There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: /nθ/ = [nd], etc., examples?
From: BPJ
2a. Case names in split-S languages (was: subject and object covered by
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2b. Re: Case names in split-S languages (was: subject and object covered
From: David McCann
2c. Re: Case names in split-S languages (was: subject and object covered
From: George Corley
3a. What if "and" was a verb?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
3b. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
From: Garth Wallace
3c. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
From: George Corley
3d. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
From: Padraic Brown
3e. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
From: Garth Wallace
3f. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
From: H. S. Teoh
4.1. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
From: George Corley
4.2. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
From: Anthony Miles
5a. LF Someone with The Tolkien Reader
From: David Peterson
5b. Re: LF Someone with The Tolkien Reader
From: Jim Henry
5c. Re: LF Someone with The Tolkien Reader
From: David Peterson
Messages
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1a. Re: /nθ/ = [nd], etc., examples?
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 7:13 am ((PDT))
2013-08-21 21:51, Matthew Boutilier skrev:
> aha, ok, thank you both. i'll go ahead and incorporate it.
>
> the ON example reminded me of Gothic which, now that i think of it, does
> something similar; /d/ (phonetically [ð], as in PGmc) devoices to [θ] at
> word's end or, e.g., before *-s* (and is written with the þ-letter), but
> it's written with the d-letter (which i guess in this case means it's
> phonetically [d]) when following nasals.
>
> e.g *g**ōþs*** 'good (masc. nom. sg.)' < *gōdaz
> but *winds* 'wind (nom. sg.)' < *windaz
The difference is that in Gothic [d] is an allophone of /ð/
with /ð/ and /þ/ contrasting between vowels, while in ON
- */þ/ after vowels and /r/ had become [ð],
- */lVd nVd/ > /lþ nþ/ [lð nð] > /ld nd/,
- */lþ nþ/ > /ll nn/,
- */llVd nnVd/ > /ld nd/
- */þ/ next to voiceless consonats > /t/
so you have one phoneme /þ/ with allophones [þ] and [ð] and
one phoneme /d/, but they contrasted only word/root-initially
so you have
Old Norse Younger runes would spell
---------- -------------- -------------------------
G. broþar bróðir <bruþir>
*talidó talða > talda <talþa, talta>
*wanidó vanða > vanda <vanþa, vanta>
*kannidó kennda <kanta>
G. gulþ gull <kul>
G. finþan finna <fina>
*gladidó gladda <klata>
*auþión eyða <auþa>
*auþidó eydda <auta>
G. qiþan kveða <kuiþą>
kveð þú kvettu <kuittu>
(NB forms from memory!)
/bpj
>
> i think Gothic /b/ and /g/ behave similarly. this is probably the natlang
> whence my subconscious got this idea to begin with.
>
> thanks!
> matt
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 1:58 PM, BPJ <b...@melroch.se> wrote:
>
>> 2013-08-20 02:17, Matthew Boutilier skrev:
>>
>>> is there a natlang precedent for fricatives having allophones as voiced
>>> stops (perhaps via voiced fricatives) when following a *nasal*?
>>>
>>>
>>> basically, i want this for a conlang:
>>> /nf/ = [mb]
>>> /nθ/ = [nd]
>>> /nx/ = [ŋg]
>>>
>>> this has nothing to do with the position of the stress, so although my
>>> brain keeps returning to Verner's Law, it's totally different. and, it's
>>> independent of any general plosivization of fricatives.
>>>
>>> and, while we're here, would [b] really work as the allophone of [f], even
>>> though [f] is not bilabial?
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>> matt
>>>
>>>
>> That's basically what you get in (later) Old Norse:
>> The phonemes /θ/ and /d/ only contrast word/stem-initially.
>> Elsewhere they merge as [ð] except that
>> - before voiceless sounds it gets devoiced,
>> - when geminated it's [d:],
>> - after nasals and /l/ [d] rather than [ð] occurs.
>>
>> /bpj
>>
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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________________________________________________________________________
2a. Case names in split-S languages (was: subject and object covered by
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 7:33 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Monday 19 August 2013 18:03:48 Allan Bomhard wrote:
> [...]
> While there is agreement in case naming in accusative-type and
> ergative-type systems, there is no agreement in the literature on what to
> name S1 ~ S2 in split-S type systems, and it is sometimes confusing for
> non-specialists to figure out what is being described when reading
> different authors.
This is perhaps because most split-S languages, especially in
North America, are head-marking and do not use case to mark
the subject roles. Every author just uses her own convention;
for my fluid-S conlang Old Albic, I use the terms "agentive"
and "objective".
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (18)
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2b. Re: Case names in split-S languages (was: subject and object covered
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 8:33 am ((PDT))
On Monday 19 August 2013 18:03:48 Allan Bomhard wrote:
>
> While there is agreement in case naming in accusative-type and
> ergative-type systems, there is no agreement in the literature on
> what to name S1 ~ S2 in split-S type systems, and it is sometimes
> confusing for non-specialists to figure out what is being described
> when reading different authors.
> One of the better handbooks on these matters is Robert Dixon's 1994
> book Ergativity(Cambridge University Press), though it can be a bit
> technical.
I like F. R. Palmer's "Grammatical roles and relations". He uses the
term "agentive system" and calls the cases Agentive and Patientive.
(I hope I send this to the right place: the first attempt went to Alan.
My mousing is getting erratic!)
Messages in this topic (18)
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2c. Re: Case names in split-S languages (was: subject and object covered
Posted by: "George Corley" gacor...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 8:49 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhieme...@web.de>wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Monday 19 August 2013 18:03:48 Allan Bomhard wrote:
>
> > [...]
> > While there is agreement in case naming in accusative-type and
> > ergative-type systems, there is no agreement in the literature on what to
> > name S1 ~ S2 in split-S type systems, and it is sometimes confusing for
> > non-specialists to figure out what is being described when reading
> > different authors.
>
> This is perhaps because most split-S languages, especially in
> North America, are head-marking and do not use case to mark
> the subject roles. Every author just uses her own convention;
> for my fluid-S conlang Old Albic, I use the terms "agentive"
> and "objective".
>
I copied Okuna's ergative/nominative terminology for Aeruyo (though cases
are nowhere near as complex, of course).
Messages in this topic (18)
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________________________________________________________________________
3a. What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 7:49 am ((PDT))
In the series "there's a reason why it's called ANADEW", I give you,
courtesy of William Annis via Twitter, the following article, entitled "The
verbs for 'and' in Walman, a Toricelli language of Papua New Guinea":
http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/BrownDryerWalmanAnd.pdf
As its title indicates, this article discusses the morphology, syntax and
semantics of two verbs (complete with polypersonal agreement and
morphologically indistinguishable from other transitive verbs in the
language) of the Walman language that are used to *coordinate noun
phrases*. In other words, verbs that literally mean "and", something
typologically extremely weird :).
The article is a bit long, but it's really worth reading. It's also written
in such a way that it gives us also a lot of insights on how serial verb
constructions work in languages where verbs have personal agreement
markers, besides the main discussion about the "and" verbs (and it makes
the arguments that such verbs could come into being only because of the
existence of serial verb constructions in Walman).
The nice part about this article is that Walman is a rather easy language
to describe, in that it has little morphology, and its phonology is also
relatively simple (although the language allows very complex onset
clusters, one example in the article has an onset cluster with 6
consonants!). The article also contains *many* well-glossed examples.
Reading about those "and" verbs blew my mind, and it's a gold mine for
those who want to learn how different natural languages can be from what
we're used to.
A few things that I really like from Walman:
- The "and" verbs work by treating the two noun phrases they conjoin as
their subject and object respectively, and are marked for those. Since
Walman is pro-drop, both noun phrases can be omitted, and the "and" verbs
alone are then used as noun phrases. The result is something that can be
treated as a "quasi-pronoun" (basically "me and you" to mean "us") that
complements the simple personal pronominal system of the language. This is
not unlike how Basque has turned the headless relative clause _dena_: "that
which is, what there is" into a pronoun meaning "everyone, everything,
all". It's great as an example of how languages extend some of their
features in ways that are perfectly logical once explained but seem weird
at first.
- Not related to the "and" verbs, but the article mentions in its
introductory discussion about the Walman language how a way to form
diminutives in the language is to *change the agreement marker on the
verb*! In other words, to mark diminutives of the subject or object, Walman
doesn't change them, it changes the verb!
- The object affixes are normally suffixes (except the first person, second
person and reflexive/reciprocal, which are prefixes), except for a small
amount of verbs, where they are infixes.
- Serial verb constructions, everywhere!
So I really advise everyone to read that article. It's an eye-opener! And
for you out there with naturalistic conlangs that have a verb for "and",
you can finally come out of the closet: that feature is indeed
naturalistic! (in other words, who here has been crazy enough to have that
same feature in a conlang? ;P)
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" gwa...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 9:25 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:49 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<tsela...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In the series "there's a reason why it's called ANADEW", I give you,
> courtesy of William Annis via Twitter, the following article, entitled "The
> verbs for 'and' in Walman, a Toricelli language of Papua New Guinea":
> http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/BrownDryerWalmanAnd.pdf
>
> As its title indicates, this article discusses the morphology, syntax and
> semantics of two verbs (complete with polypersonal agreement and
> morphologically indistinguishable from other transitive verbs in the
> language) of the Walman language that are used to *coordinate noun
> phrases*. In other words, verbs that literally mean "and", something
> typologically extremely weird :).
>
> The article is a bit long, but it's really worth reading. It's also written
> in such a way that it gives us also a lot of insights on how serial verb
> constructions work in languages where verbs have personal agreement
> markers, besides the main discussion about the "and" verbs (and it makes
> the arguments that such verbs could come into being only because of the
> existence of serial verb constructions in Walman).
>
> The nice part about this article is that Walman is a rather easy language
> to describe, in that it has little morphology, and its phonology is also
> relatively simple (although the language allows very complex onset
> clusters, one example in the article has an onset cluster with 6
> consonants!). The article also contains *many* well-glossed examples.
>
> Reading about those "and" verbs blew my mind, and it's a gold mine for
> those who want to learn how different natural languages can be from what
> we're used to.
>
> A few things that I really like from Walman:
> - The "and" verbs work by treating the two noun phrases they conjoin as
> their subject and object respectively, and are marked for those. Since
> Walman is pro-drop, both noun phrases can be omitted, and the "and" verbs
> alone are then used as noun phrases. The result is something that can be
> treated as a "quasi-pronoun" (basically "me and you" to mean "us") that
> complements the simple personal pronominal system of the language. This is
> not unlike how Basque has turned the headless relative clause _dena_: "that
> which is, what there is" into a pronoun meaning "everyone, everything,
> all". It's great as an example of how languages extend some of their
> features in ways that are perfectly logical once explained but seem weird
> at first.
> - Not related to the "and" verbs, but the article mentions in its
> introductory discussion about the Walman language how a way to form
> diminutives in the language is to *change the agreement marker on the
> verb*! In other words, to mark diminutives of the subject or object, Walman
> doesn't change them, it changes the verb!
> - The object affixes are normally suffixes (except the first person, second
> person and reflexive/reciprocal, which are prefixes), except for a small
> amount of verbs, where they are infixes.
> - Serial verb constructions, everywhere!
>
> So I really advise everyone to read that article. It's an eye-opener! And
> for you out there with naturalistic conlangs that have a verb for "and",
> you can finally come out of the closet: that feature is indeed
> naturalistic! (in other words, who here has been crazy enough to have that
> same feature in a conlang? ;P)
> --
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Wow, and here I rejected my idea of using a verb for "if" as unrealistic.
Messages in this topic (6)
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3c. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "George Corley" gacor...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 9:32 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Garth Wallace <gwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wow, and here I rejected my idea of using a verb for "if" as unrealistic.
>
Hmmm, what would the agreement morphology look like for your "if"? "If"
controls a clause rather than NPs, so if your verbs have any agreement
morphology you'd have to figure out how "if" with a clausal compliment
works there.
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 11:28 am ((PDT))
> In the series "there's a reason why it's called ANADEW", I give you,
> courtesy of William Annis via Twitter, the following article, entitled "The
> verbs for 'and' in Walman, a Toricelli language of Papua New
> Guinea":
> http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/BrownDryerWalmanAnd.pdf
Wow, fascinating! I have long thought that some of the various ligating
"particles" that
end up peppering some of my conlangs may be exhibiting some verbal tendencies.
Perhaps, after reading this, I'll just come out of the conjunctival closet and
admit that
those particles and!
But in all seriousness, if we look at the True Etymology of the English word,
we find
exactly the same situation! I know, I know, èvery dictionary has some pat answer
regarding the lowly word "and", but now I think it's time the world accepted
the word's
true meaning and function. Namely, it's root is *ag- > ah- > a- plus the usual
Germanic
3pl ending, -nd, having become frozen in the daughter languages. a- + -nd =
"they work
together". Now let's see if we can't make an -r middle out of "or"... ;)))
Padraic
> As its title indicates, this article discusses the morphology, syntax and
> semantics of two verbs (complete with polypersonal agreement and
> morphologically indistinguishable from other transitive verbs in the
> language) of the Walman language that are used to *coordinate noun
> phrases*. In other words, verbs that literally mean "and", something
> typologically extremely weird :).
>
> The article is a bit long, but it's really worth reading. It's also
> written
> in such a way that it gives us also a lot of insights on how serial verb
> constructions work in languages where verbs have personal agreement
> markers, besides the main discussion about the "and" verbs (and it
> makes
> the arguments that such verbs could come into being only because of the
> existence of serial verb constructions in Walman).
>
> The nice part about this article is that Walman is a rather easy language
> to describe, in that it has little morphology, and its phonology is also
> relatively simple (although the language allows very complex onset
> clusters, one example in the article has an onset cluster with 6
> consonants!). The article also contains *many* well-glossed examples.
>
> Reading about those "and" verbs blew my mind, and it's a gold mine
> for
> those who want to learn how different natural languages can be from what
> we're used to.
>
> A few things that I really like from Walman:
> - The "and" verbs work by treating the two noun phrases they conjoin
> as
> their subject and object respectively, and are marked for those. Since
> Walman is pro-drop, both noun phrases can be omitted, and the "and"
> verbs
> alone are then used as noun phrases. The result is something that can be
> treated as a "quasi-pronoun" (basically "me and you" to mean
> "us") that
> complements the simple personal pronominal system of the language. This is
> not unlike how Basque has turned the headless relative clause _dena_: "that
> which is, what there is" into a pronoun meaning "everyone, everything,
> all". It's great as an example of how languages extend some of their
> features in ways that are perfectly logical once explained but seem weird
> at first.
> - Not related to the "and" verbs, but the article mentions in its
> introductory discussion about the Walman language how a way to form
> diminutives in the language is to *change the agreement marker on the
> verb*! In other words, to mark diminutives of the subject or object, Walman
> doesn't change them, it changes the verb!
> - The object affixes are normally suffixes (except the first person, second
> person and reflexive/reciprocal, which are prefixes), except for a small
> amount of verbs, where they are infixes.
> - Serial verb constructions, everywhere!
>
> So I really advise everyone to read that article. It's an eye-opener! And
> for you out there with naturalistic conlangs that have a verb for
> "and",
> you can finally come out of the closet: that feature is indeed
> naturalistic! (in other words, who here has been crazy enough to have that
> same feature in a conlang? ;P)
> --
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
>
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" gwa...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 1:02 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 9:32 AM, George Corley <gacor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 11:25 AM, Garth Wallace <gwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Wow, and here I rejected my idea of using a verb for "if" as unrealistic.
>>
>
> Hmmm, what would the agreement morphology look like for your "if"? "If"
> controls a clause rather than NPs, so if your verbs have any agreement
> morphology you'd have to figure out how "if" with a clausal compliment
> works there.
The language I intended it for (Ilion) doesn't have agreement marking
on verbs. It also has a quirk that there are no complement clauses;
all subordinate clauses must be nominalized. Modal auxiliary verbs in
Ilion aren't syntactically distinct from regular verbs, and are simply
intransitive verbs where the subject is typically a nominalized noun
phrase. The idea was for a "transitive modal": the protasis was the
subject and the apodosis was the object, IIRC (I more or less
abandoned this years ago). The deductive evidential modal would
actually just be the conditional modal passivized.
Currently, I'm expressing conditions with a preposition that governs a
nominalized clause. I've played with the idea that the "transitive
modal" is something introduced by philosophers, a back-formation from
the deductive modal (which looks like it could be a passive verb), but
the preposition is the usual method.
Messages in this topic (6)
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3f. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 4:10 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 04:49:11PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
> In the series "there's a reason why it's called ANADEW", I give you,
> courtesy of William Annis via Twitter, the following article, entitled
> "The verbs for 'and' in Walman, a Toricelli language of Papua New
> Guinea":
> http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/BrownDryerWalmanAnd.pdf
>
> As its title indicates, this article discusses the morphology, syntax
> and semantics of two verbs (complete with polypersonal agreement and
> morphologically indistinguishable from other transitive verbs in the
> language) of the Walman language that are used to *coordinate noun
> phrases*. In other words, verbs that literally mean "and", something
> typologically extremely weird :).
Whoa. This is anadewism at its finest! A *verb* that serves as nominal
conjunction? Wow. "Fact is stranger than fiction", they say. :)
> The article is a bit long, but it's really worth reading. It's also
> written in such a way that it gives us also a lot of insights on how
> serial verb constructions work in languages where verbs have personal
> agreement markers, besides the main discussion about the "and" verbs
> (and it makes the arguments that such verbs could come into being only
> because of the existence of serial verb constructions in Walman).
Yeah it is kinda long. I did manage to slog through it, though, skimming
over some parts and more carefully reading others. It's certainly worth
the read, indeed. It gives a lot of juicy tidbits about how serial verb
constructions work in Walman, as well as some cool things about personal
agreement markers, among which include verbs that encode 3 different
personal agreement affixes. :)
> The nice part about this article is that Walman is a rather easy
> language to describe, in that it has little morphology, and its
> phonology is also relatively simple (although the language allows very
> complex onset clusters, one example in the article has an onset
> cluster with 6 consonants!). The article also contains *many*
> well-glossed examples.
Indeed! It also covers these strange "and-verbs" from many different
angles, including interesting uses where they can stand on their own as
a noun phrase when the pronouns are elided.
> Reading about those "and" verbs blew my mind, and it's a gold mine for
> those who want to learn how different natural languages can be from
> what we're used to.
The paper surmises that these "and"-verbs likely only arise in languages
with extensive serial verb constructions, which now makes me wonder if
Chinese has "and"-verbs too... :-P (except that they haven't yet been
noticed as such).
> A few things that I really like from Walman:
> - The "and" verbs work by treating the two noun phrases they conjoin
> as their subject and object respectively, and are marked for those.
> Since Walman is pro-drop, both noun phrases can be omitted, and the
> "and" verbs alone are then used as noun phrases. The result is
> something that can be treated as a "quasi-pronoun" (basically "me and
> you" to mean "us") that complements the simple personal pronominal
> system of the language. This is not unlike how Basque has turned the
> headless relative clause _dena_: "that which is, what there is" into a
> pronoun meaning "everyone, everything, all". It's great as an example
> of how languages extend some of their features in ways that are
> perfectly logical once explained but seem weird at first.
Yeah, this is one of my favorite examples too.
Another favorite example is how you can actually insert all sorts of
stuff between the first conjunct and the and-verb, like relative
clauses, adverbs, negators, etc., that normally can only be inserted
between the subject NP as a whole and the main verb.
> - Not related to the "and" verbs, but the article mentions in its
> introductory discussion about the Walman language how a way to form
> diminutives in the language is to *change the agreement marker on the
> verb*! In other words, to mark diminutives of the subject or object,
> Walman doesn't change them, it changes the verb!
Yeah, that was another feature that was refreshingly interesting to me.
[...]
> - Serial verb constructions, everywhere!
I really like how complex verbal meanings are broken down into very
simple verbs -- like "to take the baby out of the house" < [pick up
baby] [we go out] [at-outside-of house]. (Or something to that effect.)
The personal agreement markers on the verbs make the meaning
transparent, since it tells you exactly who is doing what in each of the
serial verbs.
> So I really advise everyone to read that article. It's an eye-opener!
> And for you out there with naturalistic conlangs that have a verb for
> "and", you can finally come out of the closet: that feature is indeed
> naturalistic! (in other words, who here has been crazy enough to have
> that same feature in a conlang? ;P)
[...]
Now it makes me wanna verbalize all sorts of stuff... like "if",
vocative markers, pronouns... :-P
This is also rather timely as currently I'm not very happy with the way
nominal conjunction has turned out in my alienlang -- it's far too
similar to English! I would turn it into an and-verb, except that the
language so far has refused to attest any verbs. It seems to be on the
opposite end of the spectrum from Walman: rather than extensive serial
verb constructions, it seems to insist on distributing verbal meaning
across NPs in the clause. (I keep holding out hope that perhaps "real"
verbs will one day reveal themselves in the lang, but that prospect is
rather dim right now.) Nevertheless, this has caused me to rethink the
possibilities. Never did I realize that nominal conjunction could be
realized in far more exotic ways than I've ever conceived! :)
Anyway, while Walman itself doesn't allow the use of an "and"-verb as
the main verb in a clause, it's not hard to imagine a conlang in which
this *is* allowed. So to express "John is with Mary" you'd say "John
ands Mary". :) Throw in tense markers, and you have a very succinct way
of saying things like "He-who-used-to-be-with-her came to town", or
"she-who-will-be-with-me has arrived". Or aspect markers, and you could
potentially express things like "He-and-I went hunting" with "and"
expressing interrupted action, meaning that I was only with him part of
the time as opposed to the whole time. Or maybe an aorist to indicate
that I was only with him for a moment while he was hunting over a period
of time. The possibilities abound!
T
--
Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue. -- Yoon Ha Lee, CONLANG
Messages in this topic (6)
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4.1. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
Posted by: "George Corley" gacor...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 10:12 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 12:09 PM, J. 'Mach' Wust <
j_mach_w...@shared-files.de> wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Aug 2013 20:02:54 +0200, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
> >
> >So it *is* quite a different phenomenon from spelling reform. It was about
> >divorcing the idea of writing from the idea of writing *in Latin*.
>
> Then why did spelling in Romances start only several centuries after
> spelling in Germanic languages? Old English had a considerable body of
> written literature, Old High German had some, in a time when Romances
> were not used but for scattered phrases. I think the reasonable
> explanation for this is that when Romance speakers were writing Latin,
> they still felt that this was their own language, in spite of the
> changes in pronunciation and grammar (which were only gradually bigger
> than the ones we observe today in English).
I don't know the history here that well, but certainly it's possible.
Chinese had a similar scenario -- writing in Classical Chinese was largely
considered just writing in Chinese. Modern speakers even superimpose modern
pronunciations on classical texts when they read them aloud (given that,
unlike Latin, there are few clues to the original pronunciation that are
accessible to laypeople). Even as Classical Chinese has fallen away, there
is still the perception that the Chinese language family is all a single
language with wildly variant dialects, and a mistaken perception that the
writing unites all dialects (in practice, most Chinese learn to write
Modern Standard Mandarin, and those "dialects" that have their own mode of
writing in characters are not entirely comprehensible to a Mandarin
speaker).
I could imagine that the same sort of thing might have occurred early in
Romance languages, only to be later obliterated by nationalism.
Nonetheless, it's not so much that writing is meant to be in a different
language, but that it should be reserved for a "higher" language. I think
Christophe's point is that writing in French or other Romance languages at
that time might be viewed the same way as writing in Ebonics would be to
many Anglophones today -- they consider it a vulgar and degenerate form of
the "pure" language, and thus reject the idea of serious writing in it.
Messages in this topic (47)
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4.2. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" mamercu...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 4:14 pm ((PDT))
>I could imagine that the same sort of thing might have occurred early in
>Romance languages, only to be later obliterated by nationalism.
>Nonetheless, it's not so much that writing is meant to be in a different
>language, but that it should be reserved for a "higher" language. I think
>Christophe's point is that writing in French or other Romance languages at
>that time might be viewed the same way as writing in Ebonics would be to
>many Anglophones today -- they consider it a vulgar and degenerate form of
>the "pure" language, and thus reject the idea of serious writing in it.
IIRC, the composer of El Cid was convinced he was writing Latin, although his
reasons may have been as much "this is literature and not trash, therefore it
must be Latin" as any linguistic criteria - the etymologies of Isidore of
Seville
don't inspire much confidence. The pre-1976 distinction in Greek between
Katheravousa (sp?) and Demotic seems to be similar, although fuzzier. Even in
English, when I compose a business letter or write something academic, I use
a higher register than when I'm talking to one of my Scouts who's a 6th grader.
Now, I must concede that my colloquial register is not much lower than my
academic one, but that's because my default vocabulary is relatively high.
Indeed, as one Ancient Egyptian said, "I know the language of the land; I do
not speak like a common man; my speech is not full of "pa's"".
Once I'm done with update of my conlang Siye, you will be able to see that
the Simayamka and the Guild of Scholars are keenly aware of such
distinctions - the "Moonies" advocate the (irregular) use of the ergative suffix
-na on a nominative-accusative pronoun mu- for disambiguation of the nominative
and accusative, while the majority of the Guild decries this usage as vulgar
and tolerates the ambiguity, at least in independent pronouns. Even in regular
nouns, the authorization (i.e. recognition of new cases) can take years.
And if you use an authorized case in a contract, that is possible
grounds for invalidation.
Messages in this topic (47)
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5a. LF Someone with The Tolkien Reader
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 4:42 pm ((PDT))
I'm looking for someone that has a physical copy of The Tolkien Reader. If you
have the actual book and would be willing to help me out with something quick
(or hopefully quick), please e-mail me offlist. Thanks!
David Peterson
LCS President
presid...@conlang.org
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (3)
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5b. Re: LF Someone with The Tolkien Reader
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 4:53 pm ((PDT))
I've got it handy.
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:41 PM, David Peterson <deda...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking for someone that has a physical copy of The Tolkien Reader. If
> you have the actual book and would be willing to help me out with something
> quick (or hopefully quick), please e-mail me offlist. Thanks!
>
> David Peterson
> LCS President
> presid...@conlang.org
> www.conlang.org
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (3)
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5c. Re: LF Someone with The Tolkien Reader
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 4:58 pm ((PDT))
Great! I'll continue offlist.
David Peterson
LCS President
presid...@conlang.org
www.conlang.org
On Aug 22, 2013, at 4:52 PM, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've got it handy.
>
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:41 PM, David Peterson <deda...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm looking for someone that has a physical copy of The Tolkien Reader. If
>> you have the actual book and would be willing to help me out with something
>> quick (or hopefully quick), please e-mail me offlist. Thanks!
>>
>> David Peterson
>> LCS President
>> presid...@conlang.org
>> www.conlang.org
>
>
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
> http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (3)
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