There are 12 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1a. Re: Gateway to conscripts (was: Intro to Conlanging by John McWhorte    
    From: Matthew George

2a. A Small Interactive Conlanging Project of mine    
    From: Nico Baier
2b. Re: A Small Interactive Conlanging Project of mine    
    From: Alex Fink

3a. Spoken Indo-European    
    From: Andrew Jarrette
3b. Re: Spoken Indo-European    
    From: Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro
3c. Re: Spoken Indo-European    
    From: Padraic Brown
3d. Re: Spoken Indo-European    
    From: Padraic Brown
3e. Re: Spoken Indo-European    
    From: Alex Fink
3f. Re: Spoken Indo-European    
    From: taliesin the storyteller

4.1. META: Conlang-L FAQ    
    From: Henrik Theiling

5a. "Re: Colloquial French resources"    
    From: Leonardo Castro
5b. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"    
    From: Padraic Brown


Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Gateway to conscripts (was: Intro to Conlanging by John McWhorte
    Posted by: "Matthew George" matt....@gmail.com 
    Date: Mon Sep 30, 2013 10:26 am ((PDT))

Yes.  Let us say that the symbols are the futhark, and the symbolic system
is not.

Matt G.





Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. A Small Interactive Conlanging Project of mine
    Posted by: "Nico Baier" nico.ba...@gmail.com 
    Date: Mon Sep 30, 2013 11:19 am ((PDT))

I've been away from conlanging for a while (turns out grad school gets in the 
way of hobbies, sometimes, who knew?). I've decided to jump start getting back 
into it with a little experiment. 

Instead of just posting updates at my own pace, I have made two threads, one on 
the ZBB and one on the CBB. Both were seeded with the same initial sketchy 
phonology, and then I told people to ask me questions about how I deal with 
various morphosyntactic phenomena in the language, without ever having thought 
about it before. These are questions like, "how do you form relative clauses", 
"How do non-verbal predicates work?", "is there case?". 

My job is to answer those prompts, and if something isn't in place for me to 
answer that question, make it up as I go along. I've found it's gotten me 
actively thinking of multiple areas of the grammar at once, which has been very 
helpful. 

The two threads are influencing each other, so anything said in one thread is 
valid in the other. I would like to expand the horizons though, and have people 
ask me questions here, as well, if they would be so kind. I think the more eyes 
on this the better, and the fast questions are generated. I'm trying to answer 
at least one a day.

I've included links to the two threads, and if people would like, I can post 
the latest version of the phonology in this thread as well. I may write up some 
kind of evolving summary document when I have the chance, so that there will be 
one source for the grammar.

ZBB Thread: http://tinyurl.com/kphnaxp  
CBB Thread: http://tinyurl.com/lmlhzqr

There you can see some of the decisions I've already made. If it would be 
easier, I can also post the phonology sketch in a direct reply to this message. 

Fire away! 





Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: A Small Interactive Conlanging Project of mine
    Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com 
    Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 6:15 am ((PDT))

On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:18:48 -0400, Nico Baier <nico.ba...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I've been away from conlanging for a while (turns out grad school gets in the 
>way of hobbies, sometimes, who knew?). I've decided to jump start getting back 
>into it with a little experiment. 
[...]

Neat.  I'll toss in a few:

- Are there any sort of serial verbs or complex predicate constructions?
- How are locative predicates done ("the dog is in the tree"?)  How 'bout 
attributively ("the dog in the tree saw me"?)
- Are there morphological limitations on the use of your verbal stem 
extensions, e.g. on the number which can occur at once?  Are they involved in 
any nontrivial morphophonology?  (Various Niger-Congo languages have 
interesting things here, tied to morphophonological constraints on the maximal 
base and suchlike.)

Alex





Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Spoken Indo-European
    Posted by: "Andrew Jarrette" anjarre...@yahoo.ca 
    Date: Mon Sep 30, 2013 5:59 pm ((PDT))

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/trending-language-spoken-first-time-070000096.html?vp=1





Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: Spoken Indo-European
    Posted by: "Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro" hcesarcas...@gmail.com 
    Date: Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:05 pm ((PDT))

Jarrette,

this video is not available in my location, and I think it will not be
available in the location of other members of this mailing list.

Is this the same spoken indo-european fables shown here:
http://archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/1302-proto-indo-european-schleichers-fable
?




On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Andrew Jarrette <anjarre...@yahoo.ca>wrote:

>
> http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/trending-language-spoken-first-time-070000096.html?vp=1
>





Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: Spoken Indo-European
    Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com 
    Date: Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:16 pm ((PDT))



> http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/trending-language-spoken-first-time-070000096.html?vp=1


So...

...the fable was first written in 1868 and ónly júst nòw this guy comes along 
and reads it aloud
for the very first time in the history of the universe?

Sadly, this kind of inane sensationalism is all too typical of Yahoo Snews. I 
mean really? "Here
it is for the first time ever"?? Schleicher's Fable has been on Youtube for a 
couple years at
least, read by several different folks and one even has a nice animation. I'm 
sure the author himself 
read it aloud a time or three during his career, and quite probably all the 
authors of subsequent 
modifications read their versions as well.

Padraic





Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: Spoken Indo-European
    Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com 
    Date: Mon Sep 30, 2013 6:18 pm ((PDT))

> this video is not available in my location, and I think it will not be

> available in the location of other members of this mailing list.
> 
> Is this the same spoken indo-european fables shown here:
> http://archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/1302-proto-indo-european-schleichers-fable
> ?

Sounds about like the same voice. Some guy from Uni. of Kentucky. You can find
others on Youtube if you'd like to compare.

Padraic


> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Andrew Jarrette 
> <anjarre...@yahoo.ca>wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
> http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/trending-language-spoken-first-time-070000096.html?vp=1
>> 
> 





Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: Spoken Indo-European
    Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com 
    Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 3:42 am ((PDT))

On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:59:55 -0400, Andrew Jarrette <anjarre...@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/trending-language-spoken-first-time-070000096.html?vp=1

There was some discussion of this on Language Log:
  http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7179
among other things regarding the fact that Byrd's *h1 seems quite close to his 
*h2.  I was pleased to see Martin Kümmel cited as endorsing values h1 = /h/, h2 
= /X/, h3 = /R/, which is more or less my position (though I'm not sure what I 
think of the question of whether h3 was rounded yet).  

Of more general interest, the book this is taken from, Kümmel's 
_Konsonantenwandel: Bausteine zu einer Typologie des Lautwandels und ihre 
Konsequenzen für die vergleichende Rekonstruktion_ appears to be a specimen of 
a type that many conlangers have wished for*, namely, a catalogue of sound 
changes and study of their probability.  Kümmel's scope is Indo-European, 
Uralic, and Semitic.   Now only to get my hands on a copy...

* and some have embarked on producing, e.g.
http://jc.tech-galaxy.com/bricka/sound_changes.html
http://www.frathwiki.com/Velar_consonant#Sound_changes_involving_velars

Alex





Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
3f. Re: Spoken Indo-European
    Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" taliesin-conl...@nvg.org 
    Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 4:17 am ((PDT))

On 2013-10-01 12:42, Alex Fink wrote:
> Konsonantenwandel: Bausteine zu einer Typologie des Lautwandels und
> ihre Konsequenzen für die vergleichende Rekonstruktion

http://www.amazon.com/Konsonantenwandel-Lautwandels-Konsequenzen-vergleichende-Rekonstruktion/dp/3895005908

At "just" $99 it's not the most expensive linguistics-book I've come
across... but then again, I try to collect reference grammars.


t.





Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4.1. META: Conlang-L FAQ
    Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" h...@theiling.de 
    Date: Mon Sep 30, 2013 8:05 pm ((PDT))

The following is the de facto Conlang-L FAQ, hosted at:

    http://wiki.frath.net/Conlang-L_FAQ

This is automatically posted once a month, copied directly from that page,
for the benefit of new members. If you would like to change it, please
edit it at the link above.

**Henrik


==Where to get Conlang-L==

The official archives are at http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html .
>From there, you can search the archives, get an RSS feed, manage your
subscription, etc.

It's also the ONLY place you can go to sign up and post things to the list.

A read-only archive with a nicer user interface is at
http://archives.conlang.info/ .  [As of April 2009 this archive has ceased
mirroring new messages.  Henrik Theiling knows about the problem and has said
he's planning to fix it but hasn't had time to do so yet.]

Conlang-L is also _mirrored_ as a Yahoo group, but there is no way to have
posts to the Yahoo group sent to the actual list.  Do *not* subscribe to the
Yahoo group.  It has no admin anymore.  Go to
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html instead!

==A brief history of the list==

The list evolved from some informal email conversations among an early group
of language enthusiasts. The earliest mail mirror was run by John Ross out of
the BU physics department, and was up and running by 29 July 1991. It moved to
Denmark on 23 March, 1993.

The original note reads in part:

  ''By agreement with John Ross, the CONLANG mailing list has been moved to
  diku.dk, the mail hub of the CS Department of the University of Copenhagen.
  Send all submissions to CONLANG at diku dot dk. The address at buphy still
  works, but it is just an alias for the new list.''

  ''Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dept)  (Humour NOT marked)''

(Note that the submission address in that historical note '''NO LONGER
WORKS'''.)

Later, growing traffic and changes at the university necessitated a move. In
January–February of 1997 the list moved to its current home at Brown
University's LISTSERV server. David Durand made the move and actively
moderated the list from that point on.

Before the move, threads centered on debates on the relative merits of
[[auxlang]]s had become common on CONLANG; these were often incendiary and
irritated many listmembers.  Accordingly, when the new CONLANG list was set up
at Brown, a sister list AUXLANG was set up to cater to participants of these
threads, and auxlang advocacy was banned from CONLANG.  It still is.
(Dispassionate discussion of auxlangs is welcome.)

In ??? John Cowan took over actual moderation duties, as "Lord of the
Instrumentality".

Later the torch was passed to Henrik Theiling.

==List behaviour==

The CONLANG list rejects attachments.

===Posting limits===

As a traffic-limiting measure, if the list receives more than 99 messages in a
given day (in Brown's time zone), all subsequent messages will be
automatically held and not delivered until the admin unblocks the list.

Sometimes, during longer periods of high traffic, a further limit is imposed
restricting each person to five posts a day.  ''This restriction is currently
in force.''  Messages beyond the daily limit are simply bounced, not held for
the next day.

Posters are encouraged to consolidate several shorter replies on a single
topic into a single message.

==Subject Topic Tags==

In the subject line of a post, you can mark the post with one of the following
tags.  Tags are only recognised if a colon follows immediately: no other
decoration (e.g. brackets, an extra space) should be used. Any 'Re:' etc. is
irrelevant -- the software skips it.

Good tag syntax:

CHAT: Is the world really round?

Bad tag syntax:

[CHAT]: Is the world really round?

These are the official tags the listserv software can be instructed to

filter automatically.  There are currently exactly four:

* OT: off-topic stuff

* CHAT: off-topic stuff of the conversational sort

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* THEORY: linguistic theory discussions

Only the above tags are official and configured for filtering. However, most
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* OFFLIST: not actually seen on-list, this tag is added to make explicitly
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The following are explicitly not included in the list of filterable tags:

* META: threads about CONLANG-L itself

* TECH: technical issues (e.g. email programs, list-related technical
problems, etc)

Finally, there are two meta-tags:

* [CONLANG]: This should not be actually added when starting a new subject;
you can make the listserv prepend it automatically to all email (so that you
can set your mail client to filter all list traffic)

* "was": used to change the subject, or more commonly, to indicate that the
subject of a thread changed a while ago and you're no longer pretending it's
about the original topic

Example:

JAMA says flat earth leads to flat [@] (was CHAT: Is the world really round?)

Note that tags ARE included after the "was", but "Re:" is NOT, nor is
[CONLANG].

==Acronyms==

List of acronyms specific to the Conlang Mailing List:

* AFMCL - "As for my conlang.."

** AFMOCL - "As for my own conlang"

* ANADEW - "A natlang's already dunnit, except worse"

* ANADEWism - Something you thought was unique, but ANADEW

* IML - "in my 'lect" (dialect or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiolect
idiolect], depending on context)

* LCC - the [http://conference.conlang.org Language Creation Conference]

* LCS - the [http://conlang.org Language Creation Society]

* NCNC - "No cross, no crown".  In the context of the list, "don't discuss
religion or politics"
([http://recycledknowledge.blogspot.com/2006/05/no-cross-no-crown.html not its
more general meaning]).

* NLF2DWS or NLWS - Non-linear [fully 2-dimensional] writing system

* YAEPT (the original acronym) - Yet Another English Pronunciation Thread

** YADPT ... Dutch Pronunciation ...

** YAGPT ... German Pronunciation ...

** YAEGT ... English Grammar ...

** YAEUT ... English Usage ...

** general pattern: YA(Language)(Topic)T

Acronyms not on this list might be in general usage: try
[http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aafaict Google's define:] or
[http://www.acronymfinder.com/ Acronym Finder].

==Other conlang-specific vocabulary==

>From [http://cassowary.free.fr/Linguistics/Conlang%20Dictionary/ here] and
[http://arthaey.mine.nu/~arthaey/conlang/faq.html here].  See also [[Conlang
terminology]].

con__

* constructed __ (generally a contraction): conlang, conworld, conhistory,
conculture, ...

__lang

* a language characterised by ___ (generally a contraction): conlang, artlang,
auxlang, ...

[[artlang]]

# A language constructed for the beauty or fun of doing so. [From art(istic) +
lang(uage)]

# (See conlang) [From art(ificial) + lang(uage)]

[[auxlang]]

* A language constructed to replace or complement natlangs to facilitate
cross-linguistic communication. [From aux(iliary) + lang(uage)]

concultural [From con(structed) + cultur(e) + al]

* Adjective form of "conculture".

[[conculture]] [From con(structed) + culture]

* A fictional culture created as a backdrop to a conlang. See also "conworld".

[[conlang]] [From con(structed) + lang(uage)]

# n. A constructed language

# v. To construct a language

[[CONLANG]] (all caps), conlang-l, Conlang-L, or CONLANG-L

* A very active conlang mailing list hosted by brown.edu, and currently
operated by Henrik Theiling

[[conworld]] [From con(structed) + world]

* A fictional world created to host a conlang or conculture. See also
"conculture".

[[engelang]] /ˈendʒlæŋ/ [From eng(ineered) + lang(uage)]

* A conlang that is designed to certain criteria, such that it is objectively
testable whether the criteria are met or not. This is different from claiming
that the criteria themselves are 'objective'. For example, the Lojban/Loglan
roots are designed to be maximally recognisable to the speakers of the
(numerically) largest languages in the world in proportion to the number of
speakers. It is not a matter of taste whether this criterion is met; it is
something that can be tested. (by John Cowan) [From eng(ineered) + lang(uage)]

etabnannery /raːmnænəɹi/ (rare)

* The state of appearing entirely unpredictable, but, upon closer analysis,
failing at even being that. [From Etá̄bnann(i), a conlang by Tristan McLeay,
which was supposed to have an unpredictable orthography, but ended up just
having a confusing one. Damn people trying to make patterns everywhere. At
least it's a bugger to typeset!... errm... back to the derivation + -ery]

maggelity /məˈgɛlɪti/ (rare) [From Maggel, a conlang by Christophe
Grandsire which has a rarely predictable orthography]

# The state of being entirely unpredictable. (Tristan McLeay)

# The state of being regularly unpredictable, such as to horribly confuse
anyone unfamiliar with the language, lulling them into a full sense of
security before pointing out, cartoon-character-style, that the ground no
longer exists where they're standing. (Tristan McLeay and H. S. Teoh)

Maggel's Paradox (rare)

* Your radical ideas have already occurred to others. (Muke Tever)

[[natlang]] [From nat(ural) + lang(uage)]

# A natural language, i.e., one that naturally developed in the world, as
opposed to a conlang.

ObConlang (or ObCL)

* Just before something about conlanging in an otherwise off-topic post.

* From ob(ligatory) + conlang (i.e., an obligatory on-topic comment about
conlangs just so that the post isn't completely off-topic).

[[translation relay]]

* A game similar to Telephone or Chinese Whispers, wherein the participants
translate a passage one at a time, in serial, into their own languages - and
then marvel at how far from the original the translations have gotten.

==CXS (Conlang X-SAMPA)==

[[CXS]] is a version of X-SAMPA for use on the CONLANG mailing list. X-SAMPA
is a way to write the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) using normal
plain-ASCII text that everyone can read.

* [http://www.theiling.de/ipa/ Theiling Online: Conlang X-Sampa (CXS)] -
includes CXS-to-IPA conversion chart

* [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Conlang/Appendix/CXS CXS at Wikibooks]

==Related lists==

The Auxlang list, mentioned above, is dedicated to international auxiliary
languages.  Its archives and subscription interface are at
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/auxlang.html .

The list re...@calcifer.valdyas.org is dedicated to the planning and
conducting of [[conlang relay]]s, q.v.

==Resources==

* [http://www.arthaey.com/conlang/faq.html Arthaey's Conlang FAQ]

* [http://www.langmaker.com LangMaker] - repository of many conlang
"biographies"

* [http://wiki.frath.net Frath Wiki] - a similar site, and host of the
Conlang-L (wikified) FAQ

* [http://www.omniglot.com Omniglot] - which has information on more writing
systems than you thought could exist

{{Conlangculture}}

[[Category:Terminology]]





Messages in this topic (39)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. "Re: Colloquial French resources"
    Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com 
    Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 3:23 am ((PDT))

> Le 30 août 2013 17:07, "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets"
> - _Tu vois, ma femme elle en a toujours des bonnes idées_ ("You see, my
> wife always has good ideas", the subject and direct object are both marked
> on the verb, by _elle_ and en_ respectively, despite being present as full
> noun phrases in the sentence).

I was thinking about this and remember that, when I was studying
Spanish with an old course in CD-ROM, constructions like "a mí me
gustaría" were presented as "customary redundancy".

Don't you think that it would be simpler to think about customary
redundancy than about polypersonal verbs in French too?

BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.

Até mais!

Leonardo





Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
    Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com 
    Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 6:20 am ((PDT))

From: Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>


>> Le 30 août 2013 17:07, "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets"
>> - _Tu vois, ma femme elle en a toujours des bonnes idées_ ("You see, my
>> wife always has good ideas", the subject and direct object are both marked
>> on the verb, by _elle_ and en_ respectively, despite being present as full
>> noun phrases in the sentence).
>
>I was thinking about this and remember that, when I was studying
>Spanish with an old course in CD-ROM, constructions like "a mí me
>gustaría" were presented as "customary redundancy".
>
>Don't you think that it would be simpler to think about customary
>redundancy than about polypersonal verbs in French too?


I don't know. To me "customary redundancy" sounds like the author or presenter
simply doesn't want to be bothered getting into a highly interesting historical
philological tangent and is just covering it up. It's a more grown up way of 
saying
"because I said so (now don't ask any more questions)!" but the result is the
same.

Clearly, something is going in French and Spanish (and indeed English: you see,
my wife, she always has good ideas) that is being glossed over. Dunnow about
F&S, but for me, I'd take Christophe's original English example as plain, while
the "customary redundancy" is actually some kind of marker of focus. He's sort
of distancing himself from his wife, as if to say "my wife always has good 
ideas,
while I can never keep two thoughts in a row in my own head".


>BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
>composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
>to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.


Just curious: what's wrong with it?

Padraic


>Até mais!
>
>Leonardo
>
>





Messages in this topic (2)





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