Talk:Conlang/Intermediate

Preliminary caveats
There are some cautions I'd like to get into readers' heads before they start taking on board the analytical terminology in this level. Since it seems too little for a whole separate module within this level, a natural place to put it is as a section heading on this page. However, it occurs to me that perhaps the introductory page for each level should have a short section heading for preliminary remarks, because if some of them don't have such a section-heading, readers might look there first, get the impression that the level-introduction pages don't have any specfic content, and not bother to look at them thereafter, thus failing to see the specific content here. So I'm considering whether I can think of worthwhile things to say on each of the other level-introduction pages.

The essence of what I want to say here is that terminology is a map, language is the territory, and one oughtn't mistake the map for the territory. A language might put the boundaries between things in different places than the terminology does, defying the terminology both by what it does and by what it doesn't group together. Language devices may serve multiple functions that the terminology doesn't suggest would be related. Language is also likely to have multiple ways of doing things, rather than selecting one way from a list of strategies (as well as the strategies it has possibly not fitting neatly into items on the list). In some cases the distinctions made by the terminology may describe categories that don't even usually have conceptual significance. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:45, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I think you should go ahead with this; It's a useful thing to say and this is the appropriate place to say it. Most of the "branch" pages aren't particularly useful at present --- little more than miniature duplicates of the table-of-contents --- and I would very much like to see them made more content-rich. I've actually been considering merging Sound notation into Phonetics and Phonology for this reason, though I've become wary of making such drastic changes since the book got more tightly inter-dependant. --Ingolemo (discuss • contribs) 22:14, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, tried something. At least its a first draft.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 23:17, 20 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, second draft. Imho less dry and abstract than the first.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:01, 23 January 2014 (UTC)


 * and... I'm still not satisfied. The point I want to communicate is rather like the one I find (to my bemusement) being made by conlangery #70 &mdash; that these analytic tools can be used to study existing languages, which is useful for conlanging because it helps you become aware of possibilities, and after you build your language they may also help you to explain what you've done to others; but that doesn't make them suitable for building a language, and in fact if you use these analyses as forms to fill out you'll end up with an unnaturalistic-feeling language.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:03, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * New version. Emphasizing the point that linguists' description of language is analysis, not necessarily suited to building languages.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:03, 7 February 2014 (UTC)