[conlang_learners] criteria for IE

[Jim Henry]

2009/6/19 Dayle Hill <dwhmusic32 at yahoo.co.uk>:
> Hypothetically, if my conlang was chosen and it 'evolved' from the combined
> learning efforts of others..I'd actually be quite excited about that...It's
> like a dialect, therefore another string the conlang's bow.

Yes; the better-developed artlangs with a fictional context have
different dialects spoken in different regions of their fictional
settings or sociolects spoken by different subcultures.   Even with a
personal language that has no fictional conculture, I sometimes find
conlangers' descriptions of how the language has changed over time or
is used in different ways in different contexts to be at least as
interesting as the basic description of the language's standard
grammar.


> Can anyone clear this up for me. Talking about IE languages...but in this
> context, conlangs of IE influence and style. Is it assumed that a conlang
> can only be termed IE if it shares a majority of IE lexicon?
 .......
> You see, I term my conlang as being full of IE traits, but lexically
> speaking, probably less than 10% of words are derived from any Germanic
.......
> Grammatically, it is similar to IE, with prepositions, adverbs, nom/acc case
> for pronouns etc...but then there are many syntactical rules that are, in my
> opinion, unique.

In the real world we call a language IE if it descends from proto-IE.
 It might have borrowed much of its vocabulary from one or more IE
languages -- I'm doubt if any of the possible examples Olivier
mentioned, or Maltese, or some Native American languages that have
borrowed a lot from English or Spanish, have actually borrowed a
majority of their vocabulary from IE languages, but some have borrowed
a lot -- but if it isn't descended from Proto-IE, it isn't part of the
IE family.   (Maybe such languages could be called "daughters-in-law"
rather than "daughters" of Proto-IE?)

Re: conlangs, I'd say a conlang that, within its fictional history, is
descended from Proto-IE is an IE conlang in th strictest sense, even
if it's replaced the majority of its vocabulary with words from non-IE
sources.   If a conlang merely borrows its vocabulary mostly or
entirely from IE languages and imitates the grammar of IE languages
(like Esperanto or Interlingua), but doesn't have a fictional history
of descent from Proto-IE via various stages of sound changes, grammar
changes, semantic drift of particular words, etc., then I'd consider
it "IE-like" or "IE-esque" but not "IE" tout court.   I'd venture to
say that an auxlang or engelang can't be IE by definition, unless
maybe it has a fictional history of having messily evolved from
Proto-IE and then been overhauled into unnatural regularity by a
language academy or something -- though they can be IE-like in
lexicon, grammar or both, and many are.


> Any ideas? (I ask this because of the unbiast opinions against IE conlangs
> for this project)

It seems as though the bias, to the extent it exists, is relative;
that is, *other things equal* several of us would prefer a non-IE
conlang to an IE conlang because we'd prefer something more unfamiliar
to something familiar, but wouldn't rule out learning an IE conlang
per se if it has other nifty traits, especially if it's unusual for an
IE language.   Dalcurian, from my brief examination, might suit us in
spite of being IE or somewhat IE-like (with e.g. its adjective
tense/aspect, its syntactic distinction of inherent and non-inherent
adjectives,  the different ways of marking single vs. double
genitives...).

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/