Hallo conlangers!

On Thursday 26 May 2011 16:17:46, R A Brown wrote:

> I did say at the beginning of this busy week I'd give a more
> considered reply to Jan's two emails of the 24th May. But as
> this thread has gone quiet, I'll try to be brief.
> 
> The first thing I will say is that like Jan I shall be
> re-writing one of my web-pages as a result exchanges on this
> thread.
> 
> On 24/05/2011 01:07, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
> > I agree about that, Ray. The surname thing was more like
> > a joke (mind, that's why I added quotes :)),
> 
> Yes, I realized that    ;)
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > === CLASSIFICATION ===
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >> - I notice that Liva appears in both columns B2 and C4
> >> (on the 4-II-6 rank in both cases). Is that
> >> intentional?
> > 
> > Absolutely. That's actually explained in the Dutch text.
> > ;)
> 
> Ah, I must admit I didn't pay too much attention to the
> Dutch      :(
> 
> > Claudio himself writes about Liva simultaneously being
> > an engelang and a fictional language,
> 
> "Liva is constructed mainly for fun: at first, it has not
> any practical aim. It can be seen as an experiment, trying
> to satisfy both the requirements of logic and the aesthetic
> preferences of its author"
> 
> a loglan and an artlang - Why not? Liva is one of the
> conlangs I very much like.

If the preference of the author is to be logical, a personal
language may simultaneously be a loglang.  (I don't think,
though, that it is a good idea to have a language be a loglang
and a fictional human natlang.  Human ethnic languages tend
not to be loglangs, to put it politely.)
 
> [...]
> > (Ray:)
> > 
> >> The reason why reconstructed languages don't fit the
> >> triangle is surely because it wasn't designed to cater
> >> for them. I strongly suspect that Claudio did not (and
> >> probably does not) consider them as "conlangs" in the
> >> sense that we normally use the word. Nor do I; nor, as
> >> far as I can see, do they figure in David Peterson's
> >> Conlang Manifesto.
> > 
> > Perhaps not. But I'm trying to think outside the box a
> > bit.
> 
> That's fine and probably made many of us reconsider what a
> conlang really is. I think _glossopoeia_ is rather more
> narrow than constructed language. I see _glossopoeia_ as
> _creation_ (which -poeia implies) of alternative languages
> to natlangs.

I feel that the word _glossopoeia_ fits artlanging better
than auxlanging or engelanging, but I tend to consider
_conlanging_ and _glossopoeia_ synonyms.  But I understand
your distinction.
 
> [snip]
> 
> > (Ray:)
> > 
> >> Sort of - the difference is that it is generally
> >> agreed that PIE once existed, as you say, and the
> >> reconstructions are attempts at getting an
> >> approximation to that natlang (or group of natlang
> >> dialects), whereas Vulgar Latin did not survive in
> >> Britain and Brithenig is not an attempt to
> >> (re)construct a natlang that ever existed or will
> >> exist. Brithenig implies a conculture&  conworld; PIE
> >> does not.
> > 
> > That's true. But then, can the same be said about
> > Proto-Nostratic and similar projects with a very narrow
> > scientific base?
> > 
>   :)
> 
> That could get us into the whole Nostratic debate and might
> ruffle a few feathers. Yes, it is certainly whether
> Nostratic ever actually existed or not.  But the point is,
> it seems to me, that those who do propose Proto-Nostratic
> reconstructions are not intending to create an alternative
> language to what may have existed at the time; they are
> attempting to re-create what they consider to have been an
> actual natlang.

The difference between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Nostratic
is merely that the scientific base for the latter is narrower,
and most linguists consider it too speculative to constitute
proper science.  But it is still an attempt at scholarly
reconstruction, however misguided it may be, not an attempt
at the artistic creation of a fictional reality.

> There seems to me to be a world of difference between
> someone who attempts to reconstruct Proto-Nostratic and Jörg
> with his pre-Celtic Albic language.  The former is an
> attempt (however misguided we may consider it) to
> reconstruct a putative natlang; the latter is a conscious
> work of fiction, i.e. the creation of an alternative language.

Yes.  I have no claim to truth with the Albic project.  It is
informed by scholarly investigations into the languages of
prehistoric Europe, to be sure, but I am aware that it is a
*fictional* language and entirely my *invention* and not an
attempt at a scholarly reconstruction of the *real* language(s)
of pre-Celtic Britain.
 
> I'll agree that both a conlangs (constructed languages), but
> IMO only Albic is a genuine example of glossopoeia.

I see.  If you, like me, are both into glossopoeia and into
research on prehistoric languages, and use the latter as an
input to the former, you must always remember which hat you
are wearing at the moment!

> >>> common with "real" conlangs: they all have an
> >>> author.
> >> 
> >> So do the various versions of revived Cornish: [...]
> >> 
> >> A lot of construction going on, yet people generally
> >> think of Cornish as a natlang of the Brittonic Branch
> >> of the Celtic IE family. The point, I think, is that
> >> these people were attempting to revive a natlang that
> >> had once lived - the same, of course, is true of modern
> >> Israeli Hebrew.
> > 
> > Yes. In these cases, it is very important to distinguish
> > between Cornish the Natlang of the Brittonic Branch of
> > the Celtic IE Family, and Kernowek Unys Amendys as
> > created by Nicholas Williams in 1995. The former is a
> > natlang that went extinct at some point in history and
> > that we have only a certain amount of information about,
> > the latter is a constructed language based on a mix of
> > surviving material and what the author perceives as being
> > the best way to revive the former.
> 
> In the case of the example you chose there's a bit more to
> it; Kernowek Unys Amendys (Revised Unified Cornish) was
> actually an attempt to overcome what by that time were
> generally agreed flaws in Nance's 'Unified Cornish' as
> opposed to Ken George's Kermewek Kemmyn (Common Cornish)
> which William's clearly didn't like. But I don't want to get
> into the internal politics of the different Cornishes,
> especially as now a common written standard is being
> established.
>  
> But the point is, it seems to me, that Williams, Nance,
> George and others were not attempting to create a new
> language, different from any existing or past natlang, for
> the people of Cornwall; they were attempting to bring life
> back into a natlang which had died out. They were certainly
> engaging in language reconstruction but not in glossopoeia.

Yes.  The various flavours of revived Cornish are reconstruction
attempts and not free inventions of languages.
 
> [snip]
> 
> > And that's what we should also do in the fact of revival
> > languages, proposed language reforms, standardised
> > dialects and reconstructed proto-languages: the base
> > material is natlang, but the actual construction work is
> > conlang.
> > 
> > Now that I think of it: how come Cornish revival projects
> > aren't usually considered conlangs, while several quite
> > similar projects are? Look here:
> > 
> > * Damien Perrotin's Gutisk (Modern Crimean Gothic):
> > conlang * Neo-Dalmatian / Dalmatesku (Frank George
> > Valoczy): conlang * Siberian (Yaroslav Zolotaryov):
> > conlang * High Icelandic (J. Braeckmans): conlang *
> > Modern Prussian (Donelaitis): ~conlang * Kernewek,
> > Rumantsch Grischun, Nynorsk, Bahasa Indonesia, Modern
> > Hebrew etc.: natlang
> > 
> > This makes me wonder: why?
> > 
> > It seems to be that in these cases the only thing that
> > really makes a difference is when there is a League or a
> > Council or something behind it. If a proposal is put
> > forward "not seriously enough", contains fictional
> > elements, or doesn't really catch on, then it's easily
> > shifted into the range of conlangs.
> 
> There's more to it than that, I think. One criterion would
> IMO be the amount of fictional/guess-work elements as
> opposed to actually attested elements. If large part of it
> is guess work, then it may fairly be termed a conlang.  If,
> for example, someone proposed Neo-Etruscan we would almost
> certainly label it a conlang.  Although it may used Etruscan
> as a basic, there are far too many gaps in our knowledge of
> the language; any Neo-Etruscan has to be guess-work.
> Whereas with Cornish, the natlang basis of the language
> forms the greater part.

Yes, there is a continuum of some sort between a reconstructed
natlang and a fictional language.  The standard model of PIE
and the various revived Cornishes are at one end; the various
attempts at Proto-Nostratic a bit further to the middle; then
would come something like your hypothetical Neo-Etruscan; yet
more fictional is Old Albic; and at the other end the patently
fictional languages such as Klingon or Quenya.

> The other thing needed is a speaker base. A national
> language was needed for the state of Israel, so there was a
> viable speaker-base for a revived Hebrew. People live in
> Cornwall who are proud of their Cornish heritage and were
> ready to take up a revived form of a language which had held
> on till the 18th century.

Yes.  There are people who consider their nationality to be
Cornish, and learn revived Cornish as their "true native
language".  There is no such base, though, for PIE, disregarding
those people from Spain (dnghu.org) who build their auxlang on it.
 
> But are there any people in Crimea who feel they have a
> Gothic heritage or wish to speak a revived Gothic language?
> I suspect not. Isn't Gutisk rather like Brithenig, i.e. a
> language which might have existed if history had been
> different? That is languages of an alternate time-line.

I think so, too.  Gutisk is, like Brithenig, a fictional
language, although one based on a real language.  We call that
a diachronic a posteriori conlang.

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