Hallo conlangers!

On Saturday 18 August 2012 21:45:33 Jim Henry wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 5:15 PM, Logan Kearsley <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:
> > On 16 August 2012 20:49, Jim Henry <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:
> >>> Here is something that I just came up with:
> >> It's pretty good, but it doesn't show clearly that the "a priori",
> >> "mixed" and "a posteriori" categories are orthogonal to the Gnoli
> >> Triangle categories.  My gzb is a mixed abstract artlang, and Lojban
> > 
> > I find myself uncomfortable with the given definition of "abstract
> > language" in this kind of edge case; is gzb properly called abstract
> > because *you* are not fictional? Similarly, should Mev Pailom be
> > considered abstract because I am real? That, to me, seems backwards. A
> > language designed to be used by a nonfictional culture seems even less
> > abstract than one that is designed by used by a fictional one.
> 
> They're abstract in contrast to naturalistic artlangs.  Maybe
> "abstract" isnt' the best word for "intended to be human speakable,
> but not to mimic all features of naturally-evolved languages such as
> irregularity or having a fairly symmetrical phoneme inventory"?

That is indeed my motivation for the term "abstract artlang":
a naturalistic artlang is like a representational painting in
that it "paints" a faithful picture of an imagined reality,
in this case a naturally-evolved language.  An "abstract"
artlang is non-representational: there is no imagination of a
naturally-evolved language behind it, or if there is, it is
not recognizable.  The language still has an artistic purpose,
but it does not resemble a natlang.

Most abstract artlangs are cookie-cutter regular, but that
need not be the case.  An abstract artlang may be irregular
in a bizarre way that goes beyond the kind and amount of
irregularity found in natlangs.

Note that not all non-naturalistic artlangs are abstract.
A non-naturalistic artlang may be an exolang, which is as
representational as a naturalistic artlang, the difference
being merely that the imagined speakers are not human.
Also, there are some conlangs around that purport to
represent a human language but fail to be naturalistic.
Those aren't abstract, either: they are just badly done.

> > To preserve the spirit of the term, I think I'd redefine an abstract
> > language as one designed without a speaker community in mind. It would
> > then be useful to further distinguish those non-abstract languages
> > whose speaker communities are fictional from those that aren't (the
> > latter clearly being a much smaller group).
> 
> Conlangs whose speaker communities are fictional are generally
> naturalistic, or are intended to be even if they aren't successful at
> it.  Conlangs with a real speaker community are sometimes
> naturalistic, but, I think, usually not.

Few artlangs have a real speaker community.  Klingon does; it
is not very naturalistic, but it isn't abstract either: it is
clearly an exolang, though one may be of the opinion that such
a humanoid exolang was as unlikely as the humanoid aliens for
which it is intended.  (But on the other hand, we know so little
about real extraterrestrial intelligences that we cannot really
say what makes a plausible exolang!)  Also, a real speaker
community is not really relevant for the classification of an
artlang - not even an abstract one.  A naturalistic artlang may
attain a real speaker community (as have, to some degree, Quenya
and Sindarin); an abstract artlang not necessarily does so.

Most conlangs with a real speaker community are either auxlangs
(where the real speaker community is paramount to the purpose,
of course: an auxlang without real speakers is a failure) or
engelangs (there are border cases such as Lojban, which is, as
a loglang, primarily an engelang, but using it as an auxlang
has been suggested, though I don't know whether that suggestion
comes from the Logical Language Group itself or not).

These conlangs are indeed usually not naturalistic in the artlang
sense: a naturalistic engelang would pretty much be a contradiction
in terms, and while there are auxlangs of a kind called
"naturalistic", that word just does not mean the same thing as
in artlang circles!

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