There are 5 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Ṫirdonic, my first serious conlang
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2a. Re: Teacher-Professor distinction in nat and conlangs
From: Leonardo Castro
2b. Re: Teacher-Professor distinction in nat and conlangs
From: C. Brickner
3a. Re: inflection of metonyms
From: C. Brickner
4a. Re: Ṫirdonic, my first serious conlang
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
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1a. Re: Ṫirdonic, my first serious conlang
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Thu Sep 12, 2013 6:56 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Thursday 12 September 2013 02:09:38 Jyri Lehtinen wrote:
> [Anthony Miles:]
> > OTOH, Yash has indicated that this is a proto-language. Proto-languages
> > often do look artificially regular thanks to the disappearance of certain
> > irregularities from all attested branches. If the original immigrants
> > were small in number, but derived from an alliance of even smaller
> > groups, one could get a highly regular language. Or, if the case endings
> > were recently derived from clitics/particles, there could be a high
> > degree of regularity. I am interested to see how irregularities develop
> > in the daughter languages!
Yes. Reconstructed proto-languages are *models* of languages
of the distant past, and can be expected to miss features that
for some reason did not survive in any daughter language. Like
any model, they are simpler than the real thing.
But there are some very regular natlangs around, such as Turkish
or AFAIK Quechua. The main problem with the Ṫirdonic morphology
seems to me not to be excessive regularity, but underuse of zero
morphemes. Paradigms usually contain "unmarked" values (singular
number, nominative/absolutive case, 3rd person, present tense,
indicative mood, active voice etc.) which are usually, especially
in agglutinating languages, marked by zero, i.e. absence of an
overt morpheme. This has the effect that most forms in actual
usage carry much less affixal material than theoretically possible
in the language as most of the affixes are zero. In Ṫirdonic,
most unmarked categories have an overt morpheme expressing it,
leading to excessively long forms.
> Or to be nitpicky, it's used as a proto-language. If you are developing a
> language with the sole purpose of deriving daughter languages and
> explaining irregularities in them, you don't have a need to describe a
> realistic amount or irregularity. You might even decide not to develop the
> language fully.
Fair. Many proto-languages are only incompletely known, such
as Proto-Uralic (only about 400 lexemes and a fragmentary
morphology).
> This is close to my own strategy, as I mostly bother
> nailing down such features in a proto-language which have reflexes in the
> daughters. I can certainly describe more features in the proto-language as
> the work goes on, but there's the possibility of doing that only on the
> basis of need.
I basically do the same.
> There are still places in languages, though, which are likely to preserve
> irregularities for ages. Following Padraic, pronoun systems are an
> excellent example of this. For example, after restructuring the case system
> of a language, maybe by agglutinating adpositions on the nouns, the
> pronouns are highly likely to still preserve at least parts of the old case
> system.
A correct observation. Irregularities can last very long in
forms that are frequently used, such as pronouns. This is
because frequently used forms are memorized better than rare
ones. (Hint: The reason why language learning materials often
resort to such contorted example sentences is that many of the
most commonly used word forms are irregular in many languages.)
--
... 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 (4)
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2a. Re: Teacher-Professor distinction in nat and conlangs
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Sep 12, 2013 7:55 am ((PDT))
2013/9/11 Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <tsela...@gmail.com>:
[...]
>> Many French people I have met usually find strange that university
>> "teachers" are called "professor" in Brazil, even young Master
>> students working as substitutes ("professor substituto").
>>
>>
> That's because in France, as well as in the Netherlands and I believe in
> most (all?) Western European universities (and I believe the US have
> similar rules, although I'm not sure about that), "professor" is a title
> you must earn through your work (like "doctor" is a title you can only use
> if you have a Ph.D.), rather than a job description. In fact, it's
> completely unrelated to whether you're even teaching at all, instead being
> dependent on the level of your research work and complex university
> politics (at least as I understood it when I was in uni). In fact, you can
> even get stripped of your professorial title in case of some forms of
> misconduct (I actually know someone who was a professor at the lab I was
> working in in 2001-2003 --attached to the University of Delft-- who's been
> stripped of his title since then. I don't know the exact reasons why he
> lost his title of professor, but I can tell you from my experience with him
> that it was long due...)
Actually, even some Brazilians think I'm too young to be "professor"
in a university, and many think I'm too young to have a Dr title as
well. Some people think I'm a physician (Dr) and if I say that I'm an
PhD, they become even more astonished, because they think that PhD is
some kind of "foreign post-doc title" that only great genius, just
like those sci-fi movies genius, have. That's because the title "PhD"
doesn't exist in Brazilian education system.
But even being so much easy to be called "professor" in Brazil, most
university professors are still really older than 40. But, since
Lula's Reuni program, there have been more young professors in
Brazilian universities.
But I'm "professor" (teacher) since I was 19. I was just an
"undergraduate" student ("estudante de graduação"), but there was a
shortage of true Physics teacher in remote places. And, as it was an
adult education secondary course, most students were older than me.
>> I have to explain that I'm kind of their "maître de conférence",
>> otherwise they can't believe that a 32 years old guy can be a
>> professor .
>>
>>
> Yeah, getting a title of professor before the age of 40 is actually
> considered quite a feat. Most people who get it only get it after 20 to 30
> years of experience in their field of study (which starts only *after* they
> got their Ph.D.).
So, I think that your "Professeur" is equivalent to our "Professor
Titular" or "Livre-Docente".
> Now I finally understand why a good friend of mine (a Brazilian guy working
> at the University of São Paolo, only 3 years older than me) could brag of
> having received a title of professor years ago! And me thinking he was such
> a genius! ;)
Maybe he's a genius, anyway. :-)
>
> I have a title as well BTW. Won through hard work and getting my
> university-level engineering diploma :). Maybe I should use it more often
> :P.
:-)
> --
> Ir. Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (6)
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2b. Re: Teacher-Professor distinction in nat and conlangs
Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com
Date: Thu Sep 12, 2013 2:04 pm ((PDT))
There are no schools in Sefdaania. Children are taught by their parents.
Children (and adults, for that matter) are taught special skills, such as
metalwork or weaving, by those skilled in those crafts.
Still there is a word for teach:
‘dóka’, teach
‘dókas’, teaching, instruction; recipe
‘dokóónus’, teacher
And there is a word for learn:
‘túna’, learn
‘tunóónus’, student
Charlie
----- Original Message -----
Hi!
Are there different words or concepts for "teacher" and "professor" in
your natlangs and conlangs?
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (6)
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3a. Re: inflection of metonyms
Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com
Date: Thu Sep 12, 2013 8:27 am ((PDT))
Coincidentally, "metonymy" is the Miriam-Webster word of the day.
Charlie
----- Original Message -----
Just wanted to share something interesting I overheard today. A
conversation between two of my colleagues:
"Ik heb laatst nog een wortelkanaal gehad."
"Mijn tandarts gaat binnenkort kijken naar een oude wortelkanaal."
"I had a root canal [treatment] a while ago."
"My dentist is going to examine an old root canal soon."
"Wortelkanaal" (root canal) is obviously used as a metonym for "root
canal treatment" here.
I found it interesting that "oude" (old) is inflected for the inferred
"behandeling" (treatment, common gender) instead of "wortelkanaal"
(root canal, neuter gender).
"een oud wortelkanaal" would be "an old root canal" (the anatomical part).
"een oude wortelkanaal" is "an old root canal treatment".
Strictly speaking, "root canal treatment" is itself a metonym for the
_result_ of such a treatment here.
René
Messages in this topic (2)
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4a. Re: Ṫirdonic, my first serious conlang
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:07 pm ((PDT))
> OTOH, Yash has indicated that this is a proto-language. Proto-languages often
> do
> look artificially regular thanks to the disappearance of certain
> irregularities
> from all attested branches.
Indeed, though I think part of this must come from the fact that when WE look at
proto-languages, we are looking at them / constructing them BACKWARDS. We
don't see them as one point along a continuum so much as a spring whence flows
all the descendent languages. Neither PIE nor Nostratic is anywhere close to
being
such a starting point. They are simply wayposts along the way. Another part is
our
tendency to rely on reconstructions as if they were the real thing. PIE is
*not* a
real language. It's what scholars think is pretty close to what some real
language
might have been like.
I had simply assumed that Yash's proto-language was not, like Charlie's
Senjecas,
The Original Language, so much as a language from some point in the midst of the
history of those wandering nomadic barbarians he mentions.
If we look at a proto-language from the perspective of its own speakers, we see
that it has antecedents and could very well evolve into descendants. If it
survives
the rigors of civilisation!
> If the original immigrants were small in number, but
> derived from an alliance of even smaller groups, one could get a highly
> regular
> language.
I suppose like a creole. Only Yash can answer these kinds of questions.
> Or, if the case endings were recently derived from clitics/particles,
> there could be a high degree of regularity. I am interested to see how
> irregularities develop in the daughter languages
As am I.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (4)
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