Re: CHAT: models and miniatures

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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