Hallo conlangers!

On Sun, 22 May 2011 14:54:45 +0100, R A Brown wrote:

> On 21/05/2011 17:53, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
> > Oh dear, there we go. ;)
> 
> Yes, I can understand that as your talk was not really about 
> conlang classification it's possibly a tad frustrating that 
> the Hexagon is what's sparked off a thread on this list       ;)
> 
> > In my opinion, the most relevant criterion is PURPOSE.
> > And from that point of view, the Gnoli Triangle is
> > definitely the best solution I have ever seen. It does
> > have the great advantage that a language can be placed
> > anywhere on or in the triangle, thus making it possible
> > to quantify the level of auxlanginess, artlanginess and
> > engelanginess on one chart.
> 
> OK - we agree so far.

Yes, that is the strong point of the triangle - you can simply
place the "in-between" cases just there: in between.

> > However, as I see it, it has
> > two disadvantages.
> >
> > First of all, I've noticed that this works for some 95%
> > of all conlangs, but there are several examples of
> > languages that wouldn't really fit anywhere on the
> > triangle.
> 
> I have felt this also, which is why from time to time I have 
> considered different models.  In my case, it was trying to 
> place Balaibalan on the triangle that first set me off 
> considering different models. It gives the appearance of a 
> 'real' language (like your Hattic, which has actually been 
> mistaken for one!) so one thinks in terms of the artlang 
> sector.

Yes, it feels much like an artlang.

>       But its purpose was not to be an artlang; it was to 
> serve as a secret, mystic language for an ultra-Shiite sect. 
> It could be argued that it was a limited auxlang - an 
> auxlang for the members of the sect. But IMO that is not 
> what would generally be thought of as an auxlang;

Indeed not - one can even say that it is the *opposite* of an
auxlang: an auxlang serves to overcome communication barriers,
while a secret language serves to establish them!

>      to say 
> that Balaibalan is x% artlang and y% auxlang did not seem 
> satisfactory to me.

Indeed not.  It is not an auxlang; it is not really an artlang
in the sense Quenya or Klingon are; I also feel uncomfortable
with classifying it as an engelang.

> [reconstructed proto-languages]
> 
> But there seems to me a world of difference between 
> scholarly attempts to arrive at an approximation (and that's 
> all we can reasonably hope for) of a once spoken language 
> (or, more precisely, group of dialects - the idea that there 
> was once a _standard_ PIE language seems to me risible) and 
> the creation of, say, Quenya - just as reconstructing a 
> model of T.Rex is a whole different ball game from 
> constructing a model of a Gruffalo.

Yes, these are two different things.  A scholarly reconstruction
is something else than an artistic creation.

> [...]
> 
> _engelang_ is, perhaps, not the best term and this has been 
> argued over on this list a few times in the past - but no 
> one has come up with a better term.

Indeed.

>       But, as I understand 
> it, the _purpose_ is important. My understanding is that 
> engelangs are "designed to specified *objective* criteria, 
> and modeled to meet those criteria."  Whereas artlangs will 
> have more *subjective* aims, e.g. aesthetically pleasing.

This is also my understanding.  An engelang is distinguished
by being designed according to a specified set of objective
criteria, while an artlang is based on more subjective notions.
This precisely is the difference between engineering and the
fine arts.

> > There is absolutely no contradiction between being a
> > loglang and an auxlang, and being both doesn't make the
> > language any less of either.
> 
> That, is very debatable. Certainly loglangs do not comply 
> with the criteria I used to see so monotonously trotted out 
> in the far off days when I was on the auxlang list.  I think 
> many auxlangers would indeed maintain that a loglang-auxlang 
> was not a 'proper auxlang' - and at least one person on this 
> list has IIRC recently questioned Lojban claim to be a 
> 'proper loglang'. It could well be argued, I think (tho I do 
> _not_ want to get involved in such an argument) that by 
> making itself more suitable as an auxlang, Lojban has 
> sacrificed 'loglang purity.'

There are people who argue that strict logicality was a good thing
to have in an auxlang; that, however, is debatable.  Certainly,
some features such as avoidance of homonyms and other ambiguities
tend to be aims of both loglangs and auxlangs; yet, I feel that
a strictly logical language would not constitute a good auxlang
- for the simple reason that logic and language are different
things.  Logic is about proving or disproving statements; language
is for communicating ideas and emotions.  The loglangs I have seen
so far (not many, because I am not very interested in loglangs) all
struck me as bizarre and difficult to learn because they are so
alien to the human language faculty.

> > Of course, you can redefine the three categories. For
> > example: A) Languages intended to be spoken by as many
> > people as possible (auxlangs) B) Languages intended to be
> > spoken by a select group of people (ritual, stealth,
> > micronational, dialect standarisation etc.) C) Languages
> > intended to be spoken by fictional people only or not at
> > all (artlangs, experilangs)
> 
> Something like that occurred to me when I came across 
> Balaibalan. But in my case I envisage an axis with 'private 
> language for oneself [and God/angels etc]', e.g. Lingua 
> Ignota at one end and 'language intended for the whole globe 
> at the other.'  Thus, turning the Gnoli triangle into square 
> or diamond shape: one axis being as described in the above 
> paragraph, and the other being unmeasurable, subjective aims 
> at one end and measurable, objective aims at the other (i.e. 
> more or less artlang ~ engelang).

Yes, such a chart would make sense, I think.  It certainly
would not capture all relevant aspects, but that would be
too much to expect from a simple chart.

> > Or otherwise: A) Languages to be used for communication
> > B) Languages to be used for illustration
> 
> Tho presumably even B will communicate something  ;)

Sure, but it is a different mode of communication.  The languages
of category B are not used to talk about anything else in the
conventional sense; they are *images* of imagined languages.

> > ... but such a thing doesn't really give satisfactory
> > results either. In addition to that, "purpose" is not
> > always easy to establish anyway. Some languages clearly
> > serve more than one purpose, and it's not always easy to
> > tell which one is the primary.
> 
> That's why the Gnoli triangle is such a useful model.

Yep.

> > Besides, I'm pretty sure a
> > lot of auxlang authors only use it as a means to justify
> > their artlanging by providing it with some higher goal.
> > And Rosta once suggested making a distinction between
> > PURPOSE and MOTIVATION, but this leaves us with a
> > practical problem: if there is any difference at all
> > here, only the author himself knows, and unless he
> > writes explicitly about it, we can only make an educated
> > guess here. Not much of a base for a reliable
> > classification scheme either, methinks.
> 
> I agree.

Indeed.  Some auxlangs probably contain features which the author
chose because of personal appeal, but even if that was revealed,
that would not turn the language into an artlang, and it remains
irrelevant to the purpose.  If that "beautiful" feature was a
hindrance to the purpose, it remains badly chosen.

> [snip]
> > that as a disadvantage at all though: there is a
> > difference between CLASSIFYING conlangs and QUALIFYING
> > them. The hexagon is basically my proposal for a simple
> > classification scheme, but I am well aware that it is not
> > suitable for qualifying them at all.
> 
> This, I think, is the source of the problem. Because the 
> "Van Steenbergen hexagon" is surname+geometric shape just as 
> "Gnoli triangle" is, it gives the impression that the "Van 
> Steenbergen hexagon" is an elaboration of the Gnoli triangle 
> as a better way of _qualifying_ them.
> 
> Personally, if it's _classification_ we're after, I think it 
> would be less confusing if the hexagon thing was dropped and 
> you just used the matrix as described below.

Indeed, indeed!  The presentation of the top level of the
classification as a hexagon led us to misunderstand the thing
as a qualification chart like a more elaborate version of the
Gnoli triangle, and at that the hexagon doesn't really succeed.

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