Re: artlang-blindness of linguists (was ...)

--- Jörg Rhiemeyer skrzypszy:

(Dirk Elzinga:)
>> It has not escaped the author's attention that languages may be
>> constructed for personal or artistic reasons. He is also the author of
>> _A Priori Artificial Languages_ and _Mixed Artificial Languages_. In
>> the preface to the former he said: "I am primarily interested in those
>> languages which were constructed with some serious purpose in mind. A
>> fair number of languages, or (much more often) fragments of languages,
Well, be sure that I'm not questioning the author's good intentions. My
objection against exclusive focusing on auxlangs is simply that he omits an
entire category of constructed languages. Auxlangs tend to simplify
everything, and usually they miss the fireworks that artlangs can create.

Besides, the languages we are missing in the book are not just artlangs,
but in particular the so-called "what if" languages, like Brithenig, Kerno,
Jovian and my own Wenedyk. I have the impression that this is a relatively
new type of conlang. At least, I am unaware of any such language having
existed before 1990!

>Fragments of languages... indeed true.  Few artlang projects ever
>reach the stage of actual usability.  Makes it even more difficult
>to take them seriously.
Absolutely. Nevertheless, there are plenty of artlangs that díd reach such
stage.
OTOH, I'm not convinced that every auxlang listed in the index of the book
has reached it; I've seen examples of Latin-based auxlangs with a
vocabulary of much less than 2000.

>When a conlang occurs in a popular work of fiction, people want to
>know about the language that appears therein; otherwise, popular
>interest in artlangs is almost non-existent.
Indeed, that's our unfortunate reality.

>>      The development of the Internet and the World Wide
>> Web has only fueled the transitory nature of our languages;
Very true. Although I'm quite sure this will change sooner or later. Don't
forget that the Internet is still a young thing. As soon as a language
gets "stabilised", the website will probably remain (if the owner at least
should care to maintain it).

Currently, Wenedyk is close to 2300 words. No "full usability", but we're
getting somewhere, at least. Incidentally, I change things, like
grammatical bits, derivational rules, or words. But then, the language was
conceived only 16 months ago! Of course things change. I imagine that at
some point I'll stop changing anything, because all the changes necessary
have already been made. And I'll stop developing it further, except perhaps
for adding a new word to the lexicon every once in a while. If I ever reach
that point, I'm sure Wenedyk would at least be worth mentioning.

>> So any discussion of artlang projects would have to be rather general
>> and vague (if there is discussion at all); they're moving targets.
>
>Yes.  Almost everything posted on CONLANG or on list members' web sites
>is work in progress, and many of us go through seemingly endless
>build-and-tear cycles.  [...]
>But there is a handful of artlangs which have reached a rather stable
>mode of existence.  Andrew Smith's Brithenig is pretty stable;
Yes, but isn't this stability mainly caused by the fact that Andrew
abandoned it? Besides, I don't know the size of its lexicon. Has it
reached "full usability"?

>Klingon has an official dictionary and grammar; in the case of Quenya
>and Sindarin, we have at least a published corpus available to
>linguistic analysis; there are certainly others.
Yes, don't forget Verdurian, Teonaht, and some of the other languages
around here.

>> I'm just happy that constructed languages of any stripe are
>> receiving serious attention from a sympathetic scholar.
Of course, so am I. As I said, I will probably buy the book.

Cheers,
Jan

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