> 1)
> Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 14:49:38 -0500 (CDT)
> From: burt@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu (Susan Meredith Burt)
> Subject: Inventing Languages
>
> -------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 14:49:38 -0500 (CDT)
> From: burt@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu (Susan Meredith Burt)
> Subject: Inventing Languages
>
> For Query: Linguist 11.912
>
> Hello, All!
>
> It's a good thing we have students or we would never learn anything!
> Prompted by a student's query, a few weeks ago I posted a message to the
> list asking about information on the invention of languages for fiction or
> for other reasons. I received over twenty replies. It turns out that
> Tolkien and Elgin are only the tip of the iceberg: there are a number of
> people out there inventing languages for the sheer intellectual fun of
> doing so; indeed there is a list, CONLANG, to which my original query was
> posted, of these language inventors. I had thought that language invention
> was an outgrowth of fiction-writing, but was corrected in this: in some
> cases, the fiction follows the invention of the language.
>
> It was hard for me to know what to do with all the replies I
> received--besides pass them on my student, of course (he wrote an excellent
> paper and received an A, by the way). Some of the replies expressed
> interest in my query and these are not included in the list below. Thanks
> to all of the following for information or references to further
> information.
>
> >wmorris@cs.ucsd.edu
> >p.larrivee@aston.ac.uk
> >pkurtboke@hotmail.com
> >andreas@kyriacou.ch
> >"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...>
> >"Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs@...>
> >Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@...>
> > Linda_K_COLEMAN@umail.umd.edu (lc22)
> > Mary Shapiro <mshapiro@...>
> >Jan Havlis <jdqh@...>
> >"David E. Bell" <dbell@...>
> >Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
> > And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
> > FFlores <fflores@...>
> >Jill Brody <gajill@...>
>
> Those replies that included references to literature or to websites are
> appended below. Enjoy! And again, thanks to all--Susan Meredith Burt
> ***
>
> Dear Professor Burt:
> While I have not personally done any specialized work on the subject
> about which you have posted your query, I have in my reference files some
> websites that may possibly contain some helpful information:
>
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8853/index.html <== A language
> called"qIb HeHDaq."
>
http://www.kli.org/ <== Homepage of the Klingon Language Institute.
>
http://www.elvish.org/ <== Homepage of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship.
>
http://www.quetzal.com/conlang.html <== Constructed Human Languages
> Homepage: This site contains a wide array of information on various
> constructed languages.
>
>
> Richard S.
> Kaminski
> <Nitti45@...>
> ***
> Dear colleague,
>
> If your student reads French, I would direct her to the following excellent
> essay on the topic of inventing languages.
>
> AUTEUR : Yaguello, Marina.
> TITRE : Les fous du langage : des langues imaginaires et de leurs
> inventeurs / Marina Yaguello
> S^DITEUR : Paris : S^ditions du Seuil
> DATE : 1984
> DESC.PHYSIQUE : 248, [1] p.
> NOTES : Bibliogr. : p. 243-[249].
> ISBN : 2-02-006713-7
>
>
> Pierre Larrivée
> ***
>
> Two web pages giving guidelines on how to create languages might help.
>
> They include tips regarding the lexicon, morphology, syntax, writing
>
> systems, etc. Both authors also talk about their motivation to
>
> invent languages:
>
>
http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
>
>
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/1021/language.html
>
>
> Andreas
>
> ***
> Hi,
>
> I teach a course called "Language and Popular Culture" in which we
> examine representations of lg. such as in sci-fi movies and other media.
>
> I've got some stuff on my website about this; your student might want to
> look at:
>
>
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/syllabus.html
>
> Hal S.
> ***
>
> Marina Yaguello has a book out called _Lunatic Lovers of Language:
> Imaginary Languages and Their Inventors_. Fairleigh Dickinson University
> Press, 1991.
>
> I have not yet read it, so I do not know if it is what you are looking for.
>
> Linda Coleman, Director
> Freshman Writing Program
> Associate Professor
> Department of English Language and Literature
> University of Maryland
> (301)405-3761
> LC22@umail.umd.edu
>
> ***
>
> Dr. Burt --
> I taught a course on the Languages of Science Fiction several years ago,
> when I was a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, and
> discovered a thriving language-building culture, only some of which was
> directly related to science fiction per se. In addition to the examples
> you cited, there's also Tenctonese (the language from the television
> series Alien Nation), Draak (the language from the film Enemy Mine), and
> a host of Star Trek related languages developed by the fans. Every race
> ever encountered in the Star Trek universe now has a language of its
> own, thanks to fans, who would take the one or two words or phrases
> given on the show and on that flimsy evidence, build a whole grammar and
> lexicon. I can't tell you what their motivations were, though!
>
> One invaluable reference for your student would be ALIENS AND LINGUISTS
> by Walter E. Meyers (University of Georgia Press, 1980). It's 20 years
> out of date, obviously, but it's got great older examples that your
> student might not stumble across nowadays, and it's very good on
> linguistic theory.
>
> Dr. Mary Shapiro
> Asst. Professor of Linguistics
> Truman State University
> Kirksville, MO 63501
>
> ***
> Susan,
>
> I saw your post on the Linguist list and as an active conlanger (constructed
> language creator) thought you might be interested in a reply. In fact, you
> might be interested to know that there is a large and active community of
> language inventors on the internet. I have a website at
> www.graywizard.net>with a large number of pages devoted to language creation
> (www.graywizard.net/conlinguistics.htm) and in particular an extensive
> reference grammar for my main constructed language amman iar(see
> www.graywizard.net/amman_iar.htm). You will also find a number of hyperlinks
> to other constructed language resources available on the internet.
>
> Conlangers come from a number of different backgrounds, although a few are
> professional linguists, most like myself are not, but we all share an
> intense avocational interest in linguistics. Our creations vary from small
> language sketches (see www.graywizard.net/forendar.htm) to full blown and
> fairly detailed language descriptions like amman iar . The community also
> divides along an axis of interest. Some, like me, create languages purely
> for the challenge and aesthetics of the activity. These languages are
> typically called art languages (artlangs for short). Some create them with
> the goal of becoming an international auxiliary (ala Esperanto, Ido et al),
> these are typically called auxiliary languages (auxlangs for short.) Still
> others create languages that are meant to model predicate or other formal
> logic systems (ala Loglan, Lojban et al), these are typically called logical
> languages (loglangs for short).
>
> I could probably babble on and on about this past-time, but it might be more
> productive if I responded to specific questions your student might have,
> which I would be quite willing to do.
>
>
> David
>
> David E. Bell
> The Gray Wizard
> dbell@graywizard.net
> www.graywizard.net
>
> Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!
> A memorable remark! Just consider the splendour of the words! I shall
> express the accusative case. Magnificent! Not it is expressed nor even
> the more shambling it is sometimes expressed, nor the grim you must learn
> how it is expressed. What a pondering of alternatives within ones choice
> before the final decision in favour of the daring and unusual prefix, so
> personal, so attractive; the final solution of some element in a design that
> had hitherto proved refractory. Here were no base considerations of the
> practical, the easiest for the ëmodern mindí, or for the million only a
> question of taste, a satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of
> fitness.
>
> from The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays - A Secret Vice,
> by J.R.R. Tolkien [Houghton Mifflin Company 1984])
>
> ***
> From: FFlores <fflores@...>
>
> Well, first of all, I must say I'm not in Linguist, but in Conlang,
> where your message was forwarded to harvest some responses. You may
> be receiving some more answers from Conlang members; I hope you won't
> matter my answering directly to you.
>
> I have invented several languages, to different extents. Some of them
> were, as you said, outgrowths of fictional settings or short stories,
> but most of them developed together with the setting, and often preceded
> it (in time, or in my mind's causal chain, so to speak).
>
> My motivations? You can read about them in my site,
>
http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/language.html
> where I've also placed links to my conlangs' pages. In short, I find
> beauty in the structure of languages, in the way sounds combine, and
> concepts relate to each other and 'fall into place' with relative
> simplicity even if the whole is overwhelmingly complex. I also like
> to play and see what I find. The fact that everything I do is, as
> some detractors of this task pejoratively claim, to re-arrange
> preexisting things, does not bother me the least bit. I simply
> try to find not-so-common outcomes. I must confess I feel a bit
> guilty when I create a language with some extremely non-exotic
> feature, like SVO order with no case marking or suffixed tense-
> person-number inflection on verbs; this (the guilt) is AFAIK quite
> common in the conlanging business. :)
>
> My methods?
http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/how.html
> ('How to Create a Language') is a tutorial-like thing I've written
> to explain them, though full of little and not so little mistakes
> due to my linguistic amateurishness. My personal routine is to work
> on the language when I want to. I begin by creating a phonology,
> which is usually symmetrical, sometimes too simple and sometimes too
> complicated, which is then in flux for days or weeks (rarely longer).
> Sometimes the phonology is just a excuse to start creating words
> illustrating some morphological or syntactic feature that was the
> real cause of the language starting. I then focus usually on nouns,
> then on verbs; other parts of speech appear later. When the language
> has reached some stability, I begin to toy with semantics, creating
> untranslatable words (meaning, unstranslatable with a single word
> in English or my native Spanish) and synonyms and antonyms for the
> ones I have.
>
> I keep everything well-documented in text files, with a database for
> words and eventually for each morpheme.
>
> Few langs reach this stage. My current most developed project, Draseléq
> (
http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/draseleq.html ), was started more
> than two years ago and it only has circa 1860 words, composed of 1000+
> morphemes. Far before this point, I felt the need to go deeper into
> the language and I set up (after a painfully detailed task of revision
> a set of ancient roots and affixes, from which the modern words were to
> be derived. This is what I do always, now; I create the ancient word,
> then derive it; it lets me play some interesting games like double
> derivation (a word derived as usual vs. a reborrowed cognate). Some of
> my languages share a common setting, and have borrowed words from each
> other.
>
>
> --Pablo Flores
>
http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
> ... I cannot combine any characters that the divine Library
> has not foreseen, which in some of its secret tongues do not
> bear some terrible meaning. No-one can articulate a syllable
> not filled of caresses and fears; which is not, in some one
> of those languages, the powerful name of a god...
> Jorge Luis Borges, _The Library of Babel_
>
> ***
> From: Humphrey Tonkin <tonkin@...>
>
> You are, I am sure, aware of Paolo Albani and Berlinghiero Buonarroti's
> Aga Magera Difura: dizionario delle lingue immaginarie (Bologna:
> Zanichelli, 1994). Also Marina Yaguello, "Lunatic Lovers of Language:
> Imaginary Languages and Their Inventors" (London: Athlone Press, 1991).
> See also Michel Pierssens, "The Power of Babel: A Study of Logophilia"
> (London: Routledge, 1980). P.Cornelius, "Languages in 17th and Early
> 18th-Century Imaginary Voyages" (Geneva: Droz, 1965) is helpful on this
> aspect of the subject.
>
> A section of the Modern Language Association's Annual Bibliography,
> entitled "Invented Languages," contains numbers of references to current
> scholarship, e.g. about Klingon.
>
> HT
>
> Humphrey Tonkin
> University Professor of the Humanities, University of Hartford
> West Hartford, CT 06117, USA
> tel (office) +1 860-768-4448 fax (office) +1 860-768-4411
> (home) 279 Ridgewood Road, West Hartford, CT 06107
> tel (home) +1 860-561-2669 fax (home) +1 860-561-5219
>
> "The unexamined college is not worth loving." --Mabel Lang
>
> Susan Meredith Burt
>
> until May 15:
>
> Department of English
> University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
> 800 Algoma Blvd.
> Oshkosh WI 54901 USA
> internet: Burt@vaxa.cis.uwosh.edu
>
> Thereafter:
>
> 602 Normal Avenue
> Normal, IL 61761
> phone: 309-888-2704
>
> After August 16, 2000:
>
> Department of English
> Illinois State University
> Campus Box 4240
> Normal, IL 61790-4240
>
> my best guess at an email address: smburt@ilstu.edu
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> LINGUIST List: Vol-11-1085