Re: unnatural languages

Jens S. Larsen wrote:
António Marques:

Jens S. Larsen wrote:
António Marques:
- A language is not its description.
'Conlangs' are decriptions of invented languages. Whereas 'real
languages' are languages. For a conlang to be actually used, there is an
infinite amount of stuff that the user must provide to fill in the space
- grammmars and dictionaries of the conlang will only provide a skeleton.
The metaphorical skeleton is in-born.

No, I'm referring to all the little things that won't be in a
description. Like when to use 'all the little things' and just what it
means. Of course you can write a 10.000 pages description of, say,
english, where you explain all those (I doubt 10.000 pages will be
enough, but whatever). The point is that no language has such a detailed
description published, let alone a 'conlang'.

What we have more or less detailed descriptions of, is exactly the
little things. The big picture is usually not described, because it's
common to all language, so that nobody needs it to learn a different
language.

No. Wrong. Read everything from the start.
I'm not in the mood to explain it all again.

'Conlang' people are happy
to produce a fundamental grammar and a dictionary and let the speakers
fill in the blanks with their own creativity. Which will almost always
be modelled on their own linguistic background. Just like when spanish
speakers in the US substitute english expressions for the spanish ones
they didn't have the opportunity to learn, for instance.

Will those people substitute English or Spanish expressions for what
they haven't learnt about Esperanto?

As well as for what doesn't exist in Esperanto. Or invent new expressions altogether. Which only by convergent evolution may resemble what other speakers come up with.

What you call linguistic
background is not the background, it's the foreground!

'Background' as in previous knowledge, not as in landscape.

If two people learn any language (invented or not) from mere
descriptions, rather than native speakers, independently, it's only by
chance that they'll end up with the same, coherent language. Now it just
so happens that conlangs don't have native speakers - why, some may
have, but those acquired it as per the de novo process above, so they
don't count -, and as such they're devoid of much that makes language
interesting. Each individual may have their own, but the 'language' as
usually considered does not.
How do native speakers end up with "the same, coherent language"? And
if that's not a complete mystery, why cannot the procedure be mimicked
on the basis of a description of a language?

They end up with "the same, coherent language" by following each other's
speech.

How do they do that without a comprehensive, in-born theory about what
human language can look like?

Usually, imitation and observation of the feedback do the trick.

Of course, some conlangs just happen to have an enthusiast base of very
similar linguistic background. Cf. the idea that modern hebrew (which
isn't a conlang but shares some of the above problem) may be yiddish
relexified.
Maybe Esperanto is Yiddish, German, Polish and Russian blended
together and relexified -- those four languages were freely spoken by
Zamenhof (besides writing skills in several more), and he cannot have
been alone in that.

'Of course, some conlangs just happen to have an enthusiast base of very
similar linguistic background'.

Or you can just say Eo is a Czech-Italian creole and leave it at that.

In that case it's a natural language.

There's nothing forbidding a 'conlang' from *becoming* a natural language. After which it no longer is what it was before. For before it was A, after it is A+B, with B a very large part of A+B. And if some group comes up with A+C, which will be to a large extent incomprehensible to A+B folk, both groups can't claim their version is the right A.
--
am

laurus : rhodophyta : brethoneg : smalltalk : stargate

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