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

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Thursday, December 11, 2003, 3:35
On Tuesday, December 9, 2003, at 08:21 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Hallo! > > On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 12:26:55 -0700, > Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...> wrote: > >> On Tuesday, December 9, 2003, at 10:31 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
[snip]
>> 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, > > Fragments of languages... indeed true. Few artlang projects ever > reach the stage of actual usability. Makes it even more difficult > to take them seriously.
Yes, this is indisputable. It is probably even more true of artlangs which are "Artificial Descendants of Latin" (the title of the book); it seems almost obligatory for conlangers to produce at least one Romance conlang. I produced fragments of several in my late teens & early 20s. But..... [snip]
>> 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.
Only if the author had discussed artlang projects in general :) Not all artlangs are moving targets. I submit that his discussion of con-IALs would also be general & vague if he discussed IALs *in general*, especially if he'd picked auxlangs that are moving targets (they do exist!). [snip]
> But there is a handful of artlangs which have reached a rather stable > mode of existence. Andrew Smith's Brithenig is pretty stable;
Yes, indeed, not your "moving target" - and it was "constructed with some serious purpose in mind", i.e. to reconstruct as plausibly as possible what the Vulgar Latin of the Romano-British might have become if it had not been displaced by Saxon. I wonder too how many of the the listed LatAuxlangs survived their authors: 1.1 Carpophorophilus's Language 1.2 Kosmos 1.3 Latino Moderne 1.4 Latino sine Flexione 1.5 Latinulus Ach-y-fi! What a name for a language! (In real Latin it'd mean "a little person from Latium [Lazio]" - with meaning of endearment or, more likely, scorn) 1.6 Linguum Islianum 1.7 Mundelingva 1.8 Myrana and Communia 1.9 Nov Latin 1.10 Reform-Latein 1.11 SIMP-LATINA (SPL) 1.12 Universal-Latein 1.13 Uropa 1.14 Weltsprache (Eichhorn) 1.15 Weltsprache (Volk and Fuchs) I must say the list doesn't tempt me to part with 44 euros :) If it's a YASLA ('yet another simplified Latin auxlang') you're after, I can supply one any time. ;-) Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) ===============================================

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