Re: Introducing myself, and several questions

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jörg Rhiemeier" <joerg_rhiemeier@...>

> Hallo!
>
> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 00:01:43 -0500,
> Damian Yerrick <tepples@...> wrote:
>
>> My name is Damian, and I'm a conlanger.
This does sound like a twelve step program, doesn't it! :)  Hello, Damian!
Sed tso o karyts narlty! ("We welcome you warmly").

>>       I've dabbled for
>> years, never "finishing" anything to the point that arbitrary
>> conversation is possible.
>
> Well, only few people ever get to that point in conlanging.
> Most conlangs remain incomplete.
It's like Xeno's paradox.  That arrow never gets to its target, no matter
how many words you invent.  If you invent a word for house, then you have to
invent the things inside a house, ever spiraling down to the microcosmic;
you're at the dressing table.  What are the words for brush? bristles in a
brush? hairs caught in the bristles in a brush?  You get the idea.  I
imagine natural languages go through this process too, and its speakers feel
just as helpless.  Imagine Mulcaster, trying to defend the validity of the
English tunge in the face of the clearly superior (to him and others) Latin,
cum French and Italian of the sixteenth century.

>>       I come to this list to ask for help
>> in getting past roadblocks.  I've read some of the archives,
>> but not all 6 1/2 years of them.  Here's where I want help:
>>
>>
>> LEXICAL ICONICITY
>>
>> When creating the a priori lexicon for Qenya (early drafts of
>> Quenya), Tolkien chose sound patterns that he felt "fit" a given
>> meaning.
>> http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/vice.htm
>>
>> However, I seem to have a dulled sense of aesthetics, possibly
>> caused by my Asperger syndrome that causes me to distrust vague
>> hunches.  Much of the time, I can't seem to do better than creating
>> phonotactic rules and then randomly assigning Swadesh-list glosses
>> to sound patterns, possibly with the aid of a computer program.
>> Are there some general procedures that govern lexical innovation
>> in natlangs and naturalistic conlangs?  Has anybody successfully
>> implemented ding-dong or ta-ta in their conlangs?
Words that are onomatopoeic?  Tsyttsytsa is "cricket" in Teonaht, and it
intends to imitate the sound a cricket makes.  In the early stages of
Teonaht, Damian, I just pulled words out of the air arbitrarily.  I had a
strong sense at the time (which you claim you don't but you may surprise
yourself!) that a word would "fit" its meaning, and as the language
developed I resorted to more and more compounding.  But I state as strongly
as Jörg does that this is completely subjective.

> The relationship between sound and meaning in languages is generally
> arbitrary, with only few words approaching iconicity.  And aesthetics
> is a very subjective issue.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Exactly.  In looking over Teonaht, I have found that I find "nrina" rather
beautiful, although it starts with a rather unconventional consonant
cluster.  I have tended to favor quite a lot of clucky sounds: kemkrilyt for
"labyrinthine" is full of clusters that other people might find harsh, and
yet I adore that word.  I have a book of words I pulled out of the air
(where the F*#)(@)k is it?) and to which I had planned to assign meanings,
and many tend towards three syllables with stress on the first syllable.
Avgyab, begrimod, krestimait, zydzyend, etc.  I find these collection of
syllables pleasing, though there is nothing inherently beautiful about them.

> I find naturalistic conlangs (i.e., conlangs that look like natlangs,
> with a sense of historicity) beautiful and conlangs that give away
> their artificiality at first sight ugly, but there are people around
> here who have a different taste.
So Jörg, what conlangs give their artificiality away?  There are so many
features of a language that could considered "artificial."  Many of the
linguistic scholars of glossolalia were so sure they could identify the
artificial aspects of that linguistic practice by noting the 1) open
syllables, 2) reduced phonology, 3) echoism, etc. that we find in Hawaiian,
for instance.  An over regularity of grammar?

> There have been attempts to create conlangs that avoid the
> arbitrariness inherent in natlangs.  They are called "philsophical
> languages", and they were failures.  There is no such thing as
> an "iconic language".
>
>> DEFAULT SETTINGS OF GRAMMAR
>>
>> I don't want to make euroclones all the time, but I don't want to
>> make an unspeakable language that violates fifty-two universals
>> either.  What structures are "easier" for the developing hominid
>> brain to parse?  For example, do learners intrinsically prefer
>> object-verb order or verb-object order?  What about adjective-noun
>> or noun-adjective?  Is there any appeal to iconicity for this?
>
> The variation among human languages is enormous, and it is hard
> to say whether left-branching (object-verb, adj-noun, postpositions)
> or right-branching (verb-object, noun-adj, prepositions) structures
> are easier to parse.
Teonaht is a direct violation of the Greenbergian rules for syntax.  It is
OSV, or more colloquially SOV with adjectives that are postpositional and
prepositions that are... for the lack of a better word. . .prepositional,
although you do find the -jo and -ro among the conjuntions that are
postpositional.

If I were ever to invent a new language, don't hold your breath! I would
probably make its words far more monosyllabic; it would be inflected with a
syntax that expresses topic and focus.  Or I would invent a Teonivar who
invents a philosophical language.  And have it fail, or taken up by
Rrordaly's mimes.

>> CULTURAL-PHONETIC CORRELATION
>>
>> Does tendency for open or closed syllables, for softer or harder
>> sounds, or for tones or no tones, depend on culture?  I've heard
>> of the Inuit and the Arabs, whose languages have fewer distinct
>> vowel heights and more back consonants because their harsh
>> environments make it painful to open the mouth to the elements
>> in order to produce low vowels.
>
> Few linguists would subscribe to that.  There seems not to be
> any correlation between culture and phonology.
Again, exactly.  It's like the amateur linguists who wanted to psychologize
the Welsh for their initial mutations ("they're lazy") or better, for the
particles that precede initial verbs and predicates.  "Nothing touches. They
are secretive, careful, mystical."  Bosh!

>>        In addition, Tolkien's chaotic
>> orcs speak a phonaesthetically "harsher" language than his
>> lawful elves.  Is such correlation the rule or the exception?
>
> Again, it's subjective.  Tolkien decided that the good guys in
> his story would speak languages he'd consider beautiful, and the
> bad guys languages he'd consider ugly.  The next author will have
> different ideas about what is beautiful, and build his languages
> accordingly.
However, I might add that there is some research being done into the
aesthetics of western language by no other than the Cornish Language
revivalists; I talked to one at the Berkeley conference I attended two years
ago.  I don't know if this was his particular bailiwick, or one that has a
larger calling.  But language aesthetic, especially in the reconstruction of
language, or the creation of a dead language, is of interest to some people.
We talked about the relatively common assumption that front consonants and
liquids with few clusters are considered "prettier" than back consonants and
back consonant clusters.  I like Mike Ellis's examples!  HAH!  But again,
this is cultural.  Like what chords and note sequences express
"sorrowfulness" vs. "an upbeat attitude" in music.

>> CULTURAL-GRAMMATIC CORRELATION
>>
>> Likewise, are any grammatical qualities correlated to aspects
>> of the culture?  Does an environmental or cultural constraint
>> correlate with an OV or VO preference, with obligate marking
>> of various properties of a noun or verb, or anything similar?
>> I can see how a more paranoid culture might lead to evidentiary
>> markers becoming grammaticalized; are there other examples?
>
> There is perhaps more of a correlation between culture and grammar
> than between culture and phonology.  A rigidly stratified culture
> is perhaps more likely top develop an elaborate system of honorifics
> than an egalitarian one, for example.
I agree.  But I don't think that syntax can be tied down to cultural
constraints.  I also don't think that a culture need be "paranoid" to
produce evidentiary markers, any more than a culture is overly precise and
fussy because it shows redundant marking with gender/number and
noun/adjective.  The French however... :) :) :D

>> SIMPLIFICATION
>>
>> I understand that the lexicon can be reduced to sizes that
>> may initially appear absurd while retaining expressiveness.
>> Evidence: A conlang called Toki Pona manages to convey every
>> meaning one can think of in 120 basic words.
>
> Closed vocabularies don't really work.  You will find that the
> words that aren't there must be replaced by circumlocutions
> which must be learned individually just like words.  No natlang
> has a closed vocabulary.
>
>> Is this true of grammar as well?  For instance, in computing, the
>> problem called 2-SAT is not NP-complete, but 3-SAT is NP-complete.
>> Does this result have an analog in human language?  Is it possible
>> to make a fully expressive language that uses two-word clauses?
>
> I don't know, but I doubt it.
>
>> Specifically, is the narrator's description of the language of
>> the Eloi in chapter 5 of HG Wells's _The_Time_Machine_ unnatural?
>>
>> "Either I missed some subtle point or their language was
>> excessively simple - almost exclusively composed of concrete
>> substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract
>> terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences
>> were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey
>> or understand any but the simplest propositions."
>
> Sounds like a pidgin.
Sounds, rather,  like that South American tribe whose name I can't remember;
I have it on the tip of my tongue.  Their language was also almost devoid of
abstractions, and they showed an inability to calculate, as well, i.e., to
think in abstractions.  We even discussed it about a year ago.

Back to work,
Sally
Al eskkoat ol ai sendran rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo
(I'm just noticing all those "k"s :)