There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: To be (was: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates)
From: Roger Mills
1.2. Re: To be (was: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates)
From: Douglas Koller
2. Hello, and language sketch.
From: Aodhán Aannestad
3.1. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Padraic Brown
3.2. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Padraic Brown
4a. Re: the origin of /N/ (was: the symmetry of sound change)
From: Leonardo Castro
4b. Re: the origin of /N/ (was: the symmetry of sound change)
From: Leonardo Castro
5.1. Re: To be
From: R A Brown
5.2. Re: To be
From: Leonardo Castro
5.3. Re: To be
From: R A Brown
5.4. Re: To be
From: R A Brown
5.5. Re: To be
From: Leonardo Castro
6. Fwd: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: G. van der Vegt
7a. Animal Noises?
From: Scar Cvxni
7b. Re: Animal Noises?
From: H. S. Teoh
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1.1. Re: To be (was: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates)
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Jun 23, 2013 7:04 pm ((PDT))
From: R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com>
(snips)
Some people do distinguish between perfect and passive
participles in that with a very few verbs some people do
make a distinction; e.g.
"to prove"
I haven't proved it (perfect part.)
It hasn't been proven (passive part.)
"to show"
He has never showed a taste for oysters (perfect part.)
This result has never been shown before (passive part.)
(Oh dear - will this trigger YAEDT?)
RM Like others, I'm biting my tongue and tying up my fingers.....:-))))
>
> And of course Span. and Ital. took Lat. sta:re 'to stand'
> to fill in certain usages of 'to be',
They are based on 'esse', which in VL was extended by
gaining a normal Latin infinitive ending, i.e. *essere.
Span. 'ser' is derived from it; in Italy the form had stayed
the same for some 2000 years :)
> Nor do I know the origin of French etre.
être <-- estre <-- *essre <-- *essere
RM I suspected that might be the case in French. Is a VL essere attested?
Messages in this topic (30)
________________________________________________________________________
1.2. Re: To be (was: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates)
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" douglaskol...@hotmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:15 pm ((PDT))
> Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 17:30:08 -0500
> From: ra...@charter.net
> Subject: Re: To be (was: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates)
> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
> On Jun 23, 2013, at 2:28 PM, R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote:
> > On 23/06/2013 19:52, Roger Mills wrote:
> >> From: Eric Christopherson ra...@charter.net
> >> True; good point. But I wonder if anyone could fill me in
> >> on how the copula, at least in English and Romance, ever
> >> developed a passive participle in the first place, if the
> >> copula can't be made passive (as a finite verb)?
> > Or more strictly _perfect_ participles, as they denote
> > perfect aspect. If the verb is intransitive such
> > participles are always _active_.
> You know, I did some thinking after asking my question, and came up with some
> hypotheses about the appearance of a "passive" perfect participle for ESSE.
> Digression time:
> The reasoning for my question was that a passive perfect participle formed
> from ESSE in CL or early VL wouldn't make sense, since it would mean
> something like *"a been thing". While I was thinking about this, I initially
> reasoned that "have" + PPP in the periphrastic perfect function would have
> prompted creation of an analogical PPP for ESSE; but I then discarded that
> idea when I remembered that "have" + PPP resulted from this sort of
> reanalysis:
> *HABEO VISUM PASSARUM "I have a seen bird," i.e. "I have a bird which has
> been seen"; the experiencer of the seeing being 1sg by implication, > "I have
> seen a bird"
If you move "passarem" before the participle (ie: "Habeo passarem visum." or
"Passarem habeo visum."), and change the object to something feminine (ie:
"Habeo puellam visam."), you see the accord of PPP with preceding direct object
which soldiers on in modern French and Italian:
Je l'ai vu (sth. masc.)/Je l'ai vue (sth. fem.)
le passereau que j'ai vu/la fille que j'ai vue
L'ho visto/L'ho vista
il passero che ho visto/la ragazza che ho vista
> *HABEO COMEDITUM "I have an eaten thing", i.e. "I have a thing which has been
> eaten" > I have eaten
?Habeo comesum?
> But I reasoned that a PPP for ESSE still wouldn't make sense; e.g.
> *ESSITUS/A/UM "a 'been' person/thing"
> *HABEO ESSITUM HOMINEM "I have a 'been' man" - what would it mean for a man
> to be "been"?
> *HABEO ESSITUM "I have a 'been' thing"
> To bring this digression to a close: At this point I was thinking that in
> order to use HABEO + PPP, the PPP would have to have some existence of its
> own *independently* of that construction. But now I don't think that's
> necessarily a true premise; it's quite possible that the HABEO + PPP
> construction was already in existence when people realized they needed a way
> to use ESSE with it. (And if not HABEO + PPP, there was also the construction
> ESSE + PPP of intransitive verb, which was later supplanted in Spanish at
> least by the transitive HABEO construction.)
As you mention, swap out "habere" for "esse" (as was discussed earlier, using
an oblique case with a copula in a language like this is echt verboten):
?Sum homo status./?Homo status sum.//?Sum femina stata./?Femina stata sum.
In Italian, at least, has "essere" as the auxliary for "essere/stare":
Sono stato/a (masc./fem.)
l'uomo che sono stato/la femmina che sono stata
Why French excludes "être" from its DR MRS VAN DER TRAMP verbs as the sole
hold-out, I have no idea. ("j'ai été", not "*je suis été"). I mean, German and
Dutch do it as well: "Ich bin gewesen."/"Ik ben geweest." And French plays nice
with other verbs of this ilk:
Je suis allé(e)//Sono andato/a//Ich bin gegangen./Ik ben gegaan. (Cf: He's
gone).
Je suis venu(e)//Sono venuto/a//Ich bin gekommen./Ik ben gekomen. (Cf: The Lord
is come.)
So why not "être"? Go figger. Those wacky French. One assumes sth. happened in
the hoarfrosts of antiquity...
(As you say, Spanish and Portuguese (?) laid waste to the whole avoir/être aux.
distinction: Hé ido.)
> >> Nor do I know the origin of French être.
> > être <-- estre <-- *essre <-- *essere
> I've read that the /t/ in this one was due to contamination by STARE; but I
> suppose it's reasonable that it was epenthetic.
visum => visto (Italian/Spanish/Portuguese) ?
Kou
Messages in this topic (30)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. Hello, and language sketch.
Posted by: "Aodhán Aannestad" tolkien_fr...@aannestad.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 1:12 am ((PDT))
Hello! I'm a longtime lurker, finally deciding to get involved a little.
Some of you may have met me at the last LCC, I'm with UT Austin's
conlang club and I drove some people around. I've been conlanging on and
off for quite some time now, but I don't have much to show for it - I
tend to be singlemindedly focused on realism, and as my level of
linguistics knowledge has increased I've scrapped and restarted on
several occasions due to realising how horribly unrealistic of a
language I'd created. This is kind of the latest iteration of that
cycle, and as I'm done with all the core undergrad ling classes now
hopefully I've run out of major things to learn and it'll prove to be
the last.
Anyway, on to the language. It doesn't have a name yet, sadly - I'm
using it for a protolang for a large project, and since said large
project has yet to really begin, it's not really in a state where I can
really name anything. (I suppose I could come up with an endonym for it
- it'd be something like 'Lesuy' (/lesuj/, /person-speak/) or something,
though that doesn't sound that great to my ears.)
Phonologically, it's not that interesting - five vowels (/a i u e o/),
two stop series (/p t k/ and /p^(h) t^(h) k^(h)/, transcribed <b d g>
and <p t k>), /m n/ - the usual stuff. It only has one fricative series,
but it does distinguish /?/ and /s/ (for four total, /f ? s x/). /w j ?
l/ round out the inventory.
Syllable structure is (C)(G)V(G)(C), where <G> is a glide. /uw ij/ are
disallowed, and maximal CGVGC syllables are very rare. Affixes have no
shape target - anything from V to a maximal syllable is in theory
permitted. Length is kind of phonemic on consonants (really, a 'long
consonant' is just two adjacent identical consonants - /alla/ 'day' is
VC.CV, not V.C?V), not on vowels - any sequences of two identical vowels
are shrunk into one (e.g. /emnira/, 'girl', from /emni/ 'woman' + /ira/
'child'). /i/ and /u/ become glides when adjacent to other vowels (e.g.
/dorayra/ 'boy', from /dora /'man' + /ira/). Aspiration isn't
distinguished in codas. There's not much else in the way of phonological
rules/alternations, at the moment this is the idealised pre-protolang
stage, and I'll need to send it through some sound changes before I get
a good protolang by the technical definition.
Stress is noncontrastive - it occurs on the heaviest of the last three
syllables, defaulting to the antepenultimate when they're all equal
(so/émnira, doráyra,////dalésise (do-person-COP-ATT)/, etc.)/./
Grammatically, it's agglutinative and erg-abs. The two basic word
classes are noun and verb (all 'adjectives' are just verbs, and at least
in the protolanguage all 'adverbs' are clearly nouns or nominalised
verbs marked with a non-core case). Word order is VSO when there's no
overt complementiser, and SOV when there is (so /fikol le/ 'the man has
gone', but /le/ /fikolti/ 'the fact that the man has gone').
Verbs don't care about person, number, or tense, but there are 5 or 7
aspect markers (perfective/stative (null-marked), progressive, perfect,
expective, intentive(?), and hortative and imperative if you count them
- they're mutually exclusive with aspect). It has a number of 'mood'
markers: potential and permissive; volitive, suggestive, and
necessitive, and weak and strong expectation (weak is for 'I bet X is
the case' and strong is for 'X /has/ to be the case, I just know it').
Relative clauses are formed by using the attributive affix
/-se/:/fikolse le/ 'the man who has gone'. /-se/ doesn't specify the
role the modified noun would have in the clause, that's left up to
context (so typically you can only relativise obliques when the
subclause has all of its core arguments overtly specified). (This works
mostly like the Japanese rentaikei.)
The only obligatory marking on nouns is case, but there's a number of
other potential affixes. Number is especially complex - specific
quantities are marked directly on the noun (so/lemofyethon/ 'twenty
people', it's base-8 so that breaks down as /le-mo-fye-thon/
'person-8-2-4' for (2*8)+4 people), and there are also suffixes for
'more than half (of a group)', 'less than half (of a group)', 'part (of
a unit)', and 'all (of a unit)'. These can be augmented by 'all' or
'none', and further by 'the next' or 'the previous' (allowing for very
long sequences such as /lemofyethondawfag /'none of the last twenty
people'). Demonstratives are also noun suffixes (there's a two-way
distinction, 'this'/'that'), and an interrogative marker can slot in
here too (/lewos?/ 'who? / which person?').
There are a good number of cases (it's kind of Finno-Ugric in this
regard :P) Beyond the erg and null-marked abs, there's two kinds of
genitives, possessive and categorical (for things like 'men of that
village', 'the strength of an ox', 'a sword of bronze' and so on), both
of which form verbs (so//'the man's cat' has to be /lenase nyawa/ with
-/se/, not */lena nyawa/ - /lena nyawa /is grammatical, but it would be
heard as 'the cat is the man's').
Locative cases are the following: inessive and exessive (both used for
general locatives, inessive for being within the boundaries of a place,
exessive for being near but outside the boundaries of a place or
object), superessive and subessive, proessive ('in front of') and
postessive ('behind'), comitative, allative (also used as a dative) and
ablative (also used as the agent of causatives and volitives), illative
and ellative, superlative ('going over') and sublative ('going under'),
circumlative/circumessive, and adspective ('facing') and abspective
('facing away from').
Non-locative cases are benefactive (also used for the experiencer with a
number of perception verbs - 'see' for example has a BEN subject when
you would expect ERG, and giving it an ERG subject changes the meaning
to 'look at'), instrumental, causative, and comparative.
Copular constructions are formed by affixing the copular verbaliser
/-si/ to nouns - /dorasi le/ 'the person is a man'. This allows for a
somewhat idiosyncratic way to express motion - while it's perfectly
grammatical to say /fyokh ne sakhtasoy /(/go-PROG 1-ABS river-ALL,
/literally 'I am going to the river'), it's much more native-sounding to
say /sakhtasoysi ne/ (/river-ALL-COP 1-ABS, /literally 'I am to the river').
Beyond three generic 'pronouns' (1st person exclusive and inclusive and
2nd person), there's not much in the way of real pronouns - nouns can be
used with any person as their referent, and typical non-personal
pronouny things are done with nouns plus suffixes (so 'who' is just
/lewos /(/person-INT/), literally 'which person'). There is a set of
'generic nouns', though, which are basically nouns that refer to quite
large categories of things - 'person', 'object', 'place', 'point in
time', 'state of being', 'piece', 'reason/cause', and 'action' make up
the set - and this allows for fairly conventionalised pronouns ('person'
can be 'him/her', 'object' can be 'it', 'place' plus the near
demonstrative can be 'here', and so on). These nouns are further
distinguished from other nouns by being used as nominaliser suffixes -
so /ub/, the generic for 'reason/cause', combines with /ryukol /'has
died' to make /ryukolub/ 'the reason [the subj] died'.
There are also two generic verbs, meaning something like 'to do (it)'
and 'to go (there)'. They can also be used as nominalisers (somewhat
ironically :P), meaning 'method' and 'process', respectively.
There's a few other small details here and there (I've left out
valence-change affixes, for example), but that's a basic overview of the
language. The goal is realism (indeed, all else is secondary), so some
comments in regards to how realistic these systems are would be
appreciated! I've got a few ideas on where to go with it from here, but
if anyone has any ideas I'd be happy to hear them.
This is my main conlang project, but I'm also working on a set of
condialects of Japanese (splitting off at various points after around
1610?), and I'd be happy to describe them if anyone's interested. (It's
gotten to the point where I'll slip into my primary condialect every
once in a while while thinking in Japanese, even when I'm not explicitly
trying to think in it :P)
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3.1. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 4:25 am ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
> From: Michael Everson <ever...@evertype.com>
> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
> Cc:
> Sent: Friday, 21 June 2013, 10:29
> Subject: Re: [CONLANG] writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
>
> On 17 Jun 2013, at 01:15, C. Brickner <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Senjecas is unicameral, using only the lower case. I figure that, since
> there are no capital letters in the various Senjecan scripts, why use them in
> transliterations into the Latin alphabet?
>
> Because there's no reason to jettison the useful reading conventions of the
> Latin script.
While it's true that Latin script does have capitalisation as a useful reading
convention,
he did actually just give us a valid reason for scrapping it, namely, the
native script in
question has no case distinction. Reading Senjecas in all lower case gives one
a taste
of what it's like to read the native writing without actually dealing with a
foreign script.
There is no reason to force the case conventions of English onto another
language just
because those conventions happen to convenient and familiar to English readers!
When
transcribing my own conlangs using Latin script, I dó in fact at times use
something
approaching an English mode of capitalisation -- as you say, it is useful and
convenient
and familiar. But I don't hold anyone else to following that same practice; and
I don't
even follow it consistently for all languages.
Padraic
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (53)
________________________________________________________________________
3.2. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:58 am ((PDT))
> From: George Corley <gacor...@gmail.com>
>>While it's true that Latin script does have capitalisation as a useful
>>reading convention,
>>he did actually just give us a valid reason for scrapping it, namely, the
>>native script in
>>question has no case distinction. Reading Senjecas in all lower case gives
>>one a taste
>>of what it's like to read the native writing without actually dealing with a
>>foreign script.
>
>There is no reason to force the case conventions of English onto another
>language just
>>because those conventions happen to convenient and familiar to English
>>readers! When
>>transcribing my own conlangs using Latin script, I dó in fact at times use
>>something
>>approaching an English mode of capitalisation -- as you say, it is useful and
>>convenient
>>and familiar. But I don't hold anyone else to following that same practice;
>>and I don't
>>even follow it consistently for all languages.
>
> Everyone should be free to make their own aesthetic decisions, of course, but
>I wouldn't much
> care for dispensing with capitalization conventions. I can see dispensing
> with a few rules, personally,
> such as capitalizing
nationalities and such, but I'd probably still maintain capitalization
for the
>beginning of a sentence and proper names.
Fair enough!
> Besides that, there is, of course, natlang precedent for adopting common
> capitalization conventions in
> romanizations of languages whose native scripts do not have
> majuscule/minuscule forms
Sure. Though I've no doubt this particular convention was decided upon for the
convenience of Latin
script natives rather than for any particular aesthetic reason or an attempt to
give one a feel for the
native script.
> -- over and over and over again, considering that these forms are pretty much
> a phenomenon of Greek
> and Latin scripts exclusively AFAIK. By having a romanization at all you are
> already imposing alien
> writing conventions on your conlang, if it is not meant to be "natively"
> written in Latin script.
Sure.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (53)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: the origin of /N/ (was: the symmetry of sound change)
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:19 am ((PDT))
2013/6/24 Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>:
> Sometimes I have the impression that the leg of the /ɲ/ was displaced
> in Brazilian "nh" (corresponding to Spanish "ñ"), turning /ɲ/ into /Å/
> (or /J/ into /N/ in SAMPA).
>
> In my own dialect, there's no /ɲ/
<ERRATUM>
, but some thing that I don't know if
(In fact, I was thinking in "some one", as opposed to "someone".)
> it's /~j/, /Å/ or either of them depending on environment. I'm almost
> sure that my "nh" is closer to /Å/ when it's in initial position ("Nhá
> Chica", "nheengatu", etc.) or when it's preceded by /~i/ or /~e/
> ("galinha", "lenha", etc.), and closer to /~j/ otherwise ("unha",
> "Bolonha", etc.).
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
>
> 2013/6/23 Matthew Boutilier <bvticvlar...@gmail.com>:
>> On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> No! Certainly not a *lot* weirder. The odds are slightly pretty much
>>> exactly fifty-fifty that a random language will have it, in WALS. However,
>>> in three out of eight languages that have it, it can't appear in absolute
>>> initial position (and perhaps other initial positions).
>>> http://wals.info/feature/9A
>>>
>>
>> fair enough. my apologies for not gathering the relevant statistics before
>> throwing out my usual blanket statements. nevertheless my main point was
>> that phonologies with /m/ and /n/ and no /N/ (with or without [N]) are all
>> over the place.
>>
>>
>>> That's the prevailing one, yeah, but there are other sources of [N] (and
>>> thus of /N/). At times it seems to be the mòst preferred nasal in coda:
>>> witness e.g. Caribbean dialects of Spanish, and many Chinese varieties,
>>> shifting all coda nasals to [N] -- in some Spanishes even internally before
>>> heterorganic stops! In Nyole, a Bantu language, /N/ comes from *p,
>>> seemingly by rhinoglottophilia from an intermediate [h]. In Samoyedic, [N]
>>> was epenthesised before initial vowels. And of course even if there is
>>> [Ng] it doesn't have to come from /ng/; prenasal series can come from
>>> elsewhere (I seem to remember SE Asian examples of spontaneous
>>> prenasalisation of voiced stops).
>>>
>>
>> another one i thought of is the Hindi word for 'lion' which (i don't know
>> Hindi) sounds to me like [sIN] but the wikipedia-supplied phonology
>> suggests it could also be [sINg] = /sIng/, since /N/ is not listed among
>> the Hindi consonant phonemes. either way, Sanskrit *siṃha* with the usual
>> place-assimilation of the anusvara 'm' thing, since Sanskrit /h/ somehow
>> counts as a velar according to the traditional grammarian(s). if anyone can
>> explain that to me, that'd be great.
>>
>> matt
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: the origin of /N/ (was: the symmetry of sound change)
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:41 am ((PDT))
Sometimes I have the impression that the leg of the /ɲ/ was displaced
in Brazilian "nh" (corresponding to Spanish "ñ"), turning /ɲ/ into /Å/
(or /J/ into /N/ in SAMPA).
In my own dialect, there's no /ɲ/. but someone that I don't know if
it's /~j/, /Å/ or either of them depending on environment. I'm almost
sure that my "nh" is closer to /Å/ when it's in initial position ("Nhá
Chica", "nheengatu", etc.) or when it's preceded by /~i/ or /~e/
("galinha", "lenha", etc.), and closer to /~j/ otherwise ("unha",
"Bolonha", etc.).
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/6/23 Matthew Boutilier <bvticvlar...@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Jun 22, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> No! Certainly not a *lot* weirder. The odds are slightly pretty much
>> exactly fifty-fifty that a random language will have it, in WALS. However,
>> in three out of eight languages that have it, it can't appear in absolute
>> initial position (and perhaps other initial positions).
>> http://wals.info/feature/9A
>>
>
> fair enough. my apologies for not gathering the relevant statistics before
> throwing out my usual blanket statements. nevertheless my main point was
> that phonologies with /m/ and /n/ and no /N/ (with or without [N]) are all
> over the place.
>
>
>> That's the prevailing one, yeah, but there are other sources of [N] (and
>> thus of /N/). At times it seems to be the mòst preferred nasal in coda:
>> witness e.g. Caribbean dialects of Spanish, and many Chinese varieties,
>> shifting all coda nasals to [N] -- in some Spanishes even internally before
>> heterorganic stops! In Nyole, a Bantu language, /N/ comes from *p,
>> seemingly by rhinoglottophilia from an intermediate [h]. In Samoyedic, [N]
>> was epenthesised before initial vowels. And of course even if there is
>> [Ng] it doesn't have to come from /ng/; prenasal series can come from
>> elsewhere (I seem to remember SE Asian examples of spontaneous
>> prenasalisation of voiced stops).
>>
>
> another one i thought of is the Hindi word for 'lion' which (i don't know
> Hindi) sounds to me like [sIN] but the wikipedia-supplied phonology
> suggests it could also be [sINg] = /sIng/, since /N/ is not listed among
> the Hindi consonant phonemes. either way, Sanskrit *siṃha* with the usual
> place-assimilation of the anusvara 'm' thing, since Sanskrit /h/ somehow
> counts as a velar according to the traditional grammarian(s). if anyone can
> explain that to me, that'd be great.
>
> matt
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5.1. Re: To be
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:53 am ((PDT))
On 23/06/2013 23:30, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> On Jun 23, 2013, at 2:28 PM, R A Brown wrote: [snip]
>>
>> Or more strictly _perfect_ participles, as they denote
>> perfect aspect. If the verb is intransitive such
>> participles are always _active_.
>
> You know, I did some thinking after asking my question,
> and came up with some hypotheses about the appearance of
> a "passive" perfect participle for ESSE. Digression
> time:
>
> The reasoning for my question was that a passive perfect
> participle formed from ESSE in CL or early VL wouldn't
> make sense, since it would mean something like *"a been
> thing".
This is true of Classical Latin. Normally the perfect
participle had a passive meaning. But it is not quite so
straight forward in that:
- the perfect participle of deponent verbs was always active.
- some non-deponent intransitive verbs are found also with
_active_ perfect participles, e.g. cÄnÄre "to dine" -->
cÄnÄtus = "having dined."
- other (i.e. most) intransitive verbs could be with
_impersonal passive_ forms, e.g. ventum est = "they have
come, people have come, etc."
So, in theory, an active perfect participle of 'esse' could
have existed, but one is not attested. The verb also lacked
a present participle in Classical Latin, though, according
to Priscan, Caesar used 'Äns' (not actually attested in any
extant works by Caesar). In Late Latin we find both 'ens'
and 'essens' being used as present participles (vowel length
no longer phonemic)
Vulgar Latin, however, is a whole different beast :)
It is apparent that:
- deponents were replaced by non-deponent forms but. if
intransitive, retained their active perfect participles.
- forms like cÄnÄtus were no longer isolated peculiarities.
All verbs (with possible exception of "to be") now had
perfect participles - active if the verb was intransitive,
passive if transitive.
- the impersonal passive did not survive.
This meant that in Vulgar Latin the Classical "perfect
tense" came to be used as a simple past perfective (i.e.
Greek 'aorist'; English 'simple past'); and new perfect
forms developed thus:
- INTRANSITIVE VERB: "to be" plus perfect active participle,
agreeing with the subject; e.g. *sum ventus = I have come
(literally: I-am having-come; cf. Esperanto "mi estas
venita", earlier English "I am come").
- TRANSITIVE VERB: "to have" plus perfect passive
participle, agreeing with the direct object;, e.g. *habeo
puellam visam = "I have seen the girl" (lit. I-have the-girl
having-been-seen).
The latter construction is found as early as Plautus (late
3rd, early 2nd cent BC). In one of his plays we find, e.g.
_hÄsce aedÄ«s condÅ«ctÄs habet_ meaning little more than "he
has hired this house" (_aedes_ is a feminine plural word
with singular meaning: "building, temple, house).
Clearly this construction gained currency in the Vulgar
Latin of the late Republic and was well established by
imperial times.
[snip]
>
> *HABEO VISUM PASSARUM "I have a seen bird," i.e. "I have
> a bird which has been seen"; the experiencer of the
> seeing being 1sg by implication, > "I have seen a bird"
Correct and, as I note above, well attested.
> *HABEO COMEDITUM "I have an eaten thing", i.e. "I have a
> thing which has been eaten" > I have eaten
Yep - if what was eaten was something masculine or neuter ;)
But if the verb was intransitive you would have "to be" with
perfect _active_ participle, e.g. *sum status "I have stood."
> But now I don't think that's necessarily a true premise;
> it's quite possible (and there might be documentary
> evidence to confirm or deny this) that the HABEO + PPP
> construction was already in existence
It was.
> when people realized they needed a way to use ESSE with
> it.
But that is incorrect. The perfect of intransitive verbs
was colloquially formed with *ESSERE and perfect _active_
participle. They would have felt a need to create a perfect
active participle to "to be"; in Italy and Gaul they fell
back on using VL *status' = "having stood" ; in the Iberian
peninsular they developed a distinctive form, presumably
*essítus. Romanian _fost_ suggest a form *fustum, though
it may well be a later analogical development with Romanian
[snip]
>
> Can STARE function transitively?
Nope. It was always intransitive. The related word SISTER
was the transitive one.
I[snip]
>
> I think I've seen a hypothesis that Span. _ser_ comes
> from SEDERE. There were at least formerly some other
> forms of the paradigm that came from SEDERE, but they
> don't spring to mind right now (possibly the present
> subjunctive).
You may be correct. Or it could be a confusion *essere and
sedÄre. Some parts of the modern Spanish verb "to be" are
from sedÄre.
>>
>>> Nor do I know the origin of French etre.
>>
>> être <-- estre <-- *essre <-- *essere
>
> I've read that the /t/ in this one was due to
> contamination by STARE; but I suppose it's reasonable
> that it was epenthetic.
It's possible that it's both ;)
=========================================================
On 24/06/2013 03:04, Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
>
> RM I suspected that might be the case in French. Is a VL
> essere attested?
Not that I aware of - unless you count early Italian ;)
=====================================================
On 24/06/2013 04:15, Douglas Koller wrote:
[snip]
>
>> *HABEO VISUM PASSARUM "I have a seen bird," i.e. "I
>> have a bird which has been seen"; the experiencer of
>> the seeing being 1sg by implication, > "I have seen a
>> bird"
>
> If you move "passarem" before the participle (ie: "Habeo
> passarem visum." or "Passarem habeo visum."), and change
> the object to something feminine (ie: "Habeo puellam
> visam."), you see the accord of PPP with preceding
> direct object which soldiers on in modern French and
> Italian:
Which _always_ happened in Latin, whatever the word order.
> Je l'ai vu (sth. masc.)/Je l'ai vue (sth. fem.)
> le passereau que j'ai vu/la fille que j'ai vue
> L'ho visto/L'ho vista
> il passero che ho visto/la ragazza che ho vista
Yep - because in this order it still retains the earlier
Latin construction :)
>
>> *HABEO COMEDITUM "I have an eaten thing", i.e. "I have
>> a thing which has been eaten" > I have eaten
>
> ?Habeo comesum?
Yes, *comeditum might be a Vulgar Latin term used in the
Iberian peninsular - tho _comido_ could be a later
analogical formation. In the best Classical Latin _comesum_
the form used, but we do also come across _coméstum_ .
[snip]
>
> As you mention, swap out "habere" for "esse" (as was
> discussed earlier, using an oblique case with a copula
> in a language like this is echt verboten):
...and certainly would not happen in Latin
>
> ?Sum homo status./?Homo status sum.//?Sum femina
> stata./?Femina stata sum.
Not possible in Classical Latin. But in VL there would have
been a perfect _active_ participle *status = "having stood".
But *_homo status sum_ would mean something like: "I, a
man, have stood."
> In Italian, at least, has "essere" as the auxliary for
> "essere/stare":
..and also in VL. The perfect construction was quite simply:
- INTRANSITIVE: *essere + perfect active participle,
agreeing with the subject.
- TRANSITIVE: _habere_ + perfect passive participle,
agreeing with the direct object.
[snip]
> Why French excludes "être" from its DR MRS VAN DER TRAMP
> verbs as the sole hold-out, I have no idea.
Nor I - but analogy worked changes on the simple VL system.
Modern English now uses "have" as the only perfect tense
auxiliary; so, I believe, does Portuguese. Spanish likewise
now uses "haber" as the sole auxiliary, but it no longer
uses the verb in the sense of "to have."
[snip]
>
> (As you say, Spanish and Portuguese (?) laid waste to
> the whole avoir/être aux. distinction: Hé ido.)
Yep - just contemporary English has (except for the odd
archaism used in certain contexts, e.g. "I am come")
[snip]
>
> visum => visto (Italian/Spanish/Portuguese) ?
Simple analogy with other participles ending (originally) in
-tum; cf. _comÄsum ~ comÄstum_ in Classical Latin.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language ⦠began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (30)
________________________________________________________________________
5.2. Re: To be
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:12 am ((PDT))
2013/6/24 R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com>:
[...]
>
>
> Nor I - but analogy worked changes on the simple VL system.
> Modern English now uses "have" as the only perfect tense
> auxiliary; so, I believe, does Portuguese.
Yes, but I must add that Portuguese verbs "haver" and "ter" are
completely interchangeable for this purpose and that this type of
construction (have+participle) is rarely used with a sense of
"perfectivity" in Portuguese, but more frequently with a sense of
something that is probably still being frequently repeated in the
present (kind of "present continuous").
Messages in this topic (30)
________________________________________________________________________
5.3. Re: To be
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 8:21 am ((PDT))
On 24/06/2013 14:23, R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
> Vulgar Latin, however, is a whole different beast :)
>
[snip]
> - INTRANSITIVE VERB: "to be" plus perfect active
> participle, agreeing with the subject; e.g. *sum ventus
> = I have come (literally: I-am having-come; cf. Esperanto
> "mi estas venita", earlier English "I am come").
Actually _sum ventus_ would also mean "I am a wind." :)
This is obviously why a new perfect active participle forms
was created in VL. *venūtus, which survived in Italy and
Gaul, and venītus in the Iberian peninsular and Dacia.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language ⦠began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (30)
________________________________________________________________________
5.4. Re: To be
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:22 am ((PDT))
On 24/06/2013 15:17, Leonardo Castro wrote:
> 2013/6/24 R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com>:
>
> [...]
>
>>
>>
>> Nor I - but analogy worked changes on the simple VL
>> system. Modern English now uses "have" as the only
>> perfect tense auxiliary; so, I believe, does
>> Portuguese.
>
> Yes, but I must add that Portuguese verbs "haver" and
> "ter" are completely interchangeable for this purpose and
> that this type of construction (have+participle) is
> rarely used with a sense of "perfectivity" in Portuguese,
Nor should they be in any language, in theory. The
perfective aspect is quite distinct from the perfect aspect.
I think it fairly safe to say that the periphrastic
constructions were (by and large) used with strictly perfect
aspect meaning in Vulgar Latin.
But in later western European languages the distinction
between the present perfect (e.g. I have shut the door
[that's why its closed now}), and the past perfective (I
shut the door yesterday) has become more blurred. I notice
when my daughter visits from across the Pond that usage in
Britain and the USA differs ;)
In spoken French the "passé composé" has now acquired both
meanings: Je suis allé = I have gone; I went. The old past
perfect ("passé simple") is confined to the written language.
> but more frequently with a sense of something that is
> probably still being frequently repeated in the present
> (kind of "present continuous").
You mean with a meaning something like the so-call "perfect
continuous" in English, e.g. I have been digging the garden ?
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language
began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (30)
________________________________________________________________________
5.5. Re: To be
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:47 am ((PDT))
2013/6/24 R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com>:
[...]
>
>> but more frequently with a sense of something that is
>> probably still being frequently repeated in the present
>> (kind of "present continuous").
>
>
> You mean with a meaning something like the so-call "perfect
> continuous" in English, e.g. I have been digging the garden ?
Yes. Hmmm... It seems it's the "present perfect continuous tense":
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verb-tenses_present-perfect-continuous.htm
http://www.studyandexam.com/present-perfect-continuous-tense.html
Let me try to translate some of those sentences into Brazilian to make sure:
I have been reading for 2 hours. [I am still reading now.]
"Eu tenho estudado por 2 horas. [Eu ainda estou estudando agora.]"
(or "Eu estou estudando a 2 horas.")
How long have you been learning English? [You are still learning now.]
"Por quanto tempo você tem estudado inglês? [Você ainda está estudando agora.]"
(or "A quanto tempo você estuda inglês?")
It has [not] been raining for three days.
"Não tem chovido por três dias."
I have [not] been living in America since 2003.
"Eu não tenho vivido nos Estados Unidos desde 2003."
(more common: "Não vivo mais nos EUA desde 2003.)
To me, more natural usage would included:
"Tenho visto a minha mãe todos os dias desde o Natal."
(I've been seeing my mother everyday since Christmas.)
"Não tenho estudado muito..."
(I have not been studying very much...)
A word-for-word tranlation of "I have been studying" would be "eu
tenho estado estudando" which seems a little verbose. "Eu tenho sido
estudando" (as "to be" can be "ser" or "estar") is completely strange.
Leonardo
>
>
> --
> Ray
> ==================================
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com
> ==================================
> "language
began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
> for individual beings and events."
> [Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (30)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6. Fwd: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "G. van der Vegt" gijsstri...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 7:56 am ((PDT))
(Onlist this time, didn't notice a reply-to was set.)
> There is no reason to force the case conventions of English onto another
> language just
> because those conventions happen to convenient and familiar to English
> readers! When
> transcribing my own conlangs using Latin script, I dó in fact at times use
> something
> approaching an English mode of capitalisation -- as you say, it is useful and
> convenient
> and familiar. But I don't hold anyone else to following that same practice;
> and I don't
> even follow it consistently for all languages.
I strongly disagree. The point of transliteration is to make things
convenient and familiar to the users of the target orthography, and
most (if not all) languages which have the Latin script as their
native script use capitalization, and most of those capitalize the
things English do (the main exceptions I know capitalize more, not
less.)
For example, the various forms of ãã¼ãå (romaji, Latin script
transliteration of Japanese) tend to follow fairly typical Latin
script-based capitalization script despite Japanese lacking any
capitalization. This is, of course, because they are not used for the
Japanese themselves but the foreigners who don't read Japanese.
In short, if you're transliterating a language, you're already
catering to people who don't speak the language. You might as well go
all the way.
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
7a. Animal Noises?
Posted by: "Scar Cvxni" jeviscac...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:45 am ((PDT))
How many of your conlangs have animal noises? Do you have specific animal
species in the worlds your languages inhabit as well?
I've just found my old notes for one of my conlangs, called Yuun.
Animals are kept in an area called "Maab kihaa", or "Place of livestock",
and they all have different sounds, e.g.
sheep - dêêêêêê
a certain type of local bird - reeeeca
lizards - tetetetete
etc. I'm toying with the idea of writing a couple of children's books in
Yuun, just for fun.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
7b. Re: Animal Noises?
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx
Date: Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:49 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 05:00:02PM +0100, Scar Cvxni wrote:
> How many of your conlangs have animal noises? Do you have specific
> animal species in the worlds your languages inhabit as well?
[...]
Tatari Faran is quite onomapoeic sometimes; this can be seen in the verb
"to bark": _boha au'au_ ["bOha ?ao?ao]. "To chirp" (bird) is _tsitsit
isin_ [ts)i"ts)it ?isin]. A crow is _kauna_ ["kaona], and a chicken is
_ako'_ [?akO?].
Sadly, I haven't worked on any other animal sounds so far.
As far as natlangs go, the same animal sound may be transcribed rather
differently. For example, in English barking is variously transcribed as
"woof woof", "wuff wuff", or "bowwow", whereas in my L1 it's [wou.wou],
and in Mandarin it's [waN.waN].
T
--
When solving a problem, take care that you do not become part of the problem.
Messages in this topic (2)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com
conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
