use unconventional letters
 > to represent sounds?  Why?

It's highly phonemic/phonetic.  Possibly more phonetic than phonemic,
which is not necessarily a good thing.

 > This is a question Heather asked, but I also asked it four years ago:  how
 > many of you write in your language?  What do you write?

I have yet to enjoy the opportunity.  I would like to write a complete
grammar of the language in itself, one day.

 > How many of you sing in your language and have invented songs for that
 > purpose?

I do not.

 > For how many of you does your language function as a spiritual
 > instrument?  This is a deeply personal question--let me give you an
 > example.  When I first started inventing "Tayonian" in my early
 > teens, what I wrote were spells and prayers.  They had a talismanic
 > quality.  Does that ring a bell for anybody?

I'm not sure that I fully understand the word "spiritual", so I can't
fully answer.  But there is perhaps a faint echo.

 > For how many of you was your language at least at one stage of its
 > making meant to fool others, or to write secret diaries? (Me,
 > waving my hand).

I have not had such intentions with this language.  I did keep a diary
in Anglo-Saxon runes for over a year as a child.


 > How many of you have put up websites where your language can be showcased?
 > If so, what is the website address?

Not yet.  One day.

 > How many of you are comfortable talking to your boss, your
 > professors, your family members about this pursuit?  How many of
 > you have received condescending or other negative responses to your
 > disclosure?  (I have.)  Or even been called "pathological"?

I'm not comfortable talking to superiors about anything.  Family
members are fine, although it doesn't come up much.  But I don't talk
to people that much in general, and less about my private interests.

 > If this attitude is changing, to what do you attribute the change?  (On New
 > Year's Eve, a delightful, elderly gentleman could not understand why I would
 > be interested in this pursuit.  What purpose could it serve?)
 >
 > For how many of you is the damning statement "better to learn real languages
 > than invent private ones" a criticism you have encountered?  What would be
 > your response to such a remark?

It hasn't come up, but I suppose my answer would be "Many leisure
pursuits don't accomplish anything in particular.  This is at least
educational and harmless."


 > PART V:  GENERAL DEMOGRAPHICS:
 >
 > What is your age (optional--and can be general: 30-40, for instance).

23 years.

 > What is your gender?

Male.  (Damn Christophe for saying "Animate" before me!  Well, I guess
that's what I get for taking over a week to compose my reply.)

 > What is your nationality and your native language?

UK and US.  English.

 > What natural languages do you speak or have studied?

I have studied French, Spanish and Japanese in classes, and have at
one time or another been proficient in them at a basic conversational
level (enough to be of some help if I was in those countries).  I
retain little of this proficiency now.

 > How many of you have chosen a profession in linguistics because of
 > your interest in inventing languages?  Or plan a profession in
 > linguistics?

I have not.

 > What have you learned from conlanging?

A certain amount of linguistics.

 > What texts on language and linguistics have you consulted to help
 > invent your language?

Various, but none particularly stand out.

 > Do you know of anyone who has not connected with the Internet or
 > the List who has invented a language? (I'm firmly convinced that
 > "conlanging" has been a private pursuit for many people long before
 > the list started, but that the list has increased its visibility as
 > an art).

No.

 > Can you give me a short sample of your language with interlinear description
 > and translation?

Not at present.  Ask again in another 6 months. ;)

 > Would you object to my mentioning your conlang/and or your name in my talk?
 > I will be discreet about some of the more personal questions you answered.

I have no objection (assuming it hasn't taken place, by now).