Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

> Amen. It may not be easy, it may take many many versions, but here at
> conlang we are all blazing the trail of accelerated language evolution.
Are we?  That's news to me.  Myself, I'm trying to create something which
mimics as closely as possible the complexities and eccentricities of
naturally occuring human languages.  As far as I can tell, there's nothing
about Tokana which makes it more or less 'evolved' than the natlangs which
it emulates.  I certainly wouldn't say it was more 'logical' than any
natlang.  In fact, there are aspects of Tokana grammar, rules which need
to be followed, that even *I* don't completely understand.  They just
'feel' right for the language.

I wonder if other people on this list have had that experience, of being
carried along by some semi-conscious aesthetic impulse, arriving at a
particular set of choices which even the conlanger himself does not fully
comprehend.  I find myself 'discovering' new things about Tokana all the
time.  Rather than being a consciously directed exercise in 'language
evolution', it often feels like it has a life of its own and I'm merely
a passive observer or recorder...

Matt.

Matt.

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Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
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