Re: Yaguello's stereotype: response to Roger

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! :-)
(Which is not so easy to do these days, since my PalmPilot
is broken and as a result, I can't download all my emails in order
to read them during the day as time allows; which means,
unfortunately, many missed postings, until I get it fixed :-(    )
    Anyhow:
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", something
along the lines of "coming up with" --- without the implication of
deliberate design.
    In the looser sense, I'd quite agree with Yaguello!
    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.
    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.
    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!
    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.
The question, IMHO, is one of deliberate control of the tools!


Dan Sulani
------------------------------------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.

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