Hallo!

On Fri, 8 Apr 2011 15:19:46 -0400, Matthew Martin wrote:

> I think the relevant split is the goals of the language, especially with 
> regard to 
> how the language designers want to interact with fans, i.e. as co-conlang 
> creators, as a Zamenhoff-eque savior of the world & the adoring throng, or 
> the 
> goal is to not really interact with anyone at all,except maybe on a casual 
> show 
> & tell basis, in the case of personal languages, etc, or maybe a fine 
> purveyor of 
> quality fantasy fiction & largely passive fans (i.e. the model for conlangs 
> in 
> novels)

While auxlangs can be easily singled out by their professed purpose
of overcoming language barriers, the line between artlangs and
engelangs is a more blurry one.  Basically, one can perhaps define
engelangs by the presence of objectively testable design criteria
such as absence of ambiguity, parsability by a specific class of
parsing algorithms, etc., while artlangs have more subjectively
defined design goals such as beauty or verisimilitude.

Most artlangs are fictional languages, i.e. they purport to be the
language of an imaginary speaker community, e.g. of an alien or
fantastic race (examples: Klingon, Quenya), or a nation in an
alternative history (example: Brithenig).  A few fictional languages
are set in a world "not patently different" from our own (such as the
Ku language in _The Interpreter_, or the various "lostlangs" done by
some list members).  With such fictional languages, the ideal is
usually to design a language that could be believed to be a natural
language, hence most creators of fictional languages try to be as
naturalistic as they can.  There are, however, purely personal
artlangs which are not connected with any fictional speaker community,
and which aren't always naturalistic.

Engelangs, in contrast, are rarely connected with a fictional speaker 
community, and usually show unnatural features.  The association with
a fictional speaker community is in case of an engelang not only
entirely unnecessary (the goals of an engelang are very different
ones) but also not called for (the plausibility of a speaker community
speaking an engelang is practically nil in most cases).  There are a
few special cases, though, where an engelang spoken by fictional
people could make sense, as in a future totalitarian régime decreeing
the adoption of an engineered language to steer the thought of its
subjects into a particular direction (example: Newspeak).  But the
standard case of an engelang does not involve a fictional nation.

It is certainly the case that there are matters where artlangers and
engelangers don't have anything to say on the concerns of the other
party, e.g. artlangers not caring about self-segregation schemes and
engelangers not caring about sound changes.  Yet, what unites them
against the auxlangers, is the lack of proselytizing, which falls
out from the mere fact that neither artlangs nor engelangs compete
against each other, but there is always room for more in both métiers.

> That, more than the technical structure of the language at hand, imho, is
> what 
> colors the differences among the online communities.

Yes.  Of course, the technical structure of the language reflects
the purpose of the language, as I have detailed above.

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