Conlanging, privilege

[xxx]

IIn many ways, it's a lot like drawing. If you want to draw the human figure well, with a good amount of detail, you're going to have to study it. Which doesn't mean you can't draw, say, angels, but then you need to careful study birds and human babies and come up with a credible way to attach those wings...

tthat' s the problem with drawing angels as men and alien languages as human languages...
What about abstract painting...

what we learn through study of linguistics are ways to free ourselves of our preconception(...) Or, to put it another way, left to our own devices, we'd all create relexifications of our native languages

using other languages to mask/enrich one's relex by reading books of linguistics cannot replace imagination...
Imagination exceeds the limits of reality...

Is there any evidence of artistic creation of entire languages for artistic purposes before Tolkien?

that depends on what you put in the word "art"...
for myself even H of Bingen is an artist...


and I agree " I believe different formats ought to be tried..."

[elemtilas]

In that case, if this is what you mean by ‘scientifically engineered model languages’, then why do you find a trend towards these languages to be ‘so saddening, maddening, and even disturbing’? I don’t at all understand how you could make that statement.

Because there's little to no art to it. It's like paint by numbers or choose 1 to 3 items from each column kind of thing. There's no delight or wonder in the process. As a matter of fact, so many new language inventors seem to approach the art with trepidation & angst! It really ought to be a joyful act of creation!, not something to give one nightmares because they don't understand the recipe. Nor something that even requires a recipe.

[zompist]

Because there's little to no art to it. It's like paint by numbers or choose 1 to 3 items from each column kind of thing. There's no delight or wonder in the process. As a matter of fact, so many new language inventors seem to approach the art with trepidation & angst! It really ought to be a joyful act of creation!

Ah, nothing like a dispute over art! I have a lot of sympathy for elemtilas's position— just go and do stuff you enjoy. Some of the most interesting conlangs are far from naturalistic: philosophical languages, Lojban, Toki Pona, Solresol, Jeffrey Henning's Fith, or one of my old favorites, DiLingo, the guttural utteral.

Some joshing of the naturalist method is fine, though I think the "little or no art" comment is a little mean-spirited. There's no art to Quenya or Sindarin? Just because you don't want do that sort of thing doesn't mean it's artless or easy.

Even if you don't intend to be naturalistic, I think learning about linguistics always helps. 5000 natural languages are always going to be more creative than you are. If you simply never learn about alignment, or evidentiality, or tone, or topic-prominence, or Sign, or polysynthesis, or triliteral roots, you are limiting your creativity in ways you don't even realize. And if you want to make a loglang or auxlang, limited knowledge generally means you're reproducing some parochial aspect of European languages when you think you're being universal. For that matter, if you want to make an alien language, it's helpful to know what features are truly alien rather than being simply unusual for Westerners. (Klingon is my go-to example here: only its phonology is really alien; most everything else is extremely familiar to anyone who's studied a Native American language.)

I've used Ars Lande's drawing analogy myself— learning linguistics is like learning anatomy, it gives you more options, not less.

But of course you can be free and freaky, and make abstract art, or totally weird languages. (Though I'll note, the people who developed modern art were classically trained. They were not simply throwing out all rules, and they were highly influenced by non-European art, just as conlangers are highly influenced by non-European languages.)

[elemtilas]

Is there any evidence of artistic creation of entire languages for artistic purposes before Tolkien?

Couldn't say, really. I think the very concept of language creation as art is probably something like 15 to 20 years old. I certainly didn't consider what I was doing an "art" before that time; and I kind of doubt that Tolkien considered language creation an "art" per se either.

Even now, while I'm more comfortable with language invention as a proper art, and am a proponent thereof, for my own, I still really consider it more an act of theological engagement, almost of prayer or contemplation.

That said, the realistic approach, or the Realistic School (I love the idea of belonging to an artistic school!) suits me very well, but I don't think there's anything wrong with other approaches. And I'd love to see other schools put in practice!

Oh indeed! I'd like to see the other schools more in practice too! And I'm of the Irrealist School.

[bradrn]

In that case, if this is what you mean by ‘scientifically engineered model languages’, then why do you find a trend towards these languages to be ‘so saddening, maddening, and even disturbing’? I don’t at all understand how you could make that statement.

Because there's little to no art to it. It's like paint by numbers or choose 1 to 3 items from each column kind of thing. There's no delight or wonder in the process. As a matter of fact, so many new language inventors seem to approach the art with trepidation & angst! It really ought to be a joyful act of creation!, not something to give one nightmares because they don't understand the recipe. Nor something that even requires a recipe.

I completely disagree with that. Let me quote what I said earlier:

From what I’ve seen, the sort of realistic conlangs which are preferred these days, are — like any Earthly language — messy, full of irregularities and exceptions …

This sort of stuff has no recipe, and you need to be creative to do it. And that’s true of a lot of conlanging! Even something like choosing sound changes has no recipe to it — there are subtle rules about the plausibility of sound changes, which seem to be more intuitive than anything else.

… DiLingo, the guttural utteral …

Quick question: you’ve mentioned this a couple of times over the years, and it sounds interesting. Do you know where I can find more information about it?

[Pabappa]

DiLingo was one of the first conlangs i found in the 90s .... i remember reading about it at school when I didnt have Internet at home .... its website is http://dilingo.net/DiLingo/Home.html now but i dont think there have been any significant updates in a long time.

the basic gimmick of the language is that ordinary speech in DiLingo is full of rhymes. e.g. "i walked home" might be /sim tim kim bala/ or something .... its cuased by grammatical agreement taken up a notch so that the rhymes are not just one or two sounds at the end of each word.

an example taken from http://dilingo.net/DiLingo/Meter.html :
Zing ing ging k'ying ingruu copingboling k'copingding?
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

[zompist]

I hadn't actually seen that version of the language. Even more best-of-1997 web design than my pages!

GIFs for text is... pretty darn 1997.

It's not as hilarious as I remembered, but something like tip-tippisaagan sip-tippity-twip tippitaat dip-tippity twippity-trip tippita trip-twippity twippity-fip for 4,672,923,324 still makes me smile.

[xxx]

What kills me is the question: "I would like my tongue to have such a property. Is it possible?"
...and even more so the answer, which is fraught with linguistic considerations...
when I think the only question is "will I get there"... and the only answer is "try"...

and better yet, no matter how crazy the attempt, it's a good bet that it will lead to a solution already used by a natural language...

the path is the real goal... using a tour bus or a political commissioner to visit the country of my dreams is not what I'm looking for... it's safer, it's faster, you get to the essentials and success is assured, but the pictures might look a lot like the one in the tour operator's catalogue, and the inside experience might be very limited...

no need to take the linguistics plane... a walk in the little woods behind your home language is enough for that...

no need to simulate the use of time of natural languages to get the patina of the real one, you just have to play with it for a long time to get the right shape... and why make a new language that attacks the real world an old machine worn out by an imaginary world...

but of course this is only my personal research, I can't dictate the research of each one... there is no recipe...
and model making is an honorable hobby with impressive results...

[sasasha]

My feeling on the art/science debate is that we probably shouldn't assign primacy to either artistic instincts or technical rigour in our creative processes. I'm a classical singer. I need both, all the time! If I neglect one side, I neglect the whole endeavour. And the flip side of that is that if I assign too much value to one side, I also jeopardise the whole.

Oh, and I checked out DiLingo. I absolutely love the passive/aggressive mood, where all variable rhymes are replaced by -ack.

[Raphael]

In my case, if I wouldn't be interested in "realism" at all, I probably wouldn't do any conlanging at all - I only try to work on naming languages in order to get some half-way plausible names for my conhistory.

[xxx]

My feeling on the art/science debate is that we probably shouldn't assign primacy to either artistic instincts or technical rigour in our creative processes.

my cup of tea is the triple S philosophical language (1Sound=1Sense=1Sign), where there is no question of not being rigorous .
but from there to hack some science of language or using some recipe that I can draw from it to create, no way....
and as for being arty, my research is purely free and motivated by my only urgency to create....
but not here of a beauty that would deserve to appear in a living room of the fashion world, or deserve to compete with stock market products....