Hallo conlangers!

On Sunday 04 December 2011 23:16:10 Michael Everson wrote:

> On 4 Dec 2011, at 20:04, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
> >>> Indeed.  Artificial languages are not included in natlang families.
> >> 
> >> By whom? I can think of no reason no to consider Interlingua to be both
> >> Romance and Indo-European.
> > 
> > I can think of plenty. But the main reason is: it's a conlang, and the
> > Indo-European classification is meant to use for natlangs exclusively.
> 
> Says who? I'e been stuyding historical linguistics since I was 14 and I
> would accept no such stricture. Classification is a descriptive tool.

Surely it is.  But most historical linguists, I think, would
make a difference *which way* the language evolved from its
antecedent.  As far as I can see it, there are several such
ways, including the following three which are relevant to our
discussion:

1. The language gradually changes through usage over many
   generations.

2. The language is designed by an author who simulates the
   gradual changes through usage over many generations.

3. The language is designed by an author who picks words and
   morphemes from one or more languages without simulating
   gradual changes through usage over many generations.

My point (and that of most members here) is that way #3 does
not justify classifying the language as a member of the
antecedent's family, and that way #2 justifies such a
classification only with the provision that the language is
marked as fictional.  This is, as far as I can tell, the usual
convention among historical linguists.

> > Why? because it's based on diacronic linguistics:
> Synchrony is also a tool that can be used in comparing languages.

Sure.  It is done in language typology and contrastive
linguistics, but we are talking of language *families* here,
and those are defined *diachronically*.  You still seem to
confuse language families (such as Indo-European) and language
areas (such as Standard Average European).

> > a language is Indo-European if and only if a set of regular sound
> > correspondences can be found between it and other Indo-European
> > languages, pointing out to a natural evolution from PIE via sound
> > changes.
> 
> A language can be Indo-European even if it does not participate in such an
> evolution. Does Volapük or Esperanto look Bantu, or Tai-Kadai? No, they do
> not.

Of course not.  Esperanto looks Indo-European, but that does
not make it Indo-European.  There are plenty of things in it
which betray its artificiality, and no regular sound
correspondences between Esperanto and any (other) Indo-European
language can be specified (while you *can* specify such sound
correspondences between Brithenig and any (other) Romance
language).

The outward appearance or the typological profile is not
relevant to *genealogical* classification: the gradual change
through a continuity of usage over many generations is the
relevant point.  This gradual change does not exist in
Esperanto (before it was put in actual usage, when such
processes began to set in; for instance, there are dialects
of Esperanto where /x/ has merged with /k/, I have been told),
and only in a fictional setting in Brithenig.
 
> > You can't do that with Interlingua, at least not enough to treat the
> > language as Indo-European.
> 
> If one were fool enough to try to use Interlingua as evidence for
> linguistic reconstruction one would be making a mistake. To say that
> Spanish is Indo-European but Interlingua is not is, well, to me quite
> ridiculous.

Is it?  It is a difference that is considered quite important
in genealogical classification of languages.  Surely,
Interlingua does resemble a Romance language in many ways, and
someone hearing a conversation in it but not knowing what it is
may think it was Spanish or Italian.  Yet, the diachronic
continuity from Vulgar Latin is not given, so Interlingua is
*technically* not a Romance language, even though it could be
considered one for *practical* reason.  We are obviously talking
past each other here.
 
> > You *can* do that with Brithenig, because that's how it was designed. In
> > that case, you can call it Romance and Indo-European, and I'd have no
> > problem with that (as long as you don't forget to mention it's
> > artificial). But you can't do that with Novial or Esperanto or
> > Interlingua. Call them "of Indo-European stock" if you want, but they
> > are not Indo-European languages.
> 
> An engineered/artistic/auxiliary/constructed language can most certainly be
> described, based on its lexical and grammatical features, as Indo-European
> if it shares lexical and grammatical features with Indo-European
> languages.

Nope.  What makes a language Indo-European is its descent from
Proto-Indo-European by gradual change during usage over many
generations.  There is no way a non-Indo-European language can
become Indo-European by convergence, and an artificial language
resembling an Indo-European language is not any more considered
an Indo-European language by linguists than a mechanical toy dog
is considered a _Canis familiaris_ by zoologists.

>        Talossan is a marvellous Romance artlang. I have heard that it
> has been criticized because it does not have regular sound changes from
> Latin or Proto-Romance. Perhaps a narrow sort of expectation about what a
> Romance artlang might be would lead someone to be disappointed with it.
> For my part, I like the energy of Talossan. And of course it is Romance.
> And that means that of course it is Indo-European.
> 
> And of course it is artificial.

I don't know Talossan, so I cannot say how much it resembles
a Romance language.  But if it does not, as you say, have regular
sound changes from Latin, it cannot be considered a Romance
language in the technical sense.
 
> >> I don't agree. Both Slavic and Gothic translations of the Bible reflect
> >> Greek participles very exactly; it is debatable as to whether this
> >> usage was a natural part of Slavic and Gothic before those translations
> >> were made, though certainly in modern Russian the use of participles is
> >> very widespread. Might not such innovations by translators be
> >> considered language engineering?
> > 
> > But that's language engineering done on a language that *already existed*
> > and evolved naturally from an earlier form.
> 
> It seems that the Euroclones are the result of language engineering done on
> the basis of one or more languages that *already existed* and evolved
> naturally from an earlier form. It doesn't make "unu, do, tri, kvar, kvin,
> ses, sep, ok, naŭ, dek" anything but obviously Indo-European in form. They
> don't have to be "unsullied by an engineer" to be relatable to their
> Indo-European heritage.

Surely, the numerals of Esperanto clearly betray their Indo-
European origin!  But why can you not be content with the
distinction between an "Indo-European language" and an
"Indo-European-*based* artificial language"?
 
> > The main stock was natural, and was only tampered with on a limited
> > scale.
> 
> From this I guess we may understand that you admire "natural" development.
> That's fine, but it doesn't trump a description of Esperanto or
> Interlingua as being Indo-European in nature.

They aren't.
 
> > With Esperanto and Novial and Ido and Interlingua, the *very stock
> > itself* was created artificially.
> 
> Not out of whole cloth. By no means.

They are certainly not a priori, but a posteriori, and based on
some of the major European languages (which ones, in which
proportions, differs among them).  Yet, they are merely *based*
on Indo-European models, not an organic outgrowth of Indo-
European.

> >> Only diachronic conlangs based on natlangs, such as Brithenig, could be
> >> said to belong to the base language's family, but even that is not the
> >> usual practice in linguistics; for instance, Wikipedia classifies
> >> Brithenig as artificial, not as Indo-European. I'd say that the
> >> Wikipedia is wrong here.
> > 
> > I'd say it's right: Brithenig doesn't exist as a spoken language *here*.
> 
> So?

What Christophe meant is that there has not been any continuity
of usage of Romance in Britain that eventually spawned Brithenig.
Of course, there are now a few people who produce new utterances
in Brithenig, but capitalizing on that misses the point.  Before
Andrew Smith made up the language, it was *non-existent*, and
its diachronic development from Vulgar Latin is *fictional*.
 
> > It's a fiction.
> 
> Of course it is.
> 
> > It doesn't belong in the *real* Indo-European tree.
> 
> That depends on the purpose of the classifier. You won't be able to use
> Brithenig to help reconstruct anything. It's still Indo-European though,
> even if a fictional daughter.

OK.  It is *fictionally* Indo-European, as much as Hercule
Poirot is a fictional human being.

> > It belongs in the IE tree in Ill Bethisad, but our Universe isn't Ill
> > Bethisad.
> 
> I am compelled to point out that the fictional Ill Bethisad exists within
> our universe.

Sure it exists - as a corpus of writings by the people who made
it up, and as a collection of ideas these writings summon in the
minds of their readers.  But to claim that, for instance, the
country of Kemr would "exist within our universe" in the same
way as, for instance, Wales exists within it, is certainly
ridiculous.  That is the difference between fiction and reality,
and ignoring it is *delusional*.
 
> > In the same way, my Narbonese is very much a Romance language, with
> > nothing out of the ordinary, but I would only put it in the IE tree if I
> > was talking of its fictional setting (also Ill Bethisad). *Here*, it's
> > primarily a conlang.
> 
> If its features are Indo-European, then it's a fictional Indo-European
> language.

If it is derived from a real-world Indo-European language by a
fictional set of diachronic changes, then it is a fictional
Indo-European language.
 
> >> Anyway, I think that it is not axiomatic that constructed languages
> >> "should" not be considered to be members of language families.
> >> Certainly etymology counts.
> > 
> > To me, that's like saying that my imaginary brother should be considered
> > a true member of my family, at the same level as my real life sister. It
> > makes no sense whatsoever.
> 
> No, it's like saying that your imaginary brother should be considered to be
> an imaginary member of your family.

Sure.  I think we can agree that Brithenig is an imaginary member
of the Romance family, the same way such an imaginary brother is
an imaginary member of Christophe's (or whoseever) family.  But
the qualification of Brithenig as a fictional language is too
important to brush it under the carpet.

But with non-diachronic a posteriori languages, one cannot even
say that there was a fictional family relation involved, so the
imaginary brother metaphor does not hold.  They are not members
of language families as usually defined by historical linguists.

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