Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject

On 12/28/05, Chris Peters <beta_leonis@...> wrote:
> > > Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> writes:
> > > >...  Therefore conlangs should not be "designed", they should be
> > > > "used into existence." ...
> ... Has anybody on this list attempted this ... by teaching their conlangs
> to their children?  That seems an obvious way to test the "speakability" of
> a conlang, if a child is able to be raised bilingual in a conlang plus a
> natlang.
This seems like a bad idea, simply
to use one's children as experimental
subjects to test whether a language design
is workable or complete.  It could be
fun and useful for a family to have its
own language for speaking privately
in public, etc.; but in that case one
should not try to raise children speaking
the language until not just one
but several adults are fluent in it --
one should not inflict it on children
until it's already been proven to be fairly
complete and expressive.  Even so,
most of the advantages of having
a familial "secret" language could
be had using an IAL or loglang
that has at least a few speakers
outside the family, but not so many
that one is likely to run into them
randomly.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field

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