Ketsuban wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 6:00 am
I think the fault lies with the LCK chapter "Sounds".
zompist wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 6:43 am
It seems like you think the LCK is too simple; I would remind you that it is written for
beginners. You know lots more now; good for you.
Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 9:04 am
You realize some of us have been conlanging since many years before the LCK existed?
Zompist is not responsible for the quality of the conlanging hobby as a whole. Saying the LCK is at fault is a bit absurd. As Zompist mentioned, it's targeted towards beginners and does a good job of introducing linguistics to them. I referred to it when starting out, and I know many others also did, so I would suggest it does its job quite well. There is also the Advanced Language Construction Kit...
The issue is multifaceted, as I see it.
1) Linguistics is a MASSIVE topic.
There's tons & tons of linguistics - or even just phonetics - information to absorb to make a naturalistic conlang. At best it's difficult to put that all in 1 book, and more realistically it's impossible. To learn all of that, something like the LCK is just a starting point, and then very quickly you get into Wikipedia articles, grammars, academic articles, etc. It's spread out all over the place, and often there's conflicting information, so it's hard for people to get up to speed on all of that, if they ever do.
2) Conlanging needs are different because it's applied.
Most of the information out there describes various languages and/or language features, but (understandably) very little discusses how to apply that knowledge in conlanging. I think very often it's understanding how all of those systems interact, or even just understanding what options exist in real-world languages. Typology papers and Wikipedia articles probably come as close as anything. The papers I've seen by McGregor on Ergativity and Mithrun on Polysynthesis are good examples since they explain the phenomena, break it down into a framework of types that is easy to understand and apply, and give lots of examples from various languages where the features show up. Useful typologies like that don't seem particularly common, unfortunately. Most conlangers have to piece bits of information from here & there together to get a good idea of what's possible for various aspects of their languages.
3) Instructional design can be an issue.
Actual tutorials on conlanging are great since they at least try to address the points above. People that write them need to have a good understanding of the topic, and usually do. Sometimes the information in said tutorials is awesome, but it's not conveyed in a manner that makes it easy to digest & apply. They write it in a manner that makes sense to them, but might not to others, especially those with less linguistics/conlanging experience. Often it's an information dump. Still, writings like this are FAR better than having nothing at all, so the point here is not to disparage such attempts.
Bottom line is there's lots to learn, and it's not easy to assemble the knowledge needed. The point of conlanging (usually?) is not to learn linguistics, but that learning is often needed to pursue the activity. I'd guess most of us don't need or care to dive into the academic linguistic weeds; we just want to learn what's needed as efficiently as possible so we can move on to creating a language, which is the point.
Focusing on phonology, I've been conlanging for 11+ years, and my phonologies are finally at the point where they aren't totally noobish, but they certainly aren't great, either. I could still benefit from more information that organizes phonological topics. Take sound change, for example. I've seen lists of sound changes, but most of those are specific to one language or a closely related family. There's the Index Diachronica, which lists changes by phoneme and shows a list of languages where this has happened. However, what are the most common changes or very rare? Is there a difference diachronically vs synchronically? It's hard to tell, and so where do you begin when doing sound changes? I guess most people just list a bunch of changes, post them for feedback, and then adjust until no one "complains".
bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 8:06 am
I think one of the problems with phonology is that there really
are very few patterns. Stuff like allophony, sandhi and sound change don’t have any particularly clear limitations; there are patterns, but only vague ones, and the only real way to learn about them is to read a lot about sound change.
One prominent exception to this: stress patterns. These actually do have clear patterns and theory behind them, but I think that not a lot of conlangers are aware of how to utilise these.
Yep, exactly. Knowing where to find it, getting access, and understanding it from a broad perspective are hurdles. The more the information can be organized so it's easier to locate, the easier conlangers will have in making use of that information in their languages.
Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:38 pm
the hard part is that phonology interacts with other aspects of the language. not just morphology, but also root structure constraints distinct from word structure constraints, phonological
operations that morphology can exploit (e.g. word-level backing in kusunda, short and long forms in mandarin), syllable structures only licit in derived forms (-ŋθs in english), complex phonotactic restrictions with morphological implications (causative formation in shangzhai horpa), even phonosyntax (burmese developing tonal word class distinctions from phrase-final creaky voice). even a simple-looking language like gilbertese can turn out to do very bizarre things to enforce a very bizarre trimoraic foot structure
This one comment shows how much info there is to be familiar with in order to make a really high-quality phonology. Nort, you probably have the best and broadest view of anyone on the board of what real languages do phonologically. Most conlangers don't even have a particularly long list of examples, much less have the capacity to master them like an artist would with paint brushes. I'd include myself in that category.
