Re: CCHAT: History of the conlang list

O! the nostalgia!

John Cowan:
> Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> > Assuming at least one of the listfounders is still with us (or at least
> > traceable) I fear the best guide to the exact date will probably be human
> > memory... :-(  Tal was the first to point out that the anniversary is
> > approaching, perhaps he has some clearer idea than 'some time soon'?
>
> The first message in my archive, which dates back before my personal
> participation, is dated Wed Jun 19 10:27:19 1991 -0400.
Thanks be to archivists! Destroyed by a tap of sysadmin's finger were
the complete archives I once had from the very start of that earliest
phase.

> I believe this was very close to being the first message, so the 10-year
> anniversary still has some 15 months to go.
>
> I was added to the list by John Ross, the founder, on
> Tue Jul 16 09:23:17 1991 -0400 according to the message announcing the fact.
> (I erroneously called him John Clark in an earlier message.)
> At that time, Conlang was not supported by any sort of listserv,
> but was simply a bunch of addresses in the "To:" header.
> The earliest such list I have includes John Ross, And Rosta,
> Steve Rice of the Loglan Institute, "R. Kenner" (I don't know who that is)
> and someone using the mailing address <tempus%
> maple.decnet@pine.circa.ufl.edu>.
IIRC, Steve Rice did not subscribe to Conlang proper, even though he was
the only other artlanger around then.

> The first message sent to "conlang@buphy.bu.edu", which was
> a simple alias still, was at Thu, 18 Jul 1991 16:32 -0400.
I've said in another message that this seems to me the birth of the list,
the earlier phase being its conception and gestation.

[...]
> Finally, for those of you who made it this far, the first public remarks
> ever about Livagian, dated Mon, 8 Jul 1991 14:43:51 -0400 in my archive:
>
> > Rostese, the English name for Rashtoirosht, is a language I've been
> > developing for fifteen years. It has a syntax, semantics and phonology,
> > but no proper lexicon, because there are very few pairings of semantic
> > senses with phonological representations, so it is not possible to compose
> > a text in the language. Moreover, each time I change the (quasi
> > Jackendoffian) semantic system I employ in my PhD thesis (for the analysis
> > of English), Rostese changes. The language is conceived of as a classical
> > lg like Sanskrit or Latin - i.e. used in prestigious texts, but not living.
> > I mention this lg because I know I'm addressing a fellow enthusiast, but,
> > since it can't be spoken, it would otherwise be rather impudent of me
> > to claim it as an invented language. It is really my platonic ideal of
> > a language, & discovering what the ideal is precedes the invention of the
> > speakable language. If you want to know more about Rostese
> > I could perhaps discuss the phonology & syntax.
>
> (Phonology confidently expected soon, still waiting for syntax.)
Fuck me! How embarrassing! How I am laid naked for all to see me in all my
shameful dilatoriness! O my salad days, when I was even greener in judgement!

I had completely forgotten it was ever called Rashtoirosht, and I've no idea
what that name means [though I do have a gut feeling that it segments
morphologically as ra-shto-i-rosht]. That 15 years is excessive, too: I
guesstimate 14 years to the first scripts, and 10 years to the start of the
language proper.

The remark that "It has a syntax, semantics and phonology, but no proper
lexicon, because there are very few pairings of semantic senses with
phonological representations, so it is not possible to compose a text in the
language" is still depressingly and shamingly true, though in that time
the syntax has repeatedly changed beyond recognition, and the phonology
changed enormously. I am struck by how applicable my description of it
remains: "It is really my platonic ideal of a language, & discovering what the
ideal is precedes the invention of the speakable language." On the other
hand, I see that the impudence of describing Rostese/Livagian as an
invented language has not deterred me from doing so for the past nine years;
indeed I am sure there has been in my postings much greater egregiousness
which too scanty pudor has not deterred.

The first public phonology description (or more than email length)
forthcame in 1997. The new one is indeed imminent. As for syntax, it's hard to
say when that could come. I have found that the job of choosing optimal
phonological forms for the "function words" involves an amount of time and
effort that is usually 50-100% greater than the that required for defining the
function words' function and meaning. Yet practically any change to the
phonology or to the function words' system renders the phonological forms
either invalid or at least suboptimal, and hence obsolete, and rendering the
extraordinary amounts of time and effort that went into their creation
entirely futile. My new plan is therefore to do the entire syntax before
bothering to assign phonological forms. The question then is whether it is
possible to adequately describe a grammar in which the words have no phonology
or any other form of signans.

As for the PhD thesis, I seem to be describing the first of the four
incarnations it eventually took. Dead, buried and forgotten, it is now.

--And.