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There are 23 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: ADMIN: Pascal set to NOPOST for calming down
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: ADMIN: Pascal set to NOPOST for calming down
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: History of constructed languages
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Advanced English to become official!
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Advanced English to become official!
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Advanced English to become official!
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Advanced English to become official!
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: whistling s's
From: JC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Baronh: lang of the Abh: Any Details?
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: whistling s's
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Advanced English to become official!
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Fluency and spelling (was: Advanced English to become official!)
From: JC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: History of constructed languages
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: kinship systems
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: History of constructed languages
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: kinship systems
From: Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: kinship systems
From: Joseph Bridwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: whistling s's
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: whistling s's
From: Christopher Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: History of constructed languages
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: YAEPT: OMFG I'm a mutant!!! (was Re: Advanced English to become
official!)
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: TECH: Sound Change program
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: YAEPT: OMFG I'm a mutant!!! (was Re: Advanced English to become
official!)
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 20:50:26 -0400
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Pascal set to NOPOST for calming down
*bursts into laughter!* I'm sorry... I have been deleting this thread, but
I can only imagine.
S.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Henrik Theiling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, April 04, 2005 11:54 AM
Subject: ADMIN: Pascal set to NOPOST for calming down
> Hi!
>
> After having warned him with no effect, I just used my strange powers
> to put Pascal A. Kramm to NOPOST until he has calmed down (and at
> least for 24h).
>
> Bye,
> Henrik
>
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 18:20:19 -0700
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ADMIN: Pascal set to NOPOST for calming down
On Apr 4, 2005 9:11 AM, Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: Constructed Languages List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Poster: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: ADMIN: Pascal set to NOPOST for calming down
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> >Hi!
> >
> >After having warned him with no effect, I just used my strange powers
> >to put Pascal A. Kramm to NOPOST until he has calmed down (and at
> >least for 24h).
> >
> >
>
> Well, I should probably apologise for starting a mini-flame-war. I
> probably should have phrased things better.
>
> So, sorry, everybody!
>
> Joe
>
Probably not. Anything coming from any Anglophone is likely to set
Pascal off. I learned in an email exchange he has a HUGE chip on his
shoulder. Don't think it's your fault. He just hasn't learned to play
nice witht he big kids.
--
Kiwasatra ay tepan ura nga garu kucaku songa
majenyora bilat maacaku lawan ku saal
Tal sora inumyara nga sepotyal ngaruan ura nga puka ku
matambiryay
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 21:30:35 -0400
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: History of constructed languages
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Friday, April 1, 2005, at 07:58 , David J. Peterson wrote:
>
>> Ray wrote:
>>
>> <<
>> Yes, certainly - in Dante's 'Divine Comedy' there is a fragment of a
>> diabolic language.
>> >>
>>
>> Hey, I'm reading that. I'm up to Canto 29 of Purgatory. Where
>> is this language? Did I miss it?
>
> Inferno -
> Canto VII, line 1: Papè Satàn, papè Satàn aleppe!
> Canto XXXI, line 67: Raphèl may améch zabì almì!
>
> (Note: à = a-grave; è = e-grave; ì = i-grave)
And few can decipher these utterances. Some say that pape and aleppe are
distorted Greek--papai, "ye gods"; I'm less certain about aleppe; and other
commentators have suggested that Nimrod's remarks are a terribly distorted
(or fake) Hebrew. But distorted or "pretend" Hebrew is legion throughout
the middle ages and in Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and makes its way into
incantations, conjurations, Christian Cabala, and so forth.
Also, look to Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantegruel for extended passages of
made up languge. There is also the comic gibberish in Shakespeare's "All's
Well That Ends Well," Act IV, scene I. Referred to as "chough's language,"
and used to fool the pompous Parolles. So while these examples don't answer
Mark's original query in the terms that he set it out, invented language is
all over the place and has ancient origins. My special project: Hildegard?
Not a fiction, though. No fictional setting. But over a thousand invented
words.
> =========================================
> On Friday, April 1, 2005, at 10:14 , Thomas Wier wrote:
>
>> From: Mark Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>> Anyway, I'm far from an expert, and I'd like to know what the first
>>> constructed language for media use might've been. I'm not talking here
>>> about
>>> Esperanto or Volapuek etc., but a fictional languages for use in
>>> fiction.
>>
>> I think it's fair to say that conlanging as a fictional enterprise
>> is something new in the 20th century.
>
> That is not how I understand Umberto Eco's accounts of Gabriel de Foigny's
> "La Terre ausrale connue" or Denis Vairasse's "L'Histoire des Sevarambes".
Agree with Ray. It depends on what you call "fiction" and whether you limit
it only to the last two centuries. If Dante isn't fiction, then you can't
say that his distorted or fallen language of the Inferno is a "fictional
language." Nor can you say the same thing about John Dee and his "angelic
language" (provided by Edward Kelley, I believe, and incorrectly referred to
as "Enochian"), nor can you say that the Helene Smith's "Martian" is
fictional because it was "made up" in a mediumistic trance. But it has all
the earmarks of something fictional and recognizable to us, though
primitive--it is a calque of French, but it has a conworld, it has a
messenger between us and that world, there are drawings made and an
alphabet... what's the difference between inspiration and imagination, or
vision and creativity? Some of what I used to come up with in Teonaht was
fairly visionary and automatic when I was young. It has since become very
rationalized.
>> Conlanging in some form goes
>> way back. I believe I posted some years ago about my discovery
>> that the brother of one of the Hellenistic Successors (_diadokhoi_)
>
> Even earlier, there is a fragment of made-up language in one of
> Aristophane's comedies (I must look it out).
The Birds. Lots of utterances imitative of birdsong. The Frogs: the famous
Brek kek kek kek koax koax.
>> ...........Jesse brought up the potentially earlier example of
>> _Gulliver's Travels_, and IIRC Thomas More's _Utopia_ might contain
>> some similarly poorly developed constructed language materials (if
>> only lexemes). But all of these were to the best of my knowledge very
>> cursory, and don't represent fictional languages in the sense of
>
> I don't know enough about More & Utopia to comment,
The preface provided in the 1516 edition has a quatrain of Utopian with a
Latin translation and some angular looking characters. I have examined it.
It's a perfect calque of the Latin translation, so it's clear More wrote out
the Latin first and he (or someone else, perhaps Giles) adapted the language
and the alphabet to it.
> but certainly in the
> case of Gulliver's travels, the fragments from Dante & the Aristophanes
> line, I agree these don't represent fully developed fictional languages.
> But Foigny certainly got beyond that; he did provide a sort of dictionary
> and some grammatical rules at least.
In A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Australis. There are lots of other
Voyage Accounts with examples of invented languages. But for any invention
that seems to have some kind of system to it, even if extremely paltry,
More's Utopia should at least be mentioned.
Sally
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 05:11:02 -0400
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Advanced English to become official!
On Mon, 4 Apr 2005 11:16:31 -0400, Pascal A. Kramm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"Problem is, Pascal's German, so it's bound to be imperfect." -> that's a
>rather crude and very unpolite sweeping stake about all Germans being
>retarded (or otherwise being mentally incapable) and thus it's impossible
>that they can come up with something really good.
Joe's critique was not meant to be crude or unpolite. However, I'd say it
was inconsiderate. The critique of Pascal's attempt is justified: It really
reminds of the stereotype German accent. But I strongly disagree that any
English spelling by a German is bound to be imperfect. The system of English
phonology can be mastered very well by foreigners. There's plenty of
material, and with an RP-ish accent (few phonemic mergers) and RP
dictionaries at hand, you have a good start.
>About being a native speaker or not - that doesn't say ANYTHING about the
>proficiency of the person in question! It's very well possible that a
>non-native speaker is better than a native one.
Not in the fluency and not in the language intuition, that is. However,
someone who learns English as a second language will be less biassed by the
traditional English spelling than a native speaker who isn't interested in
linguistics (none on this list), simply because he already knows another
spelling system (most probably a more regular one).
I'd even affirm that someone who's learned a language at school will
probably make less orthography errors than an avarage native speaker not
interested in language matters (though the native speaker will hardly ever
make wording errors which are most abundant in foreigners' language). This
is a result of how the rules are learnt: Foreigners consciously learn the
spelling rules at the same instant they learn the language, whereas native
speakers don't need any explicit rule knowledge. Spelling is taught to
native speakers at a very early age before the mind develops the ability of
dealing with an explicit rule, so many of those who aren't interested in
language won't ever learn the spelling rules but write intuitively.
Take for instance the Spanish accent mark: The rules are easy to learn, and
most foreigners will place all the accents correctly. Many native speakers,
however, who have learnt to write a couple of words with accent mark in the
first school years, won't ever know the rules and will place the accent
marks more or less at random for their entire lifes. The same with the
silent final _s_ in French: Foreigners have learnt the rules and will place
them correctly, whereas many native speaker just place them intuitively and
thus often wrongly.
In cases like these, many non-native speakers are better than many native
ones (and of course, there's also plenty of similar cases in English).
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 20:51:30 +0900
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Advanced English to become official!
On Apr 5, 2005 6:11 PM, J. 'Mach' Wust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'd even affirm that someone who's learned a language at school will
> probably make less orthography errors than an avarage native speaker not
> interested in language matters (though the native speaker will hardly ever
> make wording errors which are most abundant in foreigners' language). This
> is a result of how the rules are learnt: Foreigners consciously learn the
> spelling rules at the same instant they learn the language, whereas native
> speakers don't need any explicit rule knowledge. Spelling is taught to
> native speakers at a very early age before the mind develops the ability of
> dealing with an explicit rule, so many of those who aren't interested in
> language won't ever learn the spelling rules but write intuitively.
> (Good Spanish and French examples)
> In cases like these, many non-native speakers are better than many native
> ones (and of course, there's also plenty of similar cases in English).
I learned English as a foreign language. Not only I had to learn the orthography
at the same time I learned the language, I had to learn the Roman alphabet
too, as my language doesn't use the Roman alphabet at all.
As a result, although I can understand in my head that _it's_ and _its_,
_there_ and _their_ sound exactly the same, I cannot really confuse them --
they are written differently, after all! I think I have never got them wrong
in my entire English usage. But I saw that even those native English speakers
who are very good at spelling use it the other way around, and it surprised
me to see that.
Seo Sanghyeon
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 14:13:57 +0200
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Advanced English to become official!
Hi!
Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Apr 5, 2005 6:11 PM, J. 'Mach' Wust <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > I'd even affirm that someone who's learned a language at school will
> > probably make less orthography errors than an avarage native speaker not
> > interested in language matters (though the native speaker will hardly ever
> > make wording errors which are most abundant in foreigners' language).
>...
> As a result, although I can understand in my head that _it's_ and _its_,
> _there_ and _their_ sound exactly the same, I cannot really confuse them --
> they are written differently, after all! I think I have never got them wrong
> in my entire English usage. But I saw that even those native English speakers
> who are very good at spelling use it the other way around, and it surprised
> me to see that.
Hmm, I started to develop the ability to make any mistakes, it
seems. :-) Earlier on, when I had just learned English, I would not
mix up "it's" and "its", but now, I also do that. The less I have to
think about the language when writing, the more the purely phonetic
representation influences the orthography, it seems. I think German's
orthography has a little less sources for mixing things up, but those
it does have are evenly likely to come out wrong for me. :-)
The thing I dislike my speech center (or whatever center generates
written text) most for is picking up bad spellings from
advertisements, newspapers and any other public language exposition
*unconsciously*, poisoning the algorithms, and reproduce mistakes
without informing my higher brain functions about it. I can get
really angry at myself about this since I really dislike the stupidly
wrong stuff I read everywhere. To prevent these mistakes, I need to
consciously reread and correct those intrusive and viruslike mistakes
'manually'...
**Henrik
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 22:14:23 +0900
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Advanced English to become official!
On Apr 5, 2005 9:13 PM, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hmm, I started to develop the ability to make any mistakes, it
> seems. :-) Earlier on, when I had just learned English, I would not
> mix up "it's" and "its", but now, I also do that.
Well, good for you! I guess you reached the another stage of English fluency
then. :-)
Has anyone developed the ability to make any orthographic mistakes
from similar sounding words *in your conlang*? I guess not...
Seo Sanghyeon
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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 06:55:44 -0700
From: JC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: whistling s's
Combining a couple of responses...
--- "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have a sort of lisp that actually comes out as a high pitched
> whistle every so often. It's quite odd to hear when it happens. It
> used to occur a lot more when I was younger.
That's the sound. I know I've heard it as a sort of lisp in a movie (a cartoon,
maybe? I don't remember which). I had my whole family trying to do it when I
was at my parents' this weekend.
==========================================================
--- Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yes!
> Another conlang with whistles!
> My Semiticonlang includes both voiced and voiceless whistled sibilants.
> When i brought it up a while ago on the list, we came to the conclusion
> that the whistled s/sh sound is probably /s_a_qp\)/ or /s_a_q/
> depending on if you're accentuating the whistle by using your lips at
> the same time.
Thanks. I was trying to write up a phonology and got stuck on that one. I
hadn't tried voiced before...
> -Stephen (Steg)
> "your whistling sounds like scary alien bees!"
> ~ why not to attempt /z_a_q/ in public
... but yes, scary alien bees ;-) Now I want to add that to my conlang.
Someone told me my voiceless one sounded like a squeaky dog toy.
--JC
--
Watch the Reply-To...
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Message: 9
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 16:58:34 +0200
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Baronh: lang of the Abh: Any Details?
Hi!
Recently I came across a conlang used in the anime 'Crest of the
Stars'. An alien race (who originate from earth but where genetically
engineered), the Abh, speak that language. It's a conconlang:
conhistory is that it's an artificially purified ancient Japanese that
evolved after the race had left earth. The language is listed at
langmaker:
http://www.langmaker.com/db/mdl_baronh.htm
Unfortunately, the original grammar is in Japanese and there is not
much about it on the web. Some interesting grammar notes are here:
http://dadh-baronr.s5.xrea.com/intl/en/index.html
http://dadh-baronr.s5.xrea.com/intl/en/grammar.html
Does anyone of you know more about the language? Especially grammar
and conhistoric development?
Bye,
Henrik
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Message: 10
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 15:55:47 +0100
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: whistling s's
JC wrote:
> One of my conlangs has a sound that's like a high pitched, whistled s or sh.
> Of
> the admittedly small set of people I was bugging with this the other day, I'm
> the only one who can do it, but if I say s or sh and sort of curl my tongue
> tip
> up, I get the whistle.
>
> Phonology is not my strong point, as you can probably tell :-) Is there a
> common notation for this sort of thing?
As an adjunct to this, does anybody know how to describe the (in)famous
Irish "whistled-t"? It's quite similar to this, only softer and not
quite so much curled as raised.
My phonology-foo isn't quite strong enough for this one.
K.
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Message: 11
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:24:30 -0700
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Advanced English to become official!
This reminds me of instances in my Spanish classes. I found it highly
Ironic that the native speakers in my classes were not held to the
same standards as the non-native speakers. Apparently they were given
a pass about their spelling and accenting of Spanish, while those of
us who've learned it as a second language are not given any such
break. Most of the frequent mistakes were mixing up b and v, putting
accents randomly.
In Mexico, I saw a lot more errors from middle school students:
- Frequent mixup of B and V with a preference for B
- Use of LL where Y is to be expected: llo - yo
- Reduction of "que" to "k" (I know, this isn't really orthographic as
much as a slangy abbreviation), or to "ke"
There were a few others I've forgotten.
On Apr 5, 2005 9:13 PM, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Hmm, I started to develop the ability to make any mistakes, it
> > seems. :-) Earlier on, when I had just learned English, I would not
> > mix up "it's" and "its", but now, I also do that.
Well, at least you'll appear to be a native speaker :)
On Apr 5, 2005 6:14 AM, Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Has anyone developed the ability to make any orthographic mistakes
> from similar sounding words *in your conlang*? I guess not...
>
Well, if i were fluent in mine (or even memorized more than a couple
of words from the lexicon), who knows?
--
Kiwasatra ay tepan ura nga garu kucaku songa
majenyora bilat maacaku lawan ku saal
Tal sora inumyara nga sepotyal ngaruan ura nga puka ku
matambiryay
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 12
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 10:56:04 -0700
From: JC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Fluency and spelling (was: Advanced English to become official!)
--- "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In Mexico, I saw a lot more errors from middle school students:
>
> - Frequent mixup of B and V with a preference for B
> - Use of LL where Y is to be expected: llo - yo
> - Reduction of "que" to "k" (I know, this isn't really orthographic as
> much as a slangy abbreviation), or to "ke"
>
> There were a few others I've forgotten.
>
>
> On Apr 5, 2005 9:13 PM, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > > Hmm, I started to develop the ability to make any mistakes, it
> > > seems. :-) Earlier on, when I had just learned English, I would not
> > > mix up "it's" and "its", but now, I also do that.
>
>
> Well, at least you'll appear to be a native speaker :)
I read Spanish well enough to notice quirky problems, but I don't speak it well
enough to have developed them. I do think it comes with fluency. And any
mistakes in my conlangs would have to be chalked up to incompetence rather than
fluency ;-)
In English, while I catch its/it's or they're/their/there almost instantly when
I'm reading, sometimes my fingers will type or write the wrong one. I usually
catch it right away, but I don't always until I reread it. Different circuits
for reading and writing, I guess. When I read, I just read; I don't hear the
words in my head. But when I write I do, so maybe there's an extra layer there.
And since this email is about these things, I probably didn't catch one of them
here...
JC
--
Watch the Reply-To...
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Message: 13
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 19:09:51 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: History of constructed languages
On Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at 02:30 , Sally Caves wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Ray Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[snip]
>> Inferno -
>> Canto VII, line 1: Papè Satàn, papè Satàn aleppe!
>> Canto XXXI, line 67: Raphèl may améch zabì almì!
>>
>> (Note: à = a-grave; è = e-grave; ì = i-grave)
>
> And few can decipher these utterances.
Yes - but they do not agree with one another :)
> Some say that pape and aleppe are
> distorted Greek--papai, "ye gods"; I'm less certain about aleppe;
_papaî_ is an exclamation in Classical Greek, showing either pain (whether
mental or physical), surprise or scorn. It is found in the works of
Aiskhylos (Aeschylus), Aristophanes, Herodotos and Plato. In Dante's time
it would have been pronounced /pa'pe/ but I doubt very much that the word
had survived in spoken Greek. Whether Dante knew the word or not depends
upon how likely he was to know about the Greek Classics.
As for _aleppe_, those who adopt a Greek decipherment take the word as
_alhpte_ (where h = 'eta') = 'not to laid hold off, incomprehensible, not
to be chosen' [masc. sing. vocative]. There are a few problems with this:
1. the word is pretty rare in Greek;
2. in Dante's time it would have been pronounced /'alipte/, which is at
odds with the medial -e- in Dante's word (Dante would not know about later
reconstructions of pronunciations of different ancient Greek dialects);
3. there is no obvious reason to change -pt- to -pp-.
And at least one commentator has seen these words as distorted French:
"Paix, paix! Satan! Paix, paix! Satan! allez!"
> and other
> commentators have suggested that Nimrod's remarks are a terribly distorted
> (or fake) Hebrew.
Yes, I have seen no even vaguely convincing explanation of Canto XXXI, 67,
other than that they are a charicature of Hebrew. According to Eco, Dante
appears not have known Hebrew but had a vague idea what it sounded like.
> But distorted or "pretend" Hebrew is legion throughout
> the middle ages and in Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, and makes its way
> into
> incantations, conjurations, Christian Cabala, and so forth.
Yep - if it is distorted anything, then distorted Hebrew seems to me far
more likely than distorted Greek or French.
> Also, look to Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantegruel for extended passages
> of
> made up languge.
Yes - I'd forgotten about that :)
> There is also the comic gibberish in Shakespeare's "All's
> Well That Ends Well," Act IV, scene I. Referred to as "chough's language,
> "
> and used to fool the pompous Parolles. So while these examples don't
> answer
> Mark's original query in the terms that he set it out, invented language
> is
> all over the place and has ancient origins.
I agree.
>
>> =========================================
>> On Friday, April 1, 2005, at 10:14 , Thomas Wier wrote:
>>
>>> From: Mark Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>> Anyway, I'm far from an expert, and I'd like to know what the first
>>>> constructed language for media use might've been. I'm not talking here
>>>> about
>>>> Esperanto or Volapuek etc., but a fictional languages for use in
>>>> fiction.
>>>
>>> I think it's fair to say that conlanging as a fictional enterprise
>>> is something new in the 20th century.
>>
>> That is not how I understand Umberto Eco's accounts of Gabriel de Foigny'
>> s
>> "La Terre ausrale connue" or Denis Vairasse's "L'Histoire des Sevarambes"
>> .
>
> Agree with Ray.
Thanks :)
> It depends on what you call "fiction" and whether you limit
> it only to the last two centuries.
That seems very limiting to me and I suspect to you). If Apuleius' "Golden
Ass" is not fiction, I don't know what is! Even earlier we have Petronius'
"Sauturae" which, tho not preserved in full, is surely a romance or novel
- indeed, it seems that a tradition of writing fictional romances was
already established in Hellenistic Greek.
> If Dante isn't fiction, then you can't
> say that his distorted or fallen language of the Inferno is a "fictional
> language."
Well it's fictional in the sense of being made up.
[snip]
>> Even earlier, there is a fragment of made-up language in one of
>> Aristophane's comedies (I must look it out).
>
> The Birds. Lots of utterances imitative of birdsong. The Frogs: the
> famous
> Brek kek kek kek koax koax.
No, no - these are essentially onomatopoeia. I was thinking of a sentence
a slave is supposed to utter in a non-Greek language. I thought it came in
the Archarnians, but I may have dis-remembered.
[snip]
>> I don't know enough about More & Utopia to comment,
>
> The preface provided in the 1516 edition has a quatrain of Utopian with a
> Latin translation and some angular looking characters. I have examined
> it.
> It's a perfect calque of the Latin translation, so it's clear More wrote
> out
> the Latin first and he (or someone else, perhaps Giles) adapted the
> language
> and the alphabet to it.
I see.
>
>> but certainly in the
>> case of Gulliver's travels, the fragments from Dante & the Aristophanes
>> line, I agree these don't represent fully developed fictional languages.
>> But Foigny certainly got beyond that; he did provide a sort of dictionary
>> and some grammatical rules at least.
>
> In A New Discovery of Terra Incognita Australis. There are lots of other
> Voyage Accounts with examples of invented languages. But for any
> invention
> that seems to have some kind of system to it, even if extremely paltry,
> More's Utopia should at least be mentioned.
OK.
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: 14
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 13:08:23 -0500
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: kinship systems
>From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>This sounds familiar; I know some Indonesian langs. have various terms for
>same-sex and opposite-sex _siblings_ as well as older/younger, but offhand,
>your system sounds different. Kinship systems confuse me....:-(((
>
>Check out:
>http://www.umanitoba.ca/anthropology/tutor/kinterms/termsys.html
Been there, but thanks.
Actually, I went back and took another look, and I noticed they had a
language up where fathers and mothers use different terms for their
children. It's not the same system, but it's encouraging.
> > The system I'm thinking of would be something like this:
> > A: son, but only of a female ego (a man cannot have a B)
> > B: daughter, but only of a female (a man cannot have a B)
>
>Do you possibly mean "brother/sister" or "sibling" not son/daughter???
No. I haven't decided how siblings work yet. The aspect I was wondering
about (with respect to naturalism) was the differentiation by sex of ego of
offspring terms.
I suppose given this a similar differentiation of siblings would make sense.
> > C: son of a male ego, son of the ego's sister
> > D: daughter of a male ego, daughter of the ego's sister
> > E: son or daughter of the ego's brother or the ego's in-laws
>
>Those sound rather odd to me...But hey, it's a conworld, no?!!
I want it odd, but I don't want it impossible. Something you might find in
some little out of the way hunter-gatherer community on Earth, or something
that could eventually evolve from more common modern languages, given a few
millenia.
I don't really have a conworld for this, though. Not yet.
> > Similarly:
> > F: mother
> > G: father, mother's brother, (also probably step-father)
> > H: mother's sister, (also probably step-mother)
> > I: father's brother, mother's sister's husband
> > J: father's sister, father's brother's husband
>
>J:...FaBroHus.....eh?? 'tain't legal, except in Ontario, Vermont, Mass. and
>Holland!!!! But aside from that (typo?), these sound more common.
Heh. Indeed. Although, were the consociety down with that (and I don't
know that they aren't) that could well be the term for it. Either that or
I.
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________________________________________________________________________
Message: 15
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 20:42:36 +0200
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: History of constructed languages
Quoting Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> [snip]
> >> Even earlier, there is a fragment of made-up language in one of
> >> Aristophane's comedies (I must look it out).
> >
> > The Birds. Lots of utterances imitative of birdsong. The Frogs: the
> > famous
> > Brek kek kek kek koax koax.
>
> No, no - these are essentially onomatopoeia. I was thinking of a sentence
> a slave is supposed to utter in a non-Greek language. I thought it came in
> the Archarnians, but I may have dis-remembered.
Is it known it *is* made up, rather than a fragment, more-or-less distorted, of
some actual non-Greek language?
Andreas
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Message: 16
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 16:54:41 -0400
From: Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: kinship systems
I don't think it's attested, but as far as naturalism goes I could see
the sort of system you
On Apr 5, 2005 2:08 PM, Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> No. I haven't decided how siblings work yet. The aspect I was wondering
> about (with respect to naturalism) was the differentiation by sex of ego of
> offspring terms.
> I want it odd, but I don't want it impossible. Something you might find in
> some little out of the way hunter-gatherer community on Earth, or something
> that could eventually evolve from more common modern languages, given a few
> millenia.
I don't think it's attested, but as far as naturalism goes I could see
the sort of system you describe arising from a system that makes a
strong distinction between potential and taboo mates. Here's an
example of what I'm thinking, beginning with a very simple
Hawaiian-type system.
po - father, uncle
ma - mother, aunt
boro - brother, male cousin
bara - sister, female cousin
so - son, nephew
data - daughter, niece
These bare roots would only be used for same-sex relatives and maybe
for other people's relatives.
po ami (my father/uncle, said by a male)
po aJose (Jose's father/uncle)
po aSara (Sara's father/uncle)
But Sara, on the other hand, must distinguish between male relatives
she might marry and ones she might not. Let's suppose this society
has the simplest restriction: no marrying a nuclear relative. Sara
must distinguish between taboo mates (suffix -m) and permissable ones
(suffix -i). So:
borom ami (my brother, said by Sarah)
boroi ami (my male cousin, said by Sarah)
baram ami (my sister, said by Jose)
barai ami (my female cousin, said by Jose)
(Maybe also a suffix, in a small tribe, for relatives that you have
actually married. -im, perhaps, because they are both marriageable
and now, since you've married them, nuclear. "baraim" = "my
cousin-wife")
This makes "son" or "daughter" different depending on whether it's a
male or female saying it. Jose's dad says "so ami" but his mom says
"som ami". Now, these aren't separate roots, but given a couple
centuries of sound changes they could become so. And perhaps
subsequently spread from just meaning one's own relatives to
everyone's relatives ("borom aSara" = "Sara's brother").
Such a system could be as complicated as one wants; I just chose a
Hawaiian system because it meant less typing for me.
--
Patrick Littell
PHIL205: MWF 2:00-3:00, M 6:00-9:00
Voice Mail: ext 744
Spring 05 Office Hours: M 3:00-6:00
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Message: 17
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 20:56:55 -0000
From: Joseph Bridwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: kinship systems
Mine are mundane.
Thule:
01. mother's child, father's child
02. younger sibling, child of same mother
03. same age sibling, child of same mother
04. older sibling, child of same mother
04. father
05. father's sibling
06. father's mother
07. mother
08. mother's sibling, mother's mother's child
09. mother's sister's child
10. mother's mother
11. mother's mother's sister
Bez:
1. rearing parent
2. non-rearing parent
4. member of same clutch
5. member of older clutch of same rearing parent
6. member of younger clutch of same rearing parent
Nen:
1. mother
2. mother's reciprocal clan
3. sibling, child of same mother
4. self's reciprocal clan
Note: clan is based on reciprocal debt, and can change
Trayih:
1. clutch rearing-mother
2. member of same clutch
|n1:l3
1. hive, queen
2. skill group
3. unit in skill group
Note: unit can change after maturity, skill-group can change but
only rarely after maturity
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Message: 18
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 23:23:30 +0100
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: whistling s's
On Apr 5, 2005 3:55 PM, Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> JC wrote:
> As an adjunct to this, does anybody know how to describe the (in)famous
> Irish "whistled-t"? It's quite similar to this, only softer and not
> quite so much curled as raised.
What is this "whistled-t" of which you speak? I've probably heard it, but the
description doesn't bring anything to mind immediately...
> K.
s.
--
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Message: 19
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 18:30:18 -0400
From: Christopher Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: whistling s's
On Mon, 4 Apr 2005 13:48:04 -0700, JC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> if I say s or sh and sort of curl my tongue tip
>up, I get the whistle.
That might be as simple as [s`] -- the voiceless retroflex fricative. I
like that sound.
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Message: 20
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 18:20:10 -0600
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: History of constructed languages
Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Quoting Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>> [snip]
>> >> Even earlier, there is a fragment of made-up language in one of
>> >> Aristophane's comedies (I must look it out).
>> >
>> > The Birds. Lots of utterances imitative of birdsong. The Frogs: the
>> > famous
>> > Brek kek kek kek koax koax.
>>
>> No, no - these are essentially onomatopoeia. I was thinking of a sentence
>> a slave is supposed to utter in a non-Greek language. I thought it came in
>> the Archarnians, but I may have dis-remembered.
>
> Is it known it *is* made up, rather than a fragment, more-or-less distorted,
> of
> some actual non-Greek language?
I _do_ remember this. Hmm. Let me look it up.
It was in Acharnians; Pseudartabas has the line:
"Jartaman exarx 'anapissona satra." (or: exarxan apissona?)
The English version at Perseus bears a footnote "Jargon,
no doubt meaningless in all languages."
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Aristoph.+Ach.+100
*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/
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Message: 21
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 20:40:45 -0400
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: OMFG I'm a mutant!!! (was Re: Advanced English to become
official!)
On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 10:17:37 -0400, Christopher Wright
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Schwa is a reduced vowel;
Schwa is a mid central vowel. In English, a short schwa is the realisation
of several reduced vowels.
> in spectrograms,
> you always tell it because it's extremely short
Not always so. /@:/ exists in the Real World, including in Sinhalese.
> Are you using different definitions for [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [V]? I'm not
> certain that
> English has a phonemic schwa, though you'd probably want it for some
> syllabic consonants at least.
Eh? Generally in English one is left with a choice *between* schwa and
syllabic consonants, depending on which dialect you take to be canon. I
don't understand this part.
Paul
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Message: 22
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 21:06:36 -0400
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program
On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 12:24:17 -0400, Stephen Mulraney
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mar 25, 2005 7:22 PM, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>
> First, it all sounds wonderful. I hope it works as planned!
>
>> From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>
>> > Paul Bennett skrev:
>> > > I think I like single-character variable names, to be honest.
>> >
>> > 2) you run out of *meaningful* single letter abbreviations even
>> > sooner.
>>
>> Yes.
>
> I think single-letter var names would be terribly restrictive too.
> Especially when you consider,
> as you mentioned earlier, that you may want the variables to change
> over time, e.g. if the
> vowel inventory changes, you might need "V_time0=a,i,u" and
> "V_time1=a,e,i,o,u". Of course,
> if you implemented the wonderful ability to redefine variables
> throughout the input file, it would
> make this a bit easier.
That's entirely the plan, expressed via features.
> However, it would still be unnecessarily
> confusing (e.g V for all vowels,
> F for fronts vowel, B for back vowels, where V, Vfront and Vback or
> whatever would help keep
> users sane while editing complex files).
What I've devised allows you to combine variables and features (frontness,
or whatever).
At a given point in the sound change definition file, you can put (e.g.)
i=V[+front][+close][-round]
and later on, something like
k > c / $V[+front]
At least, that's the plan. I'm already overdue on handing the assignment
back, so I'm going to go without variables, and just use the existing
regular-expression syntax that's in place in the language. However, I'm
fascinated enough that I will almost certainly finish this project
"properly".
> Some positive remarks: unicode support sounds brilliant.
Sounds brilliant to me, too, but when I tried to use a UTF-8 corpus of
Latin with macrons, the file reader class barfed hugely. I think I tried
UTF-16 with the same nasty results, IIRC.
> Trying to
> find suitable chars from
> the feeble pool of alphanumerics plus the chars that taliesin listed
> had me tearing my hair
> out when working with the previously existing programs. And what's
> worse, after spending
> uncountable hours on writing the GMPs in the right format, it was nigh
> unreadable and
> undebuggable, and now, a year or two later, the whole mess is utterly
> impenetrable. A simple
> feature like unicode support (without ignoring case of alpha chars!)
Without?
> plus the ability to give
> sensible var names would make writing maintainable files vastly easier.
Variable names with features I think is the way to go.
> But the thing that really has me excited is the mention of possible
> featural, umm, features.
Aha. That'll teach me to read the entire message before hitting "Reply". I
shall choose not to censor myself, though.
>> > If V is "vowel" then you want the varnames for e.g.
>> > "rounded vowel" and "front vowel" to be VR and VF.
>>
>> Yes, although with features, that could be V[+round] and V[+front]. I
>> think that's the notation I prefer reading.
>
> But there's likely to be a need for variables that don't have a
> featural description, too. Not everyone
> will want to use a strict featural approach. For that matter, in the
> past I've used these kind of programs to implement things other than
> phonological changes: flipping between orthographical systems is quite
> a natural use, too, but it would be a pain to try to bludgeon such an
> algorithm into a featural mold.
Features will be entirely ad-hoc, and absolutely voluntary. If you want
i=X[+shlrdu][-qwerty]
d=X[+shlrdu][+foo]
you will be able to have it (with |i| unmarked as to fooness, and |d|
unmarked as to qwertyhood), and if you want
a,i,u=V
b,d,g,k,p,t=C
then you will be able to have that, too.
> Ooh! Feature request!!! :). Don't worry, it's easy: the ability to
> produce output which is correctly formatted as input to a further run
> of the program. That not only saves time writing awkward little sed
> scripts or whatnot, but also makes it very easy to general related
> langs, like:
Eh? The program reads a corpus file and a sound change file, applies the
sound changes in the order they're written in the sound change file
(stopping at the specified year), and outputs the changed results, either
to stdout or a Text Box (depending on whether you're doing the GUI thing).
I suppose I could also include a "Copy Output To Input" button in the GUI.
> A = ancestor lang, X, Y, Z child langs, and B=common-X-Y-Z (not
> necessarily a fully developed lang, but containing all the changes
> from A common to X, Y and Z). Have soundchange files A_to_B.sc and
> then one of B_to_X.sc, B_to_Y.sc, or B_to_Z.sc. The run the
> appropriate combination of sc files to get whatever child you like.
Yep, yep.
> Another approach to this is the one used in Geoff's Sound Change
> Applier, where your preface each line in the soundchange file with
> "X", "Y", "Z", "XY", "XYZ", or whatever; indicating the list of
> children langs that the line affects. But this requires more
> complexity in the parser.
Not feasible at this stage. I'm thinking about XMLifying the Sound Change
format, despite my hatred for XML, because I think it would be a workable
way to store several child languages with eachother. More thinking is
required.
> By the way, what platform will it be for? Personally, I'm easy(*), but
> a unix text mode version would be the answer to all my prayers :)
>
> * Well, once it's windows or unix :)
It shall be Java, with GUI completely optional. Thus, hopefully, if you've
got it, I'll run on it. (sufficiently wimpy devices need not apply).
> But it all sounds great. I await with trembling fingers.
As do I, sir. As do I. Like I say, the drop-dead date for new function has
long since passed (for now), but depending on what my workload is like
this summer I will keep working on it until it is perfect.
Paul
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Message: 23
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2005 20:57:26 -0400
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: OMFG I'm a mutant!!! (was Re: Advanced English to become
official!)
On Apr 5, 2005 8:40 PM, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Schwa is a mid central vowel. In English, a short schwa is the realisation
> of several reduced vowels.
Isn't it the other way around? In English, unstressed vowels often
reduce to /@/, but /@/ has many phonetic realizations, of which [EMAIL
PROTECTED] is
only one. Others in my 'lect include [1], [U] (the name of the
current month has a [U] in its second syllable IMD), syllabification
of following consonants, etc. Heck, I would not be surprised to find
out that there were English dialects which lack [EMAIL PROTECTED] completely,
having
only other realizations of what we think of as /@/.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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