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Constructed Languages Defining precisely what a
constructed human language is can be a
difficult exercise because of the breadth of phenomena called by that
name. A general definition might be that a constructed human
language (or conlang) is one that can in principle be spoken by
any human and usually consists in structural features that resemble
naturally occuring human languages (or natlangs). Thus,
they will have distinct principles for the organization of their
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and other modules of natlangs
and can in principle be treated as if they were fully capable of being
used in a normal human society.
In reality, of course, the vast
majority of conlangs are
private inventions of individuals serving a variety of ends other than
simple everyday conversation: for political ideologies, for
philosophical or logical enquiry (loglangs), for use as an
international auxiliary language (auxlangs), for secrecy, for
art (artlangs), or just for fun. It is probably safe to say that
most conlangers fall into the latter two categories, in that they see
conlangs as modes of expression in the way that other people
see novels, short stories or poetry. J. R. R. Tolkien is
only
the most famous example of such a person* -- indeed, it is rarely
recognized that he considered his other literary creations to be
extensions of and context for his constucted languages, rather than the
other way around. Such people, including me, usually see no
scientific or linguistic merit in glossopoesis
as such, except perhaps in the most general sense that any
human activity has sociological or anthropological interest. For
them, it is an escape or an exercise in aesthetics. For me it can also
be a learning activity, a kind of thought experiment: you can learn a
lot about how human languages work when you have to look at them really
closely to create similar structures of your own. There is a vast and burgeoning community of conlangers on the
web. Here are some pages worth perusing:
* Other famous conlangers in history include Hildegard of Bingen
(the "Lingua Ignota") and Leibniz. Phaleran [pha.le.r@n] For the past couple years, as a
member of the CONLANG mailing
list, I've assembled a hodge-podge of posts about my artlang, Phaleran,
in its various, evolving, incarnations. This evolution reflects both my
changing sense of aesthetics and, probably more importantly, my
changing understanding of linguistic theory and exposure to natural
languages. Ideally, I would publish here a more or less complete
grammar of the language. Setting aside the question of whether a
complete grammar of any language can exist, practical time constraints
make that task prohibitively difficult. In its place, though, to
give you a flavor of the "language", you can read some of my posts to
the list.
You might have noticed that some
of the above make reference
to a
constructed culture as well. What follows is some extended
discussion of that so as to give background to the conlang: 071709
06 Sep 2002 CHAT: Phaleran society [was Re:
The [+foreign] attribute] Here's the most up-to-date lexicon of Phaleran: [.WB3]
[.QPW] C'ali [ts'a.li] In the literary conceit, C'ali
originally started out as a
backdrop to the Phaleran culture. C'ali was the language of "high
culture" for Phalerans, and the Phaleran language is riddled with
"borrowings" from that language. Recently, I've begun fleshing out some
of the structure of that language too, and as I work on that I will
post these as well.
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