A Conlanger's Thesaurus

In the last year or so I have been thinking about writing a piece of software which would spit up a skeleton dictionary which I could fill in with a new language being created. The point was to help me get out of certain lexical ruts, while still creating a language that would be more or less internally consistent. I gave up on that project, but one side effect was a lot of reading about recent work in lexical typology. I found the semantic maps especially interesting as tools for conlanging. I've collected a bunch of that work in A Conlanger's Thesaurus.

The core of that document is a word list, lightly edited, but mixed in whenever possible are cross-linguistic semantic maps, to prod thinking about new possibilities for words that don't simply reproduce the semantic boundaries of languages I already know. There are still a lot of gaps, but this seems a good start.

The last two pages have some dense but very interesting semantic maps relating to matters most people would consider grammatical rather than lexical. But there's a lot of interesting stuff there, too. Whenever possible I have included links to free, online papers and articles which discuss the maps in much more detail, so people can hunt down details if they are moved to do so.

If you know of cross-linguistic maps I have missed, please let me know. I'm sure I'll be updating this document from time to time as I run across new work.

Kahtsaai: a year old

I just noticed that the document sketch.pdf in my Kahtsaai directory is dated to April 23, 2011, meaning I just missed Kahtsaai's birthday. Taking a quick look at that sketch, it's interesting how much of the basic character of the language was firmly settled in just three not-very-dense pages with a whopping 20-word vocabulary.

For example, the conjugation table of subject and object prefixes is very similar, with the biggest change being the addition of several conditioned variants for the third person inanimate object, and the indefinites (thank you, Nahuatl). The sound system is completely unchanged, which shows serious restraint for me. The inchoative went from being a suffix, -píí to an aspectual prefix, -yé'-. The verb chain got a new slot just for those aspectual and adverbial prefixes.

I somehow derived an entire system of deixis from the single word hó'owa, thus.

Amusingly, the clause-final discourse particle łaai, undefined in the sketch, was briefly turned into the word yes, but now again sits without definition. It was used in the phrase, "s/he will make tea łaai." I suppose I really should find a meaning for it, given it's seniority.

It's at 973 lexical entries, including sublemmata. Perhaps I can spend the weekend getting that up to 1000.

Agreement of What?

I recently ran across this page about transitivity. Section six, "Problem Cases," mentions two languages in which it appears that the verb transitivity is cross-referenced on other constituents in the clause, in particular, adverbs and noun phrases acting adverbially. The first of the Shipibo-Conibo examples has two other elements in the clause so marked, Jain-xon-ra there-TRNS-EV and xobo-n-xon house-LOC-TRNS.

I don't think I'm going to be using this feature any time soon, but some people might find it alluring.

Art and Conlanging

If you listened to the out-takes from the most recent Conlangery Podcast you heard an out-of-context quote from an experience I had in college. I went to a show of performance art pieces put on by art students. One of the episodes involved a man walking out on stage with a boom box, turning on some industrial music, stripping naked and proceeding to duct-tape sausage to himself.

From time to time, both on the show and off, Bianca and I have amused ourselves by imagining how various schools of art would map to styles of language invention. But now I think we've been going at this backwards. There is nothing intrinsically confusing about an earnest, naked gentleman with kielbasa affixed to his person. The problem is that no one in the audience knew what language he was speaking. If he had passed out a grammar and lexicon first, the audience would have some idea of what he was trying to say.

So, my current idea is that conceptual art is actually a form of conlanging. People just don't realize it yet.

Maybe I can get a paper in Social Text about this...

And ACADEW, too: Tsolyáni

While some of us invented our first languages without any idea others might indulge in this hobby, most of us come to it through exposure to some other conlang. Esperanto was the most likely for a long time, and many, many of us create languages in the Mirkwood-deep shadow of Tolkien's languages. Somewhat more recently, Klingon may be the first taste of invented languages, and now Na'vi and Dothraki are bringing a few to the hobby.

I don't remember if I had seen Esperanto when I started creating my first languages — puny relexes of English with hybrid German-Latin grammars, including the dative case before I even know what one did with it. The deepest influence on my languages, however, come from an author who never invented a single language, Frank Herbert.

When Herbert needed non-English touches, he grabbed historical human languages and made modest sound changes, largely to accommodate his editors, I'm sure. Arabic infuses the books (CHOAM = OPEC), and Romani makes a regular appearance. He even grabs Ancient Egyptian once. But Herbert's thinking about language is deeply influenced by General Semantics. In particular, he was always worried about the ways our use of language conceals from us our assumptions about the world. I don't think he ever has a character say, "the map is not the territory," but he might as well have.

Herbert was also preoccupied with how far human capabilities could be extended without the aid of advanced computing technology. The Butlerian Jihad was necessary to wipe computers and AI from his science-fiction world to allow him to explore this. (As a side note, how on earth are the psychotropics used through the works, of which the Spice is but one, not technologies?) Herbert imagines a future in which the ruling classes use many, many languages. Even the soldiers have to master the battle language of the House they work for. (Conlang as impenetrable code has been used by more than one language inventor, I'm sure.)

The language that haunts me to this day is mentioned in Dune Messiah. It is mirabhasa:

They were using a mirabhasa language, honed phalange consonants and joined vowels. It was an instrument for conveying fine emotional subtleties. Edric, the Guild Steersman, replied to the Reverend Mother now with a vocal hurtsy contained in a sneer — a lovely touch of disdainful politeness.

Now, I have never figured out what phalange consonant is supposed to be. I'm guessing he misremembered "pharyngeal" from perusing Arabic, but one never knows.

In any case, I have tried through the years my own variations on a mirabhasa language, with different focuses. The results are often fiendishly complex and not very usable. Then I step back and try something daintier, only to find it falling short of my own ideas about such a language. Herbert took the best course in never attempting to create the language, instead bringing it into the scene as a way to allow him to comment on the political, social and power dynamics of a conversation between four very powerful groups. I, however, keep trying.

I recently hunted down copies of M.A.R. Barker's two-volume documentation on the Tsolyáni language. I have the second printing of it, published in 1981, somewhere between two and four years before I undertook the construction of my first little languages. It is a shame it is not more well-known. It has far more complete than any of Tolkien's languages, more interesting and naturalistic than Esperanto, and easier to learn and better described than Klingon. The grammar is full of examples. A precis may be found here.

Tsolyáni, naturally, has three separate ways to encode emotional and social judgements about discourse topics — two on the nouns, and one on the verbs.

First, nouns may take "general attitude prefixes," which encode personal judgements, though the same slot takes a few prefixes locating a discourse topic in time (the accents are primary and secondary stresses),

• shàrzakási "the captain whom I somewhat humorously despise" (kási "captain")
• chiqèkbásrim "the comically inept man" (básrim "man")
• hoqòkólumel "the future emperor" (kólumel "emperor")

Second, nouns may take "general attitude suffixes." While the prefixes above encode one's personal opinions, these mark general assessments. So, korùsskási "the captain whom I despise and hate" vs. kásigakoi "the (widely) hated captain." From the grammar, "... contains a large number of suffix elements (or perhaps 'secondary compounding stems?') which denote "objectively held" attitudes toward the noun. These items describe the status, rank, size, and other clearly perceptible qualities of the noun — including emotional attitudes towards the noun which are shared by others besides the speaker" (3.160).

Finally, verbs may take "attitude prefixes" containing "some twenty to thirty members." These indicate the way an action is performed in the opinion of the speaker,

• ramissúm "to slay in a contemptible fashion" (missúm "slay")
• lüchyiráu "to pilfer" (yiráu "steal", lüch- "to act in a petty, miserly, cowardly fashion")
• tludímlal "to strike fanatically" (dímlal "strike, hit")
• bashtaskótl "to advance loyally" (taskótl "to advance as an army")

So, here is Mr. Barker using techniques in the 1970s it would take me a good 20 years to get to myself. Tsolyáni is a good example of why conlangers should study (or at least read the grammars of) as many different kinds of languages as possible. Barker's dissertation was a grammar of Klamath, and he is clearly quite familiar with Nahuatl.

While it might have been nice to know about Tsolyáni when I was younger, I'm not sure how likely it is I would have been to able to keep the grammar when I was a kid. It has drawings of naked slave-ladies on the front cover of both the grammar and the dictionary.

Perceiving ANADEW

One feature of Láadan that always struck me as odd was how it handled perception. There are no verbs for see, hear, taste, etc., rather there is a single verb láad perceive, which is used with an instrumental noun to clarify.

Bíi	láad	le	ne-th	oyu-nan	wa.
DECL	perceive	1SG	2SG-ACC	ear-INST	EVID
I hear you.

I was never clear what effect Elgin was aiming at with this, and it has always struck me as unnatural. I should know better, but if you had asked me last week if this would occur in a natural language, I would have said, "no." But no, it does occur — in one language, Kobon.

Kobon is known for having a very small number of verbs — on the order of 100, of which about 20 get regular use. It achieves clarity by combing the verbs with nouns, adjectives and adverbs. So, eye perceive for see, ear perceive for hear, etc. It heads off into territory even Láadan wouldn't enter, with sleep perceive for dream (Láadan ozh).

I really should know better by now.

Some people might enjoy A universal constraint on sensory lexicon, or when hear can mean 'see'? (PDF).

Misunderstanding Láadan

With the help of a Christmas gift card, I got myself a copy of From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages, which was released in November of this year, from Oxford University Press (emic review). It's a collection of academic papers about various language invention topics. See the review for more details.

After I read the introduction, the first thing I did was go to the index to look for languages I know about. Láadan gets two mentions (in the index it is misspelled Láaden, but the page numbers point to the right place). In chapter 8, Suzanne Romaine's Revitalized Languages as Invented Languages, page 215, we get this lengthy paragraph,

A similarity of purpose and motivation drives inventors of all new languages, whether in the real or fictional world. The perceived need for them arises from dissatisfaction with the current linguistic state of affairs. Recognition that language can be used for promoting or changing the social, cultural, and political order leads to conscious intervention and manipulation of the form of language, its status and its uses. In this sense then, the idea of a modern standard Hebrew as the language of a secular Jewish state sprang from the mind of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, no less than Klingon did from the imagination of its inventor Marc Okrand. Hence the planners of Néo-breton, Modern Hebrew, and other revitalized languages are no less inventors than are authors of speculative fiction like George Orwell or Suzette Haden Elgin, who conceive new languages consonant with their vision of a brave new world. The task is to invent and spread a language to encode it. The project of imagining a world without gender differentiation and inequality gave birth to Elgin's Láadan, invented by women for women, just as much as Modern Hebrew would be conceived as a vehicle for modern Jewish statehood and nationality in the creation of a new land by pioneers, and of a new Jew who would escape the confines of the shtetl. Speaking or narrating in a feminist woman-made language in Elgin's Native Tongue (1984) becomes a liberating force for women dominated by a patriarchal society in the twenty-thrid century, just as Irish became and continues to be a language of resistance in the struggle against British rule.

Ok. Seeing language revivification as an example of language creation should not be new to practiced conlangers who are likely to read this. I look forward to reading the rest of the chapter later.

What drives me ever so slightly bonkers is that this paragraph contains two deep misunderstandings about what Elgin attempted with Láadan. First, Láadan is not "invented by women for women." It is indeed invented by women, and intended to express the perceptions of women better, and is "for women" in the sense that it aims at this goal. But at no point has she said that it is for women only. In fact, she goes out of her way, in both the books and in interviews about Láadan, to explicitly deny this. It is for women and men to use. Romaine's account rather makes it seem like Láadan would not be open to use by men.

Second, "imagining a world without gender differentiation" is not part of Láadan's goals either. In A First Dictionary and Grammar of Láadan (Second Edition, 1988), Elgin lays out the inspirations for Láadan in the first chapter, The Construction of Láadan. The fourth item is,

I focused my Guest of Honor speech for WisCon on the question of why women portraying new realities in science fiction had, so far as I knew, dealt only with Matriarchy and Androgyny, and never with the third alternative based on the hypothesis that women were not superior to men (Matriarchy) or interchangeable with and equal to men (Androgyny) but rather entirely different from men. I proposed that it was at least possible that this was because the only language available to women excluded the third reality. Either because it was unlexicalized and thus no words existed with which to write about it, or it was lexicalized in so cumbersome a manner that it was useless for the writing of fiction, or the lack of lexical resources literally made it impossible to imagine such a reality.

Láadan, like Esperanto, is a kind of conlang Rorschach ink-blot test. Whatever they might actually mean, they are primarily the vehicles for people's preconceptions about what they are. Here, Láadan has been shoehorned into a thesis about language revitalization. I don't think the misunderstanding of it undermines the argument, but it is astonishing to see it so badly misinterpreted in an academic context, especially when material directly from Elgin is so readily available.