On Lyhoko's Law of English descendants

[elemtilas]

Now you're just being silly. The Swedish chef doesn't speak a conlang, he speaks Swedish! You should familiarize yourself a bit more with Scandinavia.

Yry myeebihs! How terribly silly of me -- had no idea that something so cattywumpus was Actual Real Swedish!!

Sure, no doubt about it! Would you agree that this intimidation factor is a) coincidental (in that someone who has been at crafting languages for a long time will naturally have more output and at a greater level of depth and detail than someone who began last month) and b) at least somewhat ameliorated by the attitude of encouragement and nurture on the part of elder glossopoets? (We'll leave aside the few that can't get past the grandeur of their own lovely selves!) In my experience, the older generation(s) have almost always been positive towards the younger generations.

a) Yes of course. People with more practice and familiarity are going to be less intimidated. I guessed this might be due to the Internet, so if I am right, then the main coincidence we are dealing with is whether or not you happened to make your nooblangs and semi-not-nooblangs before or after boards like this allowed people to compare and contrast.
b) This depends on the person. There are people who accept guidance, and those who do not so readily.

I guess for "a" I meant more that such folks would be, quite unintentionally, more intimidating towards newer folks. But sure, more experienced conlangers will be less likely to be intimidated by others who've been at it a long time as well!

I'm not sure if this is due to the Internet per se; but I would posit that those of us who started making languages before the Internet (or even before Usenet) and also found and joined the community within those early years (this would basically be mid to late 1990s, Conlang-L) also happened to get in on the ground floor of the first discussions on glossopoesy as art, the philosophical underpinnings, the metalanguage of the craft. When someone comes in now, they're met with already determined jargon like "artlang" and "engelang" and philosophies that go with. Also, those coming in now are met with a whole host of recipe books that they can follow. Older folks had nothing of that sort. There's three or four I can think of. Never actually read any of them beyond a quick perusal; and I am very staunchly ambivalent towards cooky-cutter approaches to any kind of art. It's one thing to discuss fundamental issues in linguistics as they might could apply to glossopoesy, but quite another to say "this is how you make a language in ten easy steps".

I can see how all the mechanics of glossopoesy can be intimidating. New folks might take all that and think "that's a whole lot of work I've got to do in order to do it right". They might end up afraid of doing things wrong, or of being judged incompetent because they aren't doing it right!

However, I fear we have derailed this thread significantly. So my contribution to the original topic is that probably people make very divergent Englishes mainly because not to do so just results in a slightly different English, which is sort of boring.

But it was such a more interesting derailment!

Anyway, English was boring in 900. It's still boring in 2016. Why should it be much less boring in 3193? Without an absolute collapse of modern techno-society I see no good reason for English to fundamentally change at all over the next several millennia. International media, education and global culture will tend to reinforce some kind of standard, even though historical dialects will continue and evolve and new dialects will emerge, evolve and contribute to the Standard.

But it's not necessarily. Like say for example you make a version of English where the word "have" is unilaterally discarded for some reason. Maybe a cult leader said it was a devil word so they stopped using it. How would that work!

Individuals rarely have such command over a whole language. Even the great lexicographers of the past could at best put a spin on English rather than take the reins by force. Realistically, such a situation might at best become a fad before fading or being reworked into something else. It would take a monumental and Orwellian labour to accomplish such a thing.

EDIT: oops, no, I was wrong, that's boring. Perfect tense "have" replaced with "done": "I have finished." → "I done finished."

ANADEW: Appalachian English done did it already!

Possessive "have" replaced with "got": "I have two snuffboxes." → "I got two snuffboxes."

Cindy ain't got sense enough to come in outen the rain.

This of course oughtn't be taken to mean that creating a polysynthetic, two-vowel-ninety-three-consonant descendant of English is wrong in some way. English is unlikely to end up that way, and so such a project is almost certainly unrealistic. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be tried!

[Chagen]

I've noticed several features that are disproportionately represented in English descendants as well:

-Loss of the dental fricatives. These are always the first to go, even though they've been in English for thousands of years.

-Front rounded vowels. Gotta have that teutonic flair.

-Massive simplification of the consonant inventory.

-Absurdly complicated fusional/polysynthetic grammar. Rare is the English descendant that goes more analytic, like Chinese, or agglutinative, even though English is already showcasing signs of nascent agglutinative grammar such as "I'll've" or "shouldn't've".

In addition, English descendants tend to completely flout the SAE paradigm and look like some unholy spawn of Navajo, Icelandic, or some random language spoken by 40 people on an island.

I can understand the need to be wacky and interesting, but I'd like to see an English descendant that tried to follow the current trends of the language and extrapolate from there--in the end probably producing something like Japanese, funnily enough: most isolating nouns, but agglutinative verbs with suffixes formed from past auxiliaries and verbal particles. I'm not sure how English is going to form a case system, we don't even have a thing to make into an accusative suffix. I don't see prepositions becoming prefixes or turning post-nominal and suffixing from there, given that basically no other IE language shows signs of postpositions outside of extremely old Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit (and only commonly in the latter).

[ixals]

-Loss of the dental fricatives. These are always the first to go, even though they've been in English for thousands of years.

-Front rounded vowels. Gotta have that teutonic flair.

[...] but I'd like to see an English descendant that tried to follow the current trends of the language and extrapolate from there [...]

But aren't the loss of dental fricatives and the rise of front rounded vowels current trends in a lot of regions? Many dialects front /u/ to /ʉ/ or even /y/ and some even pronounce /ɝ/ similar to /ø/. And some dialects turn the dental fricatives into stops or labial fricatives. I think the disproportional representation of these changes is justified.

[qwed117]

-Loss of the dental fricatives. These are always the first to go, even though they've been in English for thousands of years.

-Front rounded vowels. Gotta have that teutonic flair.

[...] but I'd like to see an English descendant that tried to follow the current trends of the language and extrapolate from there [...]

But aren't the loss of dental fricatives and the rise of front rounded vowels current trends in a lot of regions? Many dialects front /u/ to /ʉ/ or even /y/ and some even pronounce /ɝ/ similar to /ø/. And some dialects turn the dental fricatives into stops or labial fricatives. I think the disproportional representation of these changes is justified.

Dental fricative loss in Fucha lannwich is *justified* because of the history of the langauge. I do however agree with Chagen's assertation that the changes aren't necessarily justified.

[MrKrov]

-Absurdly complicated fusional/polysynthetic grammar. Rare is the English descendant that goes more analytic, like Chinese, or agglutinative, even though English is already showcasing signs of nascent agglutinative grammar such as "I'll've" or "shouldn't've".

Since polysynthesis is just extreme agglutination, people who take that route are doing exactly what you'd prefer. F.
Now, the beautiful thing is these particular contractions are unlikely to ever glom on to the lexical verb for prosodic reasons among others.

In addition, English descendants tend to completely flout the SAE paradigm and look like some unholy spawn of Navajo, Icelandic, or some random language spoken by 40 people on an island.

Deep periods of time inducing severe change on a language with some retention of familiarity? Inconceivable!

I can understand the need to be wacky and interesting, but I'd like to see an English descendant that tried to follow the current trends of the language and extrapolate from there--in the end probably producing something like Japanese, funnily enough: most isolating nouns, but agglutinative verbs with suffixes formed from past auxiliaries and verbal particles.

Since these auxiliaries are preposed in English and TAM prefixes are a thing, tense suffixes would not follow the trend and be a worthy extrapolation. F.

I'm not sure how English is going to form a case system, we don't even have a thing to make into an accusative suffix. I don't see prepositions becoming prefixes or turning post-nominal and suffixing from there, given that basically no other IE language shows signs of postpositions outside of extremely old Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit (and only commonly in the latter).

First: the lack of a current marker doesn't preclude the grammaticalization of a new one. Gaining overt accusative markers is a thing. F.

Second: WOW. What a ramble! I don't know how you got Japanese to be the logical resembler to a future English. Talk about not-SAE! F.

I do however agree with Chagen's assertation that the changes aren't necessarily justified.

Wrong! They are necessarily justified even if they're not inevitable. F.

[qwed117]

I do however agree with Chagen's assertation that the changes aren't necessarily justified.

Wrong! They are necessarily justified even if they're not inevitable. F.

Under your standards, what would be justification? Not all sound changes are justifiable. A Spanglish spoken in Continental Spain wouldn't lose it's dental fricatives easy.

[MrKrov]

SCENARIOS CHANGE.

It's funny you specify Spain because there are parts of it where that loss of dental fricatives has indeed already occurred. It is not inconceivable seseo could spread thru-out the country before a future English gets involved, or the future English involved comes from a present-day variety already lacking those dental fricatives or some such.

Again: just because something isn't inevitable doesn't deny plausibility.

[qwed117]

SCENARIOS CHANGE.

It's funny you specify Spain because there are parts of it where that loss of dental fricatives has indeed already occurred. It is not inconceivable seseo could spread thru-out the country before a future English gets involved, or the future English involved comes from a present-day variety already lacking those dental fricatives or some such.

Again: just because something isn't inevitable doesn't deny plausibility.

distincion appears to be the mainstream (with seceo gaining some footholds). But the point is that you should have some reason as to why it changes as such. If th>f/v, then is it a British language? Why is would there be one elsewhere? (And just letting y'know, all you need is a reason, the one you gave is reasonable enough)

[MrKrov]

Incorrigible!

[TBPO]

would you approve of following or breaking the Law?

I really don't care, and I don't understand the attitude that leads to questions like this. It's like a writer worrying about producing a story that follows "tropes" or recognizably falls in a genre. Why does it matter if something is trendy or not? OK, it can get a bit annoying when it seems everyone else finds the same things cool and you don't, and I understand getting tired of romance conlangs after a while, but in general, I think that as long as a conlang is created carefully and thoughtfully, it is likely to be interesting no matter whether it is "kitchen sink" or "SAE."

The main things I'd look for in an English descendent are:

• plausible sound changes, rather than ones that seem obviously oriented at producing a certain result
• Interesting semantic drift, rather than just running sound changes on the current lexicon

Of course the grammar should evolve as well (it's boring and unrealistic if it's just like modern English), but I see no reason why it needs to be "vastly different."

Ay agry wiđ yu.