Hallo conlangers!

On 06.03.2016 20:37, Thomas Porter wrote:

>> Well, most human ethnic groups consist mostly of "neurotypical" individuals, so this is a healthy assumption for fictional nations, too.
> Sure, but neurodiverse people have existed throughout history... when they weren't candidates for infanticide.

I did not mean to insult neurodiverse people - far from that, I am one 
of them (I have a mild autism-spectrum condition). Some neurodiverse 
people may indeed process language differently than neurotypical people. 
Yet, as they mostly live among neurotypicals, they usually have to cope 
with the neurotypicals' languages, and naturalistic conlangs won't help 
them much (but if they can cope with natlangs, they can also cope with 
naturalistic artlangs!).

On 06.03.2016 21:28, Jeffrey Brown wrote:

> I know I am splitting hairs here, and I apologize in advance.
>
> There is a difference between "natural" and "naturalistic" as they pertain
> to conlangs.

I see. So "naturalness" and "naturalism" are two different pairs of 
shoes, and Thomas and I talked past each other.

> Naturalistic conlangs are those that sound and function like natlangs. The
> conlanger's goal is that the gestalt of the language is as similar as
> possible to a natlang. Examples are Quenya or Dothraki. Counterexamples:
> anything in a Star Wars film.

Yes, this is the commonly accepted definition of "naturalistic" in 
artlanging (nota bene: in *artlanging*; auxlangers use the word 
differently!).

> By a "natural" ​conlang (and I may be coining this term, but I believe that
> others have used it this way) is meant, to use Thomas Porter's term, a
> constructed language that is neurotypical: the cognitive "processing" of
> the language is similar to the processing of a natlang. It may not sound
> like a natlang, the grammar may be overly regular, but when people learn
> it, they do so the same way they learn a L2 natlang, rather than the way
> they learn formal logic or mathematics. Example: Esperanto. Counterexample:
> Lojban.

Fair. Esperanto certainly works like a natlang in its speakers' minds - 
an unusually regular language (though there are some very regular 
natlangs, Turkish being often cited as an example), but it is processed 
in the same way as a natlang. Lojban works *differently*, as anyone who 
has tried to learn it can probably ascertain. I have always found its 
grammar terribly hard to grasp, and never mastered it.

Yet, "natural" is poorly chosen here, as "natural language" means 
something else already ;) Perhaps one should coin a new word, such as 
"naturoid" (though that is a messy combination of a Latin stem and a 
Greek suffix). Better suggestions are welcome!

> What I said about Patrik Austin's language is that I did not feel it was
> natural. I felt that by constructing a language around paaS, he had a
> system that was artificial.
>
> Of course, people can construct languages that are purposefully artificial.
> Many engelangs seem so to me.

Yes. Most engelangs do not work like natlangs.

> Finally, to address Thomas: Neurodiversity or neurotypicality, if they are
> relevant distinctions, would form a spectrum, not an "either/or", probably
> a multidimensional normal curve.

Sure. The boundaries are fluent, as, for instance, a friend of mine 
shows who doesn't really have an autism spectrum condition, yet has some 
personality traits that slightly resemble one.

> It doesn't make sense, to me, to
> categorize any person as neurodiverse, since there are many dimensions of
> mental function, and one may be average or exceptional in many different
> ways. What I would guess (without a shred of evidence) is that any person
> who can successfully communicate in a natlang, is not sufficiently
> neurodiverse along the linguistic dimension to merit special consideration
> from those creating languages.

Fine. It of course makes sense to build languages for people who can't 
cope with natlangs for some reasons. We already have sign languages for 
the hearing impaired, we have Simple English (which even has a 
Wikipedia) and its counterparts in several other languages, etc.

But certainly, someone who can converse in a natlang can also deal with 
conlangs that work like natlangs, no matter how neurodiverse he ot she 
may be.

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