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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Nonsense Words
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
From: Your Name <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Devanagari handwriting?
From: Shanth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Conlanging with Dick and Jane
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: vowels: are they necessary?
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Devanagari handwriting?
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Conlanging with Dick and Jane
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Theta role?
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: German style orthography
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Germanic links
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Germanic links
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Reading old Greek (was: kudos (was: most looked-up words))
From: Thomas Leigh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 20:17:55 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:49:45 +0100, Rene Uittenbogaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Chris Bates wrote:
>
>> *shrugs* I was always unsure about fortis vs lenis. I've been told I
>> think that Dutch distinguishes fortis vs lenis rather than voiced vs
>> voiceless....
>
>For the distinctions between /s/ and /z/ [z_0], and /f/ and /v/ [v_0],
>this is often true, but this may be subject to individual and/or
>regional variation. I don't know if this also occurs for other voiced
>consonants.
Do you know how Netherlands phoneticians describe the articulatory and
auditive difference between Netherlands /s/ and voiceless /z/? In the
phonetics of Swiss German, the measurable distinction between /s/ and
voiceless /z/ is a distinction in length. However, many talk of a
"fortis-lenis" distinction, though I've never seen an explanation of what
"the force" (of the fortis) is supposed to be. Therefore, I imagine that
Swiss German has a similar consonant system like Finnish where the basic
opposition is short-long (independent from vowel length, unlike in
Scandinavian, Italian or orthographic German!), not voiced-voiceless.
>> I could be wrong though. I've even heard some people argue
>> that voicing isn't the primary distinction in English (I can't remember
>> what they were arguing was the primary distinction...), but I wasn't
>> convinced that they weren't just being difficult.
>
>I learnt the following things from the great book "Accepted American
>Pronunciation: A Practical Guide for Speakers of Dutch":
>
>The primary distinction between word-initial stops like "pet" and "bet"
>is aspiration. Dutch people, when speaking English, often risk their
>(unaspirated) /p/, /t/ and /k/ to be mistaken for /b/, /d/ and /g/.
This makes sense! And what about these ones: Swiss German people, when
speaking French, often risk their (voiceless) /b/, /d/, /g/ to be mistaken
for /p/, /t/, /k/. Finnish people, when speaking Swiss German, often risk
their (short) /p/, /t/, /k/ to be mistaken for (voiceless) /b/, /d/, /g/.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 02:37:38 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Nonsense Words
Roger Mills wrote at 2004-12-11 12:20:03 (-0500)
> Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> > In getting my computerized lexicon up-to-date (I've past 900
> > words online now!), I came across my half-finished translation of
> > Jabberwocky. I'm having a minor crisis deciding whether the
> > "nonsense" words belong in my lexicon. At the very least, I'll
> > need to document these words *somewhere*, just to make sure I
> > don't coin "real" words and make them non-nonsense, but I don't
> > know that they belong in the official dictionary.
> >
> > Has anyone else dealt with this? Opinions?
> >
> Jabberwocky of course is a special case, but.... My thought would
> be (1) to put them in a separate section-- perhaps for loanwords
> used only in specific contexts (??) or (2) leave them out, but keep
> a private list in a file somewhere.
>
> I suppose in translating Jabberwocky, you used native (Asha'ille)
> resources to create the nonsense. Some of the portmanteau words
> could certainly be compounds of native elements, and
> explicable. But what native words could underlie "toves", or "mome
> raths outgrabe" etc. We aren't even sure what they mean in
> "English". These would indeed be nonsense created for...what? just
> to sound funny? to fit the metre? to match the rhyme? Unless
> there's a native tradition of nonsense poetry, IMO they don't
> belong in the dictionary. (Are J. words in any English dictionary?
> ...not in my Shorter OED...)
>
"Chortle" and "galumph" have entered the wider language to a
sufficient extent that they're in the dictionary. "Burble" has an
older etymology listed, but I suspect Carroll made it up
independently, and played a significant role in establishing its
present place in the language. Quite how this relates to conlangs I'm
not sure, but it's worth bearing in mind that the boundary between
nonsense and real words is not absolutely impermeable.
(We have a reasonably good idea of what most of the words in the first
stanza mean, as Humpty-Dumpty explains them to Alice in _Through the
Looking Glass_
http://www.the-funneled-web.com/PDF_Documents/Humpty Dumpty.pdf
http://www.math.luc.edu/~vande/jabglossary.html
http://www.sabian.org/Alice/lg30.gif
Carroll explained some of the other words elsewhere:
http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/?school/alice1019.html
Of course, even if you had exact equivalents in the target language
(which seems unlikely), to translate the poem without creative
wordplay would be to miss the point. )
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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 22:06:55 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 19:02:11 -0500, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> You may have seen this before . . .
Not only had I actually seen it before, it was originally circulated back
when there actually *was* a reasonable doubt over who had been elected --
that is to say, during middle of the 2000 recounts. I am restricted by my
own insistence on greater adherence to a certain guideline from going on
at any length about what I interpret as the probable reasons for it having
been redistributed after the 2004 result was in.
Paul
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Message: 4
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 22:08:29 -0500
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
[This message is not in displayable format]
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Message: 5
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:09:06 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
Paul> Not only had I actually seen it before, it was originally circulated back
Paul> when there actually *was* a reasonable doubt over who had been elected --
Now, now, it didn't say that there was any doubt over the result. It
said that we failed to make the correct decision. That is, of course,
an opinion shared by slightly less than half of the US population, or at
least the voting ones.
Paul> I am restricted by my
Paul> own insistence on greater adherence to a certain guideline from going on
Paul> at any length about what I interpret as the probable reasons for it having
Paul> been redistributed after the 2004 result was in.
It seems pretty clear that it was distributed because it was deemed apropos,
since from what I've read most folks in the UK also share
the opinion that we elected the wrong guy. So a reprimand from that
direction makes sense. Plus, of course, it's funny.
salut> You know, you can't make United-Statians
I tend to use "United-Statesian", but it is awkward either way.
"Usanian" /ju'sein.i,n=/ maybe... one of the things I like about E-o is
that it has a non-acronymic name for this place and therefore a
regularly-derived name for us inhabitants.
salut> attack Qu�bec (it needs an accent) for two reasons:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure everyone on the list knows how to spell Qu�bec,
and even pronounce it correctly to a reasonable approximation. We
are linguaphiles by nature, after all. Of course, most of us also know
how to send plain-text email, in which ASCII is preferred over Latin-1,
which is the minimum requirement for putting accents anywhere.
In any case, you can relax. Even with Bush's noted hawkish tendencies I
really don't anticipate any attack on Canada - or any of her provinces -
nuclear or otherwise.
And look around under your desk, under your cushions, etc, and see if
you can find your sense of humor.
-Marcos
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Message: 6
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 23:53:35 -0500
From: Your Name <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
> <html><div style='background-color:'><DIV align=left>
> <DIV>
> <DIV>
> <DIV>
> <P align=left>Mark J. Reed wrote:</P>
> <P align=left><FONT face="Geneva, Arial, Sans-serif">> 7.
Declare war on Quebec and France, using nukes if they give you
any<BR>merde.<IMG height=2
src="http://graphics.hotmail.com/greypixel.gif"; width="100%"
vspace=9></FONT></P>
> <P align=left><FONT face=Arial>You know, you can't
make United-Statians(you'll never make me call them by the
word they stole to the whole continent)
Hmm... You know, when I was taught the continents, I could've sworn they
told me seven: Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America,
Australia and Antarctica. None of those are 'America', so I'm not sure
where you're talking about. I check an English-language dictionary, and
it gives the US as the primary definition of America. And I even look at
which country I come from, and I think it's the only one where the
conventional short-form is the same as the name of the continent it's
on. As we've established, it isn't America.
> attack Québec(it needs an accent) for two reasons:
(a) I notice the irony. Seeing as I doubt you do, I'll point it out: One
time you forbid the use of the word the people use for themselves, and
the other you mandate the use of the word the people use for themselves.
How odd.
(b) No word used in English 'needs' accents. They're there for
prettiness but nothing else. Different languagse might have different
words, but 'Quebec' is the English name for the province.
> <P align=left><FONT face=Arial>First, it is not a country, it is a
province.
Erm... The quote you quoted never said Quebec was a country. In fact, i
don't think _anyone_ said Quebec was a country. I think most poeple are
sensible enough to know that.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 7
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 00:16:37 -0500
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
[This message is not in displayable format]
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Message: 8
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 00:34:53 -0500
From: Shanth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Devanagari handwriting?
I didn't check the list for quite some time so I kinda missed the entire
discussion, but anyway I'll chip in FWIW.
Being a native speaker I learnt the Devanagari script in kindergarten, and
hence find it no more cumbersome than the Roman script. The overbar as
someone pointed out correctly is drawn over one word at a time and is
probably as cumbersome as connecting all the letters in cursive English,
where you have to worry about connecting to o's from above and a' from
below. Compare your own ease at writing in english vis-a-vis writing out
streams of greek characters(unless you are a Greek ;-) ) which you most
probably do know, if you have ever done a maths/physics course.
I suppose all languages must seem easy to their native writers(is that a
term?) unless they happen to be extremely calligraphic in which case
naturally a simpler version for daily use is developed, or those languages
are purely liturgical/ceremonial.
Shanth
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 12:03:23 -0800, B. Garcia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Actually, Gujarati is very much like what Devanagari would be like if
>it were simplified a bit for ease of handwriting. It lacks
>headstrokes. According to my book, it is a variant of Devanagari.
>
>Also, my book says of Devanagari:
>
>"When people write on lined paper, they "hang" the symbold from the
>line; but in rapid handwriting on unlined paper, the headstroke may be
>eliminated altogether."
>
>So apparently even native writiers of Devanagari find the headstroke
>cumbersome in unlined paper and omit it. Which is why Gujarati writing
>lacks the headstroke.
>
>The headstroke originally was a sort of serif that got interpreted as
>being part of the character.
>
>
>--
>You can turn away from me
>but there's nothing that'll keep me here you know
>And you'll never be the city guy
>Any more than I'll be hosting The Scooby Show
>
>Scooby Show - Belle and Sebastian
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Message: 9
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 08:13:59 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: FW: Notice of Revocation of Independence
Mark J. Reed wrote:
>Paul> Not only had I actually seen it before, it was originally circulated back
>Paul> when there actually *was* a reasonable doubt over who had been elected --
>
>Now, now, it didn't say that there was any doubt over the result. It
>said that we failed to make the correct decision. That is, of course,
>an opinion shared by slightly less than half of the US population, or at
>least the voting ones.
>
>
Lol... I have an american friend who would dispute that. Not that I'm
saying he's right, but all the comments the head of the company
manufacturing the Diebold voting machines made along with all the dodgy
tallies in areas where the machines were used really didn't help....
*sigh* My friend keeps saying "I'm not a citizen of America anymore! I'm
just a citizen of california!".
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Message: 10
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 08:17:25 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
>Sanskrit, e.g., and I suppose that this distinction is also found in modern
>Indian languages. Phonetically, the "voiced aspirated" stops are "breathy
>voiced". I remember I've read as an explanation that there's not a real
>aspiration, but that the following vowel starts voiceless. However, I don't
>understand how this is really different from an aspiration.
>
>
I know that some at least still have the unvoiced aspirated stops...
although I have a friend called "Rekha" (I think that's how you spell
it) and I was trying to pronounce her name right (apparently not enough
aspiration on my part?) and eventually she said "It doesn't matter
anyway. A lot of native speakers don't pronounce it right anymore." I
forget which Indian language she speaks though...
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Message: 11
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 08:51:22 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlanging with Dick and Jane
When my latest is done to my satisfaction, I plan to write a mini "Teach
Yourself" course as an exercise on my webpage... it probably won't be
that pretty though since I'm not good with graphics. :( Although I'll
actually cover the language properly of course unlike the majority of
teach yourself books, where you seem to get too little grammatical
information and too many set phrases to remember.
>On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 09:35:36AM -0800, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
>
>>Hidy ho.
>>
>>
>
>san tse.
>
>
>[...]
>
>
>>Returning after an absence of 6 or 8 months from
>>conlanging, I naturally I looked back at my several
>>unfinished conlang projects to decide where to pick up
>>the pieces. Of course the only sane solution is to
>>scrap everything and start all over from scratch. But
>>I hated to do that knowing that I'm going to make the
>>same mistakes and end up with yet another incomplete
>>and uncompletable conlang fragment. That's when
>>inspiration hit and a possible solution to systematic
>>conlang discovery occurred to me.
>>
>>
>[...]
>
>
>>The solution occurred to me when I was sorting through
>>some boxes of old books and came across a handful of
>>children's early readers. Suppose one took a first
>>year reader like "Fun With Dick and Jane" or
>>"McGuffey's Eclectic Reader" and began on page one
>>with "See Spot run." and "The cat sees the mouse." and
>>translated the entire book, sentence by sentence, into
>>the new conlang, discovering vocabulary and
>>grammatical principles as they were needed.
>>
>>
>
>I've thought about this before. In fact, now that I have laid down the
>basic principles of Tatari Faran, I'd probably do well to pick up an
>early reader like this and start translating them.
>
>
>[...]
>
>
>>And finally, by working with the conlang beginning at
>>such an elementary level it is likely that one
>>by-product would be for the designer to develop actual
>>fluency in the conlang as the work progressed.
>>
>>
>[...]
>
>Yep, I always strive to be at least semi-fluent in my conlangs.
>Unfortunately, Tatari Faran is growing so fast I'm having trouble
>keeping up. This is where I think doing translations from children's
>readers would help a lot.
>
>The other idea I have, which I've already started on, is to go through
>the Tatari Faran lexicon from beginning to end, and make a sentence
>containing each word/phrase. (Yes, people have already told me I was
>nuts.) When I started, the lexicon was about 400 entries or so, but
>now it's a whopping 494 entries. But regardless, my approach is to
>just move forward (so new words added to parts of the lexicon that
>I've already passed won't be included in this run). Currently I'm at
>_husu_, "to surge", "to flow", roughly 1/3 of the way through.
>
>I've found that having to construct sentences this way forces me to
>experiment with different types of sentences. E.g., you can only do so
>many "I see X", "he sees Y", "she sees Z" sentences before you get
>utterly bored, so you've to find more interesting things to say. This
>causes you to explore parts of the grammar which you may perhaps have
>never really given much thought to before.
>
>For example, it was during this exercise that I realized that the
>then-current way of forming statements of equivalence doesn't work in
>practice. So I had to revise TF grammar to handle these cases more
>smoothly. I've also found that I've completely forgotten to consider
>question formation with non-verbal sentences (e.g. "is that house
>red?", "is she the woman from the village?") in TF grammar. So now
>I've filled up the gap. Another large gap was in how idiomatic set
>phrases would be used in complex constructions (e.g., "go to rest now,
>for it is night" - "it is night" is a special set phrase in TF that
>didn't quite fit into the "A because B" paradigm before). Another
>thing I'm finding is that temporal phrases may need another revision.
>
>So even though this exercise may be completely crazy (who in their
>right mind would make a sentence each for every word in the
>dictionary? [1]), it has helped me improve TF a lot. Something to
>consider. :-)
>
>
>[1] The answer, of course, being left-handed people. ;-) Specifically,
>left-handed conlangers. :-P
>
>
>T
>
>--
>Why can't you just be a nonconformist like everyone else? -- YHL
>
>
>
>
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Message: 12
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 11:34:11 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: vowels: are they necessary?
Rene Uittenbogaard wrote:
> IIRC, the extra |o| only appears before certain consonant
> clusters, most notably |vs-| and |mn-|:
True. Also before some polyconsonantal clusters:
|vo zdraviye| 'for health'
|so skrezhetom| 'with gritting'.
OTOH, |v strakhe| 'in fear'.
> If a word happens to start with the same consonant as the
> preposition, then that alone is not reason enough to add |o|.
> To make a distinction, I believe that the consonant is
> pronounced long.
>
> v voskresen'ye "on Sunday" pronounced as [v:]-
> v vodu "into the water"
> s sestroy "with the sister" pronounced as [s:]-
> k kafe "towards the cafe" pronounced as [k:]- ?
Yes, that's true too.
----------
Stephen Mulraney wrote:
> Yes. Actually, I suppose that I could have answered that probably
> nothing happens in the case of /s zdra-/, but I thought I'd answer
> the implied wider question.
I'm afraid v ~ vo alteration is a reflex of older state of the language,
disappearing nowadays. Originally these words contained "yer". It would
follow all the rules of yer falling, disappearing in _# position, and giving
/o/ in odd syllables (not sure I'm clear here - I never learnt History of
Russian).
> The strange result
> is that there are actually words which begin, orthographically,
> with doubled consonants, and which I suppose are pronounced with
> an initial geminate. I guess if they are further prefixed by a
> preposition, nothing extra happens(?).
I guess you are right.
> _vvek_ 'never'
> _vverjat'_ 'entrust'
You cannot add a preposition to an adverb or a verb ;)
> I think there is indeed a [k:] here. Well, it may not actually
> be a geminate, but instead have a slight hiatus between two
> [k]s? Hmm, aren't there any native Russian speakers around at
> the moment? It's not as if we're talking about an obscure lang :).
Here I am ;)
No, the this no hiatus. It's a plain geminate.
-- Yitzik
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Message: 13
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 11:08:06 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Devanagari handwriting?
Quoting Shanth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I didn't check the list for quite some time so I kinda missed the entire
> discussion, but anyway I'll chip in FWIW.
>
> Being a native speaker I learnt the Devanagari script in kindergarten, and
> hence find it no more cumbersome than the Roman script. The overbar as
> someone pointed out correctly is drawn over one word at a time and is
> probably as cumbersome as connecting all the letters in cursive English,
> where you have to worry about connecting to o's from above and a' from
> below.
Really? I, for one, write connected cursive faster than the same words with
separate letters - it seems hard to imagine that the Devanagari overbar speeds
up anything. Does it?
Andreas
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Message: 14
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 21:18:40 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
I have updated the web page with a summary of the differences that
Tristan and I have noticed between each others' vowels, and also with
two new samples.
The primary new sample is intended as an example of ordinary speech,
in order to show not only vowel quality but also intonation. It
represents the way I speak when I am not trying to be artificially
clear.
I would welcome a similar sample from Tristan. Note that there is no
reason for it to be the same sentence; it just needs to be a sentence
that the speaker is comfortable with.
http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/say/vowels.htm
Have I missed anything?
Adrian.
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Message: 15
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 11:20:13 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
On Saturday, December 11, 2004, at 06:40 , Chris Bates wrote:
> *shrugs* I was always unsure about fortis vs lenis. I've been told I
> think that Dutch distinguishes fortis vs lenis rather than voiced vs
> voiceless.... I could be wrong though.
Probably right, I suspect. Fortis & lenis refer to the manner of
articulation of consonants.
FORTIS - consonant sound made with a relatively strong degree of muscular
effort and breath force.
LENIS - consonant sound made with relatively weak degree of muscular
effort and breath force.
I believe these terms are often used in the description of German dialects.
Certainly an Austrian girl who stayed with us for a couple of years when
we live in South Wales, pronounced her plosives rather differently from
English when speaking English, so there were sometimes misunderstandings
as to whether she said 'brick' or 'prick'. But I am no expert on German
dialectology.
> I've even heard some people argue
> that voicing isn't the primary distinction in English (I can't remember
> what they were arguing was the primary distinction...),
Possibly aspiration - I have seen English described this way.
> but I wasn't convinced that they weren't just being difficult.
Nor I. I see no good reason to abandon the tradition 'voiced' ~ 'voiceless'
distinction as far as English is concerned. In any case, voiceless
plosives are not aspirated in all environments - and the treatment of
final voiceless plosives seems to vary considerably in UK regional spech.
> Do the other germanic
> languages also aspirate unvoiced stops like English does?
AFAIK most (al?) do.
> Another thing
> I've often wondered: english has unvoiced aspirated stops. Often you
> hear about languages that have an unvoiced vs voiced vs aspirate three
> way distinction in stops.
Ancient greek :)
> Can you find voiced aspirated stops?
Yes.
> And if
> you can, is there any language with a four way distinction unvoiced
> unaspirated, unvoiced aspirated, voiced unaspirated, and voiced
> aspirated?
Yes - sanskrit, and modern Urdu/Hindi and AFAIK quite a few related
languages of India.
> Although a voiced aspirated stop would probably easily
> migrate to a voiced fricative.....
Not so in these languages.
> "softening" of voiced stops as in
> Spanish seems pretty common in languages anyway,
It has happened in earlier stages of western Romance & the Brittonic
languages, but it is by no means universal.
> and aspiration tends to make consonants even "softer" to my ears.
It can do as we see in the historic development of the gaelic languages.
But once again it is not universal. In Welsh the voiceless plosives really
are fortis - they are aspirated and pronounced vigorously. After a
stressed vowel they are geminated & preserve their aspiration; cf. English
_happy_ with Welsh _hapus_ [hap'p_hI\s]. The medial sounds are vey
different. In English the medial /p/ is not geminate and has little or no
aspiration.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 16
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 06:24:48 -0500
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlanging with Dick and Jane
On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 09:35:36 -0800, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Hidy ho.
Ho ho ho!
>The solution occurred to me when I was sorting through
>some boxes of old books and came across a handful of
>children's early readers. Suppose one took a first
>year reader like "Fun With Dick and Jane" or
>"McGuffey's Eclectic Reader" and began on page one
>with "See Spot run." and "The cat sees the mouse." and
>translated the entire book, sentence by sentence, into
>the new conlang, discovering vocabulary and
>grammatical principles as they were needed.
<snip rest>
Good idea! :D
The point is just - where to get this first year reader stuff from? The very
most of us probably won't have anything the likes...
Perhaps you could write down the sentences and make them avaiable for
everyone? Then, if everybody started using them, we would have a much better
chance of comparing the conlangs with each other than just the Babel text
all the time.
--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of:
Choton: http://www.choton.org
Ichwara Prana: http://www.choton.org/ichwara/
Skälansk: http://www.choton.org/sk/
Advanced English: http://www.choton.org/ae/
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Message: 17
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 12:46:17 +0100
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Theta role?
Hello!
Again reading some of the yet unread mails, I found the term
"theta role" mentioned several times. What is 'theta role'?
Thanks,
Carsten
--
Eri silveváng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri
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Message: 18
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 07:06:14 -0500
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 08:31:49 -0500, J. 'Mach' Wust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Funny, I've always thought that the Alemannic were the only who pronounce
>the words _Ast_ "bough" and _Espe_ "aspen tree" with /St/ and /Sp/! Are you
>sure that you don't have some kind of Alemannic accent? This would also make
>your distinction of short and long consonants much more plausible to me.
Good you pointed that out... "sp" and "st" is only pronounced /Sp/ and /St/
at the beginning of a word (or at the beginning of compounds, as the "stein"
in "Flußstein") , never otherwise.
--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of:
Choton: http://www.choton.org
Ichwara Prana: http://www.choton.org/ichwara/
Skälansk: http://www.choton.org/sk/
Advanced English: http://www.choton.org/ae/
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Message: 19
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 12:25:35 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) wrote:
>
> Have I missed anything?
Tristan's [E] sounds quite a bit more closed than mine, and probably
yourse. I think I'd describe it as [e].
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Message: 20
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:36:17 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
On 12 Dec 2004, at 9.48 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)
wrote:
> I have updated the web page with a summary of the differences that
> Tristan and I have noticed between each others' vowels, and also with
> two new samples.
Your discussion of my schwa in centring diphthongs isn't quite correct,
or more specifically my schwa, I don't think. The @ > 6 happens with
every schwa (e.g. mother, thorough have the same vowel twice when said
in this example sentence), but only at the end of some sort of phrase
thingy (my knowledge of intonation and phrasing and stuff is not very
good at all), or when saying words individually or whatever. At least
normally.
There are thus cases where what you call /i@/ will be pronounced [EMAIL
PROTECTED]:
When the diphthong is retained but not at end-of-word or
end-of-this-phrase-thing.
As for 'our', I think it's very much underlyingly /&o/ for me (using
your notation), contrasted with 'hour' which is, I spose, /&o@/ [&:w6,
&:u)-, [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's probably the diphthong ending in a low unrounded
vowel
that makes yours sound British, but I'm convinced it sounds like it
starts on [a], at least, if not [A].
For Joe's talk of my [E] being more like [e], I certainly agree that
his is significantly lower, and I generally call mine [e]~/e/ anyway,
following the normal representation of the AuE vowel. Particular
American pronunciations have values of /E/ that sound more like /&/ to
my ears---I'm not sure what they use for that.
For John's talk of Australian running out of back vowels, I believe
that /ai/ is now something more like [Ai] or [Ae], and as has been
observed my /U/ is further back than Joe's. In fact, I'd say Joe's
sounds more like my idea of [y] than [U] (check the archives, I've said
this before). Aussie back vowels, even low ones, are doing perfectly
fine, we just have a different set! For we Englysshe men ben borne
vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche is neuer stedfaste but euer
wauerynge, wexynge* one season, and waneth and dyscreaseth another
season.
* Isn't that a progressive tense? I didn't think they were invented
till Modern English, but isn't this clearly Middle English?
> I would welcome a similar sample from Tristan.
To come before too long...
--
Tristan.
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Message: 21
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 14:59:25 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Germanic links
Hallo!
On Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:42:09 -0500,
Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Very interesting selection, perhaps of some use to germaniconlangers, if
> they don't already know it:
>
> http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/linkspage.htm
Thank you! This is indeed am interesting resource. Very useful
for one of my conlang side-projects, Modern Vandalic (an East
Germanic language spoken in the LLL's Tunisia).
Greetings,
Jörg.
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Message: 22
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:54:47 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Germanic links
On 11 Dec 2004, at 5.42 pm, Roger Mills wrote:
> Very interesting selection, perhaps of some use to germaniconlangers,
> if
> they don't already know it:
>
> http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/linkspage.htm
Oo, I feel special, he's linked to one of my pages :)
--
Tristan.
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Message: 23
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 09:18:11 -0500
From: Thomas Leigh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Reading old Greek (was: kudos (was: most looked-up words))
Ray wrote:
> > OTOH, I pronounce all Greek the same way
> > as well -- with Modern Greek pronunciation.
>
> So do I :)
I spent a semester in Greece when I was 19, and I attended services at
Greek Orthodox churches. When they read from the New Testament, they
pronounce Koine as if it were Modern Greek. So I say, if it's good
enough for the Greeks, then it's good enough for me! :)
Thomas
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Message: 24
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 01:24:19 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Tristan wrote:
> Your discussion of my schwa in centring diphthongs isn't quite correct,
> or more specifically my schwa, I don't think. The @ > 6 happens with
> every schwa (e.g. mother, thorough have the same vowel twice when said
> in this example sentence), but only at the end of some sort of phrase
> thingy (my knowledge of intonation and phrasing and stuff is not very
> good at all), or when saying words individually or whatever. At least
> normally.
>
> There are thus cases where what you call /i@/ will be pronounced [EMAIL
> PROTECTED]:
> When the diphthong is retained but not at end-of-word or
> end-of-this-phrase-thing.
I'm not sure I understand fully, but here is a draft of a revision
that might, possibly, address the problem. If not, could you please
suggest how the revised version ought to look?
Tristan's dialect usually avoids centering diphthongs (diphthongs
that end in a schwa), including:
* /E@/ as in "stare"
* /i@/ as in "steer, beard"
When Tristan avoids centering diphthongs, it is either by
monophthongisation (thus [stE:] for "stare", and this phoneme is
always monophthogonal in Tristan's dialect) or by replacing the
schwa with a more open vowel (thus [sti6] for "steer", although he
does use the centering form of this phoneme in some contexts, but
never at the end of a word).
Will that do? To save time if it's right, I've uploaded this revision.
> As for 'our', I think it's very much underlyingly /&o/ for me (using
> your notation), contrasted with 'hour' which is, I spose, /&o@/ [&:w6,
> &:u)-, [EMAIL PROTECTED] It's probably the diphthong ending in a low
> unrounded vowel
> that makes yours sound British, but I'm convinced it sounds like it
> starts on [a], at least, if not [A].
Definitely starts on the [&] side of [a].
For the "ow" diphthong, I can take /&O/, /&o/, /&U/ as transcriptions;
but I think I've settled on /&o/ as my personal preference. I won't
raise an eyebrow if you use whichever transcription you like best.
I don't like describing vowels as "low" or "high". The reason is that
I find it a lot easier to think in terms of an imaginary column graph
in which the height of the column represents the distance between the
tongue and the palate than I do to think in terms of the physiological
height of the tongue. For this reason, I find "low" and "high" to be
counterintuitive. I like "closed" and "open" much better.
> For Joe's talk of my [E] being more like [e], I certainly agree that
> his is significantly lower, and I generally call mine [e]~/e/ anyway,
> following the normal representation of the AuE vowel. Particular
> American pronunciations have values of /E/ that sound more like /&/ to
> my ears---I'm not sure what they use for that.
Either /e/ vs /E/ will do for the Australian vowel, since it's really
somewhere in between. The reason I prefer /E/ is because the sound I
think of as /e/ is more closed than the Australian "e" ever is (and is
phonemically distinct from it). The /e:/ used for the monophthogonal
pronunciation of some English dialects of "fade", etc, never sounds
like "fed" or "fared" to me at all (or at least I can't remember a
single occasion when it did).
Adrian.
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Message: 25
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2004 16:39:50 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: fortis vs lenis (was Re: German style orthography)
Hi!
Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>...
> I believe these terms are often used in the description of German dialects.
Right. I think at least some, if not many, local dialects have a
fortis/lenis distinction but lack voicedness. I don't know about
Austrian, it is definitely different from the standard High German
pronunciation, since speakers of High German usually perceive b/d/g
for Austrian p/t/k. I have so far assumed that this is due to lack of
aspiration in Austrian. I haven't had a chance to listen thoroughly
enough to see whether there is a distinction between p and b in
Austrian, and whether it is only fortis/lenis, or whether there is
(also or exclusively) a voiceless/voiced distinction.
Some Saarlandian dialects (maybe Western Palatinian, too) seem to have
lost distinction between b/d/g and p/t/k totally, but some have
definitely retained *some* distinction, but also not the High German
one. I will try to find out some day after my current *holidays* when
I'm back at work with a lot of Saarlandians! :-)
> as to whether she said 'brick' or 'prick'. But I am no expert on German
> dialectology.
That's an especially weird example, because it is a special case: in
front of r and l, distinction between p/t/k and b/d/g is not retained
in many dialects. High German loses its aspiration here, too, but
keeps a distinction in fortis/lenis and voiced/voiceless.
E.g. Saarlandian has no distinction here. They say 'Prei' [pRaI] for
'Brei', without any distinction: linguistically aware people whom I
asked said there was no difference, and they could themselves not
distinguish it (and had to learn the correct way of writing at
school).
> > I've even heard some people argue that voicing isn't the primary
> > distinction in English (I can't remember what they were arguing
> > was the primary distinction...),
>
> Possibly aspiration - I have seen English described this way.
Hmm, primary way of distinction? I don't know. If any of the three
differences between High German plosives (i.e., fortis/lenis,
voicedness, aspiration) is missing, I think the phones start to be
mistaken. So I doubt it is reasonable to promote one of the three
distinctions to a primary one.
But maybe it's done. If so, I'd like to hear arguments, why. :-)
Comparing with Mandarin's aspirated vs. non-aspirated difference,
German has a very mild aspiration. :-) I always have to breathe out
hard to sound vaguely correct, I think. (I tend to use [b] for [p] in
Mandarin, however, by L1 influence, of course.)
**Henrik
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