There are 10 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
From: Lisa Weißbach
2.1. Rolling your R's
From: Beinhoff, Bettina
2.2. Re: Rolling your R's
From: Leonardo Castro
2.3. Re: Rolling your R's
From: And Rosta
3a. Re: Deriving Positionals from Directionals
From: Leonardo Castro
4a. Re: Unusual Tenses
From: Leonardo Castro
4b. Re: Unusual Tenses
From: Padraic Brown
5a. Re: The Language of Pao
From: Logan Kearsley
6a. Re: How Mentolatian Whisks Away All its Consonants
From: Virginia Keys
6b. Re: How Mentolatian Whisks Away All its Consonants
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
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1a. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
Posted by: "Lisa Weißbach" purereasonrevoluz...@web.de
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 7:57 am ((PDT))
2013/7/19 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:34:09AM +0200, Lisa Weißbach wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > I don't know if my email made it to the list - I tried sending it
> > twice a few hours ago but didn't receive it, so I have to conclude
> > that I made some kind of mistake. First time poster blues... I hope
> > you don't mind me trying to send it to you privately now; you may of
> > course respond on the list.
>
> Your message to the list did arrive, it just took some time for the
> mailing list server to bounce the messages to everybody. :) And welcome
> to the list, BTW.
>
Thank you! Sorry, obviously I was a little impatient - I just assumed that
posters also receive their own posts, and when I didn't I started to
worry... This time I know better :)
>
>
> [...]
> > Russian seems to have a similar category usually referred to as the
> > "unsuccessful conative" where a verb in the imperfect is contrasted
> > with the same verb in a negated perfect form: V.IMPERFECT but not
> > V.PERFECT 'I tried to V but in the end I didn't V'. This contrast
> > highlights the counterfactual modality of the imperfect, which chimes
> > with your choice of an imperative morphology since the imperative also
> > has a counterfactual feel to it.
>
> Interesting. So you're saying it's like V.IMPERFECT is in the process of
> being accomplished, but ultimately stopped short, hence "didn't
> V.PERFECT"?
>
Yes, that's the idea; although I should warn you that appearently, the use
of 'but not' is essential here and the intended meaning wouldn't come
across without it. Mind you, I don't speak Russian, so I don't know
first-hand if this is really happening, but Tania Kuteva comes from
Bulgaria so I assume that she - as a linguist from a Slavic-speaking area -
also has some understanding of Russian. Oh, and in the seminar where we
discussed the topics for our exams there was a girl who does speak Russian
and who confirmed that this kind of construction can be used. I'd say you
can be pretty sure of it (I seem to remember that you've learnt Russian?).
The example Kuteva gives in the manuscript is the following:
On ubeždal menja, no ne ubedil.
He convince.IMPERFECTIVE.PAST me, but not convince.PERFECTIVE.PAST
'He tried to convince me, but he couldn't.'*
*Kuteva, Tania 2010: Grammaticalization and the Evolution of Grammar: On
One Particular Kind of Grammatical Categories. In: Kang, Young-Se,
Jong-Yuri Yoon, Jongseon Hong, Jiun-Shiung Wu, Seongha Rhee, Kyoung-Ae Kim,
Dong-Ho Choi, Kee-Ho Kim and Hye-Kyung Kang (eds.): Lectures on Universal
Grammar and Individual Languages (SICOL-2010). Hankookmunhwasa: Seoul,
Korea, pp. 144-156; here: probably p. 149 or 150 (my copy has a different
pagination, the example is on page 8 of 17). This, by the way, is the
manuscript I've been talking about. Besides the inconsequential, it
examines grammatical categories of the avertive ("was on the verge of V-ing
but did not V"), the proximative ("is about to V/is on the point of V-ing")
and the avolitional ("it would be too bad if he V-ed").
>
> You're right that the choice of imperative morphology is because of the
> contrafactual modality -- an imperative implies that the action hasn't
> been done yet (otherwise there would be no need to demand it), hence
> contrafactual.
>
Yes, that's exactly what I meant - thanks for describing it more clearly
than I did!
>
>
> [...]
> > What you're describing seems to me to be semantically similar to this
> > inconsequential category - the action of you coming here is expected
> > to result in me not shattering your glass dome, but this expectation
> > is not met because I will still shatter it, whether you come or not.
> > Your last two examples are a bit trickier to fit into this scheme,
> > though, because language is taking a mental shortcut here: the most
> > important bit of information is left out, namely that the "action
> > taken in vain" is the mere prospective thought of many-eyed monsters
> > or a catastrophe assumed to prevent the speaker from "going out there"
> > or "doing this" now, not the monsters or the catastrophe themselves
> > (because they haven't appeared/happened yet - so how could they
> > prevent anyone from doing anything now?). Still, I think that the
> > semantics are comparable enough (hey, that sentence was an
> > inconsequential too - once you've got to know them, you'll start
> > seeing them everywhere).
>
> The way I perceive it, it's sorta like the equivalent of the English
> "Come what may, I'm still going to do this". It's as though the speaker
> issuing a challenge -- I'm going to do X, let all those who oppose me
> come try to stop me, 'cos I'm gonna do it anyway! It's a kind of
> disregard for the consequences of one's actions.
>
Yes, and the inconsequential category definitely includes meanings such as
this one; I analysed and translated example sentences similar to yours in
my exam so I don't have a doubt that your last sentences and the earlier
ones are related semantically. Still, I think there is a small difference.
The prototypical inconsequential works like this: something happens (action
1) - it usually has certain consequences (expected result) - in this
specific case, the result doesn't occur or at least has no influence on the
agent's actions (action 2). In your last examples, the timeline looks like
it's been switched around: the agent acts in a particular manner
(corresponds to action 2!) even though something bad may happen (action 1)
which is expected to prevent the agent (expected result) - looks like
putting the cart before the horse! But it's actually quite easy to fit the
examples into the concept of the inconsequential because in fact, what we
should label "action 1" is not the bad things that will happen, but the
thought of them happening, the premonition. So the timeline should be: the
agent thinks of the possibility of bad things happening to him (action 1) -
this thought should prevent him from acting in a certain way (expected
result) - the agent acts that way anyway (action 2).
Your way of thinking about these sentences suggests yet another possible
interpretation of the inconsequential formula: the agent acts in a certain
way (action 1) - as a consequence, monsters may appear and catastrophes may
take place so that the agent is supposed to regret his actions (expected
result) - the agent doesn't regret his actions and may even interpret them
as brave (action 2).
These two interpretations basically describe the same scenario but choose
different starting points: the first one starts at the agent's
considerations preceding his actions (provided that he does think before he
acts, of course!) and ends at the action itself, whereas the second one
starts at the action and ends at the reflection after the fact (if your
agent is the type who shoots first and asks questions later). Both are
valid in my opinion, I just thought I'd point out the difference since it
demonstrates how potential agents may adopt different perspectives,
depending on their way of thinking. That could become an interesting
distinction in a conlang ;)
>
>
> > Hope that helps - or that it is at least a push in the right direction :)
> [...]
>
> That was helpful, thanks! I'm not sure if it's exactly an
> inconsequential, but at least it helps me think about it in a clearer
> way. :)
>
Great, that's all I could hope for! I would offer to send you Tania
Kuteva's manuscript, but I'm not sure she'd be okay with it since it is
probably copyrighted material. Would you like me to ask her?
[...]
>
Lisa
Messages in this topic (8)
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2.1. Rolling your R's
Posted by: "Beinhoff, Bettina" bettina.beinh...@anglia.ac.uk
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:13 am ((PDT))
Dear all,
>How many different kinds of trills are there? AFAIK, there are:
>
>- Bilabial [B\]
>- Apical:
> - Alveolar [r]
> - Retroflex (?)
>- Uvular [R\]
One of my PhD students recently introduced me to the Slovenian dental trill
which is apparently also used in Hungarian. Now how about a conlang with 5
phonemic trills (or 6 for those who count the 'raspberry' one)? Including
voiced-voiceless pairs could give enough consonants for a complete sound
inventory.
Best wishes,
Bettina
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Messages in this topic (29)
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2.2. Re: Rolling your R's
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 1:03 pm ((PDT))
2013/7/20 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>:
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 11:59:25AM -0700, Garth Wallace wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:47 AM, H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
>> >
>> > OK, now I'm *really* wondering if what I think I'm pronouncing as a
>> > flap is actually just a really fast [d], because it has absolutely
>> > *no* resemblance to the way I'm pronouncing my trills right now!
>>
>> A flap IS a really fast [d], more or less: the articulation is the
>> same but contact between the tongue and the roof of the mouth is brief
>> enough that the airflow isn't interrupted. The English /d/ is usually
>> [ɾ] intervocalically.
>
> OK, good to know. Well, then the description of [r] being a "prolonged
> [4]" is completely inaccurate, because I simply cannot produce any trill
I'd rather say "many [4] repeated in rapid vibration" than "prolonged [4]".
> from that POA at all! I have to hold my tongue differently, slightly
> raised in the middle, and contract the roof of my mouth somewhat, and
> breathe differently, in order to make [r]. Completely unlike [d] or [4].
In order to achieve the vibration, it seems that the tongue must be
compressed with more force against the palate. It's probably this that
changes the place of articulation.
2013/7/18 Elena ``of Valhalla'' <elena.valha...@gmail.com>:
> On 2013-07-17 at 17:45:53 -0300, Leonardo Castro wrote:
>> My native dialect doesn't have alveolar trills, but pt-BR does have
>> them in some accents. I find it easy to pronounce (bilabiar trill is
>> far more difficult), but many of my relatives are unable to pronounce
>> the alveolar trill.
>>
>> I wonder how common it is for people to be unable to pronounce sounds
>> of other accents of their own language...
>
> I can't pronounce the alveolar trill, as well, and it is a sound
> in what is supposed to be my own accent of Italian.
>
> I believe this case is quite common: it has a popular name (erre moscia)
I think that Portuguese doesn't have a similar name because there are
lots of possible allophones widely used for <rr>.
> and a page on the italian and spanish wikipedias:
>
> https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotacismo_(medicina)
> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotacismo
>
> (which btw are a bit catastrophists: social reclusion as a result?
> at least here in Italy once you get to high school it becomes
> a non-issue.)
This raise another question: are some phones objectivally more
difficult than others, independently of language?
pt-BR native small children usually can't pronounce alveolar flaps,
trills or lateral palatals [L]. All of them are pronounced as [l]
until the age of 4, more or less. BTW, if my perception doesn't fail
me, children pronounce nasal vowels quite easily, what may be a
surprise for natives of languages without them.
What the last phones that children are able to produce in your native
languages? (For comparison.)
>
> --
> Elena ``of Valhalla''
Messages in this topic (29)
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2.3. Re: Rolling your R's
Posted by: "And Rosta" and.ro...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 1:36 pm ((PDT))
R A Brown, On 19/07/2013 20:41:
>> From the Wikipedia article "Blowing a raspberry": "It is
>> made by placing the tongue between the lips and blowing
>> to produce a sound similar to flatulence."
>> Could you call this a linguolabial trill"?
>
> Apparently you could - but AFAIUI the sound is not attested
> as a phoneme (or phone) in any natlang. I guess it's felt
> to be too rude ;)
Altho a pulmonic linguolabial trill would count as a raspberry, I think the
prototypical raspberry is a velaric egressive linguolabial or bilabial trill.
IIRC, a velaric egressive bilabial trill is an allophone of /pqh/ in Livagian.
([p'] is an allophone of /pq/, [R_o] is an allophone of /h/, [B_o] is an
allophone of /ph/.) Piraha has a phoneme realized as a sequence of a dental [t]
and [B_o], which is pretty close to a pulmonic linguolabial trill.
--And.
Messages in this topic (29)
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3a. Re: Deriving Positionals from Directionals
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:42 am ((PDT))
2013/7/15 Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com>:
> Traffic seems slow this week, so here's a thought that I've had brewing for a
> while.
>
> The impetus for founding the Guild of Scholars, who regulate the Martian
> language Siye, was to eliminate misunderstandings between the two dialects of
> the City. Dialect A had affricates in the very important directional suffixes
> (and elsewhere, such as cases, but the directionals are my point here), so
> the suffixes /tu/, /su/, /na/, /nu/, and /ki/ were pronounced [tsu] [su] [na]
> [nu] [tSi].
Which direction each of these correspond to?
> Dialect B had passed the affricate phase and moved onto fricatives. In
> Dialect B, /tu/, /su/. /na/, /nu/, and /ki/ were pronounced [su] [su] [na]
> [nu] [Si]. Thus, in Dialect B, the allative directional /tu/ and the ablative
> directlonal /su/ were homophonous.
>
>
> Now, I could render the directionals as meaningless in the later speakers of
> Dialect B, but where's the fun in that? So I thought about it, and I
> concluded that the Dialect B speakers reanalyzed [su] as a horizontal
> POSITIONAL suffix, with a phonological basis: [s] is associated with the
> horizontal, [S] with the stative, [n] with the vertical. Within this system,
> [s] only appears with [u] and [S] only appears with [i]. [n], however,
> appears with [a] and [u]. My question is: given the current development of
> this system, what is the most likely outcome of [na] and [nu]? Would Dialect
> B keep both? Favor [na] because it contrasts with [su]? Favor [nu] by analogy
> with [su]? Or would [na] and [nu] develop a semantic distinction other than
> that between 'up' and 'down'?
I think anything can happen in your world. Sometimes, words change
their meaning by unpredictable ridiculous ways. A possibility is that
[na] will be understood as both "up" and "large" and [nu] as "down"
and "small".
BTW, why did you choose [na] as "up" and [nu] as "down"? I've been
thinking about these ideophones. It's interesting that [a] is a "low
vowel" and [u] a "high vowel". Also, as it's just our jaws that move
when we open our mouths, [a] is open and low, while [u] is close and
high. OTOH, the relative position between jaw and palate is greater,
so [a] could be felt as "higher" than [u].
So, strange associations could happen and make [na] mean "tall",
"large" but "low position" and [nu] mean "short", "small" but "high
position".
Messages in this topic (2)
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4a. Re: Unusual Tenses
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 12:40 pm ((PDT))
2013/7/19 Padraic Brown <elemti...@yahoo.com>:
>> From: Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>
>
>> With such a system, it's also straightforward to express tenses like
>> "future of the past" and "pluperfect" (past of the past)
>
> Why would you need a set of parallel-tenses (the world within another world
> tenses
> that deal with the reality of parallel hypotheticals) to talk about ordinary
> things that
> are all in the past?
"Hypotheticals" would only make sense with the "subjunctive modifier".
With a "tense modifier", only the reference time of the narrative will
be shifted, like the following example:
Present as reference: "Yesterday I was tired, today I'm sleeping,
tomorrow I'm going to be nice."
Past as reference: "I hab been tired the day before, I was sleeping
that day, I was going to be nice the next day."
Each verb of the latter could have two preffix or one can simply begin
the sentence with
{past-preffix} {following-text-pronoun}
and then maintain the paragraph in present tense.
Yes, I'm going to have anaphoric pronouns that refers to "the
following text", "the preceding text", and also "the
following/preceding sentence/event". It's not as unnatural as it
looks; natlangs have similar ways to refer to elements of the text
after and before, the difference is only that AFAIK they don't have
specific words to refer to things in the text structure, but rather
use more generic words such as demonstrative pronouns.
In Portuguese, "este", "esse" and "aquele" can refer to the last, the
penultimate and the antipenultimate elements described. Alternatively,
"este" refers to the following and "esse" to the preceding.
> Past of the past is already old hat in Latin, the old pluperfect: "I had
> (already) destroyed
> Carthage by the time most young men my age were still learning to drive their
> fathers'
> chariots." We don't really have a future of the past in English, but
> logically, the present
> tense covers this stretch of time (as does the future).
I think you have it in expressions like "I was going to do" or "I
would do". See this definition of "would":
« Used with bare infinitive to form the "anterior future", indicating
a futurity relative to a past time. [from 9th c.] â[quotations â²]
1867, Anthony Trollope, Last Chronicle of Barset, ch. 28: That her
Lily should have been won and not worn, had been, and would be, a
trouble to her for ever.
2011 November 5, Phil Dawkes, âQPR 2 - 3 Man Cityâ, BBC Sport: Toure
would have the decisive say though, rising high to power a header past
Kenny from Aleksandar Kolarov's cross. »
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/would
>
> Padraic
Messages in this topic (12)
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4b. Re: Unusual Tenses
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:39 am ((PDT))
> From: Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>
>
>>> With such a system, it's also straightforward to express tenses like
>>> "future of the past" and "pluperfect" (past of the past)
>>
>> Why would you need a set of parallel-tenses (the world within another world
>> tenses
>> that deal with the reality of parallel hypotheticals) to talk about
>> ordinary things that
>> are all in the past?
>
> "Hypotheticals" would only make sense with the "subjunctive modifier".
Huh? I thought hypotheticals were within the realm of that parallel set of
verbal
morphology belonging to the "world with the world". (I stìll think that's a
cool idea!)
> With a "tense modifier", only the reference time of the narrative will
> be shifted, like the following example:
>
> Present as reference: "Yesterday I was tired, today I'm sleeping,
> tomorrow I'm going to be nice."
> Past as reference: "I had been tired the day before, I was sleeping
> that day, I was going to be nice the next day."
Okay. All of this is perfectly ordinary indicative and speaks of a series of
events that are either transpiring now (your "present as reference") or else are
transpiring before (your "past as reference"). Maybe I'm missing something,
but I don't see how a subjunctive will help here, nor how that other set of
hypothetical conjugations will help either...
> Each verb of the latter could have two prefix or one can simply begin
> the sentence with
>
> {past-prefix} {following-text-pronoun}
>
> and then maintain the paragraph in present tense.
>
> Yes, I'm going to have anaphoric pronouns that refers to "the
> following text", "the preceding text", and also "the
> following/preceding sentence/event". It's not as unnatural as it
> looks; natlangs have similar ways to refer to elements of the text
> after and before, the difference is only that AFAIK they don't have
> specific words to refer to things in the text structure, but rather
> use more generic words such as demonstrative pronouns.
Sure. We do this in English as well. "That said" is a good example
of a pronominal phrase referring to what has just been said (or
written). Other latiny phrases also serve as pronominals that refer
to text in relation to what is being said now: "q.v." refers to texts
located elsewhere in a document; "vid.inf." refers to text that
follows down below. These aren't *pronouns* in the way he, she
and it are pronouns; but they serve a similar function.
Can also use straight pronouns (which, the former, the latter) to refer
to other bits of text or speech.
> In Portuguese, "este", "esse" and "aquele" can
> refer to the last, the
> penultimate and the antipenultimate elements described. Alternatively,
> "este" refers to the following and "esse" to the preceding.
I guess we could say "which", "which previous" and "which anterior"
to accomplish the same. :)
>> Past of the past is already old hat in Latin, the old pluperfect: "I
> had (already) destroyed
>> Carthage by the time most young men my age were still learning to drive
> their fathers'
>> chariots." We don't really have a future of the past in English,
> but logically, the present
>> tense covers this stretch of time (as does the future).
>
> I think you have it in expressions like "I was going to do" or "I
> would do". See this definition of "would":
Hm. Now we're getting more into the realm of aspect, as opposed to
tense. We do indeed have these expressions, but the former (there's
your esse) expresses intention to do more than an actual future (although,
yes, the time reference **when viewed from the perspective of the speaker
at time WAS**, is in the future, the actual time reference **when viewed from
the perspective of the speaker** could be any time, past present or future).
For example, it's now 0814. If I tell you "I was going to go over to the cafe
for breakfast", I mean that up until my now speaking to you, I have had the
intention to do something that I have not yet done. This is all in the past,
even though, theoretically, the actual act of schlepping over to the cafe could
well be in some ill defined future. Obviously, as we move closer and closer to
the time of second breakfast, and then brunch and then nammetide and
eventually lunchtime, it'll all have been most assuredly and in the past!
As for the latter (there's your este), would is also an aspectual. "I would go
to
the cafe..." indicates the desire to go, or the preference to go. It is often
accompanied by a but clause that ruins the party by running contrary to desire:
...but the health services closed the place down last week on account of an
infestation of cats."
> « Used with bare infinitive to form the "anterior future", indicating
> a futurity relative to a past time. [from 9th c.] â[quotations â²]
>
> 1867, Anthony Trollope, Last Chronicle of Barset, ch. 28: That her
> Lily should have been won and not worn, had been, and would be, a
> trouble to her for ever.
Myeh. I don't see that as really "anterior future", though. It's all in the
past. It
certainly has echos and resonances with later pasts, but tis all water under
the bridge.
Maybe it's because we just don't have ANY actual future tense in English,
that I'm not seeing what might be obvious to you. So many verb forms in
English can indicate or hint at future events without actually directly
referring
to the same.
Even our "future tenses" par excellence, "will" and "going to", don't directly
refer to the future any more than our past tense does! Will and shall merely
forshadow the future -- the desire or the obligation to do something at some
distant date. Would is perhaps a little more standoffish, backing away a little
from the stronger desires of will and the absolute necessities of shall, always
falling before a strong prohibition. Going to clearly shows the process of and
the standing ready to, but none of these come right out and declare their
futurity
the way your "comaré" does! All of these actually happen in the present time! ;)
This is how I understand it, anyway.
> 2011 November 5, Phil Dawkes, âQPR 2 - 3 Man Cityâ, BBC Sport: Toure
> would have the decisive say though, rising high to power a header past
> Kenny from Aleksandar Kolarov's cross. »
>
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/would
Padraic
Messages in this topic (12)
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5a. Re: The Language of Pao
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 4:21 pm ((PDT))
On 15 July 2013 15:09, Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 12:49 AM, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> When I first read The Languages of Pao, I didn't realize how little
>>> information it had in it, and on re-reading it, I disliked the story so
>>> much I didn't finish it.
>
>>It isn't among Jack Vance's best works. I lost my copy a couple of
>>years ago, and haven't been in any hurry to replace it, there are so
>>many other Vance works that I more strongly want to re-read.
>
> (Cha) It's definitely a teething book for young conlangers (do). (Cha) In
> Vance's defence, it was the first book I ever read where the author
> introduced an alien language and then provided a gloss, nowever rough (do).
I skimmed through the book again in the last week looking specifically
for information about the language, and while there isn't much, there
was a bit more than I remembered on my first read-through- in
particular, the footnote with the gloss of a sentence in actual
Paonese, which provides several more words/morphemes than the single
word quoted later on in the text.
There are a lot of Paonese names (of people and places) from which one
might try to extract more bits of structure, but except for the names
of continents (which are transparently derived from the numeral
system), no meanings are assigned to any of them, and they don't seem
to have much in the way of unified phonological structure, so I'm
pretty much just discarding those as uselessly uninformative.
The explicit description of the language amounts to claiming that it
"presents a picture of a situation rather than describing an act",
contains "no verbs or adjectives" (I didn't remember the lack of
adjectives, but I guessed that right in my first round of musings)
instead consisting mainly of "nouns, post-positions, and temporal
indices", has no "formal comparison" (exemplified by a lack of words
for "better" or "best") and no words for "prestige", "integrity",
"individuality", "honor", "justice" (which is not particularly
interesting; it's easy to just leave out specific lexical items and
circumlocute around them), and is polysynthetic.
There are two glossed sentences, the first of which actually provides
the Paonese words and the second of which just has the free English
translation and the English morpheme-by-morpheme gloss:
"There are two matters I wish to discuss with you"
_Statement-of-importance_ - _in a state of readiness_ - two; ear-of
Mercantil-_in a state of readiness_; mouth - of this person here - _in
a state of volition_
"Rhomel-en-shrai bogal-Mercantil-nli-en mous-es-nli-ro."
"The farmer chops down a tree"
Farmer _in a state of exertion_; axe _agency_; tree _in a state of
subjection to attack_
It's claimed in each case that "The italicized words represent
suffixes of condition." I suspect italicizing
_Statement-of-importance_ is just a typographical error, as that's
clearly not a suffix.
We also get the basic numerals in an octal system (ai, shrai, vida,
mina, nona, drona, hivan, imple, which I assume go 1-8 rather than 0-7
though there's no explicit statement either way), and the quoted word
"praesens", which is defined only as a "vitality word" (whatever that
means).
Jack Vance seemed to use "suffix" and "post-position" pretty much
interchangeably, which is just fine if we assume a linguistically
naive narrator who can't decide which it is. Having one of
whatever-those-are that means specifically "in a state of subjection
to attack" however makes me think that it's probably an open class,
and that plus the claimed polysynthetic nature of the language makes
me want to categorize those things as independent verb-like roots,
which act as suffixes on nominal roots, as in my original musings.
I have little clue what "temporal indices" might refer to; there's
nothing that might match that description in either of the given
glosses, which indicates to me that whatever they are, they must be
optional (i.e., not a required component of a grammatical sentence).
We can conclude that they were not simply omitted from the gloss due
to being hard to translate because the sole point of providing the
Paonese words fro gloss #1 was to demonstrate that it's not
substantially longer than the equivalent English utterance. Assuming a
linguistically naive narrator, I've got quite a bit of leeway in
making up something that might reasonably be (mis)interpreted as a
"temporal index", but this might require some re-thinking of my
original plan to include evidential complexes.
The first gloss gives us some insight into morphological structure and
some interesting morphemes, including
-en = "readiness"
-ro = "volition"
-nli = genitive
es = "this person"
I would guess that "volition" is equivalent to "agent" in more
standard terms, while "agency" (from the second gloss) probably really
means "instrumental".
The "readiness" suffix might be an existential, or perhaps a topic marker.
Genitives apparently follow their heads in compounds and use a
post-posed genitive marker, which throws some naturalistic
complication into adapting Herman Miller's scheme for arbitrarily
complex compounds.
There isn't any explicit discussion of Paonese pronouns (though there
is for Breakness pronouns, mainly to get across that they are so
egocentric that there's no need to bother with a word for "I",
because, well, duh, of course "I" am the subject), so it's
particularly interesting that "es", the obvious translational
equivalent for "I" (the addressee in that situation is the ambassador
of Mercantil, so the proper noun Mercantil must be the source of the
English "you"), is glossed as "this person here". Perhaps that's to
indicate that the word, kind of like Japanese pronominals, is
standardly used for "I" but doesn't literally mean only that, and can
be employed as a more general pronoun for a nearby or highly relevant
person in the proper discourse context. I imagine an interesting
pronouns system with a split between animate near/mid/far
demonstratives used as the rough equivalent of 1st/2nd/3rd personal
pronouns and inanimate forms used more like regular demonstratives.
Also, it looks like simple numerals can be suffixed to noun-verblike
complexes. The closed simple numeral class can probably be extended
with morphemes for "few", "none", and "many" to allow for the
expression of non-specific plurality as desired, without having number
as an obligatory grammatical category. There's no indication of how
larger numbers are formed, and those often have different grammatical
behavior, so I can have fun with that.
> (Cha) If you're doing Paonese, are you planning to do the language of the
> Dominuses and then create Pastiche (do)?
Oh, no. I thought that the language of Breakness sounded like maybe it
descended from Japanese, but that's about it. None of the others
really caught my interest at all.
BTW, I find that cha/do thing so incredibly annoying that I kind of
cheered a little inside when that bug lady got killed. However, now
you got me thinking about what function it might actually serve; I
don't think it's supposed to bracket sentences, but based on the claim
that leaving it out is impolite, maybe it's supposed to be a
turn-taking mechanism. And now I wonder if the writer for Doctor Who
thought about it that much....
-l.
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Re: How Mentolatian Whisks Away All its Consonants
Posted by: "Virginia Keys" virginiak...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Jul 20, 2013 8:16 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 17 Jul 2013 20:11:10 -0700, Padraic Brown <elemti...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
Voiceless dentals go yer ways,
see yez in some oblique case!
Ablaut and Umlaut came to play,
a > É, e > ae, u > o > naught!
Mentolatian likes to take the nom. pl. of a noun and use that as a root
for a semantically extended series of nouns. For example, we have the
word dazg (house, roof, covering) whose plural is jí (from old dÉzgí).
This plural becomes a new root, j- and can form a new word with a
common nominal stem, -un. Hence, jun, cloth. The plural of cloth, jní,
plus a different nominal stem, -aru, gives us sinaru, clothing. The plural
of clothing, snáer, yields a common word for a suit or wardrobe of
clothing, sneres. Finally, the plural of suits, zrÉzí, plus a curious little
combining root, -sd (place where), gives us erzed, an armoir or dresser.
So, where the heck did dazg- go off to???
Padraic
Haha, nice! I find your post particularly interesting, as I had been trying to
think of ways to grow families of words from roots. Food for thought!
--Virginia
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: How Mentolatian Whisks Away All its Consonants
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Jul 21, 2013 4:20 am ((PDT))
> From: Virginia Keys <virginiak...@gmail.com>
>
> Mentolatian likes to take the nom. pl. of a noun and use that as a root
> for a semantically extended series of nouns. For example, we have the
> word dazg (house, roof, covering) whose plural is jí (from old dÉzgí).
> This plural becomes a new root, j- and can form a new word with a
> common nominal stem, -un. Hence, jun, cloth. The plural of cloth, jní,
> plus a different nominal stem, -aru, gives us sinaru, clothing. The plural
> of clothing, snáer, yields a common word for a suit or wardrobe of
> clothing, sneres. Finally, the plural of suits, zrÉzí, plus a curious little
> combining root, -sd (place where), gives us erzed, an armoir or dresser.
>
> Haha, nice! I find your post particularly interesting, as I had been trying
> to
> think of ways to grow families of words from roots. Food for thought!
For some odd reason, it just made sense for the language to go this route.
Some transformations are pretty obvious: enem (pl. nmí), spirit yields
manzed, chapel or temple. Some are not so: cwanu (pl. nwí), noblewoman
yields wanzed, inner court or newaru, debt servant. On the other hand,
another word for woman, mannu (pl. mní), yields nemaru, midwife. Other
transformational morphemes could extend these: nemaruta, health or
nemaruwan, to heal; newaruta, servitude.
Some of these require an understanding of the culture before they become
clear. The inner court of a Mentolatian greathouse is roughly what we might
consider a formal garden with the addition of ancillary rooms on either side:
library / reading room, a room for refreshment, etc. These are the women's
rooms and this is where Things Get Done --- quite literally the "seat of
power".
On the other hand, and I suppose in a curiously odd twist of fate, if
a family finds itself in debt, it has been traditional to sell the eldest
daughter
into servitude for a prescribed length of time until the debt is considered
paid.
This actually nearly brought about the destruction of the whole culture. Twas
nearly two centuries ago that Mentolatum found itself in a scuffle with
Auntimoany.
Scuffle ended, in typicaly Germanic fashion, the victorious Emperor at the time
sought to "seal the deal" with a royal marriage and quite naturally demanded
the daughter of the arquan in marriage. Consternation ensued -- after all, how
could the arquan condescend to sell off his daughter into slavery!? -- but there
being no real choice in the matter, the poor girl got sent away. Although she
apparently succumbed to some wasting illness within two years, every Mentolatian
knew it was really an act of honorable suicide. Anyway, Auntimoany went on its
merry way, while Mentolatum fell into a nasty civil war and economic depression.
The arquan was deposed and much that was fair in the country fell to ruin. Twas
only about fifty years ago that the arquanate was restored, but its reputation
was
still very much tarnished. Much of the old esteem was refurbished five years ago
when the present arquan, on the anniversary of that ill-fated wedding, decreed
an end to the practice of newaruta.
Padraic
> --Virginia
Messages in this topic (10)
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