There are 13 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: Something for we to discuss!
From: Leonardo Castro
1.2. Re: Something for we to discuss!
From: Herman Miller
2a. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
From: H. S. Teoh
2b. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
From: Lisa Weißbach
2c. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
From: H. S. Teoh
2d. Re: "Even if"
From: Douglas Koller
3.1. Re: Rolling your R's
From: David McCann
3.2. Re: Rolling your R's
From: Leonardo Castro
3.3. Re: Rolling your R's
From: Roger Mills
4a. ping
From: BPJ
4b. Re: ping
From: Daniel Bowman
4c. Re: ping
From: H. S. Teoh
4d. Re: ping
From: BPJ
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1.1. Re: Something for we to discuss!
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 6:36 am ((PDT))
2013/7/6 R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com>:
> On 05/07/2013 20:28, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
>>
>> On 5 July 2013 21:09, Leonardo Castro
>> <leolucas1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In expressions like "for me to do", do you use "me" or
>>> "I" in your conlangs? (If it distinguish them.)
>>>
>>>
>> Actually, there is no reason for a conlang to even have
>> the "for me to do" in the first place. After all, not
>> all natlangs do!
>
[...]
>>> In pt-BR, the formal rule is using the nominative
>>> ("caso reto", actually), that is, "for I to do" ("para
>>> eu fazer"),
>
>
> IMO the English equivalent is misleading. The use of _eu_ is
> surely because _fazer_ part of the peculiar personal
> infinitive of Portuguese, and _eu_ is its subject. the
> preposition _para_ governs _fazer_, not the pronoun. That
> simply does not work in English.
Personal infinitive are only "personal" if they are conjugated or if
they have a subject? In some web pages, there are references to the
subject of the infinitive, usually with the construction "for someone
to do" indeed. Is it an analysis mistake? :
http://www.grammar-quizzes.com/infinitive1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinitive
I just read a sentence in English with what seems to be an infinitive
with a subject:
"Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability
of scientists regularly to select problems that can be solved with
instrumental techniques close to those already in existence."
(Thomas Kuhn, In "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions")
OTOH, I see that "the ability of scientists regularly to select
problems" can be analysed in another way:
"the ability to select problems" -> "{the ability to select problems}
of scientists" -> "{the ability to select problems}-regularly of
scientists" -> "the ability of scientists regularly to select
problems"
instead of
"{the ability} of {scientists to select problems}"
Well, you native anglophone who knows how do you decompose the sentence...
Messages in this topic (35)
________________________________________________________________________
1.2. Re: Something for we to discuss!
Posted by: "Herman Miller" hmil...@prismnet.com
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 5:29 pm ((PDT))
On 7/23/2013 9:35 AM, Leonardo Castro wrote:
> I just read a sentence in English with what seems to be an infinitive
> with a subject:
>
> "Normal research, which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability
> of scientists regularly to select problems that can be solved with
> instrumental techniques close to those already in existence."
> (Thomas Kuhn, In "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions")
>
> OTOH, I see that "the ability of scientists regularly to select
> problems" can be analysed in another way:
>
> "the ability to select problems" -> "{the ability to select problems}
> of scientists" -> "{the ability to select problems}-regularly of
> scientists" -> "the ability of scientists regularly to select
> problems"
>
> instead of
>
> "{the ability} of {scientists to select problems}"
>
> Well, you native anglophone who knows how do you decompose the sentence...
I'd say it's "the ability (of scientists) (to select problems)", which
can be rephrased as "scientists' ability to select problems".
Maybe something along the lines of "scientists to select problems", as a
newspaper headline, could be an example of an infinitive with a subject.
Messages in this topic (35)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 8:17 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 06:07:20AM -0700, Padraic Brown wrote:
> > From: H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>
[...]
> >> >> Maybe an emphatic adversative conjunctive adjunct.
> >> >
> >> > Whoa. That's quite a mouthful. Mind unpacking that a bit for
> >> > me? :)
> >>
> >> Careful! These kinds of boxes can explode all over the place,
> >> spewing their contents to every corner of the room. Ever try to
> >> pry adjunct goo off the wallpaper? :/ Not fun!
> >
> > I don't mind exploding boxes.
>
> Alright, but you've been warned! Don't come complaining back to me
> when you get a 5000 quatloo bill for goo scrapage and shrapnel
> removal.
Sigh, and I still have no answer to what that original mysterious
incantation quoted above means.
> Or when the Society magistrates come around with their little yellow
> notice saying that this region is simply not zoned for highly
> explosive languages! :P
Well, then one just has to add some implosive stops to the language to
balance out the explosiveness and bring it within acceptable limits...
:-P
> > My conlangs tend to explode boxes every now and then. They just
> > refuse to be boxed in by well-known, nicely-behaved linguistic
> > boxes, no matter how hard I try. Tatari Faran refuses to behave like
> > any language with "normal" case systems; then when I started on the
> > alien conlang, I actually started using normal cases like
> > nominatives, datives, ablatives, and patientives (which, so far,
> > behave essentially like accusatives), only to have the *rest* of the
> > language explode in my face by refusing to attest any verbs, and
> > refusing to have standalone pronouns.
> >
> > I'm still holding out hope for "real" verbs in the alien conlang,
> > though the weight of evidence seems to be pointing the other way
> > right now. I've given up hope on the pronouns, though.
>
> Hm. In all honesty, I think you're just going to have to give up all
> pretense of your actually constructing this language. Clearly, it
> exceeded critical mass within moments of reaching the tolkien
> constant, and now, my friend, you're just hanging on for the wild
> ride!
Hmm. I'm surprised this happened so early in the process. I mean, I
don't even have the outline of the clause structure figured out yet!
Back in the day, Tatari Faran only started to rear its own head against
my wishes after I set down the rules of behaviour^W^W^W I mean, the
general rules of clausal structures. With this alienlang, I only have a
handful of sample sentences and what little grammar can be deduced from
them, and already it's exploding in my face. And the lexicon is only 63
entries thus far!
> Such languages tend to go their own way and resist all attempts
> on the part of the conlanger to be tamed, housebroken or otherwise
> wrangled into any shape the conlanger desires. These maverick
> conlangs, as they call them, have wills and agendas of their own.
> Sorry, but I'm afraid you are quite stuck with it now!
No kidding. I originally had in mind a roughly German-like sound to the
language... but lately it has rebelled against that with word-initial
/N/'s, which is decidedly *not* German in any way, shape, or form. And
what with explicit possessives (below) turning out to be tacking more
morphemes onto the head noun, this language is starting to have
agglutinative tendencies, also quite unlike German (AFAIK). Sigh...
> > They only exist as possessives, and what should normally be unmarked
> > pronouns are actually possessives of various body parts -- "my body"
> > instead of "I", "my hands handle" instead of "I handle", "my feet
> > walk" instead of "I walk", "your tongue speaks to my ear" instead of
> > "you speak to me", etc.. These conlang things have a life of their
> > own, and simply refuse to be tamed!
>
> Indeed!
>
> By the way, my-mind likes the way the pronoun-conjuncts turned out.
Yesterday, I discovered how to form possessives involving explicit
possessors (i.e., other than pronouns). Oddly enough, the pronominal
possessive affixes are still there! It's just that you tack on the
explicit noun immediately after:
fraht.
[frAxt]
girl
voluÅ.
[vO'lUN]
spaceship
voluÅget.
[vO'lUNgEt]
voluÅ-et.
spaceship-3SG.POSS
His/her spaceship.
voluÅgetfraht.
[vO'lUNgET,frAxt]
voluÅ-et-fraht
spaceship-3SG.POSS-girl
The girl's spaceship.
It's almost as if one is saying "spaceship of her, the girl".
Interestingly enough, if the explicit possessor is plural, the usual
plural markings aren't used; instead, you indicate plurality by using
the plural pronominal possessives:
voluÅgutfraht.
[vO'lUNgUT,frAxt]
voluÅ-ut-fraht
spaceship-3PL.POSS-girl
The girls' spaceship.
In essence, "the spaceship of them, the girls".
> > (Well, actually, it's even worse than "your tongue speaks to my ear"
> > and "my feet walk"; it's actually "your-tongueing my-ear" and
> > "my-feet-ing".
>
> Ones-mind-boggling.
Actually, it would be closer to one's-boggled-mind-ing. ;-)
> > A verbalising suffix is tacked onto the noun+possessive, and that
> > turns it into a kind of pseudo-verb. I say pseudo-verb because if
> > you then stick in a nominative NP, the "pseudo-verb" turns into an
> > instrumental NP!
> >
> > voluÅtekmi aiherltu.
> > voluÅ-tek-mi aiherl-tu.
> > spaceship-2SG.POSS-??? distant_skies-DAT
> > You fly by spaceship to the distant skies.
> > [Lit. Your-spaceshipping to the distant skies]
> >
> > voluÅtekmi gruÅgen aiherltu.
> > voluÅ-tek-mi gruÅ-en-0 aiherl-tu.
> > spaceship-2SG.POSS-??? hands-1SG.POSS-NOM distant_skies-DAT
> > I fly your spaceship to the distant skies.
> > [Lit. ??! I don't even know how to transliterate this one.
> > By-your-spaceshipping my-hands to the distant skies?!]
> >
> > I glossed -mi as ??? because sometimes it acts like a verbalizer, and
> > sometimes like an instrumental case marker. Crazy things.)
>
> Just call it a "relational particle"! Magic words, them. They describe
> anything and nothing at all, and have the added benefit of at least
> feigning actual linguisticitude!
[...]
Ah, terminology fit for politicians! ;-)
On a more serious note, I've tentatively decided that -mi will be
glossed as either -V or -INSTR depending on its meaning in the current
sentence. I haven't decided what to do in cases where it might be
ambiguous (though this hasn't come up yet).
T
--
Latin's a dead language, as dead as can be; it killed off all the Romans, and
now it's killing me! -- Schoolboy
Messages in this topic (14)
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2b. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
Posted by: "Lisa Weißbach" purereasonrevoluz...@web.de
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 1:15 pm ((PDT))
2013/7/22 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>
> On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 04:47:38PM +0200, Lisa Weißbach wrote:
> > 2013/7/19 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>
> > > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:34:09AM +0200, Lisa Weißbach wrote:
> [...]
> > > 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?).
>
> I've been learning (imperf) Russian, but I can't really say I've learnt
> (perf) it. ;-) I still feel like a beginner even after 7 years. Granted,
> I was learning on my own free time, so the actual amount of time I spent
> learning Russian during these past 7 years may be significantly less
> than it would appear at first.
>
Oh, I know these kinds of problems... So many languages on the back burner
because I can't find a class, and trying to teach myself usually ends up in
a very lopsided kind of linguistic competence, i.e. good reading skills, no
speaking skills whatsoever... By the way, I've actually encountered a very
similar construction in English (similar to yours about learning Russian)!
It's from a dialogue of a TV series:
A: So she was planning to sell the house?
B: Oh, she was always selling it - never did.
As a non-native speaker, I always had problems understanding this last
sentence - after all, "she was selling it" is in the past tense, so the
action of selling must already have taken place! But then, a seminar on
contrastive grammar opened my eyes, and I started to see that "she was
selling it" highlights the progressive (imperfective) aspect instead of the
past tense and is, in this aspect, very similar to "she was going to sell
it". Quite an epiphany for someone in their second semester.
>
> [...]
> > > 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).
>
> Hmm. I wonder if it helps to construct more elaborate contexts in which
> such constructions might used in my conlang, to help tease out the exact
> meaning:
>
> 1) A king is sitting in his court, and is about to send out an envoy to
> a nearby diplomatic ally in order to establish important trade
> relations, when his attendants bring news that their mortal enemies, the
> Ahripf tribe, are on the move, and are likely to cross the path of the
> envoy. The king thinks for a while, then says: "We will send the envoy
> (indicative); let the enemy cross our path (imperative/hortative)!" That
> is, he decides that it would serve his goals whether the envoy manages
> to evade the enemy and establish contact with the ally, or gets attacked
> and thereby gives him an excuse to retaliate against the enemy.
>
> 2) A young explorer is about to set off on his spaceship to an unknown,
> uncharted region of space, and his mother tells him to be careful, since
> there have been rumors of monstrous 2-eyed beings inhabiting that space
> who have violent inclinations. He answers, "I will still fly out there
> (indicative), let dangers and 2-eyed monstrosities come (imperative)!"
> That is, dangers and threats do not concern him as much as his desire to
> explore the unknown.
>
> 3) A prisoner-of-war is about to be executed at the gallows. He is given
> a final chance to defect to his captors' cause. But he is unshaken, and
> says, "I stand for my country's cause (indicative), beat me and execute
> me (imperative)!" That is, he refuses to betray his cause, even if his
> captors will beat him and execute him.
>
> 4) A child is sitting at the dinner table, and is told to eat up his
> vegetables otherwise he will get no candy. He says, "I won't eat them
> (indicative); take the candy away (imperative)!" That is, he'd rather
> not eat the vegetables even if that means he has to give up the candy.
> His brother, on the other hand, says, "I want the candy (indicative),
> let me eat the vegetables (imperative)!" -- that is, he wants to get the
> candy, even if it means he has to eat those yucky vegetables.
>
Those are some interesting and funny examples! I especially like the first
one, since it introduces a constellation we haven't talked about before,
i.e. a situation where both the occurrence of "action 1" and its
non-occurrence can be interpreted as an advantage. That means that the
agent doesn't have to worry about whether it takes place or not because he
is in a win-win situation. I'm not sure if you're moving beyond the
inconsequential category there, though: after all, it's no longer true that
the agent doesn't care about which of the two possibilities becomes true,
but that he'd welcome either one; his attitude is positive towards both of
them, not indifferent. An interesting borderline case which could become
visible in the morphology if your conlang should develop attitude markers
or the like.
I'd say that the second example works the same way as your earlier
examples: the mere thought of monsters is not enough to thwart his plans.
The third example includes both interpretations - I'd say that for "beat"
it works like the prototypical inconsequential (you beat me - I still stand
for my country's cause), but for "execute" it obviously has to work along
the lines of "Come what may...", so this short sentence mixes the two
possible aspects of the inconsequential. The fourth one is still undecided
for me - both aspects could work for the child's thinking. The brother,
however, doesn't use the inconsequential at all but instead offers a simple
conclusion to the given premises: "I want the candy" + "I'll have to eat
the vegetables in order to get the candy" --> "I'll eat the vegetables" -
no surprise or evasion of expected consequences there.
>
>
> [...]
> > 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?
> [...]
>
> I think the discussion on this mailing list should suffice, for now. :)
>
Fair enough - just tell me if you change your mind! :)
Lisa
Messages in this topic (14)
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2c. Re: Fwd: "Even if"
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 9:03 pm ((PDT))
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 10:05:49PM +0200, Lisa Weißbach wrote:
> 2013/7/22 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>
[...]
> > I've been learning (imperf) Russian, but I can't really say I've
> > learnt (perf) it. ;-) I still feel like a beginner even after 7
> > years. Granted, I was learning on my own free time, so the actual
> > amount of time I spent learning Russian during these past 7 years
> > may be significantly less than it would appear at first.
> >
>
> Oh, I know these kinds of problems... So many languages on the back
> burner because I can't find a class, and trying to teach myself
> usually ends up in a very lopsided kind of linguistic competence, i.e.
> good reading skills, no speaking skills whatsoever...
Haha, yeah. There are almost no native Russian speakers among my
acquiantances, so most of my learning was actually from reading Russian
books. I bought a Russian New Testament and read through it: when I
started out, I could barely understand 5% of it (I did take the time to
learn Cyrillic so that I can at least pronounce the words); by the time
I finished, I daresay my comprehension level was around 70%. (Being
well-versed with the English NT helped a lot, of course.) Currently, my
reading comprehension is probably around 85% or so.
However, my listening comprehension is not good, and my speaking skills
are worse. I Skype'd with a native speaker from Moscow every Saturday
for about a year or so, which dramatically improved my
listening/speaking skills, but we've had a hard time keeping it up so
recently I haven't had much practice at all. I do still try to read
every now and then so that I don't start losing my grasp of the
language, but it's hard to keep up without a Russian-speaking
environment to be immersed in.
> By the way, I've actually encountered a very similar construction in
> English (similar to yours about learning Russian)! It's from a
> dialogue of a TV series:
>
> A: So she was planning to sell the house?
> B: Oh, she was always selling it - never did.
>
> As a non-native speaker, I always had problems understanding this last
> sentence - after all, "she was selling it" is in the past tense, so
> the action of selling must already have taken place! But then, a
> seminar on contrastive grammar opened my eyes, and I started to see
> that "she was selling it" highlights the progressive (imperfective)
> aspect instead of the past tense and is, in this aspect, very similar
> to "she was going to sell it". Quite an epiphany for someone in their
> second semester.
I'm technically not a native speaker either, but I'm a de facto native
speaker 'cos my grasp of English is far better than my own L1 (or any
other language I know)... to me, "she was always selling it" has
several distinguishing qualities:
1) "selling" is continuous, which hints at something unusual, because
if she had already sold it, we'd say "she sold it" -- simple past.
The use of the continuous tense instead of the default simple past
indicates that it's an unfinished action.
2) The English verb "sell" has two similar but distinct meanings: (a) to
complete a transaction of sale; and (b) to put something up for sale
(e.g., "they're selling hotdogs on the street corner"). The use of
the continuous tense in (1) implies that the intended meaning is (b).
This is strengthened by the following:
3) "always" has overtones of irony or derision; it's emphasizing the
continuous action of "selling", which again sets it apart from the
simple past "she sold it", which is a one-time, finished action, a
done deal.
Finally, "never did" is a (negated) simple past -- which, by context,
refers to "selling". Here, there's a subtle pun on "sell": whereas in
the previous clause meaning (b) was indicated, here it refers to meaning
(a) by switching to the simple past. That is, she put up the house for
sale, but no sale ever happened. The pun is probably unconscious, since
English speakers have come to associate both meanings with the lexeme
"sell", so the switch is probably mostly unconscious.
[...]
> > Hmm. I wonder if it helps to construct more elaborate contexts in
> > which such constructions might used in my conlang, to help tease out
> > the exact meaning:
> >
> > 1) A king is sitting in his court, and is about to send out an envoy
> > to a nearby diplomatic ally in order to establish important trade
> > relations, when his attendants bring news that their mortal enemies,
> > the Ahripf tribe, are on the move, and are likely to cross the path
> > of the envoy. The king thinks for a while, then says: "We will send
> > the envoy (indicative); let the enemy cross our path
> > (imperative/hortative)!" That is, he decides that it would serve his
> > goals whether the envoy manages to evade the enemy and establish
> > contact with the ally, or gets attacked and thereby gives him an
> > excuse to retaliate against the enemy.
> >
> > 2) A young explorer is about to set off on his spaceship to an
> > unknown, uncharted region of space, and his mother tells him to be
> > careful, since there have been rumors of monstrous 2-eyed beings
> > inhabiting that space who have violent inclinations. He answers, "I
> > will still fly out there (indicative), let dangers and 2-eyed
> > monstrosities come (imperative)!" That is, dangers and threats do
> > not concern him as much as his desire to explore the unknown.
> >
> > 3) A prisoner-of-war is about to be executed at the gallows. He is
> > given a final chance to defect to his captors' cause. But he is
> > unshaken, and says, "I stand for my country's cause (indicative),
> > beat me and execute me (imperative)!" That is, he refuses to betray
> > his cause, even if his captors will beat him and execute him.
> >
> > 4) A child is sitting at the dinner table, and is told to eat up his
> > vegetables otherwise he will get no candy. He says, "I won't eat
> > them (indicative); take the candy away (imperative)!" That is, he'd
> > rather not eat the vegetables even if that means he has to give up
> > the candy. His brother, on the other hand, says, "I want the candy
> > (indicative), let me eat the vegetables (imperative)!" -- that is,
> > he wants to get the candy, even if it means he has to eat those
> > yucky vegetables.
> >
>
> Those are some interesting and funny examples! I especially like the
> first one, since it introduces a constellation we haven't talked about
> before, i.e. a situation where both the occurrence of "action 1" and
> its non-occurrence can be interpreted as an advantage. That means that
> the agent doesn't have to worry about whether it takes place or not
> because he is in a win-win situation. I'm not sure if you're moving
> beyond the inconsequential category there, though: after all, it's no
> longer true that the agent doesn't care about which of the two
> possibilities becomes true, but that he'd welcome either one; his
> attitude is positive towards both of them, not indifferent. An
> interesting borderline case which could become visible in the
> morphology if your conlang should develop attitude markers or the
> like.
Right, with that example I was trying to get at the underlying thought
of this construction, which is that the agent doesn't care / doesn't
have to worry / is indifferent to the (potential) action. I suppose the
"doesn't have to worry" bit might be stretching the concept of
inconsequentiality a little.
> I'd say that the second example works the same way as your earlier
> examples: the mere thought of monsters is not enough to thwart his
> plans. The third example includes both interpretations - I'd say that
> for "beat" it works like the prototypical inconsequential (you beat me
> - I still stand for my country's cause), but for "execute" it
> obviously has to work along the lines of "Come what may...", so this
> short sentence mixes the two possible aspects of the inconsequential.
I suppose one could say that the indicative/imperative construction
encompasses both aspects of the inconsequential, and perhaps a little
more (as in the first example)?
> The fourth one is still undecided for me - both aspects could work for
> the child's thinking. The brother, however, doesn't use the
> inconsequential at all but instead offers a simple conclusion to the
> given premises: "I want the candy" + "I'll have to eat the vegetables
> in order to get the candy" --> "I'll eat the vegetables" - no surprise
> or evasion of expected consequences there.
[...]
Hmm. I guess another aspect of what the brother said is that the use of
the indicative/imperative construction indicates the overriding of the
reluctance to eat vegetables by the desired longer-term goal of
obtaining the candy. The idea of overriding seems to explain (2)-(4),
though (1) seems to be an odd one out from this viewpoint. Though one
way of looking at it might be, that there is an implicit expectation of
the king's attendants that the news of the enemy's move should cause him
to hesitate sending the envoy, so his use of the indicative-imperative
construction is to emphasize the overriding/overturning of this
expectation.
T
--
Questions are the beginning of intelligence, but the fear of God is the
beginning of wisdom.
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: "Even if"
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" douglaskol...@hotmail.com
Date: Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:44 am ((PDT))
> Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 22:05:49 +0200
> From: purereasonrevoluz...@web.de
> Subject: Re: Fwd: "Even if"
> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
> 2013/7/22 H. S. Teoh hst...@quickfur.ath.cx
> > On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 04:47:38PM +0200, Lisa Weißbach wrote:
> > > 2013/7/19 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>
> > > > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 10:34:09AM +0200, Lisa Weißbach wrote:
> > [...]
> > > > 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?).
> ... By the way, I've actually encountered a very
> similar construction in English (similar to yours about learning Russian)!
> It's from a dialogue of a TV series:
> A: So she was planning to sell the house?
> B: Oh, she was always selling it - never did.
> As a non-native speaker, I always had problems understanding this last
> sentence - after all, "she was selling it" is in the past tense, so the
> action of selling must already have taken place! But then, a seminar on
> contrastive grammar opened my eyes, and I started to see that "she was
> selling it" highlights the progressive (imperfective) aspect instead of the
> past tense and is, in this aspect, very similar to "she was going to sell
> it". Quite an epiphany for someone in their second semester.
At the risk of triggering a usage thread, I'm happy for your epiphany, but I
don't think you need to take your non-native speaker status out behind the shed
for having problems with B's utterance. I hardly find the meaning immediately
transparent and to get to an interpretation of, "Oh, it seemed she always had
it up for sale on the market, but never succeeded in selling it." requires me
to fill in a whole lot of backstory that isn't necessarily there as it's
written here. Nothing wrong with context-bound utterances, mind. I'm just
saying I have problems with sentence B, too. :) Kou
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3.1. Re: Rolling your R's
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 8:43 am ((PDT))
On Mon, 22 Jul 2013 10:57:37 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> Whoa! So you're saying that they have 9 phonemes just from /t d r/
> alone? That's pretty impressive... and here I thought my alien
> conlang's [r]/[R\_0] contrast was "special". Anadewism. :)
Three seems to be the limit for rhotics:
Toda (Dravidian) has alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex
Edo (Niger-Congo) has approximant, voiced fricative, and voiceless
fricative
Quite a few Australian languages have approximant, trill, and retroflex
> On that note, what exactly is the /Å/ sound in the Czech name DvoÅak?
> On Wikipedia it's described as some kind of raised alveolar
> non-sonorant trill. At first I thought non-sonorant meant that it was
> voiceless, but then it says it has both voiced and unvoiced
> allophones, so what's a non-sonorant trill??
Ladefoged and Maddieson describe it as a laminal trill â made with the
blade of the tongue instead of the point â which tails off into a
fricative, often voiceless! The spectrogram for one speaker shows two
taps and a much longer period of friction. Some speakers just do the
fricative.
Messages in this topic (40)
________________________________________________________________________
3.2. Re: Rolling your R's
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 9:43 am ((PDT))
Is it just me, or they really pronounce the "d" of "aplastado",
"espinado", etc. as laminar alveolar flaps in this song (Corazón
Espinado)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFO0Nrr5z-U
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/7/23 David McCann <da...@polymathy.plus.com>:
> On Mon, 22 Jul 2013 10:57:37 -0700
> "H. S. Teoh" <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
>
>> Whoa! So you're saying that they have 9 phonemes just from /t d r/
>> alone? That's pretty impressive... and here I thought my alien
>> conlang's [r]/[R\_0] contrast was "special". Anadewism. :)
>
> Three seems to be the limit for rhotics:
> Toda (Dravidian) has alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex
> Edo (Niger-Congo) has approximant, voiced fricative, and voiceless
> fricative
> Quite a few Australian languages have approximant, trill, and retroflex
>
>> On that note, what exactly is the /Å/ sound in the Czech name DvoÅak?
>> On Wikipedia it's described as some kind of raised alveolar
>> non-sonorant trill. At first I thought non-sonorant meant that it was
>> voiceless, but then it says it has both voiced and unvoiced
>> allophones, so what's a non-sonorant trill??
>
> Ladefoged and Maddieson describe it as a laminal trill â made with the
> blade of the tongue instead of the point â which tails off into a
> fricative, often voiceless! The spectrogram for one speaker shows two
> taps and a much longer period of friction. Some speakers just do the
> fricative.
Messages in this topic (40)
________________________________________________________________________
3.3. Re: Rolling your R's
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 11:14 am ((PDT))
Spanish, when sung, often gets distorted...:-) To my ears, he's just doing the
normal [D] (as in Engl. the, there) pronunciation of intervocalic /d/. The fact
that his mouth is wide open may have something to do with it.
As you probably know, in colloquial ~fast speech, Span. intervoc. /d/ [D] is
often dropped entirely-- aplastado = [aplas'ta.o]
________________________________
From: Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2013 12:42 PM
Subject: Re: Rolling your R's
Is it just me, or they really pronounce the "d" of "aplastado",
"espinado", etc. as laminar alveolar flaps in this song (Corazón
Espinado)?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFO0Nrr5z-U
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (40)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. ping
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 12:05 pm ((PDT))
Is the list broken?
If it isn't please tell me so offlist!
/bpj
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: ping
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" danny.c.bow...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 12:08 pm ((PDT))
I just tried to email you offline, but got an error message stating your
mailbox is too full...I suspect that may be the problem.
This will likely prevent you from getting this message as well...
2013/7/23 BPJ <b...@melroch.se>
> Is the list broken?
>
> If it isn't please tell me so offlist!
>
> /bpj
>
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
4c. Re: ping
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx
Date: Tue Jul 23, 2013 12:10 pm ((PDT))
On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 09:05:25PM +0200, BPJ wrote:
> Is the list broken?
>
> If it isn't please tell me so offlist!
[...]
I tried emailing you off-list, but it bounced because your mailbox is
full. So I'm posting here on the list with the hope that perhaps, you
will see this message in the list archives. The bounce message was that
your mailbox quota has been exceeded. That's probably why you aren't
seeing list messages. :)
T
--
It's bad luck to be superstitious. -- YHL
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
4d. Re: ping
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:41 am ((PDT))
Thanks guys! I'm subscribed thru gmail too so I got your replies on my
phone. I also saw an alert from gmail that they can't forward for the same
reason. Oddly there seems not to be any mail to fetch all the same. I've
texted the provider's support so hopefully they'll come up with something.
I guess that as a last resort I could try to delete and then recreate the
account. I'll see what's happening till I get home. Gah I hate cpanel!
/bpj
Den tisdagen den 23:e juli 2013 skrev H. S. Teoh:
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 09:05:25PM +0200, BPJ wrote:
> > Is the list broken?
> >
> > If it isn't please tell me so offlist!
> [...]
>
> I tried emailing you off-list, but it bounced because your mailbox is
> full. So I'm posting here on the list with the hope that perhaps, you
> will see this message in the list archives. The bounce message was that
> your mailbox quota has been exceeded. That's probably why you aren't
> seeing list messages. :)
>
>
> T
>
> --
> It's bad luck to be superstitious. -- YHL
>
Messages in this topic (4)
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