There are 4 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
From: Puey McCleary
1b. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
From: taliesin the storyteller
2a. Re: OT: Language in the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia.
From: Leonardo Castro
3a. Re: THEORY: Is Jespersen cycle a cycle?
From: Leonardo Castro
Messages
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1a. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "Puey McCleary" pueymccle...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 22, 2013 8:11 pm ((PDT))
I see no reason why a language can't have a verb which, more or less, means
"if." Why, just the other day I heard about a folk who live on the other
side of the Northwind who speak a language suspiciously like Esperanto.
Instead of having a Green Star, they have a Purple Penguin as a mascot (la
Purpura Pingveno). And instead of the particle "se" they have the verb
"sei."
Usually one finds "sei" forming indirect statements with the particle "ke."
These are all simple conditionals.
La Pirato seas ke si kisos la Princinon, si estos felicha.
"If the Pirate kisses the Princess, he'll be happy."
Ci seas ke ci konstruos ghin, ili venos.
"If you build it, they will come."
To form a contrary-to-fact condition, one uses the verb "sei" plus an
infinitive. In this usage, "sei" is a modal of sorts.
Mi seis esti regho de la arbaro, mi havus kronon.
"Were I king of the forest (but I wasn't), I'd have a crown (but I don't)."
Ci seas esti tiel inteligenta, kial ci ne richa?
"If you're so smart (but you're not), why aren't you rich ('cause you're
not)?"
If should be noted that, instead of the above constructions, that the
present active participle of "sei" is used to modify a subject which is
considered honored in some way. No distinction is made, in this case,
between a simple condition and a contrary-to-fact one.
Cia Mosto seanta volas kukajhon, mi bakos kukajhon.
"If Your Majesty wants pie, I shall bake pie."
Seanta Dio estas por ni, kiu povas esti kontrau ni?
"If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31)
The adverbial form of the participle, "seante," has its own usage which
shall be described in time.
Moreover, the verb "sei" is used impersonally to describe the weather.
Compare:
Estas varme.
"'Tis warm."
Seas varme, mi manghos mian chapelon.
"If 'tis warm, I'll eat my hat."
Pluvas.
"It rains."
Seas pluvante, mi bezonas pluvombrelon.
"If it rains, I'll need an umbrella."
To construct a negative condition, one uses a slightly different verb,
"nesei," for a simple condition. In this case, "nesei" is placed before
the main verb, and both take the same verbal ending.
Ci neseas destruas la Ringon, Meztero estas kondamnita.
"If you do not destroy the Ring, Middle-earth is doomed."
A negative contrary-to-fact condition is formed with the verb "malsei." It
comes after the verb, but it also takes the same ending.
Me ekdormos malseos, la klaunoj ne manghos min.
"Should I not fall asleep (though that's not likely), the clowns will not
eat me (though I doubt it)."
Finally it should be noted that "sei" can also mean "to wonder whether."
Since it takes an entire clause as its object, the subject of this
subordinate clause is in the accusative case.
Mi seas purpurajn pingvenojn dancas.
"I wonder whether purple penguins dance."
If the subordinate clause itself contains an object, usually one can tell
the intended meaning from context.
Mi seas homon mordus hundon.
"I wonder whether the dog would bite the man."
Though sometimes one just has to guess.
Mi estas seanta la Piraton kisis la Princinon.
"I am wondering whether the Pirate kissed the Princess."
"I am wondering whether the Princess kissed the Pirate."
The verb "sei" has provided this language with few other forms lacking in
the Green Star variety of Esperanto. The most salient of these are:
Se-plene
"Provided that" ("full of ifs")
Se-eble
"Perhaps, maybe" ("if-able")
Se-se
"Hypothetically" ("iffy")
Seanto
"Philosopher" ("one who ifs.")
A most popular form of "sei" has sprung up in the speech of the young folk
of this community. For "goodbye!" the new word is "seante!" to which one
replies "seate!" The idea is that "seante" is short for "Mi seanta vidos
cin!" the formal way of expressing "Mi seas ke mi vidos cin!," "If I see
you!" Likewise, in some manner, "seate" is supposed to be short for "Mi
seanta estos vidata de ci!" the formal way of saying "Mi seas ke mi estos
vidata de ci!" "If I'm seen by you!" Oh, those crazy young people, with
their hoola-hoops and iced cream sundaes and odd verbs for "if."
Alas, as of yet I have no idea how the conjunctive verbs work:
Kaji, "and, but"
Aui, "(either) ... or"
Sedi, "and/or"
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm to search for the fabled land where the folk
speak a version of Volapük, but completely in adverbs and sneezes.
Seante!
On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:09 PM, H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 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 (8)
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1b. Re: What if "and" was a verb?
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" taliesin-conl...@nvg.org
Date: Fri Aug 23, 2013 12:28 am ((PDT))
On 2013-08-22 18:25, Garth Wallace wrote:
> 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 :).
>
> Wow, and here I rejected my idea of using a verb for "if" as unrealistic.
Warning, AFMCL ahead.
Taruven's "if" is a (defective, complemented) verb. Clause-"and" started
out the same way. The way to say that something is "equal" or
"different" involves complemented verbs. All odd bits of Taruven is due
to/hails from either complemented-verbs or stative verbs, to the degree
that it has been suggested that proto-Taruven consisted of *only*
complemented verbs and statives.
t.
Messages in this topic (8)
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2a. Re: OT: Language in the 2009 Constitution of Bolivia.
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Aug 23, 2013 5:15 am ((PDT))
2013/8/20 Padraic Brown <elemti...@yahoo.com>:
> I fully agree that a road running along the border is probably not a good
> idea
> too many cans of worms there. A solution I would propose is to simply provide
> select Bolivian transport companies with some kind of pass that allows
> screened
> drivers & trucks to cross the border with minimal delay, allows these same
> truckers
> and their rigs to stop and rest at sanctioned truck stops along the assigned
> route and
> allows the goods to be brought into / out of the port with minimal headache.
> I'm not
> saying it needs to be free, and I'm not saying these drivers have free
> license to go
> anywhere in Peru they wish to go. A simple GPS monitor on the truck, the
> trailer
> and the driver ought to be sufficient to ensure that none of them gets too
> far away
> from where they're allowed to be. Obviously Peru ought to be justly
> compensated for the imposition, so some sort of equitable payment structure
> could
> be worked out. A potential phase II could be some level of actual Bolivian
> port authority
> within selected Peruvian ports. Perhaps they could operate some kind of joint
> oversight,
> along with Peru, which would further facilitate Bolivia's needs and would
> link up with the
> road corridor already in place. Ultimately, the goal as I see it would be a
> system
> whereby Bolivia makes use of and pays for Peruvian infrastructure a kind of
> minimal rental, if you will but where Bolivia works with Peru in regards to
> ordinary
> operations and exercises its own oversight over its own trucking in the
> region. The solution
> would recognise Bolivia's needs and provide a means for them to quickly and
> inexpensively
> move goods to and fro; it would also respect Peru's sovereignty and right to
> determine who
> can cross the border. Violating transport companies would, naturally, lose
> their priviledge,
> and would also suffer consequences in both countries.
>
> So, not quite an entirely open border, and this would not allow just anyone to
> cross; neither a cession of national territory nor a complex project that
> would
> require lots of money to build (since the roads and port facilities already
> exist).
> No one loses face, everyone benefits and everyone looks good to boot: Bolivia
> gets a port and easy access; Peru gets some cash and looks good on the
> regional
> and world stage; I get a Nobel Prize for solving the problem! ;))))))))))
>
> Padraic
What is preventing you from winning a Nobel Prize might be the article
267 of the Bolivian Constitution that claims "sovereignty" over the
territory that allows Bolivian access to the sea:
"Artículo 267
I. El Estado boliviano declara su derecho irrenunciable e
imprescriptible sobre el territorio que le dé acceso al océano
Pacífico y su espacio marítimo.
II. La solución efectiva al diferendo marítimo a través de medios
pacíficos y el ejercicio pleno de la soberanía sobre dicho territorio
constituyen objetivos permanentes e irrenunciables del Estado
boliviano."
>
>> Até mais!
>>
>> Leonardo
Messages in this topic (9)
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3a. Re: THEORY: Is Jespersen cycle a cycle?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Aug 23, 2013 5:48 am ((PDT))
Yesterday, I noted that something similar to the Jespersen cycle might
have happened to the present continuous tense, in my 1st language and
probably in English and other languages too.
When I was going home, I called my wife to say "I'm going home"
("estou indo para casa"), but that "I'm going" was first understood
that I was already to leave my work in a few minutes.
Similarly, other words whose literal interpretation is more close to
"now" or "right now" are frequently used in the sense of "in a few
minutes", probably because people abuse them for their spouses and
parents not to keep asking them on the phone "why aren't they already
coming".
What is more strange is that words that should reinforce the sense of
"now" sometimes just make clearer the sense of "soon". In pt-BR, "Já!"
is "Now!", but "Já, já..." is almost surely "Soon...". "Agora" is
"now", but "agora mesmo" is also "soon".
Abuse of the word "literally" seems to be moving its meaning towards
"figuratively":
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/15/living/literally-definition
So, it seems that the Jespersen cycle is a case of a broader
phenomenon. Is there already a name for this type of "weaking of
meaning" that can lead to change of meaning?
What if the word "negative" is supressed from the following text?
"The history of negative expressions in various languages makes us
witness the following curious fluctuation: the original negative
adverb is first weakened, then found insufficient and therefore
strengthened, generally through some additional word, and this in turn
may be felt as the negative proper and may then in the course of time
be subject to the same development as the original word."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jespersen's_Cycle
http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/dwew2/network_meeting_handout_english.pdf
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (12)
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