Paul O. BARTLETT | Taking My Leave

• Autor: Paul O. BARTLETT (“bartlett22183”)
• Tema: Taking My Leave
• Data: 2002-09-25 23:31
• Mesaje: 243 (presedente, seguente)

{Crossposted to Europidgin, Eurocreole, and Auxlang mailing lists.}

    I have decided to discontinue participation in efforts to construct
a new or significantly modified international auxiliary language (such
as Europidgin and Eurocreole) based on the Indo-European (I-E) languages
of Europe and their diasporas.  I have come to the conclusion that such
efforts are no more likely to be fruitful than other similar efforts in
the past if language characteristics alone are all that people pay
attention to.

    Richard K. Harrison has remarked, cogently I think, that the supply
of IALs far exceeds the demand.  (Indeed, how much REAL demand, as
opposed to wishful thinking and projection, is there?)  Nevertheless,
there are those who seem to think, like the alchemists of old, that they
will be undaunted in the face of the failures of others.  All they need
to do is blend the right ingredients in the right proportions and
success will be theirs.  (An analogy thanks to Andrew Large.)  I do not
think that such further efforts have much more likelihood of success
than past efforts.

    There is not and never will be any sort of "perfect language" among
constructed international auxiliary languages.  One person's "necessary
feature" is another person's "fatal flaw."  People can and will go on
arguing half way to forever and not come to an agreement on the features
a conIAL "needs" to have.

    As for conIALs deliberately targeted to the I-E diaspora languages
of Europe, we already have enough.  Neo, Ido, Eurolengo, Eurolang,
Occidental, LsF Interlingua, IALA Interlingua, Lingua Franca Nova,
Intal, and on and on.  We simply do not need any more candidates.  Good
enough is good enough, and I submit that any of those languages is good
enough as an IAL for I-E European-speaking peoples.

    Some people on two of these lists are seeking a sort of pidgin-like
or creole-like language on an isolating model (more or less, at least).
I submit that if the IAL under design is for "WENSA"-speaking peoples,
then a strictly isolating grammar is not necessarily at an advantage.
All of the Indo-European languages, including English, have at least
some inflections, so an inflectional languge is hardly a novelty,
especially if the inflections are few and completely regular.  I simply
do not see how in such an instance a purely isolating grammar would be
any more advantageous, or be considered any simpler, than an
inflectional grammar as simple as those of some of the languages I
mentioned above, such as Lingua Franca Nova (since that is the starting
point for the Europidgin list).

    And, although I do not have firsthand knowledge, I suspect that the
non-I-E languages of Europe (Lappish, Estonian, Finnish, Magyar, Basque)
also have some inflectional or agglutinative morphology, so that an
isolating grammar will not necessarily be at a great advantage in terms
of familiarity (and learnability) over one with a few simple and regular
inflections.  Why is an independent particle somehow necessarily simpler
and easier to learn and use than a regular inflection?  I am no longer
convinced that it is.  If a constructed auxiliary language's phonology,
phonotactics, orthography, morphology, and possibly even syntax can be
learned by an intelligent person in a few hours, then what difference
does it make whether one uses a particle or an inflection?

    This point holds with respect to European languages and their
diasporas, which seem to be the focus of the Eurocreole and Europidgin
mailing lists, from which I am unsubscribing.  We simply do not need any
more such IAL projects.  We have more than enough already.

    The real issue, as I see it, is that in the end, history seems to
show that characteristics of morphology and syntax to some degree are
really rather secondary when it comes to acceptance and use of an
auxiliary language, at least for European and diaspora target users --
or others, for that matter.  (Consider Koine Greek, Aramaic, Akkadian,
and Arabic as successful auxiliary languages of the past, and not just
Lingua Franca, Russonorsk, and Chinook Jargon.)  A more pressing matter
is how to get ANY such constructed auxiliary language into widespread
acceptance and use, not whether it has this or that participial ending
(or maybe none at all).  THIS is where the real effort needs to be
concentrated, in my opinion, and not never-ending tinkering and
fiddling.  Tinkering and fiddling may be fun and entertaining, and there
is nothing wrong with having fun and being entertained, but they
probably have little to do with getting an IAL accepted and used.

    Of course, once it comes down to getting any one IAL accepted and
used, there is the issue of which one, because diffferent people will
favor different languages.  And that is a problem for which I myself
have no real answer except to say, pick one and promote it, and if you
get others to make the same choice, so much the better for your
candidate.  But in any case, I have decided to discontinue participation
in efforts to create or modify any new west-Indo-European-based (often
largely Romance-based) IALs.

    Please note two things: I am referring to _a_posteriori_ European-
based IALs and to a European (and diaspora) target audience.  If one
wants to make serious efforts with respect to a global, as opposed to
a European, target audience or with respect to an _a_priori_ language
(which, please note, does not necessarily mean a classificatory scheme
such as Ro or Real Character, but could be something more along the
lines of Sona or Suma or even aUI), then I might have some interest.

--
Paul Bartlett
bartlett@...
PGP key info in message headers