donaldboozer
Case 3: Languages and Linguistics, center
Conlangers, by the very nature of their craft, are intensely interested in languages and how they work. A few conlangers have chosen linguistics as a profession, but most are simply amateurs fascinated by the intricacies of syntax, grammar, phonology, and vocabulary of languages as diverse as English, French, Basque, Georgian, Tibetan, Zulu, and Murrinh-Patha. They assuage their curiosity by learning the differences between phonemes and morphemes, in investigating different case systems, and in collecting as much information as they can about how people across the world communicate. Conlangers then apply this knowledge to creating a language to see how these different facets of communication interact in a new context. Eventually, when they are confronted by a novel challenge or need a new way to construct a phrase, conlangers will once again plunge into the deep well of languages and surface with yet another interesting specimen with which to work.
Noam Chomsky
The MOST INFLUENTIAL and MOST CONTROVERSIAL figure in modern linguistics
“Chomsky has been called Copernican, Newtonian, Einsteinian, Planck-like. For both its significance and its revolutionary character, his work has been compared to that of Spinoza, Pierce, Wittgenstein, Darwin, and Freud. He is an angel, a God, an enfant terrible. Supporters criticize him with the inevitable caveat ‘Noam Chomsky is one of the half-dozen great geniuses of the twentieth century.’...Alternately, Chomsky has been described as satanic, the Enemy, a crank, an embarrassment. Generative linguistics [Chomsky’s theory of language] has been called a cult; generative linguists have been described as ‘born again.’... Today, people writing in Internet mailing lists work themselves into apoplectic rages about statements he allegedly made twenty years ago.” ~ Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (Viking, 2007) (Photo by Duncan Rawlinson.)
Case 3: Languages and Linguistics, center
Conlangers, by the very nature of their craft, are intensely interested in languages and how they work. A few conlangers have chosen linguistics as a profession, but most are simply amateurs fascinated by the intricacies of syntax, grammar, phonology, and vocabulary of languages as diverse as English, French, Basque, Georgian, Tibetan, Zulu, and Murrinh-Patha. They assuage their curiosity by learning the differences between phonemes and morphemes, in investigating different case systems, and in collecting as much information as they can about how people across the world communicate. Conlangers then apply this knowledge to creating a language to see how these different facets of communication interact in a new context. Eventually, when they are confronted by a novel challenge or need a new way to construct a phrase, conlangers will once again plunge into the deep well of languages and surface with yet another interesting specimen with which to work.
Noam Chomsky
The MOST INFLUENTIAL and MOST CONTROVERSIAL figure in modern linguistics
“Chomsky has been called Copernican, Newtonian, Einsteinian, Planck-like. For both its significance and its revolutionary character, his work has been compared to that of Spinoza, Pierce, Wittgenstein, Darwin, and Freud. He is an angel, a God, an enfant terrible. Supporters criticize him with the inevitable caveat ‘Noam Chomsky is one of the half-dozen great geniuses of the twentieth century.’...Alternately, Chomsky has been described as satanic, the Enemy, a crank, an embarrassment. Generative linguistics [Chomsky’s theory of language] has been called a cult; generative linguists have been described as ‘born again.’... Today, people writing in Internet mailing lists work themselves into apoplectic rages about statements he allegedly made twenty years ago.” ~ Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (Viking, 2007) (Photo by Duncan Rawlinson.)