Linguistics/ conlanging

Since the mid-19th century many artificial languages (henceforth ALs) have been created in order to facilitate international communication and understanding; the best known of these is Esperanto. The vocabularies of these languages often include names of countries, cities, and other places; the number of such names depends on how developed the languages are (or were), and the particular names created depended on how salient the places which they referred to were to the language designers (and their audiences).

Until recently, Azerbaijan was not very familiar to most people in Europe and North America (where most AL designers lived) and was not discussed much in media there. As a result, while many ALs have words for e.g. ‘France’ and ‘United States’, relatively few have words for ‘Azerbaijan’, and perhaps even fewer have words for places in Azerbaijan such as ‘Baku’ and ‘Nakhchivan’. If such places, particularly more obscure ones, are mentioned in writing in ALs, they may use forms of their names which were not changed to conform to the morphological requirements of the AL. For example, the Esperanto Wikipedia categories page for “cities of Azerbaijan” (https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorio:Urboj_de_Azerbajĝano) gives Baku and Sumgait in their Esperantized forms, with the nominal suffix -o (Bakuo and Sumgaito respectively), but does not do this for Lankaran (as it uses the form Lenkoran).

This paper will look at such facts, and whether they have changed in Esperanto.

Note that this abstract contains some linguistic errors (I believe that it was written by someone other than me):

It is possible to classify Artificial Languages as well as Natural Languages into three main types, according to the forms of comparative adjectives. Artificial Languages can form the comparatives using only a synthetic strategy, or only an analytic strategy, or both of them accordingly. Artificial Languages that use only a syntetic strategy can be classified further according to the rules in choosing one strategy or the other. Some evidence shows that a large proportion of Artificial Languages have both analytic and synthetic comparatives, as in some natural languages. The formation of comparatives results to be an interesting area of morphology, where there is room for choice, also for Artificial Languages.

“A’dan Z’ye Hûrayca” isimli dil öğretim eseri “Eğitsel Öğreti” özelliği ile kaleme alınmıştır. Eser, Türkçe dilinde “Al Bakiyye” isimli yapay dilin en gelişmiş lehçesi olan “Hûrayca” dilini baştan sona öğretmek ve tanıtmak amacıyla hazırlanmıştır. Kapsamlı anlatım ve örneklerle betimlemeler mevcuttur. Hûrayca isimli Al Bakiyye lehçesinin ilk öğretim-öğrenim kitabı olma özelliğine sahiptir.
İlgili eser, 1. Sürümdür.

La presente investigación reflexiona entorno a las implicaciones gramaticales y semánticas de un idioma y una cultura por medio de su creación; se sirve de gramáticas de lenguas reales y creadas como base, así como de un fuerte componente tipológico y de antropología lingüística para su creación. A lo largo del documento se introduce la terminología formal a emplear y el recorrido de la creación de lenguas hasta el presente, pero principalmente se discuten las apreciaciones que se tuvieron en cuenta para el desarrollo de la lengua, el proceso que se siguió su creación, y describe los aspectos nucleares que se desarrollaron: sociedad (creencias, condiciones de vida y organización social) y lengua (gramática, semántica y escritura). El trabajo concluye con un análisis retrospectivo del ejercicio y consideraciones en torno a la creación de lenguas y un relato escrito en la lengua y del que se partió para el análisis.

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This research thinks about the grammatical and semantic implications of a language and a culture through its creation; it uses grammars of real and created languages as a basis, as well as a strong typological and linguistic anthropology component for its creation. Throughout the document, the formal terminology to be used is introduced, as well as the path of language creation up to the present. However, it mainly discusses the considerations that were taken into account for the development of the language, the process that followed its creation, and describes the nuclear aspects that developed: society (beliefs, living conditions and social organization) and language (grammar, semantics and writing). The paper concludes with a retrospective analysis of the exercise and considerations around the creation of languages and a story written in the language and from which the analysis was based.

1. Алиса сидела со старшей сестрой на берегу и маялась: делать ей было совершенно нечего, а сидеть без дела, сами знаете, дело нелегкое; раз-другой она, правда, сунула нос в книгу, которую сестра читала, но там не оказалось ни картинок, ни стишков. "Кому нужны книжки без картинок.- или хоть стишков, не понимаю!" - думала Алиса.
2. Vîat nârdjen Alîsa ghurim zaudenos zilnui hâloi shûmjen telor, orcenosta khauran saunæth; thovâlat dûlasain nârdû ra prôthû væn, do baugharat groen zilnas, mabarnaxa khôl gintûsan hum kaŋguilen hâchen væn; nhêrax' Alîsa: voirun târakhæ proth vârath, gintûsnos kaŋguilenûsta khoil?
Перед нами, как вы уже догадались, начало сказки Л. Кэррола «Алиса в стране чудес» - в переводе на два чудесных языка: наш родной, русский, замечательный тем, что на нем говорят миллионы людей во всем мире, создана одна из величайших культур нашей планеты, язык, большой академический словарь которого включает 131 257 слов; и Arêndron – язык семьи Uschoeran планеты Atragam, которую вы не найдете ни на одной астрономической карте, язык, изобретенный Майклом Рептоном (Michael S. Repton), одним из энтузиастов конструирования вымышленных языков в Интернете, для своего фантастического мира. В этом мире на протяжении его многовековой истории возникали и рушились царства, дикие кочевые племена обретали цивилизацию, аналогичную европейской античности, и уходили в глубь веков, оставляя после себя памятники своей культуры, поколения сменяли поколения, Arêndron из живого
превратился в язык науки, литературы и философии. И все это под неустанным попечением автора, волей его фантазии и конструкторского мастерства. Казалось бы, какое значение для лингвистики может иметь вымышленный язык, лишенный реальных носителей, имеющий единственную форму существования – виртуальную, в виде грамматического описания в Интернете, воплощающий не многотысячелетнюю деятельность народного духа, а ограниченный план, родившийся в голове одного человека? Различимы ли, вообще, авторские языки-карлики, большинство из которых даже не выходит из состояния проекта, на фоне гигантов – естественных языков, дающих лингвисту-исследователю огромное поле для наблюдений?

Artificial languages -- languages which have been consciously designed -- have been created for more than 900 years, although the number of them has increased considerably in recent decades, and by the early 21st century the total figure probably was in the thousands. There have been several goals behind their creation; the traditional one (which applies to some of the best-known artificial languages, including Esperanto) is to make international communication easier. Some other well-known artificial languages, such as Klingon, have been designed in connection with works of fiction. Still others are simply personal projects.
A traditional way of classifying artificial languages involves the extent to which they make use of material from natural languages. Those artificial languages which are created mainly by taking material from one or more natural languages are called a posteriori languages (which again include well-known languages such as Esperanto), while those which do not use natural languages as sources are a priori languages (although many a posteriori languages have a limited amount of a priori material, and some a priori languages have a small number of a posteriori components). Between these two extremes are the mixed languages, which have large amounts of both a priori and a posteriori material.
Artificial languages can also be classified typologically (as natural languages are) and by how and how much they have been used. Many linguists seem to be biased against research on artificial languages, although some major linguists of the past have been interested in them.

Beyond popular accolades and prestigious positions at powerful research institutions (which unfortunately are not at all involved), there are some real benefits to a study of JRR Tolkien's invented languages and scripts. For one thing, they provide a challenge: poorly attested, highly restrictive in genre, and without comprehensive dictionaries and grammars. Like scholars of Etruscan, Gothic, Tocharian, and other fragmentary tongues known primarily (or solely) from disconnected manuscripts, students of Tolkien's languages employ the methods of comparative linguistics to decode these tongues, all of which are (carefully designed to appear to be) historically related. Further, although a philologist of distinction, it is frequently lamented that Tolkien did not publish nearly as many philological papers as some of his contemporaries; nonetheless, he worked for some sixty years perfecting the histories and relationships of his invented languages. In recent years, Tolkienian linguists have shown that these languages became the repositories of some of his most profound reflections on linguistics, philosophy, and the theory of translation: ample reward indeed for intrepid decipherers.

Words for berries in natural languages are of several types: semantically transparent compounds, e.g. English blueberry, somewhat semantically opaque compounds, e.g. English cranberry and raspberry, where it is not clear what the semantic contribution of the first component is (if there is any), and non-compounds, e.g. French fraise 'strawberry'. In addition, the set of fruits which are labelled as berries can differ in different languages. Given this variation, it would be interesting to look at such words in artificial (or constructed) languages, i.e. languages which have been consciously created. The most successful artificial language is Esperanto, but there have been more than a thousand others. This paper will look at terms for berries in various types of artificial languages: a posteriori artificial languages (e.g. Esperanto), which use one or more natural languages as sources, a priori languages (e.g. Ro), which do not do this, and mixed languages (e.g. Volapük), which occupy a middle ground between the first two types. A posteriori languages can be further classified according to which languages they are based on. Questions to be investigated include whether terms for berries are compounds, and if so, whether they are fully transparent, which sources these terms are taken from (in the case of a posteriori languages drawing on more than one languages), the ways in which they are similar in form (in the case of some a priori languages), and which fruits are treated as berries. From this work one might uncover general trends in the development of the vocabularies of artificial languages.

A majority of linguistic research concentrates on the conceptual exchange of information, and as a result the emotional aspects of language are found to be superfluous when observing the characteristics of communication. However, the prosody (or melody) within language becomes increasingly more necessary when observed as poetry or music, and one of the key aims of the present paper is to address the shared characteristics exhibited by the means of communication that exist between primitive language and music.

Among the hundreds of artificial languages put forth as possible
international auxiliary languages, relatively few (e.g. Esperanto, Interlingua) have seen a substantial amount of actual use. Given this, one might think that the study of such languages might have little to offer pragmaticists, and indeed there has been very little pragmatic work on them. However, I would argue that the pragmatic investigation of artificial languages can provide useful insights and information.
Most designers of artificial languages are not professional linguists.
Although they usually say little or nothing about the pragmatics of their languages, what they do say can reveal popular ideas about pragmatics, which may otherwise be difficult to discover. I shall present and discuss relevant remarks by some artificial language designers. I shall also look at several pragmatic features of artificial languages. Although the amount of textual material available in most artificial languages is limited, what exists can be subjected to pragmatic analysis. Perhaps most intriguing are the a priori artificial languages (e.g. aUI), attempts to
build a language without borrowing anything from natural languages, as, on the surface, these languages can appear quite odd. I shall present some texts from several artificial languages with a view to seeing whether even apparently exotic artificial languages have the same pragmatic properties as natural languages. Such work can be seen as contributing to the study of cross-linguistic pragmatics

The last recorded native speaker of the Cornish language died in 1777. Since the nineteenth century, amateur scholars have made separate attempts to reconstruct its written remains, each creating a different orthography. Later, following recognition under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2002, Cornish gained new status. However, with government support came the governmental framework of “New Public Management”, which emphasises quantifiable outcomes to measure performance. This built implicit pressure towards finding a single standard orthography, for greatest efficiency. There followed a six- year debate among supporters of the different orthographies, usually quite heated, about which should prevail. This debate exemplified the importance of standardisation for minority languages, but its ultimate conclusion saw all sides giving way, and expediency, not ideology, prevailing. It also showed that standardisation was not imposed explicitly within language policy, but emerged during the language planning process.

This chapter examines possibilities for pragmemes and practs in artificial languages, and whether and how artificial languages differ in these respects from
natural languages. In some controlled languages (a type of artificial language), it is only possible to discuss a small set of topics, meaning that the set of possible
pragmemes is small. Some other artificial languages are designed for use by a particular group of people, in some cases by only one person. Such differences seem
to make some artificial languages quite unlike natural languages; that is, although artificial languages, no matter how strange they may seem on the surface, seem to
resemble natural languages in some areas (e.g. syntax), with respect to pragmemics they appear very different. However, if artificial languages are used to report on
pragmemes (e.g. in fiction), they may (and may have to) allow for a wider range of pragmemes and practs.

Nowruz is very important in countries such as Azerbaijan and Iran, but not well known in the most countries in Europe and the Americas. One would therefore not expect it to receive much attention in media and works in artificial auxiliary languages such as Esperanto (i.e. languages which have been created to facilitate international communication), since most such languages have been created by inhabitants of these countries. On the other hand, since designers and users of such languages generally have an international outlook, it would not be too surprising if mentions or descriptions of Nowruz did sometimes occur in them. In this paper I will discuss appearances of Nowruz (or lack of them) in such languages. One might first note the apparent total absence of references to Nowruz in major auxiliary languages other than Esperanto, e.g. in Volapük, Ido, and Interlingua. This can be explained by the fact that the heyday of these languages was before the current era of globalization, and knowledge of some less familiar countries and cultures was limited. In contrast, Nowruz occasionally appears in non-fiction in Esperanto, and in at least one work of fiction in that language, Ne eblas aplaŭdi unumane ('One cannot Applaud with One Hand') by Sten Johansson. The bulk of this paper will be a discussion of such occurrences.

Although hundreds of artificial languages designed for international use have been created in the last few centuries (the best known of which is Esperanto), Korea has largely remained outside of this sphere of activity: most such languages were created in Europe or North America, and few of them make use of words from Korean. This is in spite of the fact that there is a reasonably active Esperanto movement in Korea. In this paper I shall examine the situation of artificial auxiliary languages in Korea and focus on the only major Korean artificial language, Unish, which was designed by some members of Sejong University, Seoul. Some properties of Unish will be examined in order to determine whether they can be attributed to the Korean linguistic context. I shall also look at the extent to which Korean vocabulary and grammar have been used in the construction of artificial auxiliary languages created in other countries.

COVID-19 has had a tremendous effect on a very large number of people and organizations around the world. This includes speakers of Esperanto, the most widely used artificial (i.e. consciously created) language. In this paper, I will look at how the Esperanto community has been affected by COVID-19, and how it has responded to it. For one thing, various conferences and other meetings, such as the 2020 World Esperanto Congress, have been put off, changed to an online format, or cancelled. On the other hand, the organizers of the International Medical Esperanto Congress decided to have it focus on COVID, with topics such as the Australian Esperanto Association is running a series of online lectures, and one of the lectures of g.au/news/>). In addition, various aspects of COVID-19 have come up and been discussed much in Esperantolanguage media from many countries in the world. For example, in issue 41 of Esperanto en Afrika Esperanto in Africa-Eduardo Larrouy in issue 304 of La Ondo de Esperanto The Wave of Esperanto COVID-19. We thus see that Esperantists, like most other people, have suffered from and had to deal with the current pandemic.

In this assignment, you will use the clues provided in The Fellowship of the Ring (the first volume of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, published in July 1954) to decipher the book's title-page inscriptions (shown above, and in more detail on the following pages). This assignment is intended to increase your experience with decipherment, but it also puts you in the position of the book's first readers, who waited more than a year between the appearance of The Fellowship of the Ring and the eventual appearance of keys to Tolkien's invented alphabets in The Return of the King (in October 1955). In the meantime, a number of readers had deciphered the title-page inscriptions on their own and had even written Tolkien letters using his alphabets. We call these people ‘geeks’ (though not without affection), and today you get to be one too!

This work deals with fictional languages and their use in online communities, with particular emphasis on four languages (i.e., Klingon, Dothraki, Tolkien’s Elvish, and Na’vi). The main goal is the definition of the linguistic communities who actually use these languages: a part of actors and creators, fictional languages are actually used by fans at various levels of commitment. Thus, we argue that they are a fundamental part of an “in-group making” strategy in online communities, which, in sociolinguistic terms, could be defined as “community of practice”.
A qualitative analysis will be provided by looking at discussions in dedicated chats and forums, but also in fan-fictions (i.e., stories written by fans). Non-experts (i.e., non-conlangers, and non-linguists) discuss about grammatical features of these languages, but also about the possible sociolinguistic variation in the use of some words or syntactic structures. The example in (1) shows the typical concerns of fans using fictional languages, in this case, Dothraki:
(1) As I often ask, did I use the words right?
Zhey Irri! Zhey Jhiqui! Doreah me mesile. – Irri! Jhiqui! Doreah is pregnant.
Is it a proper use of zhey to get their attention here?
The verb is mesilat, to be pregnant. I’m not sure if the stem is mesi or mesil […]. If I assume the stem is mesi, the third person is mesie, which just sounds weird […]
This writer’s questions on Dothraki language are about both grammatical features (the ending of the verb mesilat ‘to be pregnant’) and pragmatic features (the discourse particle zhey).
In conclusion, this works is a qualitative analysis of the use of invented languages in online communities from a sociolinguistic and pragmatic perspective.

Lezione tenuta il 7 novembre 2014 all'Università del Piemonte Orientale (Vercelli) nell'ambito del corso di Sociolinguistica tenuto dalla prof.ssa Maria Napoli, a.a. 2014-15.

La lezione esplora il fenomeno delle lingue "fantastiche" concentrandosi in particolare sui tre casi di Elfico (Sindarin), Dothraki e Klingon, e cercando di definire in senso sociolinguistico chi utilizza queste lingue e per quali scopi comunicativi.

Ro is an artificial auxiliary language created by Edward P. Foster in the early 20 th century. Unlike most such languages (e.g. Esperanto), it is of the a priori type, meaning that it (supposedly) does not draw on natural languages as sources. Some a priori languages had their vocabulary designed in such a way that words with similar meani words for reptiles, and the system with which these words were formed. An additional interesting feature of Ro is that Foster wrote works on it over a period of more than 20 years, and he made (relatively minor) changes to it during that span of time, and this will be seen in the words for reptiles. Words for reptiles all begin with the sequence mu, as do all words for animals. Muk(a) all words for reptiles start with muk, but so do words for amphibians, e.g. mukaf mukag Was this because Foster did not know that amphibians are a separate class from reptiles or because he did not think it worth the trouble to create a different sequence of initial letters for amphibians? Words for different types of reptiles are distinguished by their fourth letter, e.g. mukla mukma Further letters distinguish different subtypes of these, e.g. muklab mukmal of a priori artificial languages have been constructed.

Handout for talk given at the Sydney Language Festival October 8, 2016. Vela is an artificial language designed by an Australian, Ben Prist, who considers it "the easiest language possible", and how appears rather defensive about it, as shown by some of the quotations in the handout.

Eurasto is a (very obscure) artificial auxiliary language created by a Major G. Tacchi of Southsea, England; it is based on English. Artificial languages are languages which have been deliberately created, unlike natural languages such as Turkish and English; artificial auxiliary
langauges are artificial languages meant to be used as means of communication among people who do not speak the same natural languages. Most major artificial auxiliary languages, e.g. Esperanto, aim have simple morphology so as to make them easier to learn; they will thus have very few different forms of verbs. However, Eurasto has 13 moods, more than many or most natural languages, the simple, negative, endeavor, intensive, feeble, commence, continue, end, perhaps, potential, bias, volative, and imperative. This paper will look at these moods in an
effort to determine whether they are all in fact moods (or whether some of them should rather be labelled as aspects), and when they occur. To answer the second question the very limited amount of textual material in Eurasto can be examined to see to what extent verb forms with
these moods occur (it might not be surprising if some of them do not occur at all outside of sentences used to exemplify them), and in what contexts they occur. This will be done to a limited extent in the present paper. Comparisons will be made with other artificial languages
which also have complex verbal morphology.

Talk given at the Sydney Language Festival, June 1, 2013. Fitusa is an a priori artificial language, but it appears to have been influenced a little by Esperanto.

A video of the talk can be see at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alf0Y0S_-cY

A priori artificial languages are attempts to build languages from scratch, unlike artificial languages such as Esperanto, which are largely or entirely built from items in natural languages (the latter type of languages are known as a posteriori languages). Artificial languages are
languages which have been consciously created, as opposed to natural languages such as Turkish and English. Although artificial languages have been created for various purposes (e.g. in connection with a work of fiction), this paper will be limited to those created as auxiliary
languages, that is, languages designed to aid international communication. It will also be limited to languages created in the 19th or 20th centuries (although there are much older a priori languages). The vocabularies of a priori languages are often or usually built on the principle that words with similar meanings should have similar forms. By looking at the word ‘woman’ in such languages, one might learn something about what their designers felt about the concept of
‘woman’, and its relations to other concepts, such as ‘man’. The languages examined in this paper will include aUI, Babm, Lingualumina, Ro, Sona, and Suma.

The invention of constructed languages within literature, as without, has historically tended to be a Utopian project. The aesthetic process of glossopoeia, as described by J.R.R. Tolkein in his seminal 1931 lecture 'A Secret Vice', has primarily been derived from the author's 'pleasure' in creating languages that in turn 'breed a mythology'. Their invention is led by the creator's desire to invent plausible and rich linguistic environments in which to locate and enhance their fictional world-building.
While linguistic Utopians have continually striven (and failed) to reverse Babel and develop a global means of communication, artists have sought to create rich and evocative linguistic spaces.
This phylum of linguistic artistry still thrives today, especially within the fantasy and science fiction genres, and in the popularity of diverting creations like Klingon and the proliferation of aesthetic Conlang groups.
However, Anthony Burgess broke with literary tradition by developing Nadsat as a simplistic ideolect which functioned, in keeping with the principles of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, to
expose the limitations of language in a technological dystopia. Just as the Cold War nightmare of the Ludovico technique places limitations on human free will in A Clockwork Orange, so the brainwashing process of reading Nadsat functions to limit both freedom of expression and understanding.
Burgess's conjunction of techno-nightmare and linguistic limitation has proven to be prophetic fifty years on from the publication of A Clockwork Orange, as contemporary technologies of communication, such as SMS messaging and the internet, have generated similarly debased argots,
including l33t and txtspk. In this paper, I intend to demonstrate that the world presaged by Burgess in his other renowned dystopia, The Wanting Seed, where the works of Shakespeare have been reduced to a “thin tome” devoid of vowels, has already come to pass.

В статье представлена классификация вымышленных языков (с соответствующими терминологическими обозначениями) в системе языков искусственных.
Рассматриваются и анализируются рубрики и разделы на тематических сайтах, существующих в Интернете и поддерживающих конлангерское движение, описываются  основные виды деятельности, возникающие вокруг проектов вымышленных языков.

Современная лингвистика антропоцентрична: она ставит в центр своего внимания человека, который выступает не как пассивный пользователь, а как активный творец и преобразователь языка.

В естественных языках процесс творения и преобразования языка людьми происходит в ежедневной коммуникации по большей части бессознательно (хотя определенная доля языковой рефлексии у «наивных» носителей языка обязательно присутствует) и только филологи, профессионально занимающиеся изучением и нормированием языка, пытаются воздействовать на него сознательно и систематически.

Однако существует вид деятельности, в котором каждый говорящий может стать создателем языка, — конструирование (моделирование) искусственных языков, получающее все большее распространение с развитием Интернета.

Объектом нашего исследования являются проекты вымышленных языков в Интернете.

Предмет исследования составляют представление и описание вымышленных языков (ВЯ) их авторами на страницах Интернета, попытки создания текстов на ВЯ, специфика языковой деятельности «конструкторов языка», сочетание в ней исследовательской, моделирующей, игровой составляющих.

Термин «вымышленные языки» (ВЯ) принят для выделения одной из групп конструированных языков (конлангов, conlangs) с целью отграничения ее от вспомогательных международных языков (auxlangs) типа эсперанто, идо, ложбана и т.п.

Материалом исследования послужили англоязычные и русскоязычные Интернет-сайты, на которых представлены описания вымышленных языков и языковая продукция на этих языках, а также вспомогательные материалы для языкового конструирования (инструкции, учебные пособия и компьютерные программы).

В диссертации рассмотрено более 200 проектов ВЯ, а также около 100 сайтов, созданных вокруг проектов языкового конструирования (переводы, исследовательские проекты, учебные курсы ВЯ, пособия по лингвоконструированию, языковые игры, компьютерные средства автоматизации лингвоконструирования).

Целью исследования является установление места языкового конструирования в общей структуре языковой деятельности людей, выявление задач и способов конструирования ВЯ, а также наиболее значимых черт проектов ВЯ и окружающей их в Интернете деятельности, свидетельствующих об уровне лингвистических знаний создателей этих проектов, о направлении их интересов и о роли языка в построении виртуальных миров.

The works produced along with this dissertation and presented as the result of my MFA consist of a narrative video, set in a foctional land, tracing the downfall of a secret society.This is presented alongside a looped photorealistic moving image of genderless, angelic  figures blinking, smiling, and intoning a hymn-like monotonous chorus.These two videos are projected on two large screens in a dark room in which there is bench seating which has been decorated in the style of the  fictional land to which the work belongs.These video works and the furnishing exist as outcrops of a larger whole.As they function as punctual materialisations of a set of geographies and histories—the Vyrcanian Federation —that I had been devising occasionally and randomly since childhood in my head, on scribbled bits of paper and on my computer; but the bulk of which has been developed during this MFA as fully realised artworks.As the result of this research, I also will install “behind the scenes” videos, maps and images relating to the construction of the Vyrcanian Federation, located behind the projection screens.
In the following dissertation I structure and expound the history of the Vyrcanian Federation, including the language in which the videos have been made; and I have composed this research following an encyclopaedic format. I include autobiographical details indicating the personal needs and proclivities that incited and guided to their creation, and discuss the cultural background inspiring them as well as the political questions they raise. For the latter I examine the works' roots in cartography, archaeology and the history of esotericism; and their relationship to the aesthetics of spirituality and of totalitarianism; and the films and artworks that have provided inspiration.

A preview of the second chapter from my forthcoming book "The Elvish Writing Systems of J.R.R. Tolkien", covering Tolkien's history in writing systems, the origins of Sindarin and Quenya, the Tengwar, Cirth and Sarati, a history of Arda and Middle-earth, aesthetics of the written word and prerequisites for learning Elvish.