Contributors wanted f or book on "Invented Languages"

[Dennis R. Preston]

Indeed she did; a "women's language," and the use of phoney languages
is very common in language aptitude tests, going back at last as far
as a battery of such tests devised by the late Paul Pimsleur of OSU.
They were not uncommon in the structuralist days is "problem solving"
exercises, especially in phonemic and morphemic problems), but
authentic data (even if modified) has always been preferred in
linguistics I think.

dInIs



>At 10:18 AM -0400 7/22/05, James A. Landau wrote:
>>A source you probably have not suspected is the US Army, or more exactly
>>whoever it is who creates the standardized tests given all new
>>soldiers.  When I
>>was drafted (August 1969) one of the numerous multiple-choice tests I took
>>during my first week in the Army was called IIRC "the Army Language Aptitude
>>Test".
>>
>>For this test there was an invented language with a vocabulary of, I can't
>>recall exactly but at most a few dozen words, but with an elaborate
>>grammar of
>>the inflectional type---I recall it as somebody's rather sadistic combination
>>of the more annoying features of Russian and Latin grammars.  The
>>multiple-choice questions were all in this invented language.
>>
>>Jack Vance wrote a science fiction novel "The Languages of Pao" ABOUT the
>>deliberate invention of languages.  I don't recall that any samples
>>were given of
>>the invented languages, but the plot turned on the existence of these new
>>languages.
>>
>>Some science fiction writers have had fun, after specifying the languages
>>used in the worlds they create, creating a few words or even
>>sentences in this
>>language.  None that I am aware of have gone nearly as far as
>>Tolkien, though.
>>The examples I am thinking of are Heinlein's "Glory Road" and a
>>short story by
>>C. M. Kornbluth whose title I cannot remember but which I think was in his
>>collection "A Mile Beyond the Moon".  Marion Zimmer Bradley in her Darkover
>>stories has a few short examples of the language spoken on Darkover,
>>but it is not
>>an invented language but rather a variation of Spanish.
>>
>>        - Jim Landau
>
>Also:
>Didn't Suzette Haden Elgin (who is a linguist with a PhD from U. C.
>San Diego and a much-published author of both linguistics texts and
>science fiction novels) construct a few languages along the way?
>
>Larry


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
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Michigan State University
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