Re: Artyom Kouzminykh: Answes&proposal
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <grandsir@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, August 20, 1999, 14:06 |
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Artem Kouzminykh wrote:
>
> Dear members of conlang/auxlang!
>
> Thanks for all of you valuable answers to my question about conlang
> with 8 "main distin-guishing features". I supposed that there wasn't
> such conlang, but I wasn't sure of it, now it seems that I'm sure.
>
> Some remarks. I wasn't clear writing "natural" pronunciation of
> letters c, g, s, "natural ac-centing" and "natural suffixes". Of course
> I meant common ("natural") in ROMANCE (interlingua) AND/OR LATIN
> pronunciation, accenting and suffixes, because, as you saw, I prefer
> this (romance) style in conlanging. So, I prefer to write "dolorosa"
> (not "doloroZa") and "presidento" (instead of "preZidento") in "my"
> conlang as it is more "natural" (in the meaning I explained above).
But then why do you use this adjective "natural"? It means nothing! If
you want a Romance conlang, use the adjective "Romance", not the
adjective "natural", because what seems natural for you may be unnatural
for others.
> Don HARLOW wrote:
> >I'm dubious about the need to use an ending to show gender -- and even
> more dubious about the need to make gender mandatory in words.
> Charles wrote:
> >In the modern world, why carry on with obsolete gender distinctions?
> But perhaps the distinction between animate/inanimate is useful.
> As for gender of the nouns, I certainly meant that only _biological
> sex_ must be designated with letters -o and -a respectively, I don't
> like "masculine chairs or feminine books", as Fabian
> wrote, too! Seeing "patrino" for "mother" in Esperanto is really
> bringing me down! It would be rather pitiable in Romance-based conlang,
> isn't it?
> "The distinction between animate/inanimate" is very interesting, but
> not in "Romance-based conlang", that I tried to find.
>
I agree that the distinction animate-inanimate is interesting and more
useful than the distinction masculine-feminine and even
masculine-feminine-neuter. But why using mandatory endings for that?
can't you use adjective like in English "male" and "female"?
> Fabian wrote:
> >What about foxes, rabbits, and badgers? They don't seem very neuter to
> me.And humanity in the abstract sense?
> I consider, nevertheless, that it's useful to use neuter gender meaning
> people/animals of unknown sex, or a group of them of both sexes, or of
> which sex doesn't matters in the context. Ex. patres - parents, patro -
> father, matra (madra?) - mother.
>
Fabian was pointing a difference that exists between neuter and
neutral. Neuter is more inanimate, whereas neutral is animate.
The problem with your example is that it misses your goal. Giving
"patres" the same origin than "patro" vs. "matra" shows no neuter gender
for me. It is just like other languages where the masculine gender is
the default one.
> Don HARLOW wrote:
> >The plural -s is not inappropriate for a language where nouns take no
> other endings, but how is it pronounced?
> The plural -s must be pronounced usually, like in I-a - [s].
>
> Charles wrote (about -s ending for plural):
> >That's probably best, but -i isn't so bad.
> >From roman langs -i we can find only in Italian (I think!), but we can
> still find -s in: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin (among others),
> and even in such not-Romance langs as English, Holland, German and
> Greek (among others)! Italians lose in this linguistic battle?
>
> Charles wrote:
> >But what about imperfect and other aspects?
> We have no any perfect's and imperfect's (as well as pluperfect's!) in
> Russian, and still feel ourselves OK. So, it isn't necessary for a IAL,
> but it's possible, I agree.
>
> Don HARLOW wrote:
> >What about the possibility of _no_ grammatical endings, signing parts
> of speech syntactically?
> Fabian wrote (about plurals):
> Why not with an -en ending, as in German? or -i, as in Latin? Or -in,
> as in Hebrew? Why mark it at all, as in Japanese? Why not a dual form,
> as inArabic? Or...
>
> It isn't common ("natural") in the Romance langs, isn't it?
>
> Don HARLOW wrote:
> >Why tenses? The Chinese do mostly well without them. And the
> conditional, imperative and infinitive are also unnecessary -- these
> are difficult forms for many people (e.g., in Esperanto the conditional
> is, except in its most common usage, perhaps as great a problem as the
> accusative ending -- when should you say "devas" and when "devus"?).
> Also, I see no problem with a priori grammatical endings (though even
> in Esperanto and Ido _none_ of the grammatical endings is _a priori_ --
> all of them can be traced back to sources in the Indo-European
> languages). And why not analytic tenses with auxiliaries? An auxiliary
> is no different from a grammatical ending, IMHO -- just located
> differently.
> Tenses are necessory because they ARE "natural" (see above that is
> "natural" in my under-standing). I don't see how imperative or
> infinitive can be difficult for a human being from our planet.
> Conditional in Esp-o and Ido doesn't bother me, too. I don't like "a
> priori grammatical endings" because they ARE not "natural". (In
> Esperanto and Ido grammatical endings ARE a priori (not-natural) ENOUGH
> - do you think -is in Esp-o & Ido''s verbs is better than (for example)
> -ava, -as - better than (for exam-ple) -a, -os - better than (for
> example) -ara?).
The problem was not about necessity of tense or not, but about the
necessity of tense endings on verbs. If you want to have tense, why not
using auxiliaries, like spoken French that using "avoir+participe" for
the past tense.
It is not because you don't see why imperative or infinitive can be
difficult for someone else that it cannot be! Ask a native Arab knowing
no other language and he will have much difficulties to understand what
is the infinitive. If you want a real IAL, you must take care of that
and remember that there are NO universal categories in speech (whatever
others can have told you) apart maybe for the opposition between nouns
and verbs (and sometimes it is not so easy to make). Moreover, you used
a bad example as imperative is not difficult. But mandatory tenses can
be for speakers of Chinese.
> Fabian wrote:
> >Personally, I suspect analytical tenses are simpler than inflected
> tenses.
> About auxiliaries. Do you think it's OK to you use verbs "have" and
> "be" as auxiliaries in a simple and logical IAL? And creating a priori
> auxiliaries, as in Novial, wouldn't be very "natural" for a Romance
> conlang, would it?
> Don HARLOW wrote:
> >For instance, in your above list the first word should definitely be
> "olYmpico" (and I speak as one who, two weekends ago, was hiking in the
> OlYmpic National Park).
> It was my error writing "OlympIco", I certainly meant OlYmpico!
> Emerson Alcott wrote:
>
> >Why not write them asthey sound, and rid yourself of unneccesary
> memorization? If ph = f, then write f for every ph. Why not anarkia?
> Because IT IS NOT BEATIFUL (to say nothing about it isn't "natural")!
> "La nympha" is BEATIFUL (for me) and "la nimfa" (or even "nimfo") IS
> NOT!
But then it is not an IAL. Don't forget that a phonetic writing is a
condition sine qua non to define an IAL.
> Emerson Alcott wrote:
>
> >German looks shocking and repulsive. Not to the Germans! Who's to say
> what looks bad to whom?
> >Ex. Esp-o>words fraulo, shlosilo, halti, hundo, edzo (!!!), nepre,
> krom? "Nepre" comes from your own native tongue, Russian!
> I mean that (a small quantity of) German (Russian, English ? Chinese,
> Hebrew, Indian ? Martian, Venerian, Sirius?) words would be "shocking
> and repulsive" in a Romance (Latin) -based conlang!
>
Sorry but your judgement is meaningless. Who are you to decide what is
shocking or not? I am French, so I certainly can decide better than you
about Romance languages.
> Emerson Alcott wrote:
> >I-a preserves 'internationally acknowledged forms' from the view of
> Western Europe, not the world.
> I'm searching (or already creating) a conlang for me, not for "the
> world". It was probably my mistake sending such question in auxlang,
> but I thought that perhaps some auxlangers could help me to find it?
>
But if you say you want a conlang for you, why do you say you want an
IAL? Those are two completely different things. A personal conlangs
doesn't have any requirement of internationality or even regularity!
> Emerson Alcott wrote:
> >As Don Harlow has said, there is no such thing as natural accenting.
> Foreach of the above words, one would need accent marks to know exactly
> wherethe words were intended to be accented.
> In the end, accenting is not such important thing like others. Let
> everyone accent words every place he wants (though I prefer I-a style
> here)!
>
It is more important than you think. Often ununderstanding between
people speaking the same language come from different accentuations (I
myself lived such case).
> Fabian wrote:
> >And how is having an accusative form implicitly more difficult than
> having a strict word order (every language must have one or the other)?
> I have nothing against cases in a conlang, even 5-6 - 'cause it IS
> "natural" in Latin, and Latin is a real base for a Romance conlang. But
> cases in IAL - is it so necessary?
>
Not less necessary than gender-marked endings, plural endings or
tense-endings. Why having some and not the others. Be analytic or be
synthetic, but don't be both or you won't have an IAL (though I am
Esperantist and find it a beautiful language, I think it is one of its
flaws that makes it too European for an IAL. And it's yet the less
European IAL I know!).
> Patrick Dunn wrote:
> il ne es u lingua qi pote krea u no-guera. (There is no language that
> can create peace)
> I agree, but is there a constructed language that suits my unassuming
> requirements?
>
Just construct it, you'll be sure it fulfills your requirements.
> In conclusion I'd like to say that may be it would better to create
> THREE related conlangs instead of one. Well, you see:
> 1) The first one is as "natural" as possible, for example Latino
> Moderne
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3150/latinomoderne.html or
> Lingua Franca Nova
>
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/lfnintro.html or The Master Language of
> Stephen Chase Houghton or at least I-a. It is "orthographical" lang
> with cases (like Latino Moderne), genders, with no "one grammatical
> ending for one part of speech", with "natural" for Romance
> irregularity, no ANY a priori auxiliaries, affixes and so on. It's an
> artlang for role plays, author's enjoinment as well as for literature
> and solemn ceremonies, the conlang for "aesthetes", priests and poets.
> You can call it "high" or "noble" speech, for more interest. There is
> no need to create such conlang, it already exists (see mentioned above).
> 2) The second is "law" or "popular" speech, based on the first one, but
> grammatically strict as Esp-Ido, Novial etc. Well, "one grammatical
> ending for one part of speech", no any cases of nouns and pronouns,
> only 3 tenses (+participles, inf., imper.), perhaps a priori
> auxiliaries, affixes and so on. It is "orthographical" lang, too. This
> conlang must really be created by simplifying the "noble" speech.
Here again, who needs it? What is your purpose?
> 3) The third lang is the same that the 2) but this is strictly
> "phonetical", regular and logical lang, as ex. Esp-o-Ido, so it can be
> proposed as an IAL, too.
>
With such basis, I doubt it can be considered a candidate for IAL.
> As I still don't see much difference between auxlang and conlang lists,
> so I send this letter to all lists just to be sure.
>
The difference is that AUXLANG debates about constructed language for
international communication, whereas we don't bother about that. Our
conlangs are made only for the sake of art and our own fulfillment, and
we discuss of them like painters would discuss about painting or poets
about poetry. And if sometimes we talk about auxlangs, it is not for
their qualities or drawbacks as tools for international communication
but for their structure itself, and what we find interesting in it.
To give you an example, I myself created six languages (and am in the
state of creating a seventh one), with no intention at all to make them
IAL. All I am interested in is about their beauty, through my own eyes.
And when I share what I do to the list, I don't ask them to like what I
do, but at least to find it interesting.
I hope that I made clear the goal of our list. Other fellows of the
list, feel free to correct me if you think something I said is wrong or
inaccurate.
> Amikale,
> Artyom Kouzminykh
> P.S. Sorry for my poor English - I have not any practice here?
> P.P.S. Why is it the way it is?
Maybe because the Anglophones are sadic people that like seeing
foreigners having so much difficulties learning their language :) .
--
Christophe Grandsire
Philips Research Laboratories -- Building WB 145
Prof. Holstlaan 4
5656 AA Eindhoven
The Netherlands
Phone: +31-40-27-45006
E-mail: grandsir@natlab.research.philips.com