Constructed Languages

12:07 AM

Please help me out here, because it's early days and we're all still trying to understand what's on topic. I just asked a question about "fixed" parts of speech and it's got two downvotes already. What's wrong with it, and any suggestions about how to fix it?

Adarain

the problem there is really that I personally struggle to find a counterexample

having roots associated with parts of speech is essentially the norm

(I didn’t downvote the post)

user61230

(I think you're right, though I feel the need to point out that counterexamples being difficult to find doesn't necessarily mean the question should be downvoted.)

Pseudonym

Sure. Look, the downvotes aren't wrong. One is someone's opinion, two is clearly some kind of consensus that I'm unaware of.

Associated with is different from "defined as", though. The parts of speech in Esperanto are as fixed as grammatical genders.

In German, "Schaufel" is a shovel and "schaufeln" is the act of shovelling. Is the root a verb or a noun?

Adarain

I also don’t agree it should be downvoted per se

the root is a noun, from which a verb is derived

though I guess zero-derivation as found in some germanic languages (most prominently english) would be a counterexample

user61230

A little unhappy with the way this question handles gender, but this site doesn't feel like the right place to discuss that...

Adarain

12:14 AM

“noun class” is definitely the more technical and unbiased term

Pseudonym

Women, fire, and dangerous things, yes.

Hotkeys

Gender is perfectly fine to use with languages that consider their noun class systems to be gender based

Like many IE langs

Pseudonym

I guess my main point, and maybe I should bring this up on meta, is that in these early days if you're going to downvote, it's polite to also leave a comment or mention something on chat/meta.

As a questioner, I want to know what people didn't like about it.

Given that there are few hard rules to judge a question against yet.

Rand al'Thor

@Zyerah But we have to discuss gender issues on a site about conlangs, because it's an inherently political topic! :-P ;-)

2

(sorry, sorry, couldn't resist)

user61230

I like the question, worth noting - but if I had to guess @Pseudonym, it might be because it reads a little like a question about natural language rather than constructed language?

user61230

12:19 AM

@Randal'Thor Hush. ;)

Hotkeys

Questions about natural language can be fine IMO - understanding natural languages is quite important for creating naturalistic conlangs

user61230

I agree. I'm just guessin'.

Adarain

@Zyerah I mean, learning about what patterns exist (, exist commonly, exist rarely) is a large part about learning how to conlang

so questions about natlangs ought to be on topic

or there would be basically no questions askable

user61230

Preachin' to the choir.

Rand al'Thor

@Pseudonym I didn't downvote, but maybe people don't like it because it feels too open-ended? "Are there any ..." questions are frowned upon on many sites, because if the answer is yes, then there could be multiple equally-correct answers.

(see the Literature meta post Mithrandir linked earlier about recommendation questions)

Hotkeys

12:21 AM

Would "What are some examples, if any, of.." be appropriate?

Rand al'Thor

@Hotkeys I sense a scope debate brewing here ...

Hotkeys

Does there need to be a most correct answer?

Adarain

I feel like in general, “how common is X” ought to be a better format than “does X exist”, mostly because in many situations the answer to teh latter is yes anyway

Rand al'Thor

@Hotkeys Well, that sounds even more open-ended. At least "Are there any ..." is objectively answerable by "yes", if the answer is yes.

user61230

@Hotkeys Generally, list questions are discouraged on SE because they can grow to be pretty significant. That's not to say they're always bad, though.

Hotkeys

12:22 AM

I suppose

Rand al'Thor

@Hotkeys It depends. Some SE sites, like Mathematics and Math Overflow, are fine with open-ended list questions. Most aren't, and close them as "too broad".

Hotkeys

I think it might be useful

user61230

We don't necessarily have to follow that guidance -- yeah, Rand linked what I was gonna. But that guidance is there for a reason, which is bluntly, "it usually doesn't work." But it caaaan, sooo.

Rand al'Thor

Of course, this site isn't old enough yet to have scope consensus, so it's up to the users to create site norms through their votes and meta discussions.

Pseudonym

I interpret "are there any" questions as "examples please".

Hotkeys

12:26 AM

I think for the purposes of conlanging, a plurality of examples is often quite useful given the myriad ways in which languages express different ideas

Pseudonym

But far me it from me to condemn pedantry.

Hotkeys

I suppose it could get overwhelming if a feature or structure is particularly common

user61230

@Randal'Thor This is true. Though I think one of the things we can learn from Literature is that a lot of SE guidance exists for a reason... and I'm not sure we should be quite as eager to throw it out unless we can make a good positive argument for doing so.

Pseudonym

See, I think my question is actually "this is a feature I found in a conlang, what may have inspired it".

user61230

That may be good to edit your question into, or something similar to it. "Does this feature have an analogue in natural language?" is similar, too, but might be worth saying explicitly.

2

Pseudonym

12:30 AM

And it's possible that the answer is "nothing". Zamenhof wanted regularity, and it accidentally became something like a noun class.

Good call.

I might do just that.

Rand al'Thor

@Zyerah You may be right, but I was also thinking that most of the trend-bucking SE sites, with weird abnormal features that don't exist on other sites, tend to be older ones, because new sites are often dominated by already-SE-active people who just turn it into a "model SE site" and don't allow it to buck the trend as much as older sites already have.

user61230

@Pseudonym Sounds good, glad to help :)

Rand al'Thor

In fact, that's something we both learned on Puzzling. Turned out it didn't have to stick to SE norms of Q&A, but could be another exception like the older PPCG.

user61230

@Randal'Thor Yes, I'd agree. That's also an integral part of it. On sites that do this, these questions come up infrequently, and only after a heavy community moderation ethic exists. So taking it with some caution on a new site is reasonable.

user61230

I think regarding Puzzling that there was actually a problem for a long time, because there were a lot of questions like that and not much community moderation and guidance to support them. But this is starting to get a little off topic, even if I'd love to talk about it.

user61230

12:33 AM

You and I should make a room some time, just to chat back and forth on things!

Rand al'Thor

@Pseudonym See, "what inspired this specific thing" is likely to be much more answerable than "are there any examples of [thing which might have inspired that thing]". (Though this may be my bias from Science Fiction & Fantasy, where we hate list questions but are fine with inspiration questions.)

@Zyerah We keep running into each other on new sites! :-D

And then making references to ancient shared history that probably make most people go "huh?"

Pseudonym

Yes, agreed. This is probably my first humanities SE, so I'm never sure what the conventions are.

user61230

We dooo.

Pseudonym

Cheers, thanks everyone.

user61230

Cheers!

HDE 226868

1:14 AM

Oh, cool, this site is a thing.

Rand al'Thor

@Zyerah Ha, heather beat you to the first lojban question here by a whole 20 seconds!

heather

1:49 AM

lol

i didn't realize it was that close.

user61230

I'm surprised it took so long to begin with ;)

heather

i can already tell i really like this site.

user61230

It's gonna be gooooooood.

user61230

conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/66/… hmm... godel's theorem?

HDE 226868

I imagine we'll get some crossover from Worldbuilding SE, which I'd love to encourage.

Rand al'Thor

2:09 AM

And Science Fiction & Fantasy too.

Oh, hey, that's why you and I are here :-P

HDE 226868

True. I'm here for the Tolkien.

caconyrn

2:29 AM

Guys I have a on-topic conlanging question: If you carry a golfbag full of ten-foot poles, can you still make a unarmed opportunity attack?

user61230

2:40 AM

utala li pona.

HDE 226868

4:32 AM

Hey, can I just request that we all stop voting to close translate request questions until we have this sort of meta discussion well and truly resolved?

It's kinda annoying to have people voting to close questions so early based on a policy that doesn't actually exist. There is no site consensus to exclude these questions (or include them) in our scope, so let's not claim that we've agreed on something when we really haven't.

It's also probably a bit confusing for any new user who walks in here and sees us inconsistently dealing with this sort of thing.

Mithrandir

7:43 AM

I agree with that, but then again, seeing how people are voting is one of the most sure-fire ways to see what the community consensus is.

user61230

I'm seeing a metric ton of amazing answers and fantastic questions. Looking at the first half-day of this beta, I'm so happy.

user61230

Quieter than a lot of betas, but what we've cut in activity seems mostly to belong to lower-quality questions.

Mithrandir

Quality over quantity.

wonders where my questions fit in there

Mithrandir

10:51 AM

I'm unsure of the tagging on this question:

0

Q: How much of Slovio is based on Esperanto?

According to Wikipedia, Slovio (from the Slavic word "slovo") is a constructed language begun in 1999 by Mark Hučko. Hučko claims that the language should be relatively easy for non-Slavs to learn as well, as an alternative to languages such as Esperanto which are based more on Latin... [....

I went with comparative-linguistics, but I'm not sure that that's the correct terminology.

Mithrandir

11:32 AM

Fichilâ meli facheka akh lê bra!

Transcript for

Constructed Languages