Hallo conlangers!

On Wednesday 05 June 2013 01:26:09 Leonardo Castro wrote:

> 2013/6/4 Jim Henry <[log in to unmask]>:
> > On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:09 PM, Leonardo Castro <[log in to unmask]> 
wrote:
> >> Can a conlang be classified into the conventional natlang families?
> > 
> > There's been some discussion of this here or on AUXLANG in the past.
> > The consensus seems to be that "Indo-European" is a *genetic* term,
> > and only languages *descended* from proto-IE are Indo-European in the
> > strict sense.  Conlangs, however much vocabulary they borrow from a
> > given natlang or group of natlangs, aren't descended from it in the
> > way natural daughter languages are.

Yes.  It was here, some time last year.  "Indo-European" is
defined by descent from a common ancestor through an unbroken
continuity of speakers.  That way, conlangs can never be
Indo-European.  With diachronic conlangs such as Brithenig,
which have a *fictional* diachronic development, one can at
least say that they are *fictional* Indo-European languages,
the same way, say, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional human being,
but the qualification _fictional_ must never be omitted
(except in *intrafictional* texts: if someone was to write
_The Languages of Kemr_ from an Ill Bethisad-internal vantage
point, that text would call Brithenig a "Romance language").

But languages such as Esperanto that draw their vocabulary
from various Indo-European languages are not even fictional
IE languages.  There is nothing "fictional" about Esperanto.

Not even pidgins and creole languages based on IE languages
are classified as Indo-European by mainstream linguists!

> Interesting! I have heard some people arguing that families are
> defined by syntax solely, but I think the idea of genetic term is
> better.

The notion of defining families "by syntax solely" is now
considered fallacious.  That is not a language *family* but
a language *type*.  The idea of defining Indo-European by
syntactic features dates back to the late, unlamented
Nikolai Marr and has always been considered pseudoscience
in the free world.  (Marr entertained a pseudo-Marxist
stadial theory.  According to that theory, primitive
classless societies spoke agglutinating ergative languages,
of which examples still survive in Basque and in Caucasian
languages.  The development of a class society would usher
in a shift to fusional accusative language structures, and
it was this what according to Marr defined Indo-European.
Of course, this is utter bullshit, but it was the state
doctrine in linguistics in the USSR from ca. 1930 to 1950,
and western historical linguistics was forbidden.)

> I remember Richard Dawkins saying something similar while
> discussing alternative proposals of Biological Taxonomy...

I don't know what Dawkins has said, but creationists define
biological taxonomy in such ways, and I can guess how
vitriolically Dawkins rejects this.
 
> BTW, my new conlang have a lot of false cognates with natlangs:
> "mont-" for "mount", "kiel-" for "language" (Finnish), "kamp" for
> "field" and "huas-" for "house" (Quechua or English)...
> 
> But all of them are just coincidences... ;-) Isn't there a language in
> a distant planet that is exactly the same as English by pure
> coincidence?

Very unlikely, but not *impossible*.
 
> > And just judging by resemblance to Indo-European languages, Esperanto
> > is IE in vocabulary, and to a large extent in syntax, but arguably not
> > so much in morphology.

Yes.  The morphology of Esperanto has little in common with
Indo-European.  It is agglutinating without even the slightest
trace of ablaut, and only a few morphemes are vaguely similar
to their IE counterparts.  (In this regard, Esperanto is more
like Uralic or Etruscan.)

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