oxaliq.net/publish-test/source/unsettled/5.txt

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2023-11-09 04:12:52 +00:00
(body (article (h1 "beginning work on LATL") (p "a little introduction to a project i started thinking about in early 2020,\n as i was learning how to do web development and wanted to try my hand at\n combining some hobbies.") (section (hgroup (h2 "what even is this?") (p (em "of linguistics and hubris.")) (hr)) (p "so, when i was a wee little child, i discovered language. i was one of\n those kids who picked up reading real quick (like before i could form\n memories) and just have always been fascinated by what those words and\n symbols do. like, most wee little children discover language, but some\n wee little children get given the lord of the rings when they're ten or\n something and get into the narrative and the characters, sure. but\n those appendices.... there's .. a language here? called quenya? and\n this tolkien guy just made this up? " (small "this is not in fact how i talked as a child, just go with me.")) (p "so, i did the precocious kid thing and said to myself \"if this dead\n british weirdo (who's like really into the concept of royalty) can\n make a whole new language, then surely i can to.\"") (p "i did not, in fact, make a language. i made a relex of the language i\n already spoke (u.s. english,) but we all gotta start somewhere.") (p "for a long time the internet to me was mostly " (a ((href "https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html")) "the brown university conlang listserv.") " here i learned about different phonology, what the heck\n morphosyntactic alignment is, diachronicity and how different\n languages can be related. i got exposed to awkwords and sca2 (tools\n for generating words and modeling changes to those words.) but i\n never interacted with ppl much. i was a kid and the ppl in there\n really knew their stuff, and i never much felt comfy with the idea\n of being just " (em "in public") " on the internet like that.") (p "anyway i got better at making languages and learning about how\n language works, and it's just been a (at times more consistent, at\n times less) hobby of mine for most of my life.") (p "flash forward to a few years ago, i'm working on a language that has\n turned into the passion language that i've spend the majority of my\n conlanging on and i'm getting frustrated with my tools. i want to do\n more complex, phonological-feature-aware, sound change rules; i want\n a tighter feedback loop; i want to see how a derivational pattern at\n one stage in a parent form of a language branches out or collapses\n into different derivational patterns in a child language.") (p "all was not well in my conlanging.") (p "i would need to " (strong "do some programming.")) (p "the thing is, i had just learned javascript. (it was a tech bootcamp.\n someday i'll talk about what a horrible decision that was, but not\n in this post.) i had built a few little toy web apps, and i was not\n ready to execute on a vision for a multi-purpose conlanging tool that\n was beginning to take shape in my head.") (p "i tried anyway.") (p "and i made " (a ((href "https://sorrelbri.github.io/feature-change-applier/")) "a bad first draft of a sound change tool.")) (p "there's an ebnf grammar in that project somewhere! the hubris i\n had then, to think i could make a little javascript-backed\n language tool with all of the bells and whistles i needed! with\n the knowledge that i had then! (or more accurately, didn't have)") (br) (p "but now...")) (section (hgroup (h2 "reviving this project") (p (em "whatcha gonna do sorrel?")) (hr)) (p "i'm still not ready.") (p "but at least, today i'm forgoing bells and whistles for\n execution models. core abstractions. experience using " (a ((href "https://racket-lang.org")) "a (programming) language-oriented programming language") " maybe. there's a lot to think about.") (p "so, i'm going to try reviving this project. or, more accurately,\n reimagining this project. from the little sound change tool that\n was merely an unusably buggy iteration on tools that o