conlang
Thu, 06 Jan 2005 13:38:05 -0800
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Has someone you know been affected by illness or disease? Network for Good is THE place to support health awareness efforts! http://us.click.yahoo.com/RzSHvD/UOnJAA/79vVAA/GSaulB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> There are 25 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Hacker Language (was Re: Language comparison) From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2. Re: Voiced aspirated plosives (was: phonetic) From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3. Re: You've got to be kidding me. From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4. OT: Power in programming languages. From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5. Re: easy sounds From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 6. THEORY: V2 word order (yet again) From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7. Re: OT: Power in programming languages. From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 8. Re: easy sounds From: Moshe Blidstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 9. Re: my phonology From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10. Re: ADMIN: John Cowan departing; turnover in the Instrumentality of Conlang From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11. Re: You've got to be kidding me. From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12. Re: OT: Power in programming languages. From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 13. Re: my phonology From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 14. THEORY: the Glottalic hypothesis From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 15. Re: begginer From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 16. Re: OT: Power in programming languages. From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 17. Re: OT Pronunciation of _Galle_ (was: YAPT) From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 18. Re: easy sounds From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 19. Re: easy sounds From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 20. Morse Code, Silbo and Whistled languages From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 21. Re: Morse Code, Silbo and Whistled languages From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 22. Re: Morse Code, Silbo and Whistled languages From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 23. Re: vietnamese From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 24. [G] for /r/ (was Re: my phonology) From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 25. Re: You've got to be kidding me. From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 09:21:30 +0000 From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Hacker Language (was Re: Language comparison) > >> Of course, this is only relevant for those like me who want a sort of >> hacker's conlang. ;-) > > > For what purpose? That is a serious question. Until you know what the > objectives of your conlang are, you will not know what features of > natlangs are relevant in any case. > If you want a hacker's conlang you have to first consider the type of culture you're aiming for. You need to have firmly in your mind what kind of culture/society you're designing for if you want a conlang perfect for that particular culture. So what are the most marked features of hacker culture? 1) Emphasis on acquiring knowledge, usually through personal experience and experimentation rather than through, for example, lectures, classes etc 2) The hoarding of knowledge. In my experience, although a hacker might choose to associate with particular people and help them, in general the hacker isn't so interested on passing on knowledge. At times the culture tends to become similar to the shamanistic systems of other cultures: while a shaman might choose to take on an apprentice, in general being a shaman is a matter of personal learning and then hoarding the acquired knowledge rather than giving it out freely. A hacker is the ultimate individual, because his or her focus is on the self rather than the society, and this was true also of the shamans. While they might sometimes benefit their society, their ultimate focus was on their own knowledge and power, and they could do harm as well as good to their community. 3) The desire to compete and to demonstrate the knowledge they possess. After all, what's the point in being really smart and knowledgeable if no one knows it? This can sometimes contract (2), since most hackers want to demonstrate their skills without also giving out too much of their knowledge to other people, since doing so weakens them relative to others. I'm speaking of hackers in the general sense, not in the sense of "crackers", or even in the sense of "skilled computer programmers". I find it interesting that in projects such as Linux (3) has managed to triumph over (2), (that's why Linux works, because the volunteers want kudos), while in other areas (including cracker culture) (2) is generally more powerful than (3). And I do find a lot of similarities between hacker culture and the shamanistic cultures. :) The most core point is that any language built for hackers would be individual rather than community focused and generally egocentric, since community focus is the antithesis of the hacker's world view. Now, what vocabulary do you need? What kind of hackers did you mean? If you mean computer hackers, you will have to allow for a large influx of English loans into your conlang, if you want to talk about "Microsoft", "Intel", "Pentium", "Athlon", etc. If for instance your syllable structure is CVCVCV... then you're going to have to butcher any new borrowed computing term to introduce it into your language, and there are so many technical terms in computing you'd be taking a lot on to invent equivalents for everything from scratch. I guess you could borrow the terms from another language though... I'd guess the Chinese have invented their own computing terms for a start. Do you want this language to be specific to hacker activities, or to be able to talk about pretty much anything? (slightly OT, if it's aimed at hackers I suggest your first word should mean "porn" lol). ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:57:20 +0200 From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Voiced aspirated plosives (was: phonetic) Jorg Rhiemeier wrote: > Ray Brown wrote: > > > What is the present state of play, so > > to speak, regarding the PIE 'voiced aspirated' plosives? > > The present state of play is that many (though by far not all) > Indo-Europeanists favour "glottal theory", according to which the > stops traditionally reconstructed as voiced (*b, *d, *g, *gW) were > glottalized stops, and the traditional voiced aspirates were simply > voiced. I think this makes sense To stir the List up for more ontopicness and to show that I'm still here (just busy with guests in our home: my sister-in-law and her husband came to visit us for a week!), I'd add that this theory was suggested by T.V.Gamkrelidze and Vyach.Vs.Ivanov in 1972 (later expanded and illustrated by ample material in their book "éÎÄÏÅ×ÒÏÐÅÊÓËÉÊ ÑÚÙË É ÉÎÄÏÅ×ÒÏÐÅÊÃÙ. òÅËÏÎÓÔÒÕËÃÉÑ É ÉÓÔÏÒÉËÏ-ÔÉÐÏÌÏÇÉÞÅÓËÉÊ ÁÎÁÌÉÚ ÐÒÁÑÚÙËÁ É ÐÒÏÔÏËÕÌØÔÕÒÙ." Tbilisi, 1984), and, independently, by P.J.Hopper in 1973. Read his article in "Glossa. An International Journal of Linguistics", 1973, v.7, No.2. Aspirated plosives are postulated allophones for pure plosives according to Grassman's law. -- Yitzik ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 13:03:57 +0100 From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: You've got to be kidding me. Hey! On Wednesday 05 January 2005 16:09, Steg Belsky wrote: > On Jan 5, 2005, at 4:43 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote: > > How did we get into the alleged objective superiority > > of languages? I mean, it's at list a somewhat > > linguistic topic, unlike, say, the superiority of > > countries of residence, but come on! This list has > > been nothing but flamebait lately. > > > > Well, I'm with Christophe. At least with John around I > > could always count on some wise and humorous > > counterpuncture, but he's leaving, and I'm not > > interested in any of this crap. I'll keep an eye on > > the archives and come back if things ever get back to > > actual conlanging for any length of time - say, an > > entire day! - but meanwhile, I'm outta here. > > -Marcos Dear pyrotechnicians, see what flamewars cause?! More and more people are leaving the list because they're fed up. Dammit, there is no language or dialect superior to others -- this remotely reminds me of fascism and its disgusting & cruel results actually ... Bah! Shame on you! I won't say anything more about this topic. > How about trying to defuse the flamebait instead of just > jumping ship? Or ignore it, and add more conlangage (sic) > to the bandwidth of the list! A comment on my > Arabic-alphabet orthography for English, perhaps? :) I only read the stuff I'm intersted in and don't participate at flamewars in general. OBConlang: Recently, I've been thinking about dialects of Ayeri which might lead to daugther langs. I could think about this a bit more and add what I think. Or I could finally think a bit more about the maths of my concalendar I posted recently. Would that help against flamewars? :P Carsten -- Eri silveváng aibannama padangin. Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 14:02:19 +0000 From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: OT: Power in programming languages. Chris Bates wrote: >> > and because there are some things difficult to do in perl which are >> > easier in C. So succinctness definately isn't all. >> >> Nope, it's down to problem domain. It's all problem domain. > > You basically seem to be agreeing with me. I didn't say C was always > easier. I was just arguing that succinctness wasn't power, and indeed it > isn't since different languages are designed to do different things > regardless of how succinct they are. I disagree with your comparison. You can't compare C and C++ to the likes of Perl, Java and C++. They're aimed at different problem domains BTW, I kept on throwing O'Caml in there because I was hoping somebody'd pick it up. O'Caml manages to work well across both the systems and applications domains, and its compiler generates code as fast as any C++ compiler. It's succinct, and it gets out of your way, having type inference and inforcing neither an imperative nor functional style, nor does it require you to use objects if you want. Yet some parts of O'Caml are written in C, particularly things that need to be close to the metal such as basic heap operations, i/o, and the like. But O'Caml is still the more powerful language. Why? Because you have to worry about fewer things in O'Caml than you do in in C, types and memory being examples. This is the best measure of power. And it does it without sacrificing speed. > Perl, being a high level language, > is more succinct than C, but there are some things that are difficult to > do in perl because they're way beyond what it was designed for (a text > processing and scripting language basically). I would not for instance > attempt to write an operating system in perl. The same goes for C. But the reason why Perl is poor for writing low-level code in is that, like any high-level language, it doesn't provide direct access to the hardware. It doesn't make sense. C does, mostly. At least it gives you direct access to memory via pointers, and many compilers allow you to embed assembly directly into the code. But does the fact that you need to embed asm in places mean that asm's more powerful than C? No. Does the fact that people write bits of their Perl, Python and Ruby programs in C for speed make C more powerful? Nope. The amount of time and brainpower a language saves the programmer is a better measure. Working on the problem is better than code micromanagement. > Note, we might be talking about different definitions of the word > power. I'm not talking about ease of doing things. THat isn't power. > Just because a car has an automatic gear box doesn't mean it's more > powerful than one with a manual. Power is how much you're able to do > with something, not how easy it is. So am I, ergo O'Caml. If you define power by how close you get to the metal, assembly is obviously what you want. If being able to code close to the problem domain is how you define power, the likes of Ruby and Python are better. C is used as a jack-of-all-trades language. So is C++, and so is O'Caml. But O'Caml allows you to code closer to the problem domain than either the others without sacrificing speed. It's more powerful because it gives you more tools and better tools. K. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.8 - Release Date: 03/01/2005 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 14:23:10 -0000 From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: easy sounds --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >At any rate, all vowels are 'easy' to produce---it just depends on what > >phonemes your native speech had that you learnt as a child. Babies (at a > >particular stage of their linguistic development) can distinguish more > >sounds than you or me. > > Are you sure? any french speaker can know if someone who speaks french have > english as natal language with the pronounciation of the vowel [y] This is exactly what Tristan was saying. It depends on what phonemes your native speech had that you learnt as a child. Raise an American newborn in France, and you'll never hear a difference. Babies start out as perfect listeners, and have to learn to ignore non-phonemic differences between individual people's pronunciations in order to understand language. There are some inherently difficult sounds, like the rhotics (all flavors of R) and the Arabic emphatics. Those often take children much longer to learn correctly than other sounds. -- Christian Thalmann ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 6 Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005 01:29:27 +1100 From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: THEORY: V2 word order (yet again) G'day, I was fiddling around with Føtisk's word order (I'm currently taking a very long time to reply to a very short on-topic post someone made a few weeks ago about the subject) and as a Germanic language closely related to Old English, I thought I should learn about OE's V2 word order. I came across <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kroch/omev2-html/node7.html> (previously discussed on this list: <http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa? A2=ind9905C&L=conlang&P=R17948>, that thread served its purpose at least twice!). On that page I've linked to, it presents some apparentlyexceptional V2 word orders, one of which (6b) is the example: þa ge-mette he sceaðan then met he robbers As far as I can see, this is perfectly normal V2 word order---one element (then) is before the verb, so the verb and subject flip. Why is this exceptional? All the sentences on that page have the verb in the first position (well, I spose that depends on whether _ne_/'not' takes as a position or is part of the verb's place I spose), and it seems to be saying the same thing. (Incidentally, if I was speaking a V2 language, would I've said: As far as can I see, is this perfectly normal V2 word order... or does the fact that the 'AFAICS' bit is before a comma, does that not have some sort of effect on the element-counting?) fance fe /fank@ fe/ -- Tristan. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 09:58:35 -0500 From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT: Power in programming languages. CB = Chris Bates KG = Keith Gaughan CB> and because there are some things difficult to do in perl which are CB> easier in C. Could you give me an example? Very early on, as Perl grew out of its original problem domain, it was extended in ways specifically designed to make C-ish things as easy as they are in C, without giving up the power of the higher-level constructs. You sacrifice performance, but not expressibility. About the only thing I can think of that isn't well-supported by Perl5 is multithreading (although that's arguably not well-supported by C either); various attempts to add it failed in different ways due to earlier design decisions at the implementation level, which is part of the reason they started from scratch with the Perl6 implementation. KG> I disagree with your comparison. You can't compare C and C++ to the KG> likes of Perl, Java and C++. You can't compare C++ to C++? Is that kind of like how nil is not equal to nil? :) KG> They're aimed at different problem domains And I would say that there are more than two categories. In the same space as Perl you have competitors like Python and Ruby; also TCL and Scheme (especially guile), although they don't quite fit exactly the same niche. Overlapping that space in one direction you have things like the UNIX shells, AppleScript, and the Windows Scripting Host (or even batch files, but they're pretty far removed from the rest in terms of capability). Overlapping in the other way you have the "systems" languages like C and many others. I would say that you need a third dimension to fit things like SmallTalk, Java, and C# into this picture. While you can do systems stuff in them, especially in C++, they're mostly designed to operate on top of a higher level of abstraction than an operating system API. They're not so much languages as entire platforms unto themselves, designed for solving application problems rather than interfacing with other tools or directly with the operating system. In that way, despite their refined status as "real" programming languages with computer science credentials, they have a lot in common with lowly "scripting" tools like JavaScript and Flash ActionScript. KG> But O'Caml is still the more powerful language. Why? Because you have to KG> worry about fewer things in O'Caml than you do in in C, types and memory KG> being examples. This is the best measure of power. I disagree here. I have yet to encounter a valid claim about "not having to worry about" various aspects of software development. In Java, you still have to worry about memory. In "typeless" languages, you often find yourself working around the lack of types (of course, in strongly typed languages you often find yourself working around the need for a more generic interface to something). Everything in programming design is a trade-off. I like some things about O'Caml, and dislike others. -Marcos ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 8 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 10:47:01 -0500 From: Moshe Blidstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: easy sounds I think that the first letters a baby learns are the ones that he can see the easiest, that is frontal sounds. But I just remember that from somewhere and I'm not sure. later on he gets to letters that are further back. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 9 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 16:07:31 -0000 From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: my phonology --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Only a few languages? I don't know, for me they seem different but it is > maybe that by peaking frensh I know the uvular voiced fricative and that I > can easily notice that the other is different. Anyway, it must not be much > similar for others... Some few people around here use [G] instead of the more common [R] and even more common [4] for "r" (I did it too until in the middle of primary school, when the teacher realized it and inadvertantly made me a curiosity... I then learned and switched to [4] within days ;-). [G] for "r" sounds strange. I can well imagine a/G/-/R/ contrast in a language. > Yes I like it too, it sounds special for the earers Earers... LOL, that's a cute typo. Do you also call your speakers "mouthers"? ;o) If you're aiming for conciseness, how about adding a very simple form of tone? Using three pitch levels (neutral, high, low), you can triple the number of available syllables, and they don't even slow down speech (rising or falling tones, for example, require a certain minimal vowel length to be heard well). Even if you're not a speaker of a tonal language, you can probably learn to deal with such a basic tone system rather quickly. -- Christian Thalmann ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 10 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:35:16 -0500 From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: ADMIN: John Cowan departing; turnover in the Instrumentality of Conlang And Rosta wrote: >...Strange to think >that Conlang list will soon -- or perhaps already -- >be older than some of its subscribers, and that some >conlangers will not be able to imagine what being a >conlanger was like before the age of the internet.) __________________ I remember those pre-internet days...lovingly dog-eared notebooks filled with fading lines of pencilled-in and scratched-out phonologies and verb inflections, wondering if I were the only conlanger in the world besides Tolkien and Ursula LeGuin.... It's a shame that this list has gone so far downhill in such a short time. I only joined exactly one year ago, and actually recall reading thread after thread about...conlanging! (believe it or not).... Seems like such threads are few and far between now...that's why I've been in digest mode for months. Back to the pencilled notebooks for me I guess.... ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 11 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 16:42:15 -0000 From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: You've got to be kidding me. --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I only read the stuff I'm intersted in and don't participate > at flamewars in general. OBConlang: Recently, I've been > thinking about dialects of Ayeri which might lead to > daugther langs. I could think about this a bit more and add > what I think. Or I could finally think a bit more about the > maths of my concalendar I posted recently. Would that help > against flamewars? :P Daughter langs might be a good idea. Ayeri is a tad too langatmig for my taste right now. But don't let my taste influence you. ;o) > http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri ¡Dé ed Diovul! What a beautiful page! I think I'll keep it open in the background so I can rest my eyes on the peaceful treescape every now and then. ;o) Love the vine script, too, very decorative, if maybe not as efficient as it could be (one could probably distill a simpler, quick-to-write version from it, which could be rendered arbitrarily elaborately according to the artist's whim). The spiral signature is particularly awesome. Yep, definitely a welcome change from the flaming. -- Christian Thalmann ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 12 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 16:58:37 +0000 From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT: Power in programming languages. Mark J. Reed wrote: > CB = Chris Bates > KG = Keith Gaughan > KG> I disagree with your comparison. You can't compare C and C++ to the > KG> likes of Perl, Java and C++. > > You can't compare C++ to C++? Is that kind of like how nil is not equal > to nil? :) D'oh! Mistyped! Meant to type C#, of course. > KG> They're aimed at different problem domains <snipped because I agree with all this, just didn't bring it out> > In that way, > despite their refined status as "real" programming languages with computer > science credentials, they have a lot in common with lowly "scripting" > tools like JavaScript and Flash ActionScript. Hey! JS ain't all that lowly! It's essentially a Lisp in C clothing. It's just misunderstood. ;-) > KG> But O'Caml is still the more powerful language. Why? Because you have to > KG> worry about fewer things in O'Caml than you do in in C, types and memory > KG> being examples. This is the best measure of power. > > I disagree here. I have yet to encounter a valid claim about > "not having to worry about" various aspects of software development. > In Java, you still have to worry about memory. But what I mean is that while you might have to worry about memory, you don't have to worry about what happens to it once you're finished with it. Garbage collection takes care of that. > In "typeless" > languages, you often find yourself working around the lack of types (of > course, in strongly typed languages you often find yourself working > around the need for a more generic interface to something). O'Caml uses type inference, so you have strong typing, but you don't have to worry about your variable types all the time because the compiler can figure it out. But I'm not just talking about things like that. I'm talking about first-class functions, closures, and the like too. > Everything in programming design is a trade-off. I like some things about > O'Caml, and dislike others. Same goes for any language, which is one of the reasons there's so many... K. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.6.8 - Release Date: 03/01/2005 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 13 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 12:01:42 -0500 From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: my phonology ># 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: ... >> bilab labioden alveo postalveo pala velar uvular glot >> affricates 2 2 2 2 0 2 2 1 >>... >> There are also the voiced and unvoiced linguo-labial plosives Now there's a very complex consonant system! No natural language has labiodental plosives, but this one contrasts even labiodental affricates with bilabial affricates! On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 04:52:56 +0100, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Why no palatals? (I mean, I don't especially like their sound, but my >L1 contains a few, and Icelandic, which I like a lot, so why not?). To me it's not surpruising that a language with a velar-uvular contrast and with a alveolar-postalveolar contrast lacks palatal sounds. The palate would result exceedingly crowded. [EMAIL PROTECTED]: j. 'mach' wust ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 14 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:32:14 -0600 From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: THEORY: the Glottalic hypothesis Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >What is the present state of play, so to speak, regarding the >PIE 'voiced aspirated' plosives? I am no Indo-Europeanist, but maybe the best place is to look at it through the perspective of the challenging theory: Joseph S. Salmons. The Glottalic Theory. Journal of Indo-European Studies: Monograph Series. 10. McLean, Virginia: Institute for the Study of Man, 1993 (with full bibliography). This is a reasonably recent, and fairly balanced look at the theory. (BTW, I would say it is not accurate to say that most IEists believe in this theory. FWIW I certainly haven't met a single IEist in real life who believes in this theory, and I know quite a few as such people go.) ========================================================================== Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 15 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 09:56:35 -0800 From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: begginer --- # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've still never complete a conlang > <snip> I created my first conlang in 1952. That was 53 years ago and I still have not "completed" a conlang. The closest I ever came was a pictographic/ideographic conlang I created about 20 or 25 years ago, back in the mid 1970's. It had 3,000 to 4,000 pictographs and I could read and write it so fluently that I wrote a daily journal in it for a few years, and even took notes in class when I went back to university for my MS. Sadly, my dictionary, which was written on some 4,000 blank flash cards, was destroyed in a house fire in the 70's and after all these years of not using it I can only recall about a dozen of the signs. It started out as English relexified, but gradually evolved its own grammar. --gary ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 16 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 17:59:21 +0000 From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT: Power in programming languages. All that you've said doesn't contradict what I said. They're designed for different domains and can do different things, yes, but that was exactly my point: the language with the ability to do the most things (ie the most powerful) is assembly or writing directly in machine code, since you can with enough time write a program to do anything it's possible to make a computer do. But is a program in assembly language the most succinct? For most things you can probably write a shorter program in a higher level language (which typically are specialised in some way or limited in their use compared to assembly) that is shorter than the equivalent written in assembly language. Thus power is not the same as succinctness in the case of computer languages. Which part of that argument do you disagree with? All I was basically saying was if you take a higher level language like perl, you can do a lot of things more succinctly than in a lower level language like C or assembly, but you tend to have more power at the lower level because the attempts of higher level languages to hide the machine from you also places constrainsts typically on what you can do. I know that different languages are designed for different purposes. Did I say they weren't? I don't think that contradicts the basic thrust of my argument. Succinctness is not related to power. Power is about what you're able to do with something, not how easy it is to do it. I was simply putting it in terms of computer languages since that was the basis of the argument I was disagreeing with. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 17 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 18:59:12 +0000 From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT Pronunciation of _Galle_ (was: YAPT) On Wednesday, January 5, 2005, at 08:02 , Benct Philip Jonsson wrote: > Paul Bennett wrote: > >> What's bugging the hell out of me is the BBC news, who >> insist on refering to the town I thought was /'[EMAIL PROTECTED]:e/ >> as /g&li:/ > > On the Swedish news they call it /go:l/, so now I'm utterly > confused, since I've always assumed /'[EMAIL PROTECTED]:e/ based on the > standard way of romanizing Indic words. I don't know what BBC source Paul means, but on the television BBC 1 news & on BBC News 24 it has consistently been pronounced like "Gaul", even by correspondents in the place, whenever I've watched. The Swedish /go:l/ is, I guess, based on that. I suspect that _Galle_ is not a standard romanization of any Indic form, but an English spelling of a local name, dating from the days of the Raj. 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" ] ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 18 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 21:02:42 +0200 From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: easy sounds Christian Thalmann wrote: > Babies start out as perfect listeners, and have > to learn to ignore non-phonemic differences between individual > people's pronunciations in order to understand language. I don't know if it is scientific or not, but I always had feeling that there is a kind of remapping mechanism in our brains, that makes adjustments to individual accents, both in native language and in foreign one. That is why, e.g., I find difficult to follow YAEPTs when you talk about phoneMic oppositions in your dialects: something inside me makes me to ignore the difference between PR [EMAIL PROTECTED], GA [bIr\] and Tristan's [bI:]. I'm not even sure if I can hear the difference unless this is said by the same person! So I understand what Gary says about "mouth noises". Btw, it doesn't work well for me in my L1, Russian. Standard language has a very high social prestige here, therefore funny accents always bite one's ears. -- Yitzik ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 19 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 18:59:27 +0000 From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: easy sounds On Thursday, January 6, 2005, at 02:56 , Tristan McLeay wrote: > On 6 Jan 2005, at 1.24 pm, Elliott Lash wrote: > >> --- Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [snip] >>> English doesn't have [a], though it does have [A] >>> and [{]. It doesn't seem to be easy for native >>> English >>> speakers to produce, as generally when they try to >>> produce >>> it (e.g. in pronouncing Spanish words) they come up >>> with, >>> surprise surprise, [A] or [{] (in America, usually >>> the >>> former). >> >> >> English has /a/, at least I think the words "on", and >> "father", and many others contain this sound. [snip] > As to Maxime's second question, about words like 'battle' and 'pack', > some dialects, particularly British and English-as-a-foreign-language > ones, use [a] in these words, True as far English-as-a-foreign-language - but as a Brit born & bred, the former statement is a bit misleading. The southern English pronunciation is CXS [&]; this is also used in some Scots Lowland & other dialects. [a] is used in these words in Welsh English, the Scottish highlands and many (all?) northern English dialects. > but Americans and Australians generally > have [&], a higher, fronter vowel here (or one even higher and > fronter). Yep the Brit RP is [&] - the Australian certainly tends to sound more like [E] to us Brits. And Merkans quite often have something more like [EMAIL PROTECTED] now. [snip] > At any rate, all vowels are 'easy' to produce---it just depends on what > phonemes your native speech had that you learnt as a child. Babies (at > a particular stage of their linguistic development) can distinguish > more sounds than you or me. Yep. =============================================== On Thursday, January 6, 2005, at 03:13 , # 1 wrote: >> At any rate, all vowels are 'easy' to produce---it just depends on what >> phonemes your native speech had that you learnt as a child. Babies (at a >> particular stage of their linguistic development) can distinguish more >> sounds than you or me. > > Are you sure? any french speaker can know if someone who speaks french > have > english as natal language with the pronounciation of the vowel [y] Isn't this what Tristan was saying? "it just depends on what phonemes your native speech had that you learnt as a child" A baby has a 'blank sheet' - all vowels are 'easy'. What later we find easy or difficult depends upon what we learnt as children. > Except if the person lived in a french envirronment since a long time, an > english natal speaker will say the sound [y] like [Y] or [}] Eh? This is, with respect, a gross generalization. It runs counter to my experience. 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" ] ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 20 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:30:03 -0800 From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Morse Code, Silbo and Whistled languages A recent Yahoo/Rueters news article about how Silbo "speakers" process that language in the brain led me to poke around the net for more information on Silbo in particular and whistled languages in general. I didn't find much, but lumping it in with morse code, a kind of monotonic whistled language, I began to wonder about the distinctions that are drawn in such languages. (Silbo is apparently a relex of Spanish, just as Morse code is normally a relex of the radio operator's native language.) The article mentions that Silbo has 4 "consonants" and 4 "vowels" but doesn't give a clue as to what those sound like when whistled. Morse code obviously only has two sounds, dot and dash, and the space between letters, but a whistled language could have a richer alphabet by using rising, falling or warbling tones, etc. All this led me to wonder about a language (from some alien civilization, obviously) devised by a civilization that had no vocal chords, but carried around little two-tone or three-tone penny whistles to talk with. Just idle ruminations at this point. But it's an interesting thought. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 21 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:50:55 -0800 From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Morse Code, Silbo and Whistled languages In the interest of on-topic posts... :) Emaelivpeith Gary Shannon: > All this led me to wonder about a language (from some > alien civilization, obviously) devised by a > civilization that had no vocal chords, but carried > around little two-tone or three-tone penny whistles to > talk with. > > Just idle ruminations at this point. But it's an > interesting thought. Quite interesting. I like the idea of having a species that is cognitively capable of language but that lacks the physiology to produce it. Requiring some object to communicate *at all* (as opposed to needing special apparatus only for long-distance communication) could make for an unusual conculture. Does anyone know of Earth animals without vocal cords that still make a wide range of sounds? One website suggested whales and some dinosaurs. -- AA ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 22 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 15:04:54 -0500 From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Morse Code, Silbo and Whistled languages On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 11:50:55 -0800, Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >In the interest of on-topic posts... :) > >Emaelivpeith Gary Shannon: >> All this led me to wonder about a language (from some >> alien civilization, obviously) devised by a >> civilization that had no vocal chords, but carried >> around little two-tone or three-tone penny whistles to >> talk with. >> >> Just idle ruminations at this point. But it's an >> interesting thought. > >Quite interesting. I like the idea of having a species that is >cognitively capable of language but that lacks the physiology to >produce it. Requiring some object to communicate *at all* (as opposed >to needing special apparatus only for long-distance communication) >could make for an unusual conculture. > >Does anyone know of Earth animals without vocal cords that still make >a wide range of sounds? One website suggested whales and some >dinosaurs. Don't forget about their descendants: birds! I think there was a time when certain linguist believed that dolphins would indeed have a proper language. They really turned out to have proper names, but not complex languages. It's known that whales have dialects: Their singing differs from region to region. [EMAIL PROTECTED]: j. 'mach' wust ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 23 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 21:40:50 +0100 From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: vietnamese Hallo! On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 20:07:52 -0500, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I recently read a vietnamese grammar (on the frensh wikipedia) describing > how the language works using classes, methodes, "tool" words, and numerals > instead of the occidental way with articles, nouns, verbs, adverbs, > adjectives... > > I would like if someone could point me a website with a good list of these > classes and methods. "Classes" and "methods"? I know those terms from object-oriented programming languages. How does one meaningfully apply them to human languages, hm, well, "classes" could be nouns and "methods" verbs. But it is a strange terminology. Greetings, Jörg. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 24 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 22:11:49 +0100 From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [G] for /r/ (was Re: my phonology) Hallo! On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 16:07:31 -0000, Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Some few people around here use [G] instead of the more common > [R] and even more common [4] for "r" (I did it too until in the > middle of primary school, when the teacher realized it and > inadvertantly made me a curiosity... I then learned and > switched to [4] within days ;-). [G] for "r" sounds strange. I > can well imagine a/G/-/R/ contrast in a language. Funny that you mention that, because in the part of Germany where I am from (Lippe, in northeastern North Rhine-Westphalia), pre-vocalic /r/ is indeed realized as [G] or something like that, and in the local dialect of Low German, /G/ < intervocalic /g/, and pre-vocalic /r/ sound the same. This caused me to use |r| for /G/ in a transliteration system I used for my conlangs in the mid-80s. Later, I changed that, using |r| for /r/ and |gh| for /G/. Greetings, Jörg. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 25 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 16:35:36 -0500 From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: You've got to be kidding me. Hello! On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 16:42:15 -0000, Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I only read the stuff I'm intersted in and don't participate >> at flamewars in general. OBConlang: Recently, I've been >> thinking about dialects of Ayeri which might lead to >> daugther langs. I could think about this a bit more and add >> what I think. Or I could finally think a bit more about the >> maths of my concalendar I posted recently. Would that help >> against flamewars? :P > >Daughter langs might be a good idea. Ayeri is a tad too >langatmig for my taste right now. But don't let my taste >influence you. ;o) Yes, it'd undergo heaviest shortening I guess. First, I must get rid of case marking everything that isn't out of the way quick enough, Second ... >Love the vine script, too, My script is not to be confused with the script at omniglot.com!! I've always referred to it as "Ornament script", "Wine script" (with W!!) or "Tahano Nuvenon". >Yep, definitely a welcome change from the flaming. 8) Yay! See you, Carsten ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------