237 lines
11 KiB
Text
237 lines
11 KiB
Text
(article
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(h1 "beginning work on LATL")
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(p
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"a little introduction to a project i started thinking about in early 2020,
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as i was learning how to do web development and wanted to try my hand at
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combining some hobbies")
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(p (a ((href "#the-point")) "skip the story and get to the point"))
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(section ((id "the-story"))
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(hgroup
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(h2 "what even is this?")
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(p (em "a story of linguistics and hubris"))
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(hr))
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(p
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"so, when i was a wee little child, i discovered language. like, most
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wee little children discover language, but some wee little children
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get given the lord of the rings when they're ten or something and get
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into the narrative and the characters, sure. but those appendices....
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there's .. a language here? called quenya? and it's written in this
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script? called tengwar? and there's a related language, sindarin? and
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this tolkien guy just made all this up? ")
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(p
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"so, i did the precocious kid thing and said to myself \"if this dead
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british weirdo (who's like really into the concept of royalty) can
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make a whole new language, then surely i can too\"")
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(p
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"i did not, in fact, make a language. i made a relex of the language
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i already spoke (my own peculiar idiolect of u.s. english,) but we all
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gotta start somewhere" )
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(p
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"for a long time the internet to me was mostly "
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(a ((href "https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html"))
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"the brown university conlang listserv.")
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" here i learned about different phonology, what the heck
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morphosyntactic alignment is, diachronicity and how different
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languages can be related. i got exposed to awkwords and sca2 (tools
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for generating words and modeling changes to those words.) but i
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never interacted with ppl much. i was a kid and the ppl in there
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really knew their stuff, and i never much felt comfy with the idea
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of being just "
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(em "in public") " on the internet like that")
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(p
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"anyway i got better at making languages and learning about how
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language works, and it's just been a (sometimes more consistent, at
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times less) hobby of mine for most of my life")
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(p
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"flash forward to a few years ago, i'm working on a language that has
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turned into the passion project that i've spend the majority of my
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conlanging on and i'm getting frustrated with my tools. other
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conlangers have made some really cool tools that i've used forever,
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but i wanted to change my workflow. i wanted to do more complex,
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phonological-feature-aware, sound change rules; i wanted diachroinc
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tooling for morhposyntactic bits of my languages; i wanted a tighter
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feedback loop between defining some changes, or lexical items, or
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whathave you, and seeing the results; i wanted to see how a
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derivational pattern at one stage in a parent form of a language
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branches out or collapses into different derivational patterns in a
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child language")
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(p
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"all was not well in my conlanging")
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(p
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"i would need to " (strong "do some programming"))
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(p
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"the thing is, i had just learned javascript. i had built a few
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little toy web apps, and i was not ready to execute on a vision
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for a multi-purpose conlanging tool that was beginning to take shape in my head")
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(p "i tried anyway")
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(p "and i made "
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(a ((href "settled/1"))
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"a bad first draft of a sound change tool"))
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(p
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"there's an e-bnf grammar in that project somewhere! the hubris i
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had then, to think i could make a little javascript-backed
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language tool with all of the bells and whistles i needed! with
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the knowledge that i had then! (or more accurately, didn't have)")
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(br)
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(p "but now..."))
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(section ((id "the-point"))
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(hgroup
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(h2 "reviving this project")
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(p (em "whatcha gonna do sorrel?"))
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(hr))
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(p "i'm still not ready")
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(p
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"but at least, today i'm forgoing bells and whistles for
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execution models. core abstractions. experience using "
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(a ((href "https://racket-lang.org"))
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"a (programming) language-oriented programming language")
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" maybe. there's a lot to think about")
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(p
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"so, i'm going to try reviving this project. or, more accurately,
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reimagining this project. from the little sound change tool that
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was merely an unusably buggy iteration on tools that other
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conlangers had executed better, to a more robust environment for
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conlanging. one which gives language nerds the power to solve
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all of their language nerding problems in one runtime, with an
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extensible and reflective interface. and which is written in such
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a way, with the appropriate abstractions, that lanuage nerdy
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hackers can hack their own tools on top of it")
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(p
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"and i'm going to be doing "
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(a ((href "https://www.recurse.com/"))
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"a hecking hacking retreat")
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" about it. i'll spend some full-time programming days making a
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goofy little thing for goofy little language nerds surrounded by
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goofy programming nerds doing whatever rad things they happen
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to be getting up to when i happen to be there")
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(p
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"like many of the communities i am a part of, i am a quiet part of
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the conlanging community. so, we'll see how this goes. maybe it
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is only ever something of interest to me and the conlangers i
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interact with in meatspace. maybe it only teaches me some things
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about designing and building a tool of the type that i'm designing
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and building. hoooopefully it is helpful in a way to other
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conlangers such that it evolves beyond what i could do on
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my own (cause i ain't no whiz kid 10x programmer)")
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(p
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"but that's all me getting ahead of myself (as is often my wont.)
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first! to pack for the trip!"))
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(section
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(hgroup
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(h2 "packing for the trip")
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(p (em "a biggg heap of things to expand"))
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(hr))
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(p
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"i'm just gonna fly right through these. there's going to be a lot
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to read up on, to explore, to think and talk through, before it
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gets time to prototyping and to building a workable tool. so,
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here's the very start of the thinking-in-public. each of these
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little thoughts is going to get at least it's own writeup (if not
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several) and i'll update with additional sections and links to
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the writeups as i go. a note: it would be impossible for me (and
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probably most ppl) to create the full vision in the time i'll be
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working on it fulltime")
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(section
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(h3 "notes on the goals")
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(p
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"it's good to have goals! to define what it even is yr tring to
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do. so here's my attempt. my goal is to create a foss+ working
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runtime that *can* serve as a singular tool for conlangers with
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some basic programming capacity. it should be linguistically
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*theory neutral* to the extant that such a thing is possible.
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it should allow for the definition of all relevant structures
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of a language *in code* and support the construction of grammars,
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dictionaries, text documents and (stretch goal) non-programmer
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friendly tools *from code*. it should support phonological,
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lexical, syntactic, morphological, semantic, etc transformations
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across different 'epochs' be they diachronic or synchronic.
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these transformations should work on transformations, ie
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morphological transformations should themselves be transformed
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by phonological transformations. users of the tool should be
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able to edit their work and see the consequences of their changes
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quickly. hopefully, this can all happen on the web, i guess,
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cause ppl like using their browser as the everything app"))
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(section
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(h3 "notes on existing tools")
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(p
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"i'm going to talk a bunch about existing tools made by
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conlangers or made for professional linguists and used by
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conlangers or just yr regular old spreedsheets and such. i'm
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going to be doing some research about how conlangers do their
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conlanging, lest this truly be a just-for-me type project"))
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(section
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(h3 "notes on primitives")
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(p
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"i think some interesting things start to bubble out of some of
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those goals up there. like the idea of supporting a bunch of
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different kinds of transformations that should themselves be
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transformable. the primitives we're working with have to work
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below the level of \"lexeme\" or \"phoneme\" to have something
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abstract that can apply to both. i'm not going to get into
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specifics even a little bit at this point-you'll have to stay
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tuned for more"))
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(section
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(h3 "notes on execution model")
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(p
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"this is going to be the crunchiest stuff to think about. i'm
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going to make some arguments for some things that (it is my
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belief) fall out of these goals. things like dynamic typing.
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things like reflectivity (this is sooo important it gets its
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own section.) things like lazy evaluation (because languages
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are big and sometimes you only want to look at a subset of a
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language.) there's also some hypothetical notions that will
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require some experiments to determine applicability to the
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project. i'm just going to list them as questions and not
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expound upon or defend their existence as questions here:
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propositions as a means of combination? propagation networks
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as primitives?"))
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(section
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(h3 "notes on reflectivity and interaction")
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(p
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"this is so important! i want conlangers to use this tool to
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iterate and that requires ~something like a REPL~ in a
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dynamic environment. my dream is to have a bidirectional
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flow of information; whereby a user of the system can define
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some rules about their language, evaluate those rules on some
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data in an interpreter, inspect those data, modify those data
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and run the interpreter such that it produces possible rules
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that would yield the new result. wether or not that experience
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results from the project, users should be able to rebind
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anything their project needs *at runtime*"))
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(section
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(h3 "notes on portability")
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(p
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"as the project develops i will have to give some thought to
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how to make it available to conlangers with different kinds
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of computation experience. the ideal would be for a full
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featured web implementation that interoperates with hosted
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implementations, but we'll see"))
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(section
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(h3 "notes on the substrate")
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(p
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"not a lot to say here. i will begin this project in racket
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because i have some familiarity with it and it is
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specifically built for developing languages. i will be using
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other tools to explore other aspects of the project and may
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ultimately move away from the racket ecosystem, but a girl
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has gotta start somewhere")))
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(section
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(hgroup
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(h2 "about the name")
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(p (em "it's pronouced ˈlæ.ɾɫ̩"))
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(hr))
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(p
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"i don't know dude, naming things is hard. it's a working name,
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it works good as an extension. "
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(code "my-conlang.latl") "anyone?")
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(p
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"i also just like syllabic laterals? they sound neat to me. the
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official initialism is " (u "l") "inguistic " (u "a") "nalytic "
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(u "t") "ransformation " (u "l") "anguage, but it also double
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entendres to " (u "l") "ower " (u "a" ) "nterior " (u "t")
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"emporal " (u "l" ) "obe, so that's just kind of fun.")
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(p
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"and the l means there can be lambda iconography-this is crucial
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for a new computer project. [ˈλæ.ɾɫ̩] as a typographic image is
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so perfectly specific to the kinds of things i dream about.")
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(p "maybe it'll have a different name some day, idk")))
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