[Membroj] ideologies of conlangers & the international language movement (3)

[Ralph Dumain]

To recap, my previous step was to focus on the 
literature of interlinguistics in English and 
Esperanto, for the time being excluding French, 
German, Russian, and other languages. 
Furthermore, I sought to single out the broadest 
possible coverage of the subject, and the most 
important and recent books apropos to it. My 
rough-and-ready classification of the subject 
matter can for practical purposes to be reduced 
to three categories: (1) "philosophical" 
languages, which begin with theology and 
mysticism, and later become an integral project 
of the scientific revolution and early modern 
philosophy, and continuing into the 
Enlightenment, (2) languages or projects that 
function like "natural" languages and intended 
for serious international use, (3) languages 
designed for literary, recreational, or 
experimental purposes (including the contemporary conlanger phenomenon).

The Internet has changed the landscape radically, 
but I've started out with books published in the 
traditional printed form.  Also, the basic, 
introductory reading list would expand 
considerably if I relaxed my criteria in two 
directions. (1) There are a sizable number of 
scholarly books, even of recent vintage, that 
cover the development of the philosophical 
languages in intellectual context. (I mentioned 
Rossi a good "in" to the subject.) (2) There are 
several books that focus on the strictly 
linguistic aspects of constructed languages, 
comparing and contrasting. In this respect, I 
would go to Schubert (1989) and move backward in 
time to others.  But I'm interested in a coverage 
of the total context of the language projects and 
not just into their linguistic aspects, at least to begin with.

And, since not all the books cover these three 
broad categories evenly and in the same detail, I 
had to choose a set which would as a whole cover 
the field. Hence I came up with Eco, Large, Okrent as my first three choices.

Now I think I would add Mario Pei's One Language 
for the World (1958) as a fourth. Its publication 
is now past the half century mark. As I recall, 
though, it was the most comprehensive general 
book on the subject in English since the 1920s 
and until the 1980s. Furthermore, its 
organization, its bibliography and samples of 
artificial languages, its exploration of the 
different types of solutions to the language 
problem and the arguments pro and con for each of 
them (natural languages, revival of ancient 
languages, reform or simplification of existing 
languages, blends of two or three languages, the 
three major types of constructed languages) and 
for the language problem in general is still 
useful, though his prospectives were too optimistic.

You can get all of Pei's book online if you have 
a subscription to Questia, and you can get bits 
of it on google books. You can find parts 1 and 
3, which are about the language problem and prospects for a solution, here:

http://miresperanto.narod.ru/biblioteko/pei.htm

This selection guts all of the history, which is 
located in part 2, as well as the appendices and bibliography.

The previous classic study in English was Albert 
Léon Guérard's 
<http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/guerard1.html>A 
Short History of the International Language 
Movement (1922), which you can get from my web 
site if you feel the need to search for details 
from an earlier era that may have slipped through 
the cracks of later works. In any case, my 
bibliographies and web guides cover the range of 
the field decently, and the other web sites 
linked to will get you as are into this subject matter as far as you can stand.

Moving on to the literature in Esperanto, which 
includes original and translated works: it is 
huge. Now you can find whole books or parts of 
books on the web, and those in printed format, 
while you'll find few if any in major research 
libraries in the USA, are numerous. I'm way out 
of date with respect to general coverage of the 
field. I found, for example, an Esperanto 
translation of sections of Aleksandr Dulic^enko's 
<http://www.esperanto.org/Ondo/Novaj/Nov06-18.htm>En 
la Serc^ado de la Mondolingvo, au 
Interlingvistiko por c^iuj. (2006). But I haven't 
yet determined the best, most comprehensive, and 
up-to-date survey of the subject.

I begin, though, with an irreplaceable volume, 
Historio de la Mondolingvo by Ernest K. Drezen. I 
have the 3rd edition (Oosaka: Pirato, 1967), 
which is a reprint of the 2nd edition of 1931. 
There is a 4th edition (Progreso, 1991), which 
I've not seen, but which comprises 453 pp., while 
my edition only has 242. What accounts for the discrepancy, I don't know.

Drezen piggybacks off of Petro E. Stojan's 
comprehensive 1929 Bibliografio de Internacia 
Lingvo. Drezen mentions in the 2nd edition (same 
as the 3rd) that he had to excise treatment of 
some of the trivial projects mentioned in the 
1st, but there is so much excruciating minutiae 
covered in the newer edition, it would suffice 
for most people to get a picture of the history 
of language invention up to 1930 (with the 
possible exception of the history of purely 
literary language inventions, presumably covered by Yaguello, 1991).

(to be continued)
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