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2016/05/22 08:30:54
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
LordofHats wrote: Plagiarism is by definition copyright infringement (literally, that's what plagiarism is).
Wrong. If I posted Hamlet to the fiction forum under the pretense that I wrote it, that would be plagiarism but it would not be copyright infringement. Plagiarism has more in common with trademark law than copyright law: it is about falsely implying that another person's hard work is your own, it is not about the creator's exclusive right to create copies of the specific expression of that work.
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."
-C.S. Lewis
2016/05/22 14:58:15
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
That line is actually much more blurry than you think. There is no linguistic definition for a constructed language.
Linguists call it a "planned language." I think they find the word planned more descriptive for them than constructed, but planlang doesn't role of the tongue as good as conlang XD. There are even ways linguists have to classify them (a posteriori vs a priori, basically based on existent language vs completely made up).
Yes, but the whole concept of planned vs natural languages is incredibly controversial in the linguistic community. Because as I said, English and virtually all well developed literary languages have also been planned to a huge degree, and most of that can be traced to individuals too.
Meanwhile, a language like Klingon or Sindarin has also had a lot of input of a larger community. Neither Klingon nor Sindarin were functional languages when they were published.
Klingon is not. Sindarin is. While the language in the books does not form a complete language, Tolkein's notes were... Well his notes are insane. Elvish (including the Sindarin subset) was first published in An Introduction to Elvish, which contained a complete and functional language. It was edited by a third party, but the it was pretty much just a cleaned up publication of Tolkein's notes. The guy approached world building like an anthropologist. His notes contain a very functional Sindarin lexicon, and more importantly Tolkein's languages actually had in built phonologies, morphologies, and tonal shifts from the get go. He even included complex language families, and fictional etymology! In fact Tolkein specifically identified his languages as an artistic exercise of his imagination. Tolkein was a linguist by profession. His created languages sparked the modern popularity of hobby, but few conlangs reach the level of sophistication of Tolkein if only because most conlangers are not trained as linguists (they're writers like me, or hobbyists who have grasped some basic tenets of linguistics).
No, Tolkien's Sindarin never consisted of more than a few hundred words, and Tolkien never intended for Sindarin or any of his languages to become full, functional languages:
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote:"A precise account, with drawings and other aids, of Dwarvish smith-practices, Hobbit-pottery, Numerorean medicine and philosophy, and so on would interfere with the narrative, or swell the Appendices. So too, would complete grammars and lexical collection of the languages. Any attempt at bogus 'completeness' would reduce the thing to a 'model', a kind of imaginary dolls house of pseudo-history. Much hidden and unexhibited work is needed to give the nomenclature a 'feel' of verisimilitude. But this story is not the place for technical phonology and grammatical history. I hope to leave these things firmly sketched and recorded."
To Tolkien, Sindarin was a purely artistic thing. Something he did to make his world feel alive and because he just enjoyed making this kind of stuff up as an artistic exercise (which is why Sindarin is ridiculously complicated and would not even be very practical as an actual language). You might be able to argue that this is copyrightable because it is art rather than a system for conveying information. But after all the development Sindarin went through after Tolkien's death, I am not sure that will hold up anymore.
A huge lot of work on Sindarin was done by third parties (especially the scholars behind the Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon magazines) who devote their time to spitting through Tolkien's massive disorganised pile of notes. While the original source remains Tolkien, without their work Sindarin would not even be close to the level of completeness and usability it sits on today. Their work is actually not all that different from what grammarians of living languages do (as grammarians mostly work by studying works of earlier grammarians and by studying older literature and then deducing logical rules or even new words from that)
LordofHats wrote: Tolkein put more effort into developing his world of languages than I've put into my entire education (though to be fair, my education hasn't spanned half a century yet XD). Ultimately though, and for the purposes of hashing out how Sindarin is different from Klingon and different from English, everything that we know about Sindarin basically comes from a single hand. Tolkein's. It would not even remotely exist without him. I'm not keen on taking away an author's creative rights just because someone read and repeated the subject material to someone else.
Linguistically, the line between a recently constructed language like Sindarin and a dead language like Latin is extremely hard to draw, as the only real difference is in the age of the language and the complexity of its development.
Who invented Latin?
Who invented Sindarin?
The answer to the former is impossible. The best we can say is "the Romans," because functionally a "natural language" is not invented, but developed. The answer to the later is definitive; J.R.R. Tolkein. Klingon is one of a number of fictional languages that ends up falling into the middle, as it was "invented" by someone as a plot device or narrative tool, but was turned into a full language by someone else(s).
Who invented Latin?
You could trace that to Varro, Quintilius and other Roman grammarians. Classical Latin was an almost completely artificial language that wasn't actually even spoken by the Roman people.
The thing with "who invented a language" is pretty much meaningless as there are plenty of living languages that can be traced to individuals. Most creole languages, as well as modern Hebrew, are clear examples. But Eliezer Ben-Yehuda doesn't have copyright on Hebrew, so why should Tolkien still have copyright on Sindarin or Okrand on Klingon?
The other major hurdle would be that systems are expressly not eligible for copyright. And any linguist will confirm that a language is a system.
And? Windows is a system. A crappy, buggy, spyware laden system, but it's a system and its copyrighted. So is Steam. So is Amazon's weird little method of taking product photos bizarrely. Being a "system" has nothing to do with copyright. Linguists are likely to split on whether or not conlangs actually constitute language. In fact, the ISO (International Organization for Standardization), tags conlangs as "art." Notably for this discussion, Klingon is not one of them! It is simply tagged as "tlh."
Linguists have even laid out how a constructed language might become a "true blue" language, and it all hinges on having native speakers and an evolving morphology. Esperanto has been around for over 100 years and only has 2000 native speakers tops (in 2004), and it's still considered constructed. Somehow, I doubt that a fictional language produced for a scifi television series is ever going to develop a large base of native speakers if only because I expect Paramount to burn the IP to the ground long before that can happen
Windows and Steam are not systems, they are computer programs. Amazon's method of taking pictures is not copyrighted, it is patented which is something different. It is also not a patent on a certain method, but rather a patent on a very specific set-up.
Being a system or a method has everything to do with copyright, just look up the relevant US laws.
Also, the classification of Esperanto is not so black and white. It is incredibly controversial, and not just because the entire concept of constructed and natural languages is incredibly controversial.
Copyright protection extends to a description, explanation, or illustration of
an idea or system, assuming that the requirements of copyright law are met.
Copyright in such a case protects the particular literary or pictorial expression
chosen by the author. But it gives the copyright owner no exclusive rights in the
idea, method, or system involved.
Note the first section.
Which means in other words that I can write a book detailing a fictional language and get copyright on that book and its contents. That does not mean that I have a copyright on the system of morphemes described in the book. In the same way if I wrote a book about a new method for cutting wood and invented a new tool for doin so, I would be able to get a copyright on the book and the tool itself, but not on the woodcutting method. Other people would be able to invent their own tools that use the same woodcutting method or they would be able to write their own books
Systems can be copyrighted, but my copyright on something does not necessarily extend to the system used to create it. For example I write a book called "The Adventures of Hat's and His Hilariously Sized Ego," which I copyright and obtain exclusive rights to. The book is written in French. My exclusive rights to TAoHaHHSE (this book seriously needed a shorter title...) does not extend to giving me exclusive rights to French.
TAoHaHHSE? And it is written in French? Then it should be LadHesged or something like that instead.
Spoiler:
Where LadHesged stands for "Les Aventures du Hat et son gros ego drôle".
Note how LadHesged is much easier to pronounce than TAoHaHHSE and also how the use of French instantly lifts the novel to a higher literary level. It just sounds so much more intelligent and sexy.
(and please pardon my French if it is faulty, I am just a beginning speaker )
LordofHats wrote: Automatically Appended Next Post: A conlang is like any other piece of fiction. If it exists as a product of the author, the author(s) owns it unless they give up that right. I honestly don't think there is a more straight forward way to explain it... It's creation as an expression of artistic creativity is not negated by third parties repeating it anymore than a play ceases to belong to its playright because someone can recite it. The character of Legolas is copyrighted, but that does not extend to copyrights on the combination of letters spelling his name, or the idea of an elf with a bow (and no arrows except when the plot demands it). The Klingons are copyrighted, as in the fictional alien race, but that does not extend to a copyright on proud warrior race guys or face ridges.
Exactly. Just as having a copyright on Legolas doesn't a copyright on any of the elements making up the character Legolas or a copyright on Klingons doesn't mean a copyright on alien warrior races with cheesegraters on their foreheads, so a having copyright on a language doesn't mean you have a copyright on the phonemes, morphemes and all the other stuff making up the language. So to get back to the fan movie, no copyright could forbid them from using Klingon or speaking Klingon on screen, as long as they don't actually call refer to it as Klingon.
Error 404: Interesting signature not found
2016/05/22 16:26:17
Subject: Re:"You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
Wrong. If I posted Hamlet to the fiction forum under the pretense that I wrote it, that would be plagiarism but it would not be copyright infringement.
Hamlet isn't copyrighted. Even if the concept had existed in Shakespears time, DIsney didn't and his copyright would have expired centuries ago.
The whole point of copyright is that the creator of something has exclusive rights to it's reproduction, and distribution. To take someone elses work, pass it off as your own (plagiarism), is in direct violation of a copyright holders right to both.
Plagiarism has more in common with trademark law than copyright law: it is about falsely implying that another person's hard work is your own, it is not about the creator's exclusive right to create copies of the specific expression of that work.
That is completely what plagiarism is... You can't trademark a book. A book is too big to be covered by a trademark anyway. You couldn't trademark one if you tried. You can trademark a logo, or slogan, but the difference between copyright and trademark is that copyright is exclusive in all senses, while trademark is only exclusive for the market. I can write an epic fantasy series about kings fighting for a throne, but I can't call it Game of Thrones. That would get me sued for a trademark infringement (you can't copyright book titles). I can't take Game of Thrones and call it Gnome of Domes, that would get me sued for copyright infringement (aka plagiarism).
Plagiarism has very little to do with trademarks. Trademarks are not held to be creative works, that's why protections for them are much more limited than copyrights or patents.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/05/22 16:46:04
Yes, but the whole concept of planned vs natural languages is incredibly controversial in the linguistic community. Because as I said, English and virtually all well developed literary languages have also been planned to a huge degree, and most of that can be traced to individuals too.
Not in this sense. No one sat done one day and created the English language. The English language evolved from old germanic dialects, got mixed with a gak ton of French after that whole Norman thing happened, went through three stages called Old, Middle, and Modern, etc etc. It's not the same thing and it's not controversial. The controversy is about how linguistics as an academic field relates to made up languages, not about whether or not a made up language is the same as a "natural" one.
No, Tolkien's Sindarin never consisted of more than a few hundred words, and Tolkien never intended for Sindarin or any of his languages to become full, functional languages:
Tolkien's notes contained a full lexicon. That he never intended them to be become an auxiliary language like Esperanto has little to do with it. And I suppose his intent has little to really do with its current legal status (I just thought it was interesting XD)
But after all the development Sindarin went through after Tolkien's death, I am not sure that will hold up anymore.
It's as simple as making the basic legal argument that laws/case law preventing someone from copyrighting a language like french or English were never intended to deprive someone of their artistic product simply because it was a "language." That's how computer code ended up becoming copyrightable.
A huge lot of work on Sindarin was done by third parties (especially the scholars behind the Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon magazines) who devote their time to spitting through Tolkien's massive disorganised pile of notes.
Creating something, and presenting it to the public are two different things.
Their work is actually not all that different from what grammarians of living languages
And a living language can't be traced to a sole creator.
You could trace that to Varro, Quintilius and other Roman grammarians. Classical Latin was an almost completely artificial language that wasn't actually even spoken by the Roman people.
That's three people. Can you lay out how the whole of the language was created by them? Which of them invented its phonology? It's morphology?
The thing with "who invented a language" is pretty much meaningless as there are plenty of living languages that can be traced to individuals.
It's only meaningless if we chose to completely ignore the differences between how living languages develop and how a fictional one is concocted.
Which means in other words that I can write a book detailing a fictional language and get copyright on that book and its contents. That does not mean that I have a copyright on the system of morphemes described in the book. In the same way if I wrote a book about a new method for cutting wood and invented a new tool for doin so, I would be able to get a copyright on the book and the tool itself, but not on the woodcutting method. Other people would be able to invent their own tools that use the same woodcutting method or they would be able to write their own books
I have no idea why people keep bringing up this logic. By this logic a made up language can be copyrighted, but phenomes, morphologies, and tonal shifts can't. Confusing systems as they exist in a legal sense with the word system and how we use it day to day isn't making this more clear. Living languages run into a whole host of problems when it comes to copyright. The word "running" was not invented by me, and as far as I know no one can positively identify who invented it just maybe the first time it appeared in print. Even then the etymology of the word can be traced, which goes on to show no one really invented it. Further, the utilitarian use to English speakers for the word running grossly outweighs any hypothetical claim to creation.
Words are not covered by copyright. They're not deemed creative enough. A whole language however falls under the same artistic expression as a copyright on United Federation of Planets, in which the specific uniforms, characters, and civilization as designed is protected (but this does not extend to preventing anyone from ever writing about a futuristic interstellar utopia with space ships and such).
TAoHaHHSE? And it is written in French? Then it should be LadHesged or something like that instead.
[spoiler]Where LadHesged stands for "Les Aventures du Hat et son gros ego drôle".
Note how LadHesged is much easier to pronounce than TAoHaHHSE and also how the use of French instantly lifts the novel to a higher literary level. It just sounds so much more intelligent and sexy.
Well I suppose it's just written in very bad French
so a having copyright on a language doesn't mean you have a copyright on the phonemes, morphemes and all the other stuff making up the language...
So to get back to the fan movie, no copyright could forbid them from using Klingon or speaking Klingon on screen, as long as they don't actually call refer to it as Klingon.
By that logic, a copyright can exist on Klingon, and Paramount can enforce it, they just can't prevent "not-Klingon" from existing so long as it is sufficiently distinct from "Klingon" so as not to constitute copyright infringement.
Those demons who hate Star Trek, JJ Abrams and Justin Lin, got Paramount to drop the lawsuit against the guy profiting off Trek fans by exploiting fan films.
I'm all for big businesses to get off everyone's butts about fan stuff That and this whole dig we have no with copyright being effectively forever is kind of ludicrous. Back before Mickey Mouse, the copyright on Star Trek would have expired in the mid 90s. As far as I know this fan film is non-profit. All that work and effort, and Paramount doesn't have to spend a dime. It's free advertising.
Wrong. If I posted Hamlet to the fiction forum under the pretense that I wrote it, that would be plagiarism but it would not be copyright infringement.
Hamlet isn't copyrighted. Even if the concept had existed in Shakespears time, DIsney didn't and his copyright would have expired centuries ago.
The whole point of copyright is that the creator of something has exclusive rights to it's reproduction, and distribution. To take someone elses work, pass it off as your own (plagiarism), is in direct violation of a copyright holders right to both.
Plagiarism has more in common with trademark law than copyright law: it is about falsely implying that another person's hard work is your own, it is not about the creator's exclusive right to create copies of the specific expression of that work.
That is completely what plagiarism is... You can't trademark a book. A book is too big to be covered by a trademark anyway. You couldn't trademark one if you tried. You can trademark a logo, or slogan, but the difference between copyright and trademark is that copyright is exclusive in all senses, while trademark is only exclusive for the market. I can write an epic fantasy series about kings fighting for a throne, but I can't call it Game of Thrones. That would get me sued for a trademark infringement (you can't copyright book titles). I can't take Game of Thrones and call it Gnome of Domes, that would get me sued for copyright infringement (aka plagiarism).
Plagiarism has very little to do with trademarks. Trademarks are not held to be creative works, that's why protections for them are much more limited than copyrights or patents.
To be fair, in Shakespear's time, if he had caught someone else performing his play without permission, he would have gone round with a bunch of actors and fethed their gak up, probably knifed a bunch of them and thrown them in the Thames.
I actually seem to remember reading somewhere that different theatre troupes would get into fights all the time, and guarded their scripts fiercely least another steal them.
(Or do you mean the guy who is making actually good Star Trek is the one exploiting the fans?)
People complaining about JJ Abrams but he was one of the people that helped get Paramount to stop the suit. The one exploiting the fans and was being sued for getting money to pay his salary and support his lifestyle through crowdfunding and merchandising, was the one exploiting fans. If he hadn't tried to profit off IP that wasn't his to begin with Paramount wouldn't have sued in the first place.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
2016/05/22 21:13:33
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
Yes, but the whole concept of planned vs natural languages is incredibly controversial in the linguistic community. Because as I said, English and virtually all well developed literary languages have also been planned to a huge degree, and most of that can be traced to individuals too.
Not in this sense. No one sat done one day and created the English language. The English language evolved from old germanic dialects, got mixed with a gak ton of French after that whole Norman thing happened, went through three stages called Old, Middle, and Modern, etc etc. It's not the same thing and it's not controversial. The controversy is about how linguistics as an academic field relates to made up languages, not about whether or not a made up language is the same as a "natural" one.
No, but someone did sit down one day and created all of the rules of the English language. Later scholars added to and refined that work throughout the generations, actively shaping the development of the language. Without all those guys we would not have had the English language as we know it today. Every language that has been standardised only evolved "naturally" up to the point of standardisation. It is perfectly possible to argue that modern literary English is a fully artifical constructed language (as an example, preposition stranding is not permissable in standard English, even though it originally was a perfectly natural element of the language. The only reason this is so is because a guy named John Dryden one fine day decided he didn't like it.) The entire concept of constructed vs natural really is controversial because it is impossible to draw a clear line of where one ends and the other begins. I am pretty sure all linguists would agree that Klingon or Sindarin are constructed languages, but the problem comes to exist if such languages continue to develop, like Esperanto. In the end, all words were made up once upon a time. And linguistically, it doesn't matter one single bit if a language came about as a result of milennia of development by a large group of people or whether it came about as a result of decades of development by a small group of people. Age of a language is not really a valid criterium for the "constructedness" of a language. Neither is the number of inventors. As I said twice before now, there is perfect examples out there of pidgins and creole languages (as well as modern Hebrew) that were invented by a single person or a very small group of persons only a few centuries or even shorter ago, and that are now the first language of thousands of people. No linguist in sound mind would describe those languages as not natural.
On a sidenote: doesn't argueing about this make you feel like a total nerd? It does so for me. I don't I have ever felt this nerdy.
A huge lot of work on Sindarin was done by third parties (especially the scholars behind the Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon magazines) who devote their time to spitting through Tolkien's massive disorganised pile of notes.
Creating something, and presenting it to the public are two different things.
They do a lot more than just presenting things to the public.
LordofHats wrote: And a living language can't be traced to a sole creator.
In some cases, it can. Modern Hebrew is a good example where the development was started by just one single guy (others later picked up on it and made it into what it is now). And even more importantly, whether the creator(s) of a language is tracable or not doesn't matter linguistically.
You could trace that to Varro, Quintilius and other Roman grammarians. Classical Latin was an almost completely artificial language that wasn't actually even spoken by the Roman people.
That's three people. Can you lay out how the whole of the language was created by them? Which of them invented its phonology? It's morphology?
You can't "invent" phonology...
Now I am not very knowledgable about Classical Latin or Roman grammarians, but Varro and Cicero were probably the most influential in laying down the morphology and syntax of Classical Latin (which again, was rather different from the Vulgar Latin spoken by the Roman people). As an interesting sidenote, these rules also indirectly have had a huge influence on the development of English (and Dutch too) because the rules for grammar and other elements were modelled on the rules for Classical Latin. If you want to know more you really need to turn to actual linguists specialised in both classical and vulgar Latin.
LordofHats wrote: It's only meaningless if we chose to completely ignore the differences between how living languages develop and how a fictional one is concocted.
Once created, they develop in the exact same way, so there really is no meaningful linguistic difference. Look up some reports on native speakers of Esperanto or the development of modern Hebrew after becoming widely spoken. And as I said, even the continueing development on languages without native speakers such as Klingon or Sindarin resembles the development on dead languages such as Classical Latin or Gothic.
Which means in other words that I can write a book detailing a fictional language and get copyright on that book and its contents. That does not mean that I have a copyright on the system of morphemes described in the book. In the same way if I wrote a book about a new method for cutting wood and invented a new tool for doin so, I would be able to get a copyright on the book and the tool itself, but not on the woodcutting method. Other people would be able to invent their own tools that use the same woodcutting method or they would be able to write their own books
I have no idea why people keep bringing up this logic. By this logic a made up language can be copyrighted, but phenomes, morphologies, and tonal shifts can't. Confusing systems as they exist in a legal sense with the word system and how we use it day to day isn't making this more clear. Living languages run into a whole host of problems when it comes to copyright. The word "running" was not invented by me, and as far as I know no one can positively identify who invented it just maybe the first time it appeared in print. Even then the etymology of the word can be traced, which goes on to show no one really invented it. Further, the utilitarian use to English speakers for the word running grossly outweighs any hypothetical claim to creation.
Words are not covered by copyright. They're not deemed creative enough. A whole language however falls under the same artistic expression as a copyright on United Federation of Planets, in which the specific uniforms, characters, and civilization as designed is protected (but this does not extend to preventing anyone from ever writing about a futuristic interstellar utopia with space ships and such).
That is just not true. Words do not just spring up out of holes in the ground like dwarfs do. Every word was at some point invented by someone. And no, you can't copyright phonemes. You can only copyright something you invented yourself, and inventing new phonemes is virtually impossible (well, it might be possible but you'd need to make some seriously weird sound ). Morphemes would be also incredibly hard to invent, as most likely there is already some language in the world using the same morphemes you use because the possibilities are quite limited if you want the morphology to still be functional (the exception here would be word roots, but you can't copyright words, even made-up ones). A morphology might be copyrightable, but a morphology is nothing but an identifaction and description of the morphemes of a language and so would not prohibit anyone from using the morphemes in question. There really is no way to copyright a language. A language is made up out of phones who combine into phonemes (and being nothing but sounds, neither would be copyrightable) which combine into morphemes (if a word is not copyrightable, why would a little part of a word be?) which combine into words (which are also not copyrightable) which combine into phrases (which are also not copyrightable) which combine into sentences (also not copyrightable). Furthermore, a language clearly constitutes a system and therefore is also not eligible for copyright. To put it quite simply, there is no element in a language that would eligible for copyright.
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2016/05/22 21:19:52
Error 404: Interesting signature not found
2016/05/22 22:11:43
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
Iron_Captain wrote: No, but someone did sit down one day and created all of the rules of the English language.
The rules of the English language (or any language) were created by speaking it. They are noted, written down, and taught as part of modern language education and study.
The entire concept of constructed vs natural really is controversial because it is impossible to draw a clear line of where one ends and the other begins.
I can draw a very clear line. I can't put a date on when English was created. I can on Klingon (1984).
I am pretty sure all linguists would agree that Klingon or Sindarin are constructed languages, but the problem comes to exist if such languages continue to develop, like Esperanto
That's a hypothetical of a non-existent dilemma. The law does not exist to deal with non-existent dilemmas.
No linguist in sound mind would describe those languages as not natural.
I know at least one, especially since pidgins and creoles are not comparable to language like English. That's why linguists have a specific words for describing them.
On a sidenote: doesn't argueing about this make you feel like a total nerd? It does so for me. I don't I have ever felt this nerdy.
Somewhere a stereotypical manly man is flexing his pecks and screaming at us;
And even more importantly, whether the creator(s) of a language is tracable or not doesn't matter linguistically.
It does however matter as to whether or not something can be qualified as a work of creative expression.
You can't "invent" phonology...
You can't invent phonemes (well, creatively you probably could, but realistically no one could make the sound with their mouths). The IPA has a chart identifying all know phonemes used in human languages. Especially if you're talking about aliens, or fantasy races, you could "add" phonemes to the chart, but no human would be able to make the sounds.
You can invent phonology as in which phonemes are part of a language. For example this;
Is a consonant chart for Standard Finnish phonemes. These are some of the sounds used in the Finnish language (verbs have a different chart, as do other kinds of consonants). A popular thing to do in conlangs is to take an existent phonological chart and modify it (it saves time on what is easily the most boring part of making up a language). Of course, natural language doesn't "invent" its phonology like this. We can simply codify them this way. Real languages end up dumping, adopting, and modifying their phonology in contact with other languages, or even through the mere act of speaking. Morphology likewise can be invented within the context of a fictional language. Every language has its own phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. A well constructed fictional one also has them. Only lazy conlangs throw together random words with no consideration for phonotactic constraints!
This is also why I'd consider Paramounts claim to Klingon weak. They didn't spell any of that stuff out, and neither did Marc Okrand. Fans eventually identified and constructed all if by speaking Klingon, making Klingon much more similar to a real language than your standard conlang.
Words do not just spring up out of holes in the ground like dwarfs do. Every word was at some point invented by someone.
Realistically words in living language are rarely invented (they can be), but many words end up changing their nature and shape over time as they are used. The word "gay" is a good example. Damn has that word gone through a whole host of changes in a mere century!
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/05/22 22:20:17
Iron_Captain wrote: No, but someone did sit down one day and created all of the rules of the English language.
The rules of the English language (or any language) were created by speaking it. They are noted, written down, and taught as part of modern language education and study.
Yes and no. Obviously, language has inherent rules. But prior to standardisation these rules usually are very different from community to community or person to person (for some languages, this remains true even after standardisation. Just look at all the varieties of English). But in the process of standardisation, it comes down to individuals to decide exactly which rules are "good English" and which are "not good English". Just look at the example of preposition stranding in English.
The entire concept of constructed vs natural really is controversial because it is impossible to draw a clear line of where one ends and the other begins.
LordofHats wrote: I can draw a very clear line. I can't put a date on when English was created. I can on Klingon (1984).
And how is that linguistically relevant? I can put a clear date on modern Hebrew (1881) and Esperanto (1887), but that in no way means those languages are not a natural language to its speakers.
No linguist in sound mind would describe those languages as not natural.
I know at least one, especially since pidgins and creoles are not comparable to language like English. That's why linguists have a specific words for describing them.
They are most definitely comparable to English. That is why linguists use the same word (which is "language") for describing them. But anyways, that is not relevant for our discussion. Relevant for our discussion is that those languages are natural languages, despite being artifically constructed by traceable individuals at a certain point in time. Also, out of curiosity, what is the linguist you know's argument for refusing to describe creole languages as natural languages? That seems a bit strange to me.
And even more importantly, whether the creator(s) of a language is tracable or not doesn't matter linguistically.
It does however matter as to whether or not something can be qualified as a work of creative expression.
Yes, but you'd need to know the creator's intent for that. Knowing just who the creator was is not enough. And even then, being created as a work of creative expression doesn't mean it is automatically entitled to copyright. For example, a language might be a work of creative expression, but it would still qualify as being an "useful article" under copyright law unless the language in question contained elements unrelated to the utilitarian aspect of the language (i.e. elements not used to convey information).
You can invent phonology as in which phonemes are part of a language. For example this;
My bad, I meant to say phonemes. You could invent a phonology and maybe even get copyright on it, altough that wouldn't actually be really useful as anyone could still use the same phonemes.
LordofHats wrote: This is also why I'd consider Paramounts claim to Klingon weak. They didn't spell any of that stuff out, and neither did Marc Okrand. Fans eventually identified and constructed all if by speaking Klingon, making Klingon much more similar to a real language than your standard conlang.
Words do not just spring up out of holes in the ground like dwarfs do. Every word was at some point invented by someone.
Realistically words in living language are rarely invented (they can be), but many words end up changing their nature and shape over time as they are used. The word "gay" is a good example. Damn has that word gone through a whole host of changes in a mere century!
Yet if you go back to the beginning of language, words were invented. Also, new words are being invented and added to a language all the time. Travel back to the middle ages and ask anyone what an automobile is, I dare you. Or any of the many words invented and introduced into English by Shakespeare.
On a sidenote: doesn't argueing about this make you feel like a total nerd? It does so for me. I don't I have ever felt this nerdy.
Somewhere a stereotypical manly man is flexing his pecks and screaming at us;
To make it worse, I am making a language of my own. My 40k fiction writing and character development kinda got out of hand... At least it is not so bad yet as Tolkien... I am basing my language on real-world languages, I don't have the time or linguistic expertise to create a language from scratch like Master Tolkien did.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/05/23 00:07:05
Error 404: Interesting signature not found
2016/05/23 00:30:07
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
Also, out of curiosity, what is the linguist you know's argument for refusing to describe creole languages as natural languages? That seems a bit strange to me.
When I'm not here talking with other dakkanauts, I pretty much am either working, at class, or talking to other people who do nothing, but talk about academic stuff. One of these people is a linguist, and we talk about this kind of stuff from time to time (whenever he gets tired of me talking about history usually). He posts occasionally on these boards as Darth_Lopez.
And it's not that creole language isn't "natural" language. It's that it's not "natural language." Note the quotes as the word and phrase carry different conotations (and it's not that creole can't be "natural language" it's just that these are two different divisions of language that may or may not overlap). It's that linguistics recognizes many subdivisions of the overarching concept of language. constructed/planned languages, are treated as distinct from natural language, which is also treated as distinct from creole language etc etc. Linguistics is a science, and science is all about breaking gak down to ridiculous levels
You could invent a phonology and maybe even get copyright on it, altough that wouldn't actually be really useful as anyone could still use the same phonemes.
I doubt a phonology is unique enough on its own to qualify. Much like I can't copyright the name James T Kirk. I can copyright the character, but not the name. Single components of an expression are generally not copyrightable. It's the whole that is protected, and in the whole that smaller more significant elements can be expressed as uniquely owned by the creator. Marvel has copyrights on dozens of characters, but just going to the copyright office with a character profile and a sketch probably won't fly. Those characters are protected as part of Marvel's larger framework of copyrights and trademarks.
In the same way I can't own an actual person, I can't own an actual language. I can however own a fictional one in the same way I can own a fictional character.
If copyright laws worked in a sensible way, we'd actually never have to worry about a conlang becoming a reallang someday. The copyright protection would eventually expire, and the language fiction or not would enter the public domain. Issue solved. As has been noted though, private firms like Disney have aggressively pushed back the copyright deadline every time its come up, so the copyright instead of ending after 20, 30, or 70 years as it once did is now up to 120 years. It'll probably be 150 soon enough (whenever Disney needs to lobby again so they don't lose exclusive rights to Mickey Mouse )
A fictional language can be as much part of a book, series, or game as character, setting, or prose. Protection is likewise extended to it as a creative product.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/05/23 00:31:59
Also, out of curiosity, what is the linguist you know's argument for refusing to describe creole languages as natural languages? That seems a bit strange to me.
When I'm not here talking with other dakkanauts, I pretty much am either working, at class, or talking to other people who do nothing, but talk about academic stuff. One of these people is a linguist, and we talk about this kind of stuff from time to time (whenever he gets tired of me talking about history usually). He posts occasionally on these boards as Darth_Lopez.
hi i'm darth_lopez I'm a formally Trained Linguist with sadly only a Bachelors Degree (Despite taking nearly every Graduate Level Course in the Field offered by my university), in Linguistics and a Second Bachelors in German. I'm planning on pursuing my masters in the Fall or Winter Semester of this coming Academic Season. It's nice to meet you. I've Written papers on Alienability as a Unviversal Principal of Grammar in German, English, and Mandarin. Papers on Spatial Relations in German, Second Language Acquisition, Rabaul Creole German, Michif as a mixed language, Usage of Further/Farther in SAE, lol as compared to ok (presently trying to publish this one it was good), lets see... Oh the proposal of the case phrase in German.. and a few things on if Patois, Creoles in general and a at least one paper on Inuit and a few others that really aren't worth mentioning. Those are My Credentials for the moment. My current future interests include Mixed and Creole and Pidgin languages. Which I will Have you both know are entirely Natural and are not constructed. No natural human language is constructed or regarded as such by the field to my knowledge. I am his linguist friend. Don't expect perfect written grammar because that is honestly an artificiality of language produced by prescriptivists to enforce often time archaic rules for the sake of aesthetics so let the written word burn so long as you get the gist.
And it's not that creole language isn't "natural" language. It's that it's not "natural language." Note the quotes as the word and phrase carry different conotations (and it's not that creole can't be "natural language" it's just that these are two different divisions of language that may or may not overlap). It's that linguistics recognizes many subdivisions of the overarching concept of language. constructed/planned languages, are treated as distinct from natural language, which is also treated as distinct from creole language etc etc. Linguistics is a science, and science is all about breaking gak down to ridiculous levels
First of all: Creole's are a natural language. Depending on the theory you subscribe to they are part of something called the "creole continuum" and the next lingustic step beyond pidgin and lingua franca. They are the language that is formed when the children of those speaking a pidgin language nativise the pidgin and begin a slightly more complex usage beyond what was previously existent, with more complex morphological and syntactic structures though interestingly they are predominantly SVO and globally share various features that some linguists are and have been suggesting to demonstrate universal properties of grammar in acquisition and language building through the use of an innate "language organ" (Like Brocas region or Wernickers (sp?) Region).
That said Language is not simply a "tool" I will ask you to better define what you mean as a social construct because including it I think broadens what we're willing to call a social construct to such a scale it becomes moot. That said I'm not familiar with social constructionism. So if you could elaborate that would be great.
As far as constructed langauges go, thought goes into that. People Build those with the intention of building those. Creoles are developed by natural processes Klingon, The Tolkien langauges , The Voice, Mando, Esperanto, conlang, conlang, conlang were written by a person in a room with a pen and some paper, Patois, Rabaul Creole German Guyanese Creole and hundreds of others were nativised by the next generation learning them as children and implementing a systematic structure and rule set with out sitting together and saying in english first "Hey guys we need a language to speak some stuff private like" or "lets make a thing because we want to make artificial cutlure (in esparanto's case an artificial culture of unity)"... This is a Huge and Major Difference. Natural Processess produce natural language, Human intention to replicate (and often times failing at the replication of a) natural language is in no way remotely similar to the processes by which creoles are formed in the slightest.
TLDR; Creoles are Natural, Pidgins are Natural, Lingua franca they're also natural in a way, these are not "constructed" which i believe would require a massive level of premeditation in designing a facsimile.
You could invent a phonology and maybe even get copyright on it, although that wouldn't actually be really useful as anyone could still use the same phonemes.
I doubt a phonology is unique enough on its own to qualify. Much like I can't copyright the name James T Kirk. I can copyright the character, but not the name. Single components of an expression are generally not copyrightable. It's the whole that is protected, and in the whole that smaller more significant elements can be expressed as uniquely owned by the creator. Marvel has copyrights on dozens of characters, but just going to the copyright office with a character profile and a sketch probably won't fly. Those characters are protected as part of Marvel's larger framework of copyrights and trademarks.
In the same way I can't own an actual person, I can't own an actual language. I can however own a fictional one in the same way I can own a fictional character.
If copyright laws worked in a sensible way, we'd actually never have to worry about a conlang becoming a reallang someday. The copyright protection would eventually expire, and the language fiction or not would enter the public domain. Issue solved. As has been noted though, private firms like Disney have aggressively pushed back the copyright deadline every time its come up, so the copyright instead of ending after 20, 30, or 70 years as it once did is now up to 120 years. It'll probably be 150 soon enough (whenever Disney needs to lobby again so they don't lose exclusive rights to Mickey Mouse )
A fictional language can be as much part of a book, series, or game as character, setting, or prose. Protection is likewise extended to it as a creative product.
Honestly I don't think you reasonably could because you see processes like co-articulation will occur, then there's going to be innevitable regional variations in pronunciation especially in the case that you haven't mapped out every sound and every potential sound combination in your fictional language. Could you copyright some sort of representation of idealized phonological components in a fictional language sure probably. Could you copyright that phonology? Wellllll Unless you've divised a way of predicting a near infinite system that is regularly affected by human error amongst other things.... No.. But I think this all depends on how much of the science and how much of the legalese you actually want to get into. Copyrighting this would be as useful as Copyright just the SYntax, or Copyrighting just the morphology, or just the orthography. That is to say absolutely pointless.
See the issue here in that Copyrighting any COMPONENT SYSTEM of language is absolutley useless. Alternatively copyrighting any language, Is so broad it is effectively useless as dialects are an inevitability if it comes under use and then linguistic evolution will take place at some stage, possibly very rapidly with a constructed language that catches, and it will turn something on its head somewhere where it is Linguistically no longer the same. Language is simply too large of a combined system of smaller systems operating alongside one another simultaneously and with such infinite plausible variation that you probably cannot accurately copyright it. Could you copyright the first 20 words of klingon and the initial rule set you made. yeah sure, and your idealized systems. Why not you made them? However You can't copyright dutch-klingon, german-klingon, American-klingon, british-standard-klingon, klingity-kling-klingon and the othervariations that will inevitably develope with more robust and naturalistic systems than your original 20 word lexicon and scribblings on paper... Do you see my point? It might've gotten lost there.
I only know copyright with regards to photographic imagery however, which is still at 75 years out to my knowledge here. So yeah. Copyright is fethed up. I think this all comes down to how effectively one could enforce it or be reaosnably expected to enforce it. And ultimately it's an unenforceable endeavor.
I'm sure i have more gak to say i just have to keep reading backwards here.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2016/05/23 05:18:01
Remember Folks: Landmass is landmassy.
2016/05/23 04:14:15
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
Iron_Captain wrote: No, but someone did sit down one day and created all of the rules of the English language.
-.- no one sat down to intentionally orchestrate the rules of english... no one.
The rules of the English language (or any language) were created by speaking it. They are noted, written down, and taught as part of modern language education and study.
Yes and no. Obviously, language has inherent rules. But prior to standardisation these rules usually are very different from community to community or person to person (for some languages, this remains true even after standardisation. Just look at all the varieties of English). But in the process of standardisation, it comes down to individuals to decide exactly which rules are "good English" and which are "not good English". Just look at the example of preposition stranding in English.
Are you talking about written standardization? Because that doesn't matter. Like at all.
There is this approach to looking at language development called Universal Grammr that basically states there are universal principles of language and then there are local parameters of language that varry from language to language in formation. These Universal Rules are kept and maintained by some innate part of human biology (view depending science supports a variety of hypothesis regarding language acquisition). The UG is used to form a base, local paramaters are adopted by speaking and contact basically from the input some output is eventually produced and it is Rule Ordered, Systematic, and for all intents and purposes already "standardized".
If you refer to academic standardization of language, this is a moot point. On many levels written language is entirely artificial it exists to approximatley simulate the spoken format in a way that is aesthtically pleasing and utilitous. It does very little to enforce a standard form beyond the natural one. If standardization had any real impact we would see a lessening of linguistic diversity globally and more linguistic homogeny among communities. Regional Dialect would not exist. German Wouldn't have the variety it has, Nor would English. English is a language family that sponsors: British, American, Australian, Canadian and other varieties, Each of those sponsors their own little family of languages/dialects that in turn sponsor theirs and so on. All the way down to the individual level. Everything is broadly standardized by the natural rules of a language however that standardization in no way shape or form can be attributed to one person or be called out for being an artificiality unless we're discussing written language or constructed languages.
Furthermore even after standardization of the written langauges occurred we still have massive linguistic variation inside those little families. All languages have dialects. If they didn't we wouldn't need to call them Dialects or Varieties of [insert language here]
Standardization in the sense you seem to be talking about is an illusion created by a culture to act as a power structure.
Additionally if I take your comment on preposition standing to be the occurrence of a preposition without a nominal argument then I would like to inform you good sir that is a prescriptivist rule that has been well observed to be archaic. Further it's not even in relation to english it was established inorder to make english conform to a more latin-like format and has no real impact on the actual usage of the language. a simple question "Where's the library at?" demonstrates this quite sufficiently. you're approaching this from aesthetics and certainly not from descriptive linguistics.
The entire concept of constructed vs natural really is controversial because it is impossible to draw a clear line of where one ends and the other begins.
idk who said this and i don't want to be rude... But it's a stupid sentence. There is a very clear line as to where the concept of constructed language vs natural language begins. Did one have the intent on creating a language that did not previously exist(constructed)? Or did that language form with no real planning but instead using naturally intuitive language learning processes and resources that so far appear to be innate (Natural)? very very very clear line. The only place it blurs is when you have native speakers of a constructed language at which point i would argue that that language is no longer really constructed since its been nativised, which means a generation has taken it as it's L1 which means it's had natural and innate language formation rules applied to it (I would call this naturalized), and it probably differs in many ways from that of the previous generation.
If this is somehow felt to be blurry we need not to be having this conversation on a linguistic level.
LordofHats wrote: I can draw a very clear line. I can't put a date on when English was created. I can on Klingon (1984).
And how is that linguistically relevant? I can put a clear date on modern Hebrew (1881) and Esperanto (1887), but that in no way means those languages are not a natural language to its speakers.
Which English? because if we're talking about modern english sometime around shakespear if i recall correctly i might be wrong on that one. We can't pinpoint an exact time because natural language evolution occurs gradually. But we can get relative time frames.
You have to remember Esperanto is constructed language, Hebrew is a reconstruction. These are not natural languages in their current form (though there could be an argument made that native speakers of hebrew now and native speakers of esperanto speak a variety of their respective constructed languages that is technically no longer constructed, but that's a whole philosophical argument i don't feel like starting it works like how the creoles do which i'll talk about again briefly to make sure it's understood that creoles are natural languages damnit!.)
No linguist in sound mind would describe those languages as not natural.
I know at least one, especially since pidgins and creoles are not comparable to language like English. That's why linguists have a specific words for describing them.
They are most definitely comparable to English. That is why linguists use the same word (which is "language") for describing them. But anyways, that is not relevant for our discussion. Relevant for our discussion is that those languages are natural languages, despite being artifically constructed by traceable individuals at a certain point in time.
Also, out of curiosity, what is the linguist you know's argument for refusing to describe creole languages as natural languages? That seems a bit strange to me.
No No No No No No no no nono No No No...
All the nope. None of it.
They are potentially comparable to english, though english exists on a slightly different level. If we were to call english a creole (lets not) it would be a nativised variety of french-celtic-anglosaxon varieties that has evolved into something that is maybe not even recognizable as a creole at this point.
AT NO POINT is a Creole "Artificial" There is not a single linguistic point where one could conceivably call a Creole artificial because creole languages are spoken since birth. Composite? Maybe, Mixed? No because that's an entirely different thing. Artificial language requires that is planned and constructed which Creoles are neither (Pidgins to some extent maybe, lingua franca to some extent maybe) Creoles are just a thing that happen as a means of language formation as far as we can tell. They are entirely natural, they emerge via entirely natural and unplanned unintended ways that do not meet the needs of an Artificial (AKA constructed) Language. They are however entirely natural through and through.
You are focusing far too much on the individuals here, Language is in a way a Social contract, we all unconsciously agree and consent to pulling from a collectively agreed upon lexicon using collectively agreed upon rules to make collectively understandable thoughts. There is no one designer of creole there is no one traceable originator of a natural language.
And even more importantly, whether the creator(s) of a language is tracable or not doesn't matter linguistically.
It does however matter as to whether or not something can be qualified as a work of creative expression.
Yes, but you'd need to know the creator's intent for that. Knowing just who the creator was is not enough. And even then, being created as a work of creative expression doesn't mean it is automatically entitled to copyright. For example, a language might be a work of creative expression, but it would still qualify as being an "useful article" under copyright law unless the language in question contained elements unrelated to the utilitarian aspect of the language (i.e. elements not used to convey information).
The problem with the whole useful article stick is that a constructed language has no real worth until its picked up by the people who don't need it to communicate because they already have an L1 that works fine. This is why constructed languages often fail, They simply aren't useful. They're useful in the particular context of the fiction for which they are created. Outside that frame of reference however they have no real or legitimate use, are often unused or used in broken or heavily modified parts at which point it is no longer useful in the original context... I feel this is more legalese than linguistics though.
I won't argue what can and can't be a creative work. Though i will argue any constructed language is by its nature useless unless for the express purpose of performing a particular function that the natural language can't like machine languages (like c++ which by the way aren't languages. They're a means of encoding information yes but they lack many of the aspects of natural language, though they may qualify as constructed i'm not sure about that actually.)
You can invent phonology as in which phonemes are part of a language. For example this;
My bad, I meant to say phonemes.
You could invent a phonology and maybe even get copyright on it, although that wouldn't actually be really useful as anyone could still use the same phonemes.
You can't invent phonology. You can invent a phonological system. You can't invent phonemes. You can claim usage of a phoneme in a language but at the end of the day you can't make a new sound that was not previously part of the human vocal tract. put this idea to sleep. You could copyright an attempted phonological system. though that would be pointless.
LordofHats wrote: This is also why I'd consider Paramounts claim to Klingon weak. They didn't spell any of that stuff out, and neither did Marc Okrand. Fans eventually identified and constructed all if by speaking Klingon, making Klingon much more similar to a real language than your standard conlang.
Words do not just spring up out of holes in the ground like dwarfs do. Every word was at some point invented by someone.
Realistically words in living language are rarely invented (they can be), but many words end up changing their nature and shape over time as they are used. The word "gay" is a good example. Damn has that word gone through a whole host of changes in a mere century!
Yet if you go back to the beginning of language, words were invented. Also, new words are being invented and added to a language all the time. Travel back to the middle ages and ask anyone what an automobile is, I dare you. Or any of the many words invented and introduced into English by Shakespeare.
Words can totally just spring up from the ground like dwarfs do. the Lexicon is almost an unspoken social agreement that Phrase A represents Thing A. If you have a Thing AXYZ and no Word AXYZ you will create a word AXYZ weather it looks like Word AX or Word A or it's Word 1d8592cf and has no real relation is entirely up to the person who created the word. There are Word formation rules in every language and often times words fit into general structures.
Words are not invented so much as they come into existence and are either phased out or embraced by the speakers of the language. No one person can claim for the creation and prominence of any one word though they may claim to be the originator, that fact matters incredibly little, and is ultimately moot. frankly many words would still be understood as they were simply used differently and had different cultural meanings. Capacitor would be a better example.
To make it worse, I am making a language of my own. My 40k fiction writing and character development kinda got out of hand...
At least it is not so bad yet as Tolkien... I am basing my language on real-world languages, I don't have the time or linguistic expertise to create a language from scratch like Master Tolkien did.
There are numerous elements of many of his varieties that borrowed from dead or archaic forms or romance languages. Even Tolkien had a reference and being a historical linguist he would've had an interesting ideas as to how the varieties he was creating might develop based off of some of the things he referenced.
I'm afraid only those with no background on a subject are allowed to have an opinion here.
yes but I'm quite proud of my work and my nearly 4.0 average in my field if only i took those gen eds more seriously I could probably be getting my PhD already. (Supposition mostly but my professors strongly encouraged going on in the field) Let me brag a little i don't get to often
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LordofHats wrote: Honestly might have saved us all time if I just dragged him in here two days ago
EDIT: Or maybe I've unleashed a monster...
too late i'm not going back in the box
Automatically Appended Next Post: Again Forgive the Typos/Bad Grammar what the feth ever it's late i'm tired this isn't a research paper I'm just doing my thing. And I believe i already said let the written word burn yadda yada.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh and as for my actual opinion on the copyright of klingon. They could totally copyright the initial words and structures used in the first appearances. But it's largely unenforceable, useless, and any klingon actually used today is a product of the speech community not the original architect. Thus not eligible for claim by the original architect or the publisher of the initial bits. So fine line of Yes they totally can get an unenforceable copyright on an extremley limited subset of modern klingon, no they can't copyright the entirety of modern klingon, which falls under the domain of ownership of the speakers and speach communities that use it. But I'm speaking as a scientist of sorts not a lawyer.
This message was edited 14 times. Last update was at 2016/05/23 05:32:14
Remember Folks: Landmass is landmassy.
2016/05/23 12:32:16
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
I suspect the filing is more an attempt to copyright the language as a system because language is not just words. It's a complex interwoven system of codependent systems. So let's be clear here that when they say copyright a language the implication of a successful copyright being made extends far beyond just holding a few words and could jeopardize or leave other languages vulnerable to exploitation.
But then its for that exact reason I believe that it is also probably impossible for any copyright claim to really stick. What specifically are they claiming? Language evolution is readily observable and historically there is literally thousands of examples that could be used to reinforce the idea that a language, even constructed, once adopted by a people is under the collective ownership and influence of the speakers and as such cannot be owned or copyrighted. It's simply an unenforceable and unprotectable IP.
My thought as to why Tolkien had his copyrighted isn't because he wanted to protect his "artistic expression" that was his languages, but because he didn't see a constructed language as catching successfully (or even as a real language), because of the great failure of Esperanto and at least a dozen other attempts at a unified constructed language. Historically they don't catch. Even now Esperanto only has ~2,000 native speakers? So it's slightly better off than 600 endangered languages yet it is not the asset it was intended to be. Klingon and Tolkien's languages were created to flesh out a culture, not serve as an artistic expression of anything. They were simply there to perform the function of cultural transmission and create effective cultural and linguistic boundaries between different peoples, except these people are fictional.
Then there's this:
Can Tolkien’s invented languages be learned and spoken just like other languages?
As the work of a single man, these languages cannot exist beyond what the man has created: you cannot ‘invent’ new vocabulary without betraying the genius of the author, no more than you can continue the stories he wrote.
You can study the grammar, the lexicon and the evolution of the languages, but you cannot ‘speak’ any of them. Moreover, you should be particularly suspicious of anything you find on the Internet purporting to be Tolkien’s own invention. Though his most ‘advanced’ languages show a fair amount of grammatical and lexical development, and though their pronunciation is reasonably well-documented, these languages do not constitute a system, and have evolved and matured over the course of Tolkien’s lifetime—so much so that the information we possess about them is often found to be contradictory.
It is therefore not possible to make use of them like we would with ‘real-world’ languages; but we may still wish to learn all that we possibly can about Tolkien’s fascinating linguistic creations.
What it recognizes is that the languages he conceived are those that cannot be spoken because they never were, they were entirely fictional and that they were not affected by a real natural linguistic system or cycle of development and that anything purporting to be systematic, and adopted by anyone speech community, is not really the language that Tolkien designed. It's alot of posturing and alot of really semantic arguing but that is the gist.
It also acknowledges in its own way that the work of a speech community on it and the fan base changes it in a way that it is no longer what they hold a claim to. Which is probably why it's still everywhere. That said they could totally go that route with Klingon but it's not what we're discussing as Klingon here at this point at least if we really want to start comparing Klingon to real languages. But then they aren't copyrighting a "language". I can't really speak to the language worthiness of klingon though either since i've never looked at it. But it does have speakers, it has very few (hopefully very very few) native speakers (this has been documented recently) and it is spoken widely in some speech communities. So just from that if it seems systematic, rule ordered, and as if though it is indexing a particular culture (whether klingon or nerd) It is probably justifiably a real language in the same way Esperanto is. Being real doesn't mean it isn't constructed. Hope this makes sense cause i've just kinda been piecing this together as I pour over this thread right now.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ultimately it's terrible idea and they should feel bad for being ethically bankrupt
Is a consonant chart for Standard Finnish phonemes. These are some of the sounds used in the Finnish language (verbs have a different chart, as do other kinds of consonants). A popular thing to do in conlangs is to take an existent phonological chart and modify it (it saves time on what is easily the most boring part of making up a language). Of course, natural language doesn't "invent" its phonology like this. We can simply codify them this way. Real languages end up dumping, adopting, and modifying their phonology in contact with other languages, or even through the mere act of speaking. Morphology likewise can be invented within the context of a fictional language. Every language has its own phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. A well constructed fictional one also has them. Only lazy conlangs throw together random words with no consideration for phonotactic constraints!
awe... you do pay attention to my linguistics ramblings
This is also why I'd consider Paramounts claim to Klingon weak. They didn't spell any of that stuff out, and neither did Marc Okrand. Fans eventually identified and constructed all if by speaking Klingon, making Klingon much more similar to a real language than your standard conlang.
As long as they focus on it as a language its a weak claim. Especially when there is supposedly heavy documentation of klingon linguistic systems according to one of my former Profs.
This message was edited 9 times. Last update was at 2016/05/23 17:04:06
Remember Folks: Landmass is landmassy.
2016/05/23 17:57:16
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
And no, you can't copyright phonemes. You can only copyright something you invented yourself, and inventing new phonemes is virtually impossible (well, it might be possible but you'd need to make some seriously weird sound ). Morphemes would be also incredibly hard to invent, as most likely there is already some language in the world using the same morphemes you use
Hold on i'm inventing a new Morpheme right now: It's a free Morpheme. Stilch Idk what it means yet but i'm also inventing a new bound morphem -en that indicates some accustive case: I now have stilchen, and i just invented to morphemes. stilchen was invented all by myself and i've now decided it is the concept we would call in english a desk. I don't think i could copyright that but i certainly just made it. I do need a new stilch though. This one is kinda old... but stilcher are so expensive.. Oh look another morpheme I made -er for plurality... You see my point? And of course this is all new with reference to the formation of Lopezian which is the language of the pez a culture by which i claim to be a member of.... I may be taking this too far now. Point is in about 5 minute window I just made a new language for my new culture with a new word and 2 new morphemes, that can be used in a systematic way to produce intelligible speak within that langauge... So yeah... You can totally invent words and morphemes. that definately don't exist in other languages because they aren't used in exactly the same way or same environment or this or that.
No Language is ever using the "same" morphemes. Because no language is ever the "same" as another language. There are languages with no Case systems there are languages with many there are languages with many free morphemes there are languages with many bound morphemes. and there are languages where the free morpheme Strength does not exist.
because the possibilities are quite limited if you want the morphology to still be functional (the exception here would be word roots, but you can't copyright words, even made-up ones)
The possibilites are in no way limited. A functional morphology does not rely on a pre-existing morphological system for clarification. It is its own morphological system and can perform however it wants or is intended to. If Templatic languages are Morphologicaly functional then trust me the possibilities are quite endless.
. A morphology might be copyrightable,
no personal opinion not legal fact but no. No System of language is copyrightable if its intended to be used as an actual linguistic system. I'm probably repeating myself at this point. It's unenforceable, its unprotectable its simply just infeasible.
but a morphology is nothing but an identifaction and description of the morphemes of a language and so would not prohibit anyone from using the morphemes in question.
I don't mean to be beligerent but do you understand that Morphology is the study of the morpho-syntactic systems and rules that lead to word formation and that Morphology is often used to indicate a specific aspect of language and is not just a collection of definitions? Yes we identify these systems yes we describe morphemes (often times phonologically). No copyright on any linguistic system would not prohibit anyone from using it. This is not any different than anything. Are you talking about Documenting a morphology because then maybe I could see what you're saying on some conceptual level?
There really is no way to copyright a language.
a thing I support
A language is made up out of phones who combine into phonemes (and being nothing but sounds, neither would be copyrightable) which combine into morphemes (if a word is not copyrightable, why would a little part of a word be?) which combine into words (which are also not copyrightable) which combine into phrases (which are also not copyrightable) which combine into sentences (also not copyrightable). Furthermore, a language clearly constitutes a system and therefore is also not eligible for copyright. To put it quite simply, there is no element in a language that would eligible for copyright.
This is far too linear a way to view language. It's not incorrect it's not strictly speaking "wrong" but it is far too simple. There is as you say an entire system under the hood here at work and that system starts with concepts as represented in the lexicon of the speaker not with Phonemes and not with morphemes or syntactic expressions. It starts with concepts and associations. Phonology and Morphology and Syntax simply give us a combined system with which to express these concepts. Morphemes are much much more than just a combination of phonemes (in fact that idea that they are just a combination of phonemes is slightly wrong. It's like saying syntax is a collection of morphemes, its not strictly wrong but it devalues the entire system.)
at least we can both agree that copyright is not a thing languages are eligible, for generally. Sorry for the super close reading but it really seems like you're not understanding morphology.
I think this is the last thing i'll post unless i notice something that seems silly linguistically again. sorry for all the posts. Blame hats.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/05/23 18:26:15
Remember Folks: Landmass is landmassy.
2016/05/23 18:26:23
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
Ahtman wrote: The one exploiting the fans and was being sued for getting money to pay his salary and support his lifestyle through crowdfunding and merchandising, was the one exploiting fans. If he hadn't tried to profit off IP that wasn't his to begin with Paramount wouldn't have sued in the first place.
You think Robert Meyer Burnett was exploiting fans?
H.B.M.C. wrote: You think Robert Meyer Burnett was exploiting fans?
I don't know to be honest. This is just a casual conversation online and I really don't care that much to seriously research it. I know I am not a fan of others profiting off something one doesn't own and it appears to be the case here when they take money from fans via KS and merchandise to pay themselves. The whole production of Axanar seems problematic in regards to the fiscal side.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/05/24 11:56:45
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
2016/05/25 04:52:39
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
Fan films are like other forms of fan fiction. The difference is that they take more money and technical skill to put together. I think especially as the technology to do it gets more accessible, it's simply a reality that people will make them. I share a degree of discomfort at the idea of someone charging fans for a fan fiction though. I just think it's kind of inevitable, and no amount of suing will make it go away.
People have been making fan-made Pokemon games for awhile now (Pokemon Apex is a recent example). As a fan, I'm all for people embracing the things they love creatively. Fan fiction gets a bad rap, not undeserved, but it's a gate way for many people before they go on to create their own original works.
LordofHats wrote: Fan films are like other forms of fan fiction. The difference is that they take more money and technical skill to put together. I think especially as the technology to do it gets more accessible, it's simply a reality that people will make them.
Is this when we all cough and say Youtube?
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
2016/05/25 16:27:50
Subject: "You Can't Copyright Klingon" Means Paramount Is In Trouble
LordofHats wrote: Fan films are like other forms of fan fiction. The difference is that they take more money and technical skill to put together. I think especially as the technology to do it gets more accessible, it's simply a reality that people will make them.
Is this when we all cough and say Youtube?
Pretty much XD And even if Youtube banishes the likes of Axanar, Renegades, and Horizon from its page, there's a whole world of internet out there for people to go.
I think just like the music industry has no choice but to accept that downloading music without paying for it is going to happen whether they like it or not, copyright holders in general have to accept that people will produce fan fiction and distribute it over the net.
There is a difference between recognizing piracy will happen and being ok with others profiting off ones work. The problem with things like Axanar aren't that they exist but they are trying to get money off of it with things like merchandising. There may be a thin line but there is still a line, legal or otherwise.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
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