Hallo conlangers!

On Tuesday 24 May 2011 02:23:43, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:

> --- Jörg Rhiemeier skrzypszy:
> > Yes; if it is meant to be spoken by a large number of people in
> > the real world, it is an auxlang, no matter how objective the
> > design criteria are. 
> 
> Even if they are supposed to be spoken as a L1?

Well then it is not really an auxlang - but still less an
engelang, let alone an artlang.  I'd still put it in the
auxlang corner of the Gnoli triangle, knowing that such
a qualification is awkward.
 
> > Yes.  The "Brown diamond" as I may call this conlang Nolan chart
> > seems quite useful to me, though I don't know how much is won
> > over the Gnoli triangle. 
> 
> Exactly. As I pointed out in my previous message, the triangle idea is
> good, it's just the three ends that might be worth reconsidering.

The problem is that there are *so many* possible purposes
for which one could invent a conlang.
 
> > Most naturalistic IALs would be considered still unnaturally
> > schematic by artlangers, while the typical naturalistic artlang
> > would be rejected as "too baroque" even by most dedicated followers
> > of naturalistic auxlangs.
> 
> Agreed to a certain degree. I guess by naturalistic IALs you mean
> Interlingua and Occidental and the like, right?

Exactly.

On Tue, 24 May 2011 09:18:04, Jim Henry wrote:

> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Jan van Steenbergen
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > (Jim:)
> >> Do either of those cubic models make sense?
> 
> > Well, I'm afraid this makes things so complicated that any such
> > model will be beyond practical use. All questions are of course
> > very good, but lumping  them together doesn't really seem to
> > make sense to me. Since this is a matter of QUALIFYING and not
> > of CLASSIFYING languages, it's more the kind of thing that would
> > feature in the description of an individual languages, so it
> > doesn't really matter which languages end up next to which
> > other languages. I don't really see the point of adding all
> > this scales in one picture, though.
> 
> Maybe not; but it seems to me that clusters where many conlangs are
> near each other in model-space might show us meaningful categories we
> haven't noticed yet.

Yes.

> > In terms of scales, the following ones seem to be relevant to me:
> >
> > a. Subjective/objective (or: artisticity/engineeredness)
> > b. Intended number of users
> > c. A priori/a posteriori
> > d. Natural/unnatural
> > e. Simple/complex
> > f. Complete ~ fragmentary/sketch
> 
> With the possible exception of simple/complex, all those are
> continuous variables that are meaningful only for conlangs, not
> natlangs;

Sure.  It is a common technique in science to treat different
parameters as independent, draw up charts and analyze which
clusters occur in the data.  This analysis will yield useful
correlations and classes.

>       but:
> 
> > But let's face it, they can as well be treated separately.
> > Besides, there are other criteria as well. VSO languages,
> > polysynthetic languages, etc.
> 
> These others -- primary word order, index of synthesis, index of
> agglutinativity, and other traditional typological criteria -- are
> applicable to natlangs as well as (most) conlangs,

Indeed.  Any conlang will have something like a basic word
order, an index of synthesis, an index of agglutinativity,
a morphosyntactic alignment, etc., just like a natlang.

>       though there may be
> some conlangs so different from natlangs as to have no meaningful
> values for those variables.

Certainly.  For instance, the word order of Fith cannot
adequately be captured with the usual word order typology;
one could say that the language was "SOV/NA/postpositional",
but that would entirely miss the fact that its syntax is
based on a stack and not on a parse tree as in natlangs,
and does not at all work as syntax in human languages works.

Another example are loglangs which IMHO constitute a
morphosyntactic alignment class of their own.

>       Still, I shouldn't wonder if putting them
> together with more conlang-specific variables in a high-dimensional
> model wouldn't reveal interesting categories and correlations.

There are probably some correlations that would fall out
of such an analysis.  Most auxlangs and many artlangs will
hug whatever was their author's L1; more sophisticated
artlangs will spread out across the entire range of types
found in natlangs; and engelangs and alienlangs will boldly
go where no language has gone before.

> The recent discussion of stealthlangs and hermetic languages suggests
> another possible continuous variable: degree of intended secrecy vs.
> publicity.  Any auxlang will be 100% public, and any hermetic language
> 0% public; but there are a number of personal languages and artlangs
> where some aspects of the language are public and others secret.  I'm
> not sure how useful this variable is compared to the others mentioned
> recently, though; it must be strongly inversely correlated with
> intended number of speakers, and independent variables are more useful
> for finding previously unsuspected categories.

Yes.  I don't see much utility in adding a publicity count to
whatever chart we are thinking of.  It correlates, obviously,
with the number of speakers intended by the author; it also
correlates with the completeness of the conlang; etc.

I think it is not really useful to multiply the axes on which
conlangs could be rated without end.

Happy Lakeside Park Day!

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