Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject

On 12/27/05, Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...> wrote:

> Therefore conlangs should not be "designed", they
> should be "used into existence." Their "grammar"
> should never be discussed, but only demonstrated with
> a catalog of exemplars (exceptions, all). Their
> phonology should never be analyzed, but only produced
> in real time, as needed, with assorted mouth noises.
> Their lexicon must never be planned, but only
> documented AFTER the fact. They should be taught by
> example only, not by enumeration of so-called "rules"
> which don't really exist anyway.
A while ago there was a collaborative conlang project
which consisted of various conlangers contributing
sentences to a corpus, and making speculative
analyses of the grammar and lexicon based upon
the corpus.  I can't recall the name, however, and can't
seem to find the right search terms to find it.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry

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