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Re: CHAT: models and miniatures

From:Irina Rempt <ira@...>
Date:Friday, September 7, 2001, 13:21
On Tue, 7 Aug 2001,

(which, I admit, is a long time ago, but I'm only now clearing out
old mail)

J Matthew Pearson wrote:

> Somehow I fail to find the term "model" at all pejorative. A > model ship is not a toy, or a counterfeit, or a fraud. It's a > depiction (or "imitation", in the Aristotelean sense) of a real > ship--just as a painting of a house is a depiction of a house.
But it's not a real ship.
> Similarly with model languages.
That's why Valdyan is not a model language. It's *intended* to be a real language. In the world where it's at home, it *is* a real language; that this world exists only in my imagination (and in part in the imaginations of some other people) doesn't make it any smaller.
> Far from being belittling, I > find that this point of view ennobles conlanging, placing it > firmly within the sphere of Art.
Hmm. I'd rather not call what I do "art"; art makes something artificial (in the true, literal sense of the word) for the sake of aesthetic pleasure.
> Whether a conlang can ever be "living" or not depends on your > definition. For me, a language is living if and only if it is > actively used by a community of (two or more) speakers who have > internalised complete mental grammars of that language.
Valdyan has about five million speakers in the world where it belongs. You might argue that they don't exist, but I doubt whether they would agree. All I do is discover and describe it.
> I think part of the reason why some people object to calling a > conlang a "model" is their sense that this somehow negates the > reality of that conlang.
Yes. I do admit that it has no real reality in *this* world, the world that we happen to live in (that is, I don't live under a delusion, which I've been accused of more than once) but I need the conceit that it has its own existence in its own world, otherwise there would be no point in doing anything with it. Irina -- Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay. irina@valdyas.org (myself) http://www.valdyas.org/irina/valdyas

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