On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 3:10 PM, BPJ <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 2011-03-24 20:23, Patrick Dunn skrev:
>
>  On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 1:00 PM, Jörg
>> Rhiemeier<[log in to unmask]>wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Yes.  Conlangs would make an interesting matter to study by
>>> linguists.  They certainly tell something about the nature of
>>> our language faculty.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  I think we're more likely to end up studied by psychologists.
>> :)
>>
>
> Why? For the same reason a sculptor should be studied by
> psychologists because there are real people or whatever
> his/her sculptures depict?
>
>
>  The thing revealed by conlanging seems to be that the urge to
>> verbal play is intense, implacable, and multiform.
>>
>
> Verbal play is what kids do when they mutilate natlang words
> (or conlang words, since denaskuloj probably do it too! :-)
> to make them sound funny, or make up meaningless words because
> they sound funny. Conlanging, whether art-, aux- or enge-
> is different, and deeper, by definition:
>
>  A memorable remark! Of course by repeating it I have let the
>> cat, so carefully hidden, out of its bag, or at least revealed
>> the whiskers. But we won't bother about that for a moment.
>> Just consider the splendour of the words! 'I shall express the
>> accusative case.' Magnificent! Not 'it is expressed', nor even
>> the more shambling 'it is sometimes expressed', nor the grim
>> 'you must learn how it is expressed'. What a pondering of
>> alternatives within one's choice before the final decision in
>> favour of the daring and unusual prefix, so personal, so
>> attractive; the final solution of some element in a design
>> that had hitherto proved refractory. Here were no base
>> considerations of the 'practical', the easiest for the 'modern
>> mind', or for the million - only a question of taste, a
>> satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of
>> fitness.
>> ----
>> This idea of using the linguistic faculty for amusement is
>> however deeply interesting to me. I may be like an opium-smoker
>> seeking a moral or medical or artistic defence for his habit. I
>> don't think so. The instinct for 'linguistic invention' - the
>> fitting of notion to oral symbol, and pleasure in contemplating
>> the new relation established, is rational, and not perverted.
>> In these invented languages the pleasure is more keen than it
>> can be even in learning a new language - keen though it is to
>> some people in that case -because more personal and fresh, more
>> open to experiment of trial and error. And it is capable of
>> developing into an art, with refinement of the construction of
>> the symbol, and with greater nicety in the choice of
>> notional-range,
>>
>> Of course.  It's not play.  It's amusement.  The extra syllables grant it
extra gravitas.




-- 
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to
window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.  --Arthur Rimbaud