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

I can see it now: _The Complete Idiots Guide to
Inventing Languages_.  Or Maybe _Inventing Languages
for Dummies_.

--- Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
> From time to time, as we can all recall, someone
> asks for data about all our
> conlangs, with the idea of putting it all together
> into a book of some sort.
> (Nothing ever seems to come of it, that we know of,
> but that's another
> matter.......)
>
> Still, it would be an interesting idea to produce a
> "Inventing Languages"
> book; after all, there are a couple "World Building"
> books out there, and I
> assume they sell (I bought one!).... The recent
> series of questions on
> Conculture, too, are worthwile and could be
> expanded, or included, since
> building a language and building a culture are, or
> can be, intimately
> related.
>
> Clearly, Rosenfelder and Flores have already stolen
> a lot the thunder, but
> I'm sure it could be improved upon, and amplified.
> For instance, individual
> testimonies as to how one came up with given words
> for this and that; how
> one decided on morphology ("I think I shall express
> the accusative with a
> prefix") and various semantic ins and outs (cf. my
> recent posts about how to
> say "except" or "as far as" in Kash).
>
> Well, given the amount of free time I have, I
> suppose I ought to try
> it..........(but don't count on that!!)--- with a
> lot of help from my
> friends.  Any thoughts?
>
> "Running it up the flagpole to see if anyone
> salutes," as we used to
> say........