Hallo conlangers!

On Sunday 26 August 2012 20:58:16 Padraic Brown wrote:

> --- On Sun, 8/26/12, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]>
> > [...]
> > It depends on what Mil (the one who proposed The Box) meant
> > by
> > "pragmatic". 
> 
> This is true -- but then the issue is one of interpretation and utility!
> 
> > All four languages on the "pragmatic" side of the
> > box are auxlangs; so I guess it means "meant for actual
> > usage in
> > communication in the real world". 
> 
> Then perhaps a different term would work better. I don't really want to
> get deeper into thát line of argument! I didn't take pragmatic to be so
> narrowly defined

Sure.  If he meant "intended for use in the real world", then
the label "pragmatism" is poorly chosen.
 
> > Brithenig and Old Albic are
> > not meant for that; of course, they are meant to function as
> > means of communication in their respective fictional worlds, so
> > they would be failures if they were in fact unusable!
> 
> Indeed! I took pragmatic to mean not so much for real world use as
> functional and realistic within their own domains. Now, I think you
> would agree, that functional and realistic in worlds such as IB and
> LLL-world -- for all intents and purposes identical to the primary
> world! -- is identical to functional and realistic in the primary
> world as well. Brithenig wouldn't have a point at all if it were
> only functional within its own constructed world and not in the real
> world as well. I would understand O.A. to be in roughly the same boat.
> Or at least in a boat on the same lake.

Surely, a fictional human language ought to be usable, and
there is no way a language that can't function in the real
world could function in a world such as Ill Bethisad or the
LLL.  It may be that some fictional alien beings have language
capabilities different from ours (Jeffrey Henning's Fith comes
to my mind here), but the human beings of Ill Bethisad and the
LLL are in no way different from human beings of the real world,
thus their languages must be such that real human beings could
converse in them!  Human usability is part and parcel of the
concept of "naturalism" as understood by artlangers.  An
unusable fictional language would simply be a bad fictional
language.

> That's pragmatic in my opinion, it could be used *here*, but is not
> necessarily intended for use *here*. After all, either of them are
> auxlangs!

Yes.  Neither of them are auxlangs, yet the kind of fictional
setting of both language implies that if they were to be well
done, they have to be such that they could be used *here*,
because the conworlds are such that their inhabitants have
*exactly the same* linguistic capabilities and communicative
needs as real human beings.
 
> > > A sign of good engineering is that a thing doesn't feel
> > > engineered.
> > 
> > Maybe.  Depends on the goals of the engineering.
> 
> Well, Andrew's goal seems to have been little more than to create a
> convincing Romance language.

Yep.

>       To me it does not appear to be overly
> engineered the way typical auxlangs (Esperanto and so forth) appear
> heavily engineered.

Right.

>       To me it appears more naturalistic, practical
> and pragmatic in nature. Ergonomic, perhaps.

One could say that a perfectly regular auxlang is perhaps more
"ergonomic" than a naturalistic artlang with naturalistic
irregularities, but let the auxlangers debate this among
themselves ;)

>       In other words, useable
> even if not specifically designed to be used. For me, that's good
> engineering.

Well, yes, though I'd not call this "engineering" than I would
call the geometrical construction of a painting by an artist
in order to get proportions and perspective right "engineering".
A few days ago, I coined the word "conceptioneering" for this
kind of "artistic engineering".

> > Whether Kerno is a success in its role depends on what one
> > expects from the framework of Ill Bethisad! 
> 
> As the maker of said language, I would probably now say that it probably
> does not fit all that well as is, and therefore could be more successful
> if it were redone more in keeping with Brithenig's design principles.

Yes.  It would make for a better, more harmonious picture of
Ill Bethisad Britain if Kerno was redone in the way Andrew did
Brithenig, only with Cornish playing the role of Welsh in the
latter language.
 
> It might be kind of like sticking a Picasso in the Rembrandy wing of
> the gallery. Something a little to crazy for the more carefully cobbled
> realism.

Yep.  A breach in style.  We have a painstakingly realistic
diachronic language sit side-by-side with an "impressionistic"
one.
 
> > When I joined with
> > Nur-ellen and Germanech, I expected it to be a plausible
> > alternative history (and that was, I think, Andrew's
> > original
> > motivation with the project); but I soon found out that it
> > did
> > not work the way I expected, and bailed out. 
> 
> Quite. In retrospect, I think we could have curbed some of the more
> enthusiastic elements of the project. Too many chefs and not enough
> recipes.

Yes.  Of course, I am now glad that Nur-ellen was never
canonized, but deleted from the framework of that universe.
I now consider Nur-ellen an ugly hackwork, with some good ideas
that, however, felt out of place in the Tolkienian framework of
the language.  These disaffections with Ill Bethisad ultimately
led to the foundation of the League of Lost Languages.
 
> > Actually, Kerno
> > fits the "crazy quilt" character of Ill Bethisad (as I
> > perceive
> > it) quite well, perhaps better than the more
> > straightforward
> > Brithenig (or the Cornish-based language you suggested
> > above)!
> 
> Yes, well, it might fit that aspect of the world it inhabits, but it
> doesn't really fit with the other languages!

Yes.  But some of the languages of Ill Bethisad are questionable
for other reasons.  I mean, Wenedyk is nicely done, but how does
a Romance language end up in Poland?
 
> > > Even if we leave out the engelang angle, B is still a bit
> > > too
> > > pragmatic to be down at the corner.
> > 
> > Not really according to my understanding of "pragmatic" in
> > The Box (as I laid out above).  It is by no means an
> > auxlang.
> 
> Definitely not! I could be wrong about the Box, but neither do I make an
> equation between pragmatism and being an auxlang!

Nor do I!!!  I just observed that all the "pragmatic" conlangs
in the Box are auxlangs, and none of the "artistic" ones are.

>       I think any kind of
> real-world model language has to be approached with far more pragmatism
> than a free-for-all artistic language.

Sure!

On Monday 27 August 2012 04:51:16 Jim Henry wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Padraic Brown <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > --- On Sun, 8/26/12, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> All four languages on the "pragmatic" side of the
> >> box are auxlangs; so I guess it means "meant for actual
> >> usage in
> >> communication in the real world".
> > 
> > Then perhaps a different term would work better. I don't really want to
> > get deeper into thát line of argument! I didn't take pragmatic to be so
> > narrowly defined
> 
> Yes, on further thought I'm not sure art and pragmatism are in
> opposition, such that increasing one automatically decreases the other
> (though they may be negatively correlated).

Indeed, they aren't.  One of the qualities of a good artlang
is that it works well, and for a naturalistic artlang it is
a must!  An unworkable conlang would simply not be naturalistic!

>       There are a number of
> conlangs that are intended for actual (not fictional) use, without
> being auxlangs: my gjâ-zym-byn, Daniel's Angosey, and a number of
> others which their creators use to write a diary and other personal
> notes;

Yes.  I am thinking of starting a little personal journal in
Old Albic when it is better developed.

>       or conlangs intended for real use by a couple or a small
> community such as Alex and Sai's gripping language, or Logan and his
> wife's Mev Pailom, or Naeso, which was intended to be used by its
> creators for IRC chat.  But many of those are also intended to be art;
> not pure art for art's sake, maybe, but still art.

Sure.
 
> Pragmatism is probably also negatively correlated with naturalism -- I
> think most of the above-mentioned languages are too regular to be
> naturalistic, because their creators want them to be as easy to learn
> as is consistent with their other design goals.  But I don't think one
> can situate pragmatism at the opposite end of a spectrum from
> naturalism, either.  Naturalistic is the opposite of not naturalistic,
> and nothing else.  (Some promoters of Interlingua and similar auxalngs
> call the opposite of auxlang-naturalism "schematic", but I think
> that's pejorative and probably to be avoided for a classifying model
> like this.)

And there are two different meanings of "naturalistic".
In auxlang circles, "naturalistic" is one extreme point of a
spectrum whose other end is "philosophical":

most a priori <-----------------------------> most a posteriori
philosophical                                      naturalistic

Ars signorum   Kotava   Volapük  Esperanto  Novial  Interlingua

A "naturalistic" auxlang is simply *radically a posteriori*, in
using not only word stems but also word-formation mechanisms
taken from natlangs.  The same way a "philosophical" auxlang is
*radically a priori* in eliminating lexical arbitrariness by
developing the word roots from a taxonomy of ideas.

In artlang circles, "naturalistic" has nothing to do with the
"a priori/a posteriori" axis.  There are naturalistic a priori
languages such as Tsolyani.  Also, there are non-naturalistic
a posteriori (and of course a priori) artlangs.  (Of course,
artlang naturalism is incompatible with taxonomic vocabularies,
but for somewhat different reasons than auxlang naturalism.)

> Pragmatic is the opposite of... not pragmatic?
> Idealistic?  I think there's a word for it, but it's not "artistic".
> 
> And as Ray pointed out, a priori - a posteriori isn't a single
> variable either; there are conlangs which are a priori in vocabulary
> and a posteriori in grammar, and others vice versa, and lumping them
> together in the middle of an a priori - a posteriori spectrum can be
> misleading.  We need at least two variables there, if we're going to
> use a priori - a posteriori specta at all.

Yep.  Also, the distinction is most useful in auxlangs, I think.
 
> And yet, to squeeze all the variables by which conlangs can vary into
> a three-dimensional visualizable cube model, rather than a
> many-dimensional unvisualizable hypercube, maybe it's useful to
> conflate multiple variables into one if they're sufficiently
> correlated.  That seems to be what Mil did with the cube model under
> discussion.

Yes, that is what he (or she?) did.  It is just that the
"artism/pragmatism" axis is badly labeled, and the positioning
of engelangs remains unclear.

--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1