Re: Linguistics journals

[Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@MATH.ACAD.BG>]

HACKER G N wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, And Rosta wrote:
> > I myself can think of hardly any ways in which Lojban might
> > legitimately be discussed in lx journals.
>
> Fairly shattering. In what ways is it not relevant?
[...]
> Invented languages are not worthy of study in linguistics?

Linguistic research, as any other sort of research, amounts to discovering
things about some aspect of the world that can't be studied in another way
-- say, by simply reading a description.  Natural languages have evolved
and work following principles of which we have no explicit knowledge, so
it makes sense to study them in order to figure what those principles are.
It obviously makes no sense to do the same with languages that were created
consciously by our peers (`I'll hide in the wardrobe and you'll seek me').

This doesn't mean that a conlang can be of no interest to linguist, but it
is interesting *in a different way*.  For example, once it has acquired a
community of speakers (better still, some that speak it natively), one can
look at the sort of things that the speakers do to it, the degree to which
they adhere to or deviate from the standard as set up by the creator, and
try to rationalise the observed phenomena and try to link them to linguistic
theory.  But of course it'll be some time before Lojban gets to that point.

--
`Meum est propositum in taberna mori;    Vinum sit appositum sitienti ori:
 Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori "Deus sit propitius isti potatori".'
                          (Archpoet of Cologne, `The Confession of Golias')
Ivan A Derzhanski                              <iad@banmatpc.math.acad.bg>
H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria  <http://www.math.acad.bg/~iad/>
W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences