Yonagu idea: Essay collection

[zompist]

I had an idea the other day and thought I'd throw it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes. Or dig a well and see if anyone falls in.

It might be nice to have a Second Book of Conlanging for people who've read the LCK. And it might be attractive if a bunch of people wrote essays on whatever topics they thought would be useful or interesting. These could be on conlanging in particular (either more advanced stuff, or stuff I didn't cover in detail), or in-depth discussions of something in linguistics. I would contribute an essay or two, copy-edit and format the book, and publish it through Yonagu.

If you think you could contribute, post an idea or IM me.

You would retain copyright on your entries, but allow me to publish the book as a collection, in print or electronically. I would also distribute royalties based on your share of the book (minus common expenses required to publish the book). I'm not seeking to make money off this— for me it's a chance to build the brand.

People who've signed up and for what:

Gulliver - something on gender
Yiuel - ideograms
Yiuel - relative directions in Quebec French
Aszev - making/deriving an a posteriori language belonging to an Earthly language family
Zoris - morphosyntax
Zoris - LaTeX for conlangers
Radius - Athabaskan
Trailsend - basic constituent order (cf Greenberg's universals and Mithun on non-ordered lgs)
Nancy Blackett - vowel systems
Nancy Blackett - bogolanging (example of a Slavic romlang)
Miekko - Cartesian regularity
ná'oolkiłí - types of transitivity (esp. in Caucasian lgs.)
zompist - How to teach your conlang

(Edit: removed some people who said they wouldn't get it in)

[Daistallia]

I'd not presume I'd have anything to offer, but I'd sure be interested in reading it.

[Xephyr]

How long and in-depth would these essays have to be? In other words, roundabout how many such essays would you expect a book-length.. uhh.. book.. to have?

[zompist]

At this point, I'd just say I prefer quality to quantity. A really sharp and interesting 5 page paper would be great; it could be as simple as a really good explanation of some unusual aspect of a natlang.

[Bristel]

Well, I would be happy to contribute, but my experience in conlanging and linguistics pales in comparison to many who frequent this site.

Maybe if I find something particular (or peculiar) to write about, I can study it and whip up something along the lines of a short but good description that might have found its way into something like the first LCK.

Consonant mutation and gradation might be a great thing to have in LCK 2, if anyone would like to write about that.

Hopefully it can be edited well enough to seem moderately fluid... The first LCK was quite an amazing feat in that respect, as far as I believe.

A nod to those who have read the first LCK but still have moderate or less experience with linguistics and conlanging should be done... explanations, examples and varying usage would be nice.

Making the point that some conpeoples may have a different physical structure might be a good short essay if it touches upon the more exotic possibilities of phonation or expression.

[Xephyr]

I also have an idea for a contribution, which is a bit baffling to me considering my inexperience. Prolly baffling to others too cause I only make about, one linguistics-related comment on this board about once every 7 months. But shit, I'll do my best I guess?

[Nortaneous]

Yeah, I'd say one good thing to do here is in-depth but easy-to-understand explanations of concepts that most conlangers know about but probably don't have as good a grip on as they could or hardly ever use. I'm thinking of doing one on harmony processes, and other examples of good areas to cover would be alignment (including Austronesian, direct/oblique, trigger, whatever I did in Serhes Kettw where the verb agrees with the topic and the agent/patient status of the topic is marked on the verb (is that Austronesian? that's what I was trying to do), etc.), noun class/gender systems, diachronic origins of ejectives (since that's been asked so many times), clicks, interesting airstream mechanisms (I might do this one also if I can learn enough about it and stop being lazy for long enough), and tone systems.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

It sounds like a fantastic idea! I won't fool myself into thinking I know enough to contribute, but I will definitely buy it.

[Gulliver]

I'd like to contribute.

Would you be looking for academia-style texts with citations and pointers for further research, or a more relaxed "ideas on..." style?

I'd happily write an essay on gender or number. Or both. I wrote my dissertation on grammatical gender and social gender in French, so I kind of know what I'm talking about. I can also hold my own talking about modality, and number, to a certain extent. I'd be happy to write "to order".

Also, how many words is "a five page paper"? The American system always seems strange to my British brain, where we work on word-count. It's less easy to thwart by subtle tweaking of margins and spacing.

[Torco]

I'd probably write something about conworlding... maybe a piece on what weird theories like marxism-leninism or luhmanian systemics have to say about the processs of conculturing... but I'm relatively ignorant, linguistics-wise.

[Kai_DaiGoji]

I'd like to contribute.

Would you be looking for academia-style texts with citations and pointers for further research, or a more relaxed "ideas on..." style?

I'd happily write an essay on gender or number. Or both. I wrote my dissertation on grammatical gender and social gender in French, so I kind of know what I'm talking about. I can also hold my own talking about modality, and number, to a certain extent. I'd be happy to write "to order".

Also, how many words is "a five page paper"? The American system always seems strange to my British brain, where we work on word-count. It's less easy to thwart by subtle tweaking of margins and spacing.

Good rule of thumb is 500 words to a page. Or 250 if it's double spaced (which manuscripts usually are.)

[Viktor77]

I'd gladly write an illustrated guide to desiging a con-nation flag. The do's and don't's of vexological design or something along those lines.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

I could write something about ideograms. Also about relative directions in Quebec French.

[alice]

Would any of my efforts - creating a bogolang, quick guide to transcription, survey of vowel systems, and so on - be of interest or value in this?

[Torco]

your article about vowel systems... YES

[Yng]

I could possibly write something about different types of ergativity (which I now have names for after someone provided a helpful article) but there are people who know far more than me about that. I could do consonant mutation, though.

[makvas]

I sent zomp a PM but haven't gotten a reply -- I figure it's not too private or anything so I'll say here.

I'd be interested in writing about conscripts, LaTeX for conlangers, and almost any other grammar or phonology related topics that others might not know too much about. I know a little bit about a lot of things to do with conlanging, so I'm sure there's something for me to contribute.

[Ulrike Meinhof]

LaTeX for conlangers

Please please do! Especially about IPA and automatically numbering and referring to examples.

[makvas]

LaTeX for conlangers

Please please do! Especially about IPA and automatically numbering and referring to examples.

Definitely can do

[zompist]

Thanks to everyone who's expressed an interest! It seems like there's enough to get started, so let's do it!

The rule of thumb for picking topics would be whatever you're particularly interested in / qualified to do; if you need help choosing, post here. If there's a conflict (I think a couple people mentioned logographic systems), we can discuss that here, or someone can refine their topic idea.

If you have a conworlding idea, go ahead with it, though that may be a separate volume. I can't say till I see how much material we have!

[Aszev]

I could write about making/deriving an a posteriori language belonging to an Earthly language family.

[makvas]

From zomp's PM, it looks like I will be doing an introductory guide to morphosyntax and a guide to LaTeX for conlangers. He hasn't made it clear in what format he wants me to submit my essays to him though, so I guess plaintext should work? Otherwise I can install openoffice and do rtf, doc, odt, or pdf. I can also, of course, use LaTeX to generate dvi or pdf. What is preferred?

[zompist]

Format doesn't matter much, since I will be reformatting everything so the book is consistent.

Doc or rtf would be best. Html is fine. Plaintext is OK. I can work with PDF but it's kind of a waste (any fancy formatting you do will be lost, as I have to cut and paste from Adobe Reader or Acrobat to Word).

To put it another way, don't worry about overall formatting (font, appearance of headers, margins, all that jazz). But do worry about bold/italics and Unicode. If you don't use doc or html format, try to make heading levels clear.

[makvas]

Wonderful; do we have a deadline?

[zompist]

I suspect that if I say n months, I'll get nothing for n - 1 months, for all values of n. So heck, let's say two months, i.e. before March.

For editing, the ideal is to get things spaced out, so if you have an idea right now and want to get to work, please go ahead!