Re: "Theory informs practice" - OK?

--- On Tue, 11/11/08, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <yahya@...> wrote:

...
>
> My question for you practising conlang creators is this:
>   How much, if at all, do theoretical considerations like
>   those discussed in the review (and of course, the
>   book) influence your thinking and activity?
> If you choose to reply, please do so on-list.
>
> Regards,
> Yahya
My pet theory is that natlangs were created by people who knew nothing whatsoever
about linguistics, and linguistics is the educated attempt to explain the
verbal behavior of the uneducated. Pidgins and Creoles are also the creation of
the linguistically naive.

Consequently, I have always preferred the notion that conlangs are best created by people
who know nothing about theory, or if created by knowledgeable people, they
should be created without paying too much attention to theory.

Somewhere in the dim recesses of pre-history, people who had some single utterance for
some basic experience like "fire", decided, for some unfathomable reason, to
begin inflecting that word with case endings (or maybe case endings started out
as post positioned particles?). I'm sure they did so for some simple
utilitarian reason, without any deep philosophical or theoretical ponderings.

In other words, I tend toward the pragmatic belief that before there was
language, there could not have been any theory of language, because theory only
describes what the uneducated masses have sort of accidentally gotten in the
habit of doing. So naturalistic conlangs should still feel somewhat
"accidental".

--gary

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