Re: Yaguello's stereotype: response to Roger

Interestingly, the word "invent" originally meant "discover" in Latin. :)
Language "discovery."  These people you cite are "discovering" language in
their own way, perhaps?

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."



----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan Sulani" <dnsulani@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>

> On 21 May, Sally Caves  wrote (quoting Yaguello):
>
> >  " Here we enter
> > the doman of 'private languages' which borders, at the far end of the
> > continuum, on language pathology (the invention of languages by people
> with
> > psychiatric disorders).  If consideration is restricted to viable
> > projects... "
>
>     Language pathology, huh? OK. You've got my attention! :-)
> You know, I'm wondering if we're not being unduly
> hung up here on the word "invention". For most of us conlangers,
> I'd say that "invention" of langs implies deliberate construction
> (even when the source of a word or grammatical construction
> might come from a non-rational source, we would still exercise
> critical judgement as to whether to finally include it in our langs
> or not, no?).
>     The way this quote from Yaguello is worded makes me wonder
> if she isn't also intending a looser meaning to "invention",
We would have to go back to her French original, which I don't have.  (I
seem to have lost my French dictionary).  It may very well be that
"invention" still retains the earlier Latin meaning in romance languages.

> something
> along the lines of "coming up with" --- without the implication of
> deliberate design.
>     In the looser sense, I'd quite agree with Yaguello!
She does say "at the far end of the continuum."  My beef with her (among
many) is that she never once mentions Tolkien.

>     I remember one case in particular: a young man who might
> reasonably be described as having a "psychiatric disorder"
> (He was thoroughly convinced that he was both the Biblical
> King David and the Messiah! You all draw your own conclusions!)
> He was a monolingual American English speaker, but his speech
> was highly unusual: he free associated phonetically, ie every 2nd
> or 3rd word he would choose the next word solely based upon
> its similarity in sound to the previous word. Semantics and
> even morphosyntax were totally irrelevant to him. He threw in
> numerous neologisms into his "English" also.
Wow!  That's really amazing.  The language restrictions Lisa put on her
speech in the famous play _David and Lisa_ are nothing compared to this.  Do
you have any other instances of such "discoverers" that you have met in your
line of work?

>     The thing was that he had written a book of, IIRC, all his
> prophesies. He had the handwritten manuscript photocopied and bound.
> It read more or less the way he talked.
Even better!

>     Was he "at the far end of the continuum"? I'd say so.  He had cerainly
> "come up with" an unusual way of using lang. But was
> his book writtten in a conlang? I doubt it because this person didn't
> seem capable of fully controlling his linguistic tools, let alone using
> them to invent anything!
We might be restricting "conlang" to too loose a definition.  But I tend to
agree with you; glossopoeia, in my books, is the rational "invention" of a
new language.

>     IME, language pathology and conlanging can both result in
> linguistic artefacts that differ (even greatly) from the natlangs one
> is familiar with. They are not equivalent, though.
Right.

> The question, IMHO, is one of deliberate control of the tools!
Right, again.  I argued so in my paper on Hildegard, whose language has been
described as glossolalic or oneiric.


Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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