"Experiencer"

[Arzena]

Verdurian was my first published conlang and there's much I don't like about it. It was thoroughly revised once but it's too late to do it again. (Also there is an in-universe, or in-multiverse, reason for the similarities.)

I’ve been doing the nuts and bolts work of learning Verdurian recently ‒ like, learning it with a serious intent to build written and spoken fluency. So I thought I’d offer a few reflections....

Who knows, maybe a second Miracle of the Translation is in store barring that perhaps karmic threads will lead you to reincarnation in Verduria City: enda dzu ez orap ez e, after all

[sasasha]

Verdurian was my first published conlang and there's much I don't like about it. It was thoroughly revised once but it's too late to do it again. (Also there is an in-universe, or in-multiverse, reason for the similarities.)

I’ve been doing the nuts and bolts work of learning Verdurian recently ‒ like, learning it with a serious intent to build written and spoken fluency. So I thought I’d offer a few reflections....

Who knows, maybe a second Miracle of the Translation is in store barring that perhaps karmic threads will lead you to reincarnation in Verduria City: enda dzu ez orap ez e, after all

Sign me up! Though I’ll happily remain in this cosy beriludo for now.

[Glass Half Baked]

I think you all have missed the main reason congrammars are written in plain terms. The conlanger is trying to communicate, while the linguist is trying to prove to their employer that they are on the cutting edge of their field.

As for Zompist's use of "experiencer," I think this is an acceptable shorthand for "low agency subject." Either way, it is outrageous flattery to suggest he is the origin of the confusion between these two linguistic concepts.

[bradrn]

I think you all have missed the main reason congrammars are written in plain terms. The conlanger is trying to communicate, while the linguist is trying to prove to their employer that they are on the cutting edge of their field.

I think this is overly cynical. I’ve seen plenty of academics who just have no idea how to write well, because they never learnt. In my view, the use of technical terms is adequately explained by a combination of conlangs being simpler than natlangs, conlangers being less familiar with linguistic theories, and academics being poor writers.

As for Zompist's use of "experiencer," I think this is an acceptable shorthand for "low agency subject." Either way, it is outrageous flattery to suggest he is the origin of the confusion between these two linguistic concepts.

Ah, but the initial post was about it not being used to mean ‘low agency subject’! Instead, it was about zompist using it to mean ‘intransitive subject’, which is not its usual meaning. (Though as I said at the beginning, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it used that way before.)

[xxx]

Well, natural languages are nothing more than conlangs reworked by a very large number of fans,
the vast majority of whom are not linguists....

rather than trying to simulate the innumerable alterations that make up this varnish we call naturalism,
by using linguistics in reverse, I prefer to avoid this short-circuiting of the mind
and advance my pawns without worrying about linguistics or conlinguistics...

it's a different job to do linguistics on a constructed language,
and even if it can be fun to find kinship between your own creations
that have come out of your head completely weaponized,
and those that have come out of the mouths of human brothers unknown to you,

that shouldn't interfere in the creation any more than
your novelistic readings
or even your misinterpretations of scientific readings,
like all your own experience...

[Darren]

Well, natural languages are nothing more than conlangs reworked by a very large number of fans,

This is not true

[Raphael]

Well, natural languages are nothing more than conlangs reworked by a very large number of fans,

This is not true

I rarely ever agree with xxx, but they have a point there. Natural languages were created by human beings, after all, so you could interpret them as a form of collaborative conlangs.

[bradrn]

Well, natural languages are nothing more than conlangs reworked by a very large number of fans,

This is not true

I rarely ever agree with xxx, but they have a point there. Natural languages were created by human beings, after all, so you could interpret them as a form of collaborative conlangs.

I think there’s a fundamental and very important difference: natural languages have evolved under the process of normal language transmission, whereas conlangs have not. Even collaborative conlangs have not undergone this process. Perhaps Esperanto may become similar to natlangs which have undergone interrupted transmission, but that’s not the case for most conlangs.

[WeepingElf]

This is not true

I rarely ever agree with xxx, but they have a point there. Natural languages were created by human beings, after all, so you could interpret them as a form of collaborative conlangs.

I think there’s a fundamental and very important difference: natural languages have evolved under the process of normal language transmission, whereas conlangs have not. Even collaborative conlangs have not undergone this process. Perhaps Esperanto may become similar to natlangs which have undergone interrupted transmission, but that’s not the case for most conlangs.

I'd say that the difference is in degree rather than in kind, as with so many other things.

[zompist]

I think there’s a fundamental and very important difference: natural languages have evolved under the process of normal language transmission, whereas conlangs have not. Even collaborative conlangs have not undergone this process.

It's true of most languages, but why is this fundamental or important?

There are exceptions, the most notable being Nicaraguan Sign Language, which was invented by children at a school for the deaf in the 1980s. Nor is this an isolated case; there's also Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. Many Sign languages likely developed from scratch.

Perhaps Esperanto may become similar to natlangs which have undergone interrupted transmission, but that’s not the case for most conlangs.

Esperanto has developed in the 147 years since its creation. A.Z.Foreman used to have a good introduction to the changes, but sadly it's gone from his blog.

[sasasha]

I rarely ever agree with xxx, but they have a point there. Natural languages were created by human beings, after all, so you could interpret them as a form of collaborative conlangs.

I think there’s a fundamental and very important difference: natural languages have evolved under the process of normal language transmission, whereas conlangs have not. Even collaborative conlangs have not undergone this process. Perhaps Esperanto may become similar to natlangs which have undergone interrupted transmission, but that’s not the case for most conlangs.

I'd say that the difference is in degree rather than in kind, as with so many other things.

I’d also say that some conlangs try to simulate the effects of ‘normal language transmission’, while others have no interest in it.

[Zju]

Another point is that conlangs' grammars are created consciously and with clear intent, whereas natlangs' grammars just sort of evolve on their own. People don't intentionally fiddle with morphemes and syntax, not with the intention of how their language "should" look like a couple of generations down the line.
So even if you posit that "all words are made up", natlangs are still different than conlangs with many contributors.

[zompist]

Another point is that conlangs' grammars are created consciously and with clear intent, whereas natlangs' grammars just sort of evolve on their own.

People making naturalistic conlangs are, well, trying to be naturalistic. Often that means simulating natural changes. E.g. you take a word list, run it through some plausible sound changes, and see what havoc that does to your morphology. That in turn suggests changes to the syntax. All this is pretty similar to how languages do change.

It's like two people creating maps. One just draws rivers and coastlines "out of their own head". The other builds a model from sand, randomizes the heights a bit, and drips water onto it, letting the water find it own paths, and letting the resulting collected pools be the ocean. Are the water features of the second map "created consciously"? Only indirectly.

People don't intentionally fiddle with morphemes and syntax, not with the intention of how their language "should" look like a couple of generations down the line.

Sure they do. We call it "borrowing."

[Zju]

People making naturalistic conlangs are, well, trying to be naturalistic. Often that means simulating natural changes. E.g. you take a word list, run it through some plausible sound changes, and see what havoc that does to your morphology. That in turn suggests changes to the syntax. All this is pretty similar to how languages do change.

Indeed, most conlangs try to be as close to natlangs as possible. That doesn't mean the development of natlangs and the development of conlangs are the same thing.

It's like two people creating maps. One just draws rivers and coastlines "out of their own head". The other builds a model from sand, randomizes the heights a bit, and drips water onto it, letting the water find it own paths, and letting the resulting collected pools be the ocean. Are the water features of the second map "created consciously"? Only indirectly.

Those are two approaches to conlanging. The analogy for natlang development is to map out some unknown terrain.

People don't intentionally fiddle with morphemes and syntax, not with the intention of how their language "should" look like a couple of generations down the line.

Sure they do. We call it "borrowing."

Individual morphemes and pieces of syntax are borrowed occasionally, yes. And has this borrowing occurred because:

1) Speakers of that language have been influenced by a superstratum language for a long time and just tend to use features of the superstratum instead of the respective native features because of immersion and mixup?

or

2) Because they individually or collectively thought: "Hey, our language should have such and such features in the future. So let's borrow them!"

And all the non borrowed elements of the language continue to change without conscious construction intention by the speakers. You could only make the case for word derivation, but even then it's iffy if that's the same kind of construction as in conlanging.

[zompist]

People making naturalistic conlangs are, well, trying to be naturalistic. Often that means simulating natural changes. E.g. you take a word list, run it through some plausible sound changes, and see what havoc that does to your morphology. That in turn suggests changes to the syntax. All this is pretty similar to how languages do change.

Indeed, most conlangs try to be as close to natlangs as possible. That doesn't mean the development of natlangs and the development of conlangs are the same thing.

I don't say they're the same thing, only that it's not as clear-cut as people here are saying.

To me this sounds like someone saying it's a totally different thing to draw faces from life, and to draw invented characters, so we should strictly separate "natfaces" and "confaces."

I mean... sure, there is a difference, especially for a beginning artist. But the underlying skills overlap quite a bit, and with good enough artist you may not be able to tell.

(All this doesn't mean that either a conlanger or an artist has to be naturalistic.)

1) Speakers of that language have been influenced by a superstratum language for a long time and just tend to use features of the superstratum instead of the respective native features because of immersion and mixup?

or

2) Because they individually or collectively thought: "Hey, our language should have such and such features in the future. So let's borrow them!"

These are just neutral and emotive restatements of the same thing.

[Zju]

To me this sounds like someone saying it's a totally different thing to draw faces from life, and to draw invented characters, so we should strictly separate "natfaces" and "confaces."

Except that if you say that drawing an invented character is an analogy to conlanging, then the analogy to natlang development is a face of a baby developing to a face of an adult. (and not drawing faces from life)

There is indeed a clear cut difference between 1) consciously constructing every aspect of a language, be it with using SCA and then analysing the results or whatever; and 2) everybody from society just minding their own business, chatting with everybody else, not paying attention to the gradual deviations in their speech, generation after generation after many generations over and over.

You might argue that people quibble about this borrowing or that borrowing, but this is not equivalent to generating the core vocabulary with a random word generator and then sprinkling in some easter eggs.

These are just neutral and emotive restatements of the same thing.

How so? (more precisely, how is superstratum influence the same thing as mindful borrowing with the intent to change one's native language in a specific direction?)

[zompist]

These are just neutral and emotive restatements of the same thing.

How so? (more precisely, how is superstratum influence the same thing as mindful borrowing with the intent to change one's native language in a specific direction?)

What do you think superstratum influence is? You're repeating a technical term as if it's a mechanism, and forgetting that languages are spoken by human beings with minds.

Simple example: Quechua has a borrowing ganay 'win', though it has a perfectly good native word atipay. Why do people make this change? Why do you think it's not "mindful"? Why do you think it's not made "with the intent to change one's native language"?

To answer my own question: people make this sort of change because they think it sounds cool— or more precisely, cooler than the existing standard.

It doesn't mean they want everything to change. But when hundreds of terms or constructions all go in the same direction, when the source of the borrowings is widely viewed as cooler... well, that's what having a superstatum language means.

[Zju]

Why do you think it's not made "with the intent to change one's native language"?

Because the intent to sound cool or prestigious is a different (kind of) intent than the intent to conlang.

Besides, 'coolness factor' borrowings are a subset of superstratum influence, and speakers aren't aware of all superstratum influences, e.g. details of syntax or usage of morphological categories.

But when hundreds of terms or constructions all go in the same direction, when the source of the borrowings is widely viewed as cooler... well, that's what having a superstatum language means.

Exactly, and the process of hundreds of instances of speakers being swayed by this substratum or that neighbouring language is a different process than a conlanger fancying up a new conlang and all its aspects.

[bradrn]

I think you’re both right! Some parts of language are very conscious, and other parts are so automatic as to be practically invisible to the untrained speaker.

I saw a neat example of this when I read about classifiers in Lao (in Enfield’s grammar). Lao has two classification systems: numeral classifiers, and modifier classifiers. Enfield reports that speakers are highly aware of the numeral classifiers, ‘being an occasional topic for explicit discussion among speakers’. On the other hand, modifier classifiers are generally unstressed and less salient, and correspondingly ‘seem beyond the level of untrained awareness’. It seems reasonable to assume that this variation occurs across many grammatical subsystems, not just classifiers — speakers are consciously able to control some parts of grammar well, while having less ability to manipulate others.

[xxx]

naturalistic conlanging is the most shared activity,

with everyone trying to convince in their everyday speech by using new forms to strike a chord,
or by repeating the new forms they've heard to get behind this or that new way of seeing the world,
or rather their way of understanding it, and in so doing, adding a slightly different meaning...

if not everyone masters the evolution of the global language,
it's because nobody really speaks it...

like a conlanger, each person more or less consciously evolves his local dialect by picking out such and such a way,
and giving it the most original meaning, his own, possible...

the only difference is that it carries a discourse made to be shared in real life,
whereas in conlang if the result is to be able to carry them all, it's not shared by any...