Re: CHAT: Art appreciation and conlang appreciation

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, David G. Durand wrote:

>=20
> I think that for conlanging, the level of naive appreciation is at the
> level of phonology and the sound pattern of complete utterances. Long
> before I had found the parsed version of Galadriel's song (or deduced any
> of the grammar), I was in love with Namari=EB, and the flowing sounds of =
the
> song.
>=20
Well, originally, the contention was that constructed languages
couldn't be appreciated by the common man in the street, but that
paintings and music could be. The case I tried to make was that for
all those forms of art, a complete appreciation demands a lot of
knowledge. A naive appreciation is equally possible with all those
forms of art, as you've just shown.

<...>
>=20
> If all this intellectual stuff were a requirement of appreciation, then a=
rt
> of any kind would not exert the hold that it does on children.
>=20
Children, especially young children, almost all enjoy making up
languages and toying with sounds, and made-up words. So you can
approach all art intellectually, and get what the artist meant to
convey (in those cases where the artist plays in intellectual 'game'),
or naively and enjoy what you perceive - and both approaches are valid,
of course!

So I still contend that there's not much difference between a
constructed language and a painting in intrinsic accessability.


Boudewijn Rempt  | http://denden.conlang.org