(Con)linguistic Tool Development Collaboration

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thevulch
rupestrian
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(Con)linguistic Tool Development Collaboration

Post by thevulch »

To be honest, nowadays I'm more interested in the tools to develop conlangs than the conlangs themselves - conlangs keep being created/abandoned as a constant stimulus to the community, but tools are rare and could have a significant impact. And as a software developer, I know I can contribute more by developing tools than conlangs. I also feel a bit in debt to all the entertainment and knowledge you social conlangers have provided on the CBB, ZBB, and /r/conlangs. Three different communities and all enjoyable.
A high number of conlangers, like me, also code - and these two usually intertwine, resulting in too many personal, one-man (con)linguistic tools being sporadically developed and abandoned. Some survive, and become very useful tools to said conlanger. The truly special ones, I feel, also end up in the hands of others.
By far, these tools are the children of one lonely dev, with a slow and jerky development history, the only pace a one-man team can have when confronted with a life's worth of events. I'm not quite sure why there isn't more collaboration now, but I'd assume it's because conlanging has been, and still usually is, a private and unique affair. We've had a few posts on resource "wish lists" started by an enthusiastic developer (on CBB, ZBB, and /r/conlangs), but usually no actual software developed, because tech that's broad enough to be useful to a large slice of the community is a tough enough undertaking to strain a single dev.

All that said, I'm looking to uncover or start some amount of collaboration. I haven't seen anything surrounding the LCS to suspect "official" software development, and apart from /r/conlangs posts concerning a few semi-popular tools, I don't see much about tools at all.

Is there any collaboration happening now? Any way I could join?
Is anyone else interested in collaboration?
Any suggestions/words of wisdom/thoughts?


I posted something similar on /r/conlangs (same username too), where I'm keeping a tally of people and offered skills. I'm going to try to reach out to a few successful tool developers from /r/conlangs as well. I hope to center my efforts around reddit/Github, since they're simply more developer/tech friendly than phpBB.
Tanni
greek
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Re: (Con)linguistic Tool Development Collaboration

Post by Tanni »

thevulch wrote:To be honest, nowadays I'm more interested in the tools to develop conlangs than the conlangs themselves - conlangs keep being created/abandoned as a constant stimulus to the community, but tools are rare and could have a significant impact.
What exactly does it mean when conlangs ''keep being abondoned''?

If someone posts the conlang he made, it'll always be his creation. He may decide not to develop it further, but it'll stay being his creation. He might decide to open the project to others, but the base of the project will always be his creation.
And as a software developer, I know I can contribute more by developing tools than conlangs.
Conlanging was already done in pre-computer times, so you obviously only need paper and pencil. Like conlanging itself, developing a (conlanging) tool can also be part of the fun, even if it isn't perfect.
A high number of conlangers, like me, also code - and these two usually intertwine, resulting in too many personal, one-man (con)linguistic tools being sporadically developed and abandoned.
What does it mean when a tool is abondoned?
Some survive, and become very useful tools to said conlanger. The truly special ones, I feel, also end up in the hands of others.
By far, these tools are the children of one lonely dev, with a slow and jerky development history, the only pace a one-man team can have when confronted with a life's worth of events. I'm not quite sure why there isn't more collaboration now, but I'd assume it's because conlanging has been, and still usually is, a private and unique affair.
Seconded!
Any suggestions ...
If you ask for features such programs should have, you'll most likely be faced with the desire that the tools shoud be able to do lots of things, with only a low number of constraints. This would mean professional development and coding, resulting in that these tools wouldn't be for free. If you are a professional programmer, think of Leo Brodies ''Starting Forth''. There's a picture entitled Complexity or simplicity (or something like that in English, I've read a non-English version). On that base, our situation isn't that bad now (without that many complex tools).

When you go to WALS (or CALS) things are often presented in a very wasteful way: The source information given uses lots of space. This is necessary in a scientific tool, but the information should only be given when it is required. What I like to have is a tool where information about a language or languages or language feature are given in a very dense way, omitting or hiding administrative information. This could mean that the information is provided in a formulaic way, and also in the right fonts: proportional fonts aren't always a good means to clearly represent data.
My neurochemistry has fucked my impulse control, now I'm diagnosed OOD = oppositional opinion disorder, one of the most deadly diseases in totalitarian states, but can be cured in the free world.
idov
cuneiform
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Re: (Con)linguistic Tool Development Collaboration

Post by idov »

Well, I'm no software developer and I have yet to fully create a single conlang and present it but I have been fooling around with a contool or another mostly to check out different phonologies.
The most common use of tools intended for conlanging seems to be creating huge lists of words. The most common complaint about this seems to be that it completely ignores the Kiki-Buba effect. Therefore, I think a vocabulary generator that pairs up phonemes with concepts would be appreciated by some parts of the community.
If something like this already exists, or if it is found to be impractical, I have no further suggestions.
The accusative of <emo> is <eminem>. :lat:
thevulch
rupestrian
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Re: (Con)linguistic Tool Development Collaboration

Post by thevulch »

Tanni wrote:What exactly does it mean when conlangs ''keep being abondoned''?
What does it mean when a tool is abondoned?
Sorry - meant "abandoned" in the sense of development/maintenance being stopped.
If someone posts the conlang he made, it'll always be his creation. He may decide not to develop it further, but it'll stay being his creation. He might decide to open the project to others, but the base of the project will always be his creation.
Completely agree, and much like any software project.
If you ask for features such programs should have...
Actually - should have phrased that question better. I was asking for, I suppose, any other information about tool development collaboration that I hadn't brought up in my original post. But you provided both types of suggestions anyways, so bravo!
I agree about WALS/CALS. If you're interested in similar data, check out out the CLLD project, which WALS is part of. Exceptionally interesting data that I don't believe has been publicly explored on CBB & /r/conlangs. I'd recommend the PHOIBLE database as it's one of the most global and interesting in a comparative linguistics mindset, I feel.
idov wrote:Therefore, I think a vocabulary generator that pairs up phonemes with concepts would be appreciated by some parts of the community.
The hardest part might be just anticipating the Kiki-Buba effect in an algorithmic way, especially considering all the terms out there. We'd need the right data for every term (a picture?), and then a way to classify/rank phonemes on this Kiki-Buba scale.
But then again, if modern science fields are any example, the easiest way would probably be to collect a hand-annotated dataset (poll a few thousand people) and just train an RBM.
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