levels, such as -l
mungojelly (SwiftRain, swifty)
about what I've been thinking.
I imagine qww'xzx as being divided into levels, or layers. Each level
adds another letter, and the words that contain that letter. The
first level is -l, which has words made only of "l", like "ll" or
"lll". The next level is -k, which has words containing both "l" and
"k", such as "lk" or "lkl". The level -j has words like "jl" or "kj"
or "jkl".
The first level, -l, is meant to be very simple. I don't think that
"ll" and "lll" should even exactly mean anything; they're just easy
words to say, perhaps a bit like "hmm" or "umm". It should be
trivially easy to learn the language up to -l.
The language at a particular level I've been thinking of as qww'xzx
plus the level, such as qww'xzx-l or qww'xzx-g. A group for
discussion of/in a layer could be named like qwwxzx-j. (Those group
names are widely available!)
I also think it makes sense to put the level you are on as a suffix on
your name, such as John-k or Steve-j. Basically putting a suffix
means that you want to receive messages using words up to that level.
The primary purpose of this is to be able to slowly increase your
level, being exposed to new words without being overwhelmed by them.
Another way to use it, though, would be to intentionally choose what
kinds of communication you want in qww'xzx-- for instance in order to
take a sort of break from the language you could set yourself as -l,
and then when people saw that letter on your name they'd start sending
you messages that were only like "ll lll ll lll" and you could just
type back "lll ll".. easy, relaxing.
Until there's anything substantial made for the higher levels, I'm
going to identify myself as on -l, so for now I'm Mungojelly-l.
Hopefully I'll be Mungojelly-k in no time. :)
<3,
mungojelly-l
Alex Fink
> The first level, -l, is meant to be very simple. I don't think that
> "ll" and "lll" should even exactly mean anything; they're just easy
> words to say, perhaps a bit like "hmm" or "umm". It should be
> trivially easy to learn the language up to -l.
A couple first ideas on what -l might do:
(0) basically an elaboration of your "hmm", "umm": turn-taking
functions (holding or ceding the floor, like 'um') and filler words
('mm' ~= ACK) and other discourse-regulating phenomena like this.
(1) the purest emotives, the sort of things which there exist well-
understood emoticons for, or something like a simplissimo slice of
Lojban's attitudinal system.
Given the sorts of phonological values discourse-regulators tend to
have in English at least -- [@] and [m(=)] and some glottals -- I
would not at all mind if qww'xzx <l> were to have those sorts of
values. (And in general I feel no particular compulsion to have
qww'xzx values of letters match their typical deployments in Roman
scripts...)
> I also think it makes sense to put the level you are on as a suffix on
> your name, such as John-k or Steve-j. Basically putting a suffix
> means that you want to receive messages using words up to that level.
> The primary purpose of this is to be able to slowly increase your
> level, being exposed to new words without being overwhelmed by them.
> Another way to use it, though, would be to intentionally choose what
> kinds of communication you want in qww'xzx-- for instance in order to
> take a sort of break from the language you could set yourself as -l,
> and then when people saw that letter on your name they'd start sending
> you messages that were only like "ll lll ll lll" and you could just
> type back "lll ll".. easy, relaxing.
Alex-l
Brett Williams
>
> Mmm. ;-)
lll;
> A couple first ideas on what -l might do:
>
> (0) basically an elaboration of your "hmm", "umm": turn-taking
> functions (holding or ceding the floor, like 'um') and filler words
> ('mm' ~= ACK) and other discourse-regulating phenomena like this.
Yes, that sounds like just the sort of thing that should be in -l.
What I would like us to be able to do is teach people who are brand
new to the language: "Oh, -l is impossibly easy. You just say ll and
lll and stuff. Don't worry about it." And that might be somewhat of
an exaggeration, but it should be basically true. There might be some
hidden character to each of the words on -l that you can tune into,
different situations they're most often used in, but they shouldn't
have so much identity that by just saying them randomly you could get
the "wrong one".
By the apostrophe connecting system that I came up with, the words on
-l go like:
ll
lll
llll (ll + ll)
ll'lll (ll + lll)
lll'll (lll + ll)
ll'llll (ll + llll)
llll'll (llll + ll)
lll'llll (lll + llll)
llll'lll (llll + lll)
Huh. Kind of a lot of them, now that I write it out. But it's better
for redundancy of course if we don't use every one of them.
And then i've also considered using , to mean putting another root on
the outside of something that already has an apostrophe (so it's not
ambiguous):
lll,ll'lll (lll + ll'lll)
vs
lll'll,lll (lll'll + lll)
I'd be interested to hear whether you like the , idea. I'm ambivalent
about it.
Anyway I feel like qww'xzx-l is almost ready to roll out. I think
maybe it might be best not to even consciously choose personalities
for the different words, but just to start using them and see if we
can get a feel for them over time. The worst that could happen is
that they all moosh together and become pretty much the same meaning,
which would just make it that much easier for new people to learn.
But I bet we could eventually feel out interesting meanings for them,
especially if we're using them in response to English or to higher
level qww'xzx conversation so there's some context.
I'm in no huge hurry to work on -k, BTW. My intuition is that it's
better to focus on the work that needs to be done for -l, and allow
the higher levels to grow out of a certain groundedness there. I
don't think I've fully explained my vision for how I'd like to see the
levels of qww'xzx work: Each level is a sort of world onto itself.
There could be a qww'xzx-l chat, qww'xzx-l forums, etc. There's the
whole language education process, to teach you qww'xzx-l, but because
it's a language with one letter, it's a super abbreviated process--
learn the letters of the language, l, ok you're done!
So I'd like to take the time to bring -l to life before moving on. I
think we've got almost enough already that we could start a qww'xzx-l
chat or forum and speak it in text. Then we just need a sound or two
or three for the letter L and we'll be at the point where we can make
educational audio recordings, videos, etc. We sort of widen the
tunnel behind us so that other people can catch up to join the
project. The more we allow the language to be inviting, the more new
waves of students will be able to bring their fresh enthusiasm all the
way to the avant garde of the language and propel us forward. So I
think we can go forward most effectively by looking back and smoothing
the way for those who will join us.
> (1) the purest emotives, the sort of things which there exist well-
> understood emoticons for, or something like a simplissimo slice of
> Lojban's attitudinal system.
I think this sounds just right for -j or -k. Basically my vision for
-k and -j is that once you get to qww'xzx-j that's sort of the first
serious level. It's not enough to have a real conversation, of
course. But my hope is that -j will be enough to have a social
conversation. Words for hello and goodbye, to ask and answer how
you're doing. Maybe even "my name is" and "nice to meetcha". A
little chatty language.
So either -k as emotive words and -j as greeting and conversation
management words, perhaps, or viceversa, or mixing them up.
I'm going to answer another point in a separate post. ll;
<3,
mungojelly-l
Eeveelyn
or maybe a conjunction. I'm not sure how this would work in actual
conversations, but it could help build a grammatical system.
Brett Williams
> have in English at least -- [@] and [m(=)] and some glottals -- I
> would not at all mind if qww'xzx <l> were to have those sorts of
> values. (And in general I feel no particular compulsion to have
> qww'xzx values of letters match their typical deployments in Roman
> scripts...)
The way that I think about it is that the conscript that someone will
hopefully soon volunteer to make for us will be the "real" letters of
qww'xzx. The Roman letters are just chosen so that they'll be
conveniently laid out-- so that you don't have to remember what's
allowed on each level, even which letters are included in each level,
you can just know that if you're trying to speak -f you can use all
the letters to the right of F. Once we know more about our alphabet
we can make fonts and layouts and someday unicode entries to make
sense of it.
Your ideas about the phonology are great, but I don't want to go too
far down that road. One of the things I'd most like to avoid here is
consensus micromanagement. It does actually have its benefits, but I
would like to try something else for once. Let me try to explain with
an analogy.
A language is a very large project, and we're all working on it
together in a sort of workshop. We have various tools we can use, and
lots of different parts of the language that need building. Let's say
it's like a boat. It's like a big boat we're all building that we're
going to set sail on.
So the usual way that collective conlanging works is like, someone
goes (tentatively, with everyone else watching) to build part of the
boat. They pick up a tool and they go somewhere and they start trying
to make something. And everyone else follows right behind them.
Everyone is literally peering over their shoulder. And as soon as
they strike the tool once, everyone is kibitzing: "Is that the best
way you could have done that?" and "Let's think of twenty other
possible ways to do that." and "Oh no!! The boat is (probably) going
to sink (if and when we eventually get it put together) because of
this tiny detail you invented!!"
I guess then qww'xzx is like this big weird raft that we're planning
to make together. We're on the shore right now, but what I'm
suggesting is that as soon as we get a couple of logs strapped
together into the -l level we should go ahead and toss them out into
the water and get aboard. The water's shallow here; if we fall out
we'll be fine.
We might get more done, and have more fun, if we didn't look over each
other's shoulders quite as much. We can divide up a lot of the work
by specialty, and trust someone to come up with something. We can say
to someone: Go and get us some sort of lashing to tie this raft
together. The rest of us then can be gathering logs and getting other
things ready, instead of having to tag along with that person
critiquing their choice of vine.
The schism that I wrote into the foundational predestiny of qww'xzx is
emblematic of that approach: Split up and then report back. As well
as not bumping into each other, we'll also have more eyes, more
independence.. we'll have more pride of authorship.. we'll have more
history. Even if something that someone invents ends up being
impractical, or just unpopular, it still adds to the totality of what
qww'xzx is and has been.
ll;; Alex, if you'd like to invent a phonology for qww'xzx, I invite
you to do so. I'll personally pledge to study seriously what you come
up with. Even a partial phonology, beginning with l k j h etc., for
however few letters, would be perfectly useful, and then could be
continued later as a different project. There's no guarantee of
course that someone won't someday come up with an alternative
phonology for qww'xzx that people end up preferring, but even then
what we make now will lie indelibly underneath at the heart of the
language, remembered as the first way it was spoken and the beginning
of its story.
Alternatively (or also), Alex, I would be very interested in a
phonology (or whatever you call it) for qww'xzx in your gripping
system. I've been intrigued by that project, anyway, so it seems like
it would be great synergy: I'd like to learn more about what you've
come up with, and it might be easier for you to put effort into
qww'xzx if your work here is connected with that project you're
already dedicated to.
Making a language is a big project. Running out of different things
to get done is the least of our worries. So I suggest that as new
people come in looking to help, we encourage them to find their own
niche, to contribute something that qww'xzx has never seen before.
Some ideas will be used more than others in practice, but I believe
that incomplete explorations will still have an important place in our
history. Old things will be referenced, sometimes even revived, and
even when silent they'll stand as a strong foundation to inspire
future creation.
<3,
mungojelly-l
Alex Fink
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> By the apostrophe connecting system that I came up with, the words on
> -l go like:
>
> ll
> lll
> llll (ll + ll)
> ll'lll (ll + lll)
> lll'll (lll + ll)
> ll'llll (ll + llll)
> llll'll (llll + ll)
> lll'llll (lll + llll)
> llll'lll (llll + lll)
_l_ in my morpheme, or five or more?
> And then i've also considered using , to mean putting another root on
> the outside of something that already has an apostrophe (so it's not
> ambiguous):
>
> lll,ll'lll (lll + ll'lll)
> vs
> lll'll,lll (lll'll + lll)
>
> I'd be interested to hear whether you like the , idea. I'm ambivalent
> about it.
stages of qww'xzx, we could have a character-by-character progression
of stages of binding marks. Start with _'_ to just glom morphemes
together in pairs. Then throw in _,_, then perhaps other stuff.
Perhaps we could even introduce marks that add special meanings to the
combination. (Or, if we were really clever, we might be able to come
up with a way to use four different marks to encode every possible
tree structure of an arbitrarily long string of morphemes...)
> Anyway I feel like qww'xzx-l is almost ready to roll out. I think
> maybe it might be best not to even consciously choose personalities
> for the different words, but just to start using them and see if we
> can get a feel for them over time.
> So I'd like to take the time to bring -l to life before moving on. I
> think we've got almost enough already that we could start a qww'xzx-l
> chat or forum and speak it in text.
> I'm in no huge hurry to work on -k, BTW. My intuition is that it's
> better to focus on the work that needs to be done for -l, and allow
> the higher levels to grow out of a certain groundedness there.
ideas for later stages. Maybe -l is an exception, being the base of
the whole enterprise, but I imagine that in general we can sustain
work on a few layers at once.
> Each level is a sort of world onto itself.
language there might be to bring into play in the later stages.
> > (1) the purest emotives, the sort of things which there exist well-
> > understood emoticons for, or something like a simplissimo slice of
> > Lojban's attitudinal system.
>
> I think this sounds just right for -j or -k. Basically my vision for
> -k and -j is that once you get to qww'xzx-j that's sort of the first
> serious level. It's not enough to have a real conversation, of
> course. But my hope is that -j will be enough to have a social
> conversation. Words for hello and goodbye, to ask and answer how
> you're doing. Maybe even "my name is" and "nice to meetcha". A
> little chatty language.
>
> So either -k as emotive words and -j as greeting and conversation
> management words, perhaps, or viceversa, or mixing them up.
someone asks how I'm doing with a -j word I can reply with a -k word.
some nuts-and-bolts grammar? Would that be -h?
Alex-l
Alex Fink
intercalated reply at present, except: ll;
-- very good that you've got a plan to avoid the rock on which most of
these collaborative projects founder;
-- I will start thinking about whipping up a phonology (or two! llll;
Hey, why not have a "phonology" for any channel we like?), and let
y'all know.
Alex-l
Brett Williams
I think that sounds great, Eeveelyn!
I'm not sure how it would actually work, either, but I'm not sure we
need to know.
I think it could work fine for the -l words to have both the bland
feeling of hesitation words, and for them to take up grammatical roles
as well. Here are some examples for instance from English that I've
been thinking of that give me a sense for how this could work (note
that I don't think that ll and lll should be anything like any of
these examples, but there's a certain spirit to them): Saying a
hesitation noise to show a correction, like "I went to the store..
uh.. the *bank*, and blah blah blah..";;; the contentless "and"
between conversational sentences (or ".i" in lojban);;; I keep
thinking of a form that's like "I ate a bagel, uh, french fries, and,
uh...", even though I know that the "uh" there isn't really
conjuncting, it's just in an empty space and all you need is an empty
space sometimes to conjunct-- but I feel like in qww'xzx there could
be more of a conjuncty feeling there;;;;;; I'm thinking in general of
the way all the English hesitation noises like um hmm er uhhh can just
be a hesitation, but also they can be a hesitation before a particular
construct, and give a certain character to it, like "what happened
next was kind of, err, peculiar" or "was kind of, hmm, peculiar";;;
So I have this feeling of how it could be a little different from that
in qww'xzx; ; like, the -l words are very general words for putting
things into a sentence;; but also you could just put elided things
into the sentence; like "i ate a banana; and;;;" and it's like a
banana and some other thing which isn't mentioned;; or like what's an
example I feel ilke it happens in English; "it was really late, sooo
..." and then you leave off the implication;;; I feel like it makes
sense to say those sort of words the way we've been using lll a
little; as a sort of noncommittal acknowledgement when someone says
something;; someone says something so you say "lll;;;" and lll is like
saying "and" sort of but it's also kind of like saying "and how";;;;
or something like that :)
I'm going to start a qww'xzx-l group soon that will be just a
discussion of the -l words (and the sounds, symbols, ideas, etc. of
qww'xxz-l). I think it would make sense to mix the -l words into the
English we use there. That could maybe be a way to explore the
grammatical feeling of them before we have a lot of qww'xzx words to
play with. And as we make more words on higher levels and relate the
-l words to them, we can bring that grammar back down into how we use
-l words in our English on the -l level, so it will help to foreshadow
the language to new learners.
<3,
mungojelly-l
Brett Williams
>> ll
>> lll
>> llll (ll + ll)
>> ll'lll (ll + lll)
>> lll'll (lll + ll)
>> ll'llll (ll + llll)
>> llll'll (llll + ll)
>> lll'llll (lll + llll)
>> llll'lll (llll + lll)
>
> Hm, did I miss some morpheme structure constraints? Can I have one
> _l_ in my morpheme, or five or more?
I had to think to remember my own thinking when you asked! If I
remember correctly, my idea was just that llll would automatically be
a compound of ll + ll, so I didn't include l because then you couldn't
tell if it was ll+ll or lll+l. Or something. llll;;; I hereby
rescind that notion. Whatever kind of roots make sense will be just
fine.
> Well, conceivably, just like the letter-by-letter progression of
> stages of qww'xzx, we could have a character-by-character progression
> of stages of binding marks. Start with _'_ to just glom morphemes
> together in pairs. Then throw in _,_, then perhaps other stuff.
> Perhaps we could even introduce marks that add special meanings to the
> combination. (Or, if we were really clever, we might be able to come
> up with a way to use four different marks to encode every possible
> tree structure of an arbitrarily long string of morphemes...)
Well I dunno bout all that. My head kind of hurts trying to think about it. :P
But I did realize that I used another symbol too, the dash in the
level names: qww'xzx-l
So possibly
' = compounding
, = prefixing
- = suffixing
> Ooh, organicity! llll; In view of this ---
ll; ll lll;;;
> I await the creation of the -l forum.
Well then wait no longer: http://groups.google.com/group/qwwxzx-l
> Perhaps, but of course I wouldn't want to turn down folk who come with
> ideas for later stages. Maybe -l is an exception, being the base of
> the whole enterprise, but I imagine that in general we can sustain
> work on a few layers at once.
Since qww'xzx has this vibe of predestiny, I thought it might make
sense to schedule the roll-out. Since it's the first of the month,
what I thought of was just to roll out a new level on the first of
each month.
The first level is simple, but February is a short month. ;) It'll be
March 1st before we know it and we'll start on -k. Then on April
Fool's Day qww'xzx-j will begin. Next winter the home row will be
complete. Uh. Hmm. ll;; Nine months. Where else have I seen that
gestation period.
> It'll be interesting to see what new broadenings of scope of the
> language there might be to bring into play in the later stages.
If we succeed at all;; we'll surprise ourselves at every turn;;;
> lll; Perhaps -k for emotives and -j for greetings &c; then when
> someone asks how I'm doing with a -j word I can reply with a -k word.
Hey that's actually a really useful pattern. Passive use of a word
comes before active use, so it makes sense that the words on one level
should be answers to words on the next level. If someone expresses an
emotion with -k I can see how it would make sense to acknowledge with
an -l word, so we can extend the pattern at least that far.
lll'll;; It's not quite grammar or a sentence, but that does imply a
little conversation form:
(some -j question)
(some -k answer)
lll;;;
Sort of like: "Sup?" "Nothin." "Uhnh."
<3,
mungojelly-l
mungojelly (SwiftRain, swifty)
On Jan 30, 6:15 pm, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> -- very good that you've got a plan to avoid the rock on which most of
> these collaborative projects founder;
be crashes. So the least we can do is avoid the rocks we already know
about, and crash into something new. Who knows, we might hit open
ocean.
One rock is that someone runs away with the language. With no process
or division of labor, that's by far the most common case. My first
collective conlang, J.B.Blingo, fell on that rock, looking back. I
was one of the people who ran away with it. J.B.Blingo was almost
(but not entirely) a word-by-word substitution cypher for English. We
developed it in an AIM chatroom. Many of the words we substituted
were absurd-- the word for "when" was "volkspolizei"-- it was a sort
of experiment in absurdity. At first there were more than a dozen
active participants, but after the number of words got above 100 or so
there was a substantial barrier to entry: Instead of English peppered
with amusing words, it was an impenetrable code. A few of us
developed it further.. then just three of us.. then just two of us,
and finally I think I only knew the last few words myself. Mostly my
friend Justin and I ran away with J.B.Blingo together, though. I
think it had about 200 words, and we could speak for a while without
using any English words, but we had left all of our friends in the
dust.
Rules lawyering to the point where people are afraid to speak the
language is another rock. With a brand new language it's inescapable
that everyone will be a novice at first, but often everyone gets a
grammar lesson every time they open their mouth. It's my belief that
language functions very well in the presence of bad data, and that the
way to get an unusual sound or grammar construct to happen is to
ignore everyone's habits and keep reinforcing it positively as an
ideal, with examples.
Endless debate over triviality is a rock, or perhaps it's excess
ballast that holds most new languages down. There's always this
feeling that the language will be harmed or hampered by some proposed
feature, but I've never seen that actually occur. Never. If
something is ever a continuing problem in a language, it tends to fix
itself naturally if allowed, or else can easily be altered. But the
worrying itself can be a drowning weight.
The greatest unseen language killer though, IMO, is a complete poverty
of pedagogy. In order to create a language feature, someone will
think it over in their mind dozens of times, trying different
possibilities and relating it to the language they already know. They
give themselves a pretty solid idea of what they have in mind. But
then they go to share it with the community, and they just write a
line or two about it, with no examples or a single one. Often every
speaker ends up learning the facts about the language from the same
dry summary. Fears of the language changing or being misrepresented
assist in maintaining this emptiness, by making people afraid to
create pedagogical materials, or stuck in a perspective where the
preexisting documents represent the only official truth.
It's usually just a matter of disorganization. The same basic
questions have actually been asked and answered a dozen times, but the
answers are unsorted lost history on a mailing list, or completely
vanished chats and private conversations. People will explain their
personal, imperfect ideas of the language in private to each other, in
a conversational situation, but they're afraid to give their
understandings a stamp of officialness and thus subject them to even
more than the usual level of criticism.
I'll suggest two preventative remedies for this problem. The first is
that we follow the great rule of improv comedy: "Yes, And". Simply
accept what someone else says and move forward-- even if where you
take it forward is in an entirely different direction. I've been
selling qww'xzx exclusively as an art language not because I don't
think it could eventually be useful for mundane purposes, but because
it gives us absolute liberty to follow this rule. Someone can come up
with something interesting, and the rest of us can just say "OK,
sounds interesting." We don't have to judge it against any standard
whatsoever. So permissiveness must rule, because something is much
more than nothing.
The second remedy (which still needs more details to be a full plan),
is that the creation of educational materials should be systematic, in
the sense that there should be a social process which produces them,
and produces them abundantly. We're currently doing this social
process of list discussion, for instance, which is a very productive
process, but we're not necessarily even aware of trying to produce
anything; we just do the next step in the dance. Sometimes the step
we do is "type some of your thoughts into this box", and as a result
of the continued repeated performance of that step, a solid detailed
record, a massive collective work is accumulated. No constructed
language that I know of produces an abundance of introductory learning
materials (E-o has some, but it's taken centuries to accumulate), and
yet many (probably most) collective language projects do produce an
abundance of email. So I think it's simply a matter of making the
process of creating educational materials just as engaging, routine
and safe as producing conversation (which admittedly remains an undone
task).
Many other rocks are related to ownership and identity, and in these
matters I have a special role myself for qww'xzx, as its original
founder. In my first official proclamation as Founder, I hereby
proclaim that all of you who have joined with me are also its
Founders, and furthermore that every new student of qww'xzx is its
Founder and Foremost Authority. I humbly submit all of my ideas to
your criticism, and I maintain no final veto or authority. I intend
to play what remains of my role of original founder by watching and
making sure that no one person, myself or anyone else, takes qww'xzx
as their personal plaything. And I certainly hereby relinquish all
claims of copyright, trademark, patent, or anything else over the name
qww'xzx and the concept and structure of the language, which may be
used freely by anyone, anywhere for any purpose.
Getting hung up on the negative is a rock too. But a little sober
studying of our charts can't hurt too much, heading out into these
dangerous waters.
lll;;;
<3,
mungojelly-l
Alex Fink
> On Jan 30, 6:15 pm, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > -- very good that you've got a plan to avoid the rock on which most of
> > these collaborative projects founder;
>
> There are a lot of rocks! And our only way of charting them seems to
> be crashes. So the least we can do is avoid the rocks we already know
> about, and crash into something new. Who knows, we might hit open
> ocean.
a couple causes in my mind;;; I've been in several collaborative
projects;; but perhaps fewer than you;; and the majority seemed to
lose the small group of interested founders after an never (and never-
to-be-) settled period of proposal and counter-proposal on the
phonology; or something of the sort;;;
ll; The big exception is Kalusa;; have you seen it? Although it was
reduced to not many more than four of us after the first several days;
it remained vibrant for quite a long while;; this I think was due to
the language being specified in an _exclusively_ corpus-based mode; so
that the only real way to effect any change without putting forth some
sample sentences go introducing it; and hoping people voted them up;;
this was compromised in practice by a discussion-thread which at times
veered a bit rules-lawyery (and some think that was the beginning of
the end); but the ideal was there;;; What eventually brought it down
was a guy who just started not playing nice;; ;; voting all the
sentences down into oblivion; swamping us with clones of himself; and
so forth;;;
> The greatest unseen language killer though, IMO, is a complete poverty
> of pedagogy.
of new folks;; one aspect of this is pedagogy; but another is just
remaining visible;; For many collaborations there's no way or no
reason for someone new to even be able to find them after their
initial splash;;; But certainly your point here stands; that there
being no way for newbies to get in on things is fatal too;;;
> I'll suggest two preventative remedies for this problem. The first is
> that we follow the great rule of improv comedy: "Yes, And". Simply
> accept what someone else says and move forward-- even if where you
> take it forward is in an entirely different direction. I've been
> selling qww'xzx exclusively as an art language not because I don't
> think it could eventually be useful for mundane purposes, but because
> it gives us absolute liberty to follow this rule. Someone can come up
> with something interesting, and the rest of us can just say "OK,
> sounds interesting." We don't have to judge it against any standard
> whatsoever. So permissiveness must rule, because something is much
> more than nothing.
role is; of sitting down and comparing notes; as we've started for
instance doing in the thread on punctuation? If we're all free to
take things in our own respective different directions; and prepare
our own pedagogical materials; the language could certainly take its
sweet time ever converging to anything;;; lll; not to say this is a
problem! I'm put in mind of the NGL/Tokcir project; which came into
the possession of three(?) rather different systems of verbal
morphology; that I think have coexisted ever since;; for a language as
otherwise unified as it's meant to be this gives a schizophrenic sort
of impression;;;
> The second remedy (which still needs more details to be a full plan),
> is that the creation of educational materials should be systematic, in
> the sense that there should be a social process which produces them,
> and produces them abundantly. We're currently doing this social
> process of list discussion, for instance, which is a very productive
> process, but we're not necessarily even aware of trying to produce
> anything; we just do the next step in the dance.
> and safe as producing conversation (which admittedly remains an undone
> task).
we're churning out here;;;
> Many other rocks are related to ownership and identity, and in these
> matters I have a special role myself for qww'xzx, as its original
> founder. In my first official proclamation as Founder, I hereby
> proclaim that all of you who have joined with me are also its
> Founders, and furthermore that every new student of qww'xzx is its
> Founder and Foremost Authority.
Alex-l
Brett Williams
>
> ll; The big exception is Kalusa;; have you seen it?
Yes!;; I found it not too long after it died;; lll; I spent most of a
day studying it once I think;;;
I was sorry I didn't make it Kalusa in time to participate;; ;;
That's one goal I have with qww'xzx; is to take it easy enough that
there's a large window of time for people to stumble upon the
project;;; And by opening another level each month; I hope that it
will repeatedly have some of the freshness of something brand new;;;
> Although it was reduced to not many more than four of us
> after the first several days;
Who were the four of you?;;; Should we invite them to qww'xzx?;;;
Yourself; Gary Shannon; ll; ; ; I was at least going to extend a
personal invitation to Gary; as he's one of the people who loves these
collective projects;;; Feel free to write him as well;; you know him
better than I do;; lll; multiple invitations help get someone's
attention; as a rule;;;;
> it remained vibrant for quite a long while;; this I think was due to
> the language being specified in an _exclusively_ corpus-based mode; so
> that the only real way to effect any change without putting forth some
> sample sentences go introducing it; and hoping people voted them up;;
Yes; with corpus-based languages you're sure of at least one example
of everything;; lll of course with the way language works in the wild;
understanding how a language works from watching examples is very
natural;; llll;;;
I'm no fan of the process of voting up & down people's contributions
to a language; though;; Especially if; like with Kalusa; the effect
of a "no" vote is to drop things down the memory hole; declare them
"invalid"; and cleanse them from the language;;; I heard from
Peterson's Smiley Award summary on Kalusa for instance the story of
nga/ngo; first personal gender-marked pronouns;; how they were
invented; used and explored;; then voted down & undone; removed;
banished;;;
I don't want things and ideas to ever be quite so harshly banished
from qww'xzx;; lll; if something is unpopular; it will naturally be
unused and then mostly forgotten;; but even those creations which
don't become the standard language I would like to see honored;
appreciated; and stored away lovingly as history;;;;
> this was compromised in practice by a discussion-thread which at times
> veered a bit rules-lawyery (and some think that was the beginning of
> the end); but the ideal was there;;; What eventually brought it down
> was a guy who just started not playing nice;; ;; voting all the
> sentences down into oblivion; swamping us with clones of himself; and
> so forth;;;
Rules invite rules-lawyering and other abuses;;; Not that formal
structures are useless; but they shouldn't be tossed around casually;;
;; if you're going to rigidly structure something you had best be sure
it's hardened against the strongest attack you're likely ever to
encounter;; ;; build for the 30 year flood; so to speak;;;
For qww'xzx I imagine a more liquid defense;;; Attempts at trolling;
disruption; or conquer can be prepared a place; starting now;; The
weight and effort of them can be used by us; redirected judo-like;; ;;
They will add to our history;;; They will enrich us;; they will
strengthen us;;; That it's unpredictable who and when and what kind
of disruptions we'll encounter will only help with this;; lll; someone
will unwittingly write for us a more interesting history of qww'xzx
than we could invent right now ourselves;;;
Because the root killer of languages; of course; is that things stop
happening there;; People stop being interested; people stop
contributing;; A language is a story; and it only continues as long
as there is somethiing to say;;; ;; So even a troll's energy &
attention can be sustaining to it; potentially;; Something's always
got to happen;;;
What turns it into a problem is when everyone else joins in; feeding
the troll & adopting a darker; more cynical view on everything that's
been done so far;; Disruptions shatter illusions of competency;
requiring difficult reassessments of fundamental assumptions;; I
believe that to survive the disruptions that come; we must be willing
and ready to change;;;
> lll'll;; What do you think; or should I ask what do you think the
> role is; of sitting down and comparing notes; as we've started for
> instance doing in the thread on punctuation? If we're all free to
> take things in our own respective different directions; and prepare
> our own pedagogical materials; the language could certainly take its
> sweet time ever converging to anything;;; lll; not to say this is a
> problem! I'm put in mind of the NGL/Tokcir project; which came into
> the possession of three(?) rather different systems of verbal
> morphology; that I think have coexisted ever since;; for a language as
> otherwise unified as it's meant to be this gives a schizophrenic sort
> of impression;;;
ll'll;; this is a difficult; subtle question;; lll; my belief is that
we need a practical; responsive answer;;; It's not really
one-size-fits-all;;;
Open unstructured discussions can be very productive about some
things; sometimes;; Semantics for instance; such as what the various
semicolon shapes mean; has an almost magical ability to incorporate
harmlessly seemingly contradictory ideas;; ; One person can argue
that a word should mean a large domestic animal and someone else can
argue it should mean an addictive street drug; and they can both get
their way with little confusion ("horse");;; The only problem comes
if people are unwilling to allow everyone's semantic visions fair
access to play with the words;; ;; that is; it's possible to say
"Hey!;; What are you doing putting such a vile meaning on my nice
harmless word about dressage and manes with pink ribbons?!;; I call
foul!";; but really practically speaking you can dress up the
semantics of a word like a Christmas tree and it's still perfectly
useable; magically;;;
Other parts of language work differently;; ;; Systems like phonology
and grammar are small sets of rules; learned slowly and deeply and
then used unconsciously as the fabric of every utterance;;;
Complications to those systems slow learning of the language
dramatically; and changes to them can rapidly move the entire language
out of reach of even people who have already spent a lot of time
studying it;;; ;;; Here a much more conservative and closed approach
is unfortunately necessary;;;
My proposed strategy for those certain areas then (of phonology;
grammar; and whatever else ruins the party if you're always fiddling
with it) is to entrust them to someone; as we've entrusted Alex with
making his phonology;;; This is not meant to be an absolute
dictatorial role; or a cutting off of other possibilities; but just a
collective agreement to let something be invented and then to let it
rest;; lll to actually give it a solid trial;;; ;; There's no rule or
law saying that someone can't come along and say "hey; I thought of
these changes to Alex's phonology" or "hey; I made this whole other
phonology";; but they'll have to have some very compelling reason if
they expect anyone to make the effort to switch;; More likely if
someone comes up with a fiddly new idea about the phonology; we can
just politely try out their idea once or twice and then file it away
as forgotten history (just like what happens almost every time someone
thinks of a variation on how to pronounce or spell English);;;
Allowing people authorship of parts of the language is also fitting; I
think; with the scale and social structure that new languages actually
operate on;; ;; Usually a small; new language is a project of a
handful of particular people; but still there's a sort of fantasy (an
explicit fantasy; for an artlang;; or a delusional fantasy; for an
auxlang) of a whole world of people speaking the language; and the
participants have only the anonymous roles that they'd have in that
mass crowd;;; Really there are just a few of us; and while there will
hopefully be a trickle of newbies; the time is not ripe for thousands
to rush to the cause of qww'xzx!;;; So to have all of us without
distinction rushing around as a pack descending on one part of the
language at a time and all picking it apart together;; ;; well have
you ever seen young children playing soccer; the way they'll all
huddle around the ball?;; so I'm saying we should spread out a little
bit; and each pick a position;; just because one person is a forward
doesn't mean other people aren't allowed on their part of the field;
just that we're being strategic and having some productive division of
responsibility;;;
I can imagine a lot of different roles that people could take up;; ;
phonology (taken); word formation; syntax (perhaps divided in parts);
script; gesture; sentence intonation; poetic/musical forms; naming
conventions; etc;; So I would hope that in the near future anyone who
wants to help can find something to do that hasn't even been touched
yet;; there's no reason to step on each other's toes;;; If someday
qww'xzx has all of those things; plus an extensive vocabulary; well
then it might be time to stop constructing it and just let it be a
living language!;;; If we learn each other's creations and focus on
teaching them instead of critiquing them; I believe that qww'xzx will
soon live;;; Productive work; respecting each other; building upon
what's been made;; that's the way to build something strong;;;;
<3,
mungojelly-l
Alex Fink
the direct question;;; ;;
> Who were the four of you?;;; Should we invite them to qww'xzx?;;;
Gary Shannon whom you note; David Peterson; Jim Henry; Sean Palmer
(http://inamidst.com/sbp/ ; I don't know where he frequents); and Tom
Chappell = Eldin Raigmore who was the troll;; and I suspect I've
missed some people who were earlier to drop out;;; We might invite
several of them; lll;;;
Relatedly; there was a thread just after the fall of Kalusa
speculating on its lessons; which you'd probably find stimulating;; ;;
http://archives.conlang.info/cae/vhuelza/tialsaenwhuen.html ;;;
Alex-l
Alex Fink
> missed some people who were earlier to drop out;;;