News from Virestia

Well, I've been away from this blog for a while, and while there are many topics I would like to discuss (and hope that I will, eventually), I thought I would at least use this as a platform to share the latest news from the Virestian world.

First, I finally completed my translation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' around mid-January, just before starting back to teaching a rather busy semester. I'm working on editing this and putting the first part into Paiodd script, hopefully for publication in an upcoming edition of Aequinox, an online publication that features the work of conlangers in their constructed languages.

I've also translated the entire first chapter of the Gospel of John. Until now, although I am a Christian, I have resisted translating very much of the Bible, since (as you will see below) the Virestians are not Christians, and of course it is a fantasy world where Christianity has never existed at all (in fact, that made for some interesting challenges in Coleridge, as well). However, a fellow conlanger started a group devoted to translating the Bible into conlangs, the idea being that the Bible provides a wealth of material apt for exploring the capabilities of one's conlang - or expanding them.

Meanwhile, particularly this week, I've been thinking about cultural issues in the former empire. I've devised two different card game systems, one of which I spent the entire evening Thursday creating a usable deck on the backs of some old business cards. The games are both based on the mythology and religion of Virestia, but different aspects of it.

The first is based on the phases of the moon, which provide the basis for the four 'suits', since Virestia uses a lunar calendar, and values the changes of the moon as continual reminders of the story of Creation, Binding, Mediation, and Scattering, which are the basis of Virestian mythology. In each suit, there are numerals 1-5, but since there are multiple ways to form some of the numerals in Paiodd script, there are multiple cards for 1 - 4. Most games played with this deck involve collecting hands of the same suit or all 5 numerals.

The second is based on the three principle deities of earth, sky, and sea, each of which has their own suit in this deck, with five 'actions' dictating how the cards can be used to construct a hand or played in a common hand, and six 'positions' which represent stages of life. The goal is usually to construct a hand that forms a complete cycle of these positions, a complete lifespan, so to speak. The inspiration for this game actually comes from an old conscript I developed way back around the same time as I started creating Paiodd. This script was meant to be a sort of holy language, and as such was somewhat philosophical, expressing abstract concepts by means of what are now the three suits, the five actions, and the six positions. I did attempt to work out some phonology to it, but there was never any grammar, as it wasn't necessarily meant to truly be a language.

Lastly, I've begun the process of transferring some of my notes on Paiodd, Virestia, and related subjects from a spiral notebook to a word document. Among these are notes about the histories of the various nations fragmented from the empire's fall, which have led me to realize that I need more languages! There are four daughter languages of Paiodd spoken around the empire, and I have at least some ideas of what those are like - indeed, one entry I would like to write here would be about the historical development of the High Speech into these four languages - but because Virestia has quite a large coastline, it stands to reason that there are traders and others from lands across the sea that come and go, and these would not speak Paiodd or any of the common tongues natively. I may not need to develop these languages as fully as Paiodd, but I should at least work out some phonology and basic grammar, so as to have some idea of how the languages would interact. Surely the Coastal-Speech derived from Paiodd would have strong influence from the languages of the Southlands!

I will attempt to make a regular habit of updating this blog with at least brief news flashes having to do with my language or languages. I will try once a week, but that may not work out practically.

Ithkuil

The following article from The New Yorker has been making the rounds in conlanging circles. It's actually quite well-written, with some great information about conlangs. Well worth a read!

I intend to offer some commentary eventually, but for the time being, I'll let the article speak for itself.

Paiodd Numerals

I've just posted a page on paiodd.weebly.com that explains how the script is used to indicate numeric values. You can check it out here: http://paiodd.weebly.com/numerals.html

Adjectival and Adverbial Clauses in Paiodd

Sersen stulserss íagué. Gué císershía aejímai.

That's Paiodd for "Today is my birthday. I am thirty years old." And it was true yesterday. So today we could say:

Éuía (or Éwoía) sersan stulserss íagué.

Yesterday was my birthday.

goPST.REL(or go.PRES.PRF) day-that birth.NML-day POSS.I

Thus, literally: That day that went (or has gone) (was) birthday of me.

Struggling with how to say 'yesterday', particularly in this context, leads to a good discussion of adjectival and adverbial clauses in Paiodd. On the one hand, many entire phrases in English can often be rendered by a single word in Paiodd, thanks to the inflection system in nouns, with verbal inflection indicating a relationship to verbs, and nominal inflection indicating a relationship to nouns. Let's look at some examples of these single-word adjectivals and adverbials.

Verbal: Alevodía daemm lodd armas.

The man cut the bread with a knife.

Nominal: Daemm alevutía lodd armas.

The man with (or who had) a knife cut the bread.

In the first sentence, the noun alevudd is in verbal inflection, with the suffix -ía, which in this case has instrumental meaning. The word order is somewhat important as well, however, because of the verbal inflection of alevudd, it's clear that it is modifying the verb armas 'cut', which is the only verb in the sentence. As a result, we could move the word to almost any position in the sentence, and it would still maintain the same meaning. The only position that would be off-limits is between the subject, lodd and the verb armas. This is the most inviolable rule of Paiodd word order: the subject must be directly next to its verb.

In the sentence with the nominal form alevotía, this word is inflected to show that it is related to the closest noun, lodd. We know that it is most likely not related to daemm because of course it doesn't make much since for bread to have a knife (though it could, presumably, have a knife stuck in it), but also, and more importantly, adjectival forms typically appear before the noun they modify. This helps to preserve the inviolable rule of a subject appearing directly before its verb in the OSV word order that is most typical in Paiodd.

There is one other important thing to note before we move into clauses consisting of more than one word. That is the lack of copula in Paiodd. In other words, there is no word equivalent to 'to be' in English. Thus, in order to say something like 'The man is tall' or 'I am a doctor', we must place the words for tall and doctor immediately after the subject. No other change is necessary, although the word for tall is merely the word for 'height' in nominal form with the suffix -ía.

Lodd paisenía.

The man is tall.

(lit: The man is with height)

Gué acullodd.

I am a doctor (lit: healer).

Likewise, in the sentence that began this post, sersen 'today' comes immediately next to stulserss 'birthday'. Thus, in such equative sentences, the subject must be immediately next to its equivalent, or appositive modifier, just as in verbal sentences the subject must be immediately next to the verb. This same kind of order plays a role in forming adjectival clauses.

So, how do we make clauses, whether adverbial or adjectival? First, we should clarify what a clause is. The most basic units of the sentence in English are the subject and verb. As long as a sentence has those two, it can be considered a complete sentence (so long as it makes sense logically, of course). Often, however, sentences have more than one subject and verb, and in this case we have at least two clauses. Sometimes entire clauses can modify either the main verb (and consequently, in fact, the entire sentence), and sometimes they can modify nouns within the sentence. Some examples in English:

Adverbial: When the man went to the store, he bought more than he needed.

Adjectival: The man who went to the store bought more than he needed.

In the first sentence, the clause when the man went to the store is an adverbial clause, modifying the entire sentence by telling us the time at which the events in the main clause happened. That time was when he went to the store.

The second sentence, on the other hand, gives us the clause who went to the store. In this case, the clause is adjectival, modifying the subject, the man. Consequently, it gives us more information about the man, rather than the time at which the events happened.

Both of these are separate clauses, however, because they have a separate subject (the man) and verb (went) from the main clause.

In Paiodd, thanks to the verbal/nominal declension system and the lack of copula, many entire phrases in English can be rendered with a single word in Paiodd, as we saw above. However, in those cases, there is no separate subject and verb, or at least, there is no separate verb. I hadn't really dealt with too many cases where there were separate subjects and verbs until trying to decide how to say 'yesterday' this morning.

Since there are no participles, I couldn't say something like 'the gone/past day', but that did give me an idea. I could use 'go' with the relative marker -ía (when it appears on verbs, it marks relative clauses) and the noun serss with the demonstrative suffix -an. The verbal or nominal inflection of serss would be used as appropriate to the sentence. For example, in the verbal inflection:

Éuía sirzan nir gué oz.

Yesterday I saw you.

The nominal inflection is used instead for the sentence we have already seen:

Éuía sersan stulserss íagué.

Yesterday was my birthday.

Of course, a simpler, and more common way to render the same sentences would be to use the temporal suffix -é.

Éuía sirzé nir gué oz.

Éuía sersé stulserss íagué.

There may be some other ways to express the idea of yesterday, but this method allows a bit more freedom than I previously had with clauses. I intended to have the subjects of relative verbs only appear in verbal inflection themselves, since they are, after all, related to verbs. But this prohibits any sort of adjectival clause from being formed. This way, if the relative verb precedes its subject, that subject can then pull double duty as an appositive or adjectival modifier of a noun in the main clause. Said noun could be either the subject or object of the main clause, but I'll have to examine that further in a future post.

Thesis

While browsing the gritty underbelly of ancient Yahoo! e-mails, I discovered many of my old college papers and projects, including several drafts of my undergraduate research project on constructed languages. Here is the thesis of that project:

Constructed languages have the potential to explore currently held theories of linguistic phenomena and challenge, affirm, or present new evidence for these theories. Constructed Languages offer alternative definitions of Linguistic systems, and sometimes even alternative systems, which are helpful to achieving greater understanding of both natural languages and our classification of them.

Eight years and a Linguistics MA later, I think I would still agree with this thesis for the most part. It is certainly part of why I have begun this blog. Given the education and experience I have gained since then, I don't know that the original project proved this thesis as strongly as I would like. Then again, I'm not sure it's possible to prove this point as strongly as I would like. I think there is much more work to be done on the question of whether there is value to constructed languages as a valid field of inquiry, but I hope that the increasingly popular appeal of and presence of these languages thanks to films like James Cameron's Avatar and television shows like Game of Thrones will inspire more scholars to consider them as a serious field.

Why Conlang?

The following is a discussion on the purpose and usefulness of conlanging which took place last week on the facebook conlangs group. I have copied and pasted the original post, followed by comments below. All names have been removed, in the interest of anonymity and privacy for all concerned. If anyone would like to claim credit for their comments below, you are welcome to do so.

 I have included this conversation because it brings up the very questions I want this blog to explore, and there are some interesting responses that may help all of us ask and attempt to answer these questions. Here follows the post and comments:

This evening, while eating with my friends at the campus cafeteria, the topic of conlangs was brought up, yet again, after I spoke a sentence in Esperanto ("Chu vi parolas Esperanton?"). They immediately brought up the perennial issue among us that "Esperanto is not a language," and, furthermore, that conlangs "have no purpose." I have a few questions based on my part of the argument, so that I can be better-equipped for next time this comes around: 1. "Esperanto is not a language," according to them. They say that for a system of words, phonology, and grammar to be considered a language, it needs "significant amounts of use," presumably with a lot of native speakers. I want to know: how do you define language? 2. I brought up the topic of fictional-world conlangs (artlangs such as Quenya/Sindarin, Klingon, Dothraki). Their argument for that was that those have a "specific purpose" and that the people who strongly appreciate those particular franchises use it as "bonding," but nothing more. I want to hear your thoughts on the purpose of artlangs. 3. I also brought up the creation of languages for the sake of recreation (as I'm sure many people actually do). They again brought up the idea of "significant use," as mentioned in question 1. So, why do you conlang? Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your responses! 

 Because I need to create speech that is deeply personal enough to allow me to experiment with literary ideas and concepts I would not be able to express through a natural language without being vague. I need to express myself specifically even if nobody understands what the hell I am saying. 

tl;dr? Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. 

 Great questions! In my opinion, these are precisely the sorts of philosophical questions that conlanging raises. They are difficult questions, but "purpose" as a requirement for a language (or anything else, for that matter), is not a good argument. What is the purpose of art? Some art has a very clear purpose, but much of it doesn't, yet it remains valuable. Actually, I would argue that the purpose of any art form, including conlanging potentially, is to define, explore, and challenge our understanding of the world around us. Conlanging helps define, explore, and challenge our notions of what a language is, and what it is capable of. In creating P-, I wanted to try to do something different, that no natlang I knew of did, hence my noun inflection system, which is not a case system, not a gender system, but focuses on the relationships of nouns to other nouns or to verbs. The form of any given noun differs according to which it is related to. 

 Here are my answers: 1) Firstly, if your criterion for something being a language is "significant use", then Esperanto certainly is one. It has more speakers than many of the world's natural languages, including many native speakers. I do actually think that many of the languages created by the conlanging community (including my own) are "ghosts" in a sense, as they don't have much use outside of perhaps some solitary artistic expression, but that does not make them worthless. Just getting in and fiddling with bits of language can be valuable to the conlanger in learning about real languages and how they work -- or just in having a hobby. 2) As I noted above, the point of an artlang isn't really to develop a speaker community. There are many uses -- I am making artlangs that I hope to use in fiction, others create them entirely for the purpose of writing personal journals and the like. The reason they are called "artlangs" is that they are created for aesthetic reasons. Specific purposes and parameters are up to the creator. 3) I conlang for fun, and in the hope that my conlangs can be used in fictional worlds. I don't particularly care if anyone else learns my languages. They are flavor and set dressing -- very deliberate and thoughtful set dressing, but set dressing all the same -- for fictional worlds. If putting a realistic linguistic system into a fictional world is not valuable, than what about people who obsess over the biology of an alien species, or construct marvelously complex yet consistent magic systems? It's all part of the world. 

 I just had a similar conversation with a friend of mine. She does not understand conlanging (however, she admits that because she loves literature, she has an issue with the idea of making a language). She is of the opinion that constructed language is either useless as a practice, or pointless since one cannot truly capture the nuances of natural languages. I brought up the issue of planned languages as a counter, but she remains unconvinced. Also, isn't there a language somewhere in South Asia that is only spoken by a single family? As far as usage is concerned, that hardly constitutes wide distribution. 

 Also, I agree with G- about artlangs. 

 Expression, I guess. Conveying something in your own words while going beyond the limits that natural languages set on you. That's what it is for me at least. 

 Cetere, kio estas la problemo kun Esperanto? ;) 

 1) First off, Esperanto does have quite a few speakers. Secondly, I define a language as anything that can be used to communicate a satisfactory amount of ideas eligible for real life use of the common man. (High-tech/scientific/economic/etc. terms are not needed IMO to be classified as a language.) 2) The purpose of artlangs lies in the name. They are art. I agree that they do have a specific purpose which is to enhance that which they were created for. (Example: Sindarin enhances the LotR) 3) I conlang for entertainment. I also hope to make a language that could be easily spoken by friends as a way to communicate. Who knows, maybe one day I'll be asked to create an artlang as well! The main reason, however, is for pure unadulterated fun. To say that conlanging has no purpose unless it gets used sounds to me like saying that solving math problems when they don't apply to an actual situation has no purpose. This simply isn't the case. Both these activities exercise our minds and prepare us for practical situations (if not directly, at least through transferable skills). Tolkien didn't invent Sindarin and Quenya overnight with no background in conlanging, it took him years to develop these, and it may have seemed quite futile at the time. Little did he know the impact his conlangs would have.  

 Finally, just a general comment on the 'no purpose' idea. It's relativistic. Purpose needs a referent, nothing has absolute purpose, it's what purpose something holds to an individual that gives it meaning. So when people tell you that conlanging has 'no purpose', don't be insulted, read between the lines, they're really saying that it has no purpose for them. Their loss. :) 

 Wow S-. That was a very smart comment! I agree. 

 Well put S-! I may not be a conlanger, but i bump into the same thing as a conscripter. I would go even further to ask "so speakers alone constitute a language eh?.. well then I suppose dead languages.. like latin, are not considered langauges huh?" The fallacy of the logic of their arguments are easily exposed with reducio absurdum :) 

 All 3 of those arguments don't even need an very sophisticated answer :P Ask them to apply those arguments to English, then to a conlang, and objectively judge what the difference is. I reckon, in 9/10, you'll find a complete conlang will probably score better than English. And I'm pretty sure English is a language. 

 On that note, I've had someone tell me that comparing conlangs to art is just a sign desperation. I don't think I ever got through to him, but I said "yes, it is desperation. Desperation against people who just don't get that some people do some things for enjoyment". 

 But he's right. It's desperation too against ignorance and stupidity. If people just accepted languages as art, without thinking so high of their preconceived ideas about the world (I have no problem with people being high of themselves if they are actually open minded), we wouldn't need the word "artlang" used as much. It'd be damn obvious. 

 But really, to be frank, some people just ain't that trained in the noggin to think about these things at a level worth talking about. Others are, but just are too used to another worldview that it's a pain in the arse to convince them otherwise. 

 1. I hate to begin my response in an uncouth manner, but your friends' collective logical fallacy is infuriating enough to warrant it, I'm afraid. A language is only a language if it is used extensively, by loads of speakers? What a load of bollocks! A language is a complex system of communication that allows one to speak one's mind, voice one's emotions and connect with others. It has nothing to do with size or use. Is not a cat as much an animal as a lion? Is not a bungalow as much a building as a skyscraper? Is not a modest family house, home to three or four, not as much a building as a mansion that houses hundreds? Fluctuating patterns of who, and how many, speak languages does not take away from the fact that they are languages.  When the last native Akkadian speaker died, did a most expressive and beautiful language become a non-language? and did the masses of art and literature produced by its erstwhile speakers become a nonsense? Of course not. Language is not defined by who, or how many, speak it. Esperanto, whilst clunky and ethnocentric, is certainly a language; but so is my own principal language, spoken fluently by a dozen or so folk; and if a person can express themselves and communicate to a reasonable extent in their own conlang, it does not matter whether five hundred others speak it, or if they alone have mastered it - it is a language.  
 2. 'What is the purpose of artlangs?' Since when did art have to have a purpose? The purpose of artlangs is the purpose of art; the purpose of art is art. As an individual, I have produced nothing but artlangs over the years. My purpose was to make something beautiful and mellifluous,  rich and nuanced, and heavily influenced by the language's speaker community. Though I have had minor success when it comes to creative writing, it was never my intention to create a book or a screenplay - the idea of being able to box a universe that has been constructed over 15+ years into a few hundred pages is preposterous to me. I seek no acclaim, no pecuniary benefit, no community (indeed, I kept it as a personal language for many years), and never actively sought other speakers (though there are more than a few). It is sad if art is not enough as a rationale for anything, when I consider it a rationale for almost everything. Ars gratia artis. 
 3. I create and hone conlangs for enjoyment, pure and simple. I have always been intoxicated by languages and find them more beautiful than any concrete object in this world - so it stands to reason that I would be more than tempted to create languages myself. I find it a natural progression of glossophilia - if you love languages, then creating your own is bloody fun. As much as I love all the other languages that I speak, they are like suits bought in a shop - one's conlang is a garment tailored to oneself, where one can pick and mix from the amazing world of languages. I love everything about conlanging, particularly when it comes to my main language, whose import to me I would not be exaggerating were I to say that it was a syrthcelín (language of the soul). I love even the laborious things about conlanging - sitting down for two hours on a gloomy Wednesday night to create names for trees; creating worksheets to explain the intricacies of the language's syntax or subjunctive; (and best of all), creating hundreds of culture-specific idioms. I would give it up just as unwillingly as my other favourite pursuits. It's a lot of fun, an exercise of the imagination, and it hurts no one; so why the kvetching? For those who belittle conlinguistics and conworlding, I pity you - just because you lack the knowledge or creative vision to create a conlang doesn't mean that it is in any way a worthless exercise. 

 A- gave a deep answer. I created T- (and am working out the other languages) entirely for an artistic purpose. While Tolkien created Elvish, and therefore wrote an epic of Middle-Earth, I took the opposite approach: I created the languages of N- so to better write an epic of N-. The languages give the lost continent an added depth which I do not think would have been possible without them. So, for me, creating languages are a form of art, and I create them in order to write an epic, which is another art form. That is my reason. Like with other works of art, the epic of N- should be its own justification, the same as with Tolkien's epic. (Whether it turns out to be as good, you will have to judge.) Now, someone might still ask: "But why create a whole language in order to use it in limited ways? In particular, the majority of readers will probably learn no more of the languages than they absolutely must. Why go to all the trouble?" The shortest answer is that most listeners do not notice all the nuances of the music; but even a casual listener can tell when the drummer missed the beat, or the guitarist played the right note. And readers do not need to know any linguistics, or to speak any N- language, to see that they all have a pattern. So, no: all that work is precisely necessary, for the same reason that Olympic athletes practice for hours, for days on end, for years. All of that is necessary for a good performance. For creating languages, I think the same is true. 

 I conlang because it gives me space to explore. 

 Why do I conlang? Simple: to keep the monsters under my bed at bay. 

 Amazing question,... 1) Each language is a Universe in itself, the same way each Individual might be understood the same way. So, a language is the Way we use to understand the infinite possibilities of thought, emotion, art, science, faith, work, nature, and imagination, etc. There is no need to be a speaker community to have a language, as we can see in nature that all forms of life show language, independent from what we know about them, as human. 2) I agree with the "bonding" aspect of a language. But well, I don't conlang only for the Art of it, but also to be able to understand this "bonding" aspect, and I think conlangs have more to show then Art alone. They convey the needs and wishes of the speaker(s), actually whatever they be, and they're useful in a huge number of ways. 3) I conlang for Freedom. Once I've defined myself as a Free Thinker, I want to get myself free from the "jailing" aspect of the one-way-thinking given by (my) native language(s), or even by the English as (my) second language, or any other natlang, this way I invent languages to think out of the box.

A Virestian Folk Song

At the following link, you can find a Virestian folk song that I wrote some time ago, though I'm only now getting around to posting it on youtube and here. The lyrics, in English and in Paiodd, are at the youtube page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-CMISeUaBg