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There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Unconventional pronoun systemsshow us yours!
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Questions about Japanese historical phonology.
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs
From: Jeffrey Henning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Ice tea and Robin Hood
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: YAEPT Re: English /T/, was Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Ice tea and Robin Hood
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Ice tea and Robin Hood
From: Philippe Caquant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: CHAT: music // was Leaf script
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Unconventional pronoun systems-show us yours!
From: Estel Telcontar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Fwd: Magic languages was Re: Trying GMail
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
From: "I. K. Peylough" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: YAEPT Re: English /T/, was Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
From: "I. K. Peylough" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 02:30:00 +0200
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Unconventional pronoun systemsshow us yours!
My personal pride and joy, Gi-an-nain, has only four
true pronouns (i.e., only two words that function as
pronouns in and of themselves; everything else is a
full noun, even though it is being used in a
pronominal function), split between antecedents that
are participating in the discourse, and those that are
not.
/ar/ [A4] discourse participant, singular
/�a/ [i.a] discourse non-participant, singular
/ar�/ [a.4A] discourse participant, paucal
/e�i/ [E.ai] discourse non-participant, paucal
To be more precise, like if you wanted to say 'she',
you'd have to use insane circumlocution, as in 'that
woman' (ar/�a + 'n�iu' ['woman', 'lady']).
/ar-n�iu/ could mean 'you' or 'she', provided she is
taking part in the conversation and /�a-n�iu/ serves
as 'she' when she has no part in the discussion.
Other factors, like number, are matters of using the
right particles. There is no plain 'plural' marker,
but one may use the numbers two /din/ and three /n�ra/
for the dual and trial, as well as the word for 'all'
/tam�/ for a general plural (i.e. all women).
Reduplication of the pronominal stem gives the phrase
the meaning of referring to all members of a given
group; i.e., 'those women'. I call this number the
'paucal', although I'm probably using the wrong term
(again! :-o).
Examples:
/ar-s'a is�-ikk�i-na-ta/
[A4.s'a i.sa.ik.kai.na.da]
DPsg.PAT very.pretty.COPULA.but
'You're really very pretty.'
or
'She's really very pretty.' (provided she's standing
right there, involved in the conversation)
/�a-s'a is�-ikk�i-na-ta/
[i.a.s'a i.sa.ik.kai.na.da]
NDPsg.PAT very.pretty.COPULA.but
'She's really very pretty.' (she's not involved in the
conversation)
Circumlocution must be used for other pronominal
concepts, like 'when' /kai-jE/ (time.ADESSIVE) and
'way over there' /pia-jE-anu/ (place.ADESSIVE.far).
Anyone have an unconventional pronoun system to share,
or criticism of my own system?
=====
"Alle Idole m�ssen sterben."
"All idols must die."
--Einst�rzende Neubauten, "Seele Brennt" (Soul is on Fire)
"Where am I? What is this thing called 'the world'? Who is it who has lured me into
the thing, and now leaves me here? How did I come into the world? Why was I not
consulted?"
--S�ren Kierkegaard
"You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not
even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The
world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll
in ecstasy at your feet."
--Franz Kafka, Journals
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 21:35:15 EDT
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Questions about Japanese historical phonology.
In a message dated 8/24/04 4:05:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< Mitochondrial DNA and diffusion of material
culture are the ones that immediately come to mind. >>
My understanding is that both DNA evidence and recent archaeology tend to
support the view that the dominant culture in late-prehistoric Japan came from
northern Asia rather than from Polynesia or SE Asia, as previously suggested. I
recall an article called (roughly) "Jomon Genes"in Science News some time ago,
for example. (I had a copy but I don't know what happened to it when I moved.)
JohnLeland
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 00:08:07 -0400
From: Jeffrey Henning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs
I was on vacation this past week and was visited by the goddess of conlangs,
who was especially benevolent to me, giving me Minhyan. I'd think about the
language at odd times during the day, and work on it an hour or two a night.
Here's the home page for the language:
http://www.langmaker.com/minhyan.htm
(It's not connected to the rest of my site yet, as I am still working on a
few sample translations and need to double-check everything.)
The phonology is inspired by Sindarin, the orthography by Welsh and the
lexicography by Esperanto. I have no idea where the grammar came from:
verbs are conjugated for aspect and mood; nouns are declined for case and
definiteness (pronouns preserve an earlier declension based on case and number).
The key inspiration from the goddess was the system of infixing, which
produced more naturalistic compounds than my languages usually have:
orean [< *orian.] n. Eagle.
oreagin [< orean, "eagle" & -gi-, "place".] n. Eyrie.
orealen [< orean, "eagle" & -le-, "offspring".] n. Eaglet.
I wasn't planning on referring to Old Minhyan and Proto-Minhyan, but that
was another gift that came to me as I documented the language.
Please take a few moments to review the site and offer me constructive
criticism. Thanks in advance!
Oh, and have we ever decided which of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and
Zeus is the Muse of Conlangs? Because I need to know an appropriate
offering to make to her!
Best regards,
Jeffrey
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Message: 4
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 00:53:02 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
I wrote of "ll":
<<I've only ever heard a mixture between [j], [Z] and [dZ].>>
Then Roger wrote:
<<I'm a little suspicious of the
[dZ], however-- perhaps we Americans are hearing their somewhat frictional
[j\] as our more familiar affricate (this might also apply to the Japanese
speaker someone mentioned)>>
<humor>
" 'We', white man?"
-Tanto to the Lone Ranger after the latter said, "Looks like we're
surrounded!",
upon discovering that they were surrounded by "Indians".</humor>
-David "Born Chicano, Despite the Last Name" Peterson
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 5
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 06:58:07 +0200
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ice tea and Robin Hood
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 10:31:49 -0700, Philippe Caquant
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Cows are things with four legs
No - cows have twelve legs - two in the front, two in the back, two on
the left side, two on the right side, and one on each of four corners.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Please watch Reply-To!
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Message: 6
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:01:59 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT Re: English /T/, was Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
Joe wrote:
<<Wait..[t_d]?� Not [d_d] or [D_d]?>>
Well, definitely not [D_d] (wouldn't that be redundant...? The
dental would be expected, and I think you'd have to use a
"retracted" diacritic to indicate a post-dental rather than inter-
dental fricative--using strict IPA). The [t_d] was just my "joke".
That is, in many places, voiced stops in English devoice, so that
what distinguishes them from a voiceless stop is not the voicing
but the presence or lack of aspiration (spread or constricted glottis).
Voiced stops are still voiced in places, though. Nevertheless, if
one took the theory seriously and went so far as to claim that
there are *no* truly voiced stops in English, then you would have
the following:
<<[T], [t], [t_h], [t_d], as in "thigh", "die", "tie", and "thy".>>
But one thing which I believe *is* true is that the *phoneme* /D/
in many dialects rarely surfaces with any frication, so that it's
actually more of a dental stop. This is especially true of "the".
Accoustically, it's the place of articulation (dental as opposed to
alveolar) and not the frication that gives more of a clue as to
what phoneme you have, which is why you don't need to have
a fricative /D/. That's my guess, anyway.
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 7
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:22:46 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs
Jeffrey Henning wrote:
> I was on vacation this past week and was visited by the goddess of
> conlangs,
> who was especially benevolent to me, giving me Minhyan....
>
> The phonology is inspired by Sindarin, the orthography by Welsh and the
> lexicography by Esperanto.
A possible omission or oversight (?)-- "j" [Z] is given in the phonology
section, but looking quickly thru the lexicon, I didn't see a single
instance of it.
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Message: 8
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 01:26:51 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Minhyan & the goddess of conlangs
Jeffrey wrote (and everything else in corner brackets):
<<Oh, and have we ever decided which of the nine daughters of Mnemosyne and
Zeus is the Muse of Conlangs?� Because I need to know an appropriate
offering to make to her!>>
We should have an online voting...thing.
I'd like to suggest that the Muse of Conlangs is (named in my just-made-up
Romlang Ladelyoromono) Temporo Liboro, loosely translated as "free time". ;)
We already have a patron saint, though, right? (Hildegard von Bingham?)
Seriously, though, we need to get crackin'. We need a flag, an official
conlang
bird, an anthem... We kind of have a motto, which can be translated into
whatever language we wish: Fight Linguistic Extinction: Create a Language!
Maybe a fight song, a mascot, official conlang colors... Ooh! The ABA
2000
(a *very* minor basketball league) is looking for franchise owners! What if
we all pooled our money and bought a basketball team? They could be the
Conlangers!
*Seriously* seriously, though, a flag would be nice. :)
[Time passes as I review the site...]
My, but you are in industrious! And you did all this in just one hour?
Here are some questions:
(1) You give an example of the word for "jail", which I'll copy out:
litehomigir [< lir , "free" & - te -, "opposite" & - ho -, "small-item" & -
mi -, "person" & - gi -, "place".]
n. Prison, gaol, jail.
So what is a "litehomir"? Jailer? Prisoner? Also, why is there a
"small-item" suffix in there?
(2) Hey, we were just discussing languages where the indefinite is
marked and the definite isn't. Minhyan appears to be such a language.
(3) What you did with the question words is *really* neat.
(4) The order of cases in a sentence and the order in which they're presented
is identical.
(5) I don't really get your interlinears in the texts section... Could you
perhaps
explain one of the sentences?
Looks great! Good work! (P.S.: How did you create *so* many
words in such a short amount of time *and* put them all up on
the web?)
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 9
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 22:30:45 -0700
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ice tea and Robin Hood
On Sun, 29 Aug 2004, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 10:31:49 -0700, Philippe Caquant
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Cows are things with four legs
>
> No - cows have twelve legs - two in the front, two in the back, two on
> the left side, two on the right side, and one on each of four corners.
I hate to be pedantic, but cows actually have an infinite number of legs:
they clearly have an even number of legs, but as you point out, they have
twelve legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for an animal to have.
But the only way a number can be both even and odd is for it to be infinite.
--Apollo
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Message: 10
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 22:57:12 -0700
From: Philippe Caquant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ice tea and Robin Hood
--- Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Cows are things with four legs
> >
> > No - cows have twelve legs - two in the front, two
> in the back, two on
> > the left side, two on the right side, and one on
> each of four corners.
>
> I hate to be pedantic, but cows actually have an
> infinite number of legs:
> they clearly have an even number of legs, but as you
> point out, they have
> twelve legs, which is certainly an odd number of
> legs for an animal to have.
> But the only way a number can be both even and odd
> is for it to be infinite.
>
Oh, that was exactly the question I asked myself last
week: is infinite odd or even ? (after John Cowan
explained us that all odd numbers are prime).
The theory according to which cows have twelve legs is
not correct: there has been forgotten that a cow also
has four legs below (and none above), thus: 2 + 2 + 2
+ 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4 + 0 = 16. Of course, we're not
talking about one-legged cows.
This gives me the opportunity to disclose an important
information about zebras. Some think zebras are
black-striped white, and others that they are
white-striped black. In fact, zebras are green,
striped black and white.
One has to be very careful about scientific
extrapolations. Remember that Englishman who was
sitting in a train in Scotland.
- Dad, said his son, look over there, there is a herd
a new-shorn sheep !
- On our side, in any case, said he.
(And now for the elephants)
=====
Philippe Caquant
"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)
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Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
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Message: 11
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 15:59:21 +0930
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT: music // was Leaf script
B. Garcia wrote:
> I chose the lyrics in my sig because i thought they related well to
> Conlanging and language in general :)
I can well imagine that music might be a popular passtime among list
members (simply because minds that are simultaneously creative and
analytical are probably likely to be inclined that way). Myself, I
mostly listen to folk music, and play (& compose, improvise, etc with)
keyboard instruments.
I have three hours of music saved on my computer (and, of course, more
in my CD collection) which is divided into several folders, including:
- Folk music
- Instrumentals
- Songs in Foreign Languages
- Modern
The Songs in Foreign Languages include representatives from Irish
Gaelic, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish, Hebrew, and a native language of
Papua New Guinea. Some I have translations for; some I don't.
I uploaded some fragments of my favourite folk music to
http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/miscellaneous/favouritefolk.htm
(It's on my wishlist to get a microphone suitable for recording voice
and my keyboard playing straight onto my computer; when I have this
I will certainly record conlang sentences.)
Adrian.
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Message: 12
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 02:39:24 -0400
From: Estel Telcontar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Unconventional pronoun systems-show us yours!
Steven Williams ha tera a:
> Anyone have an unconventional pronoun system to share,
> or criticism of my own system?
Well, one of the languages I dream about but never actually work out
the details of has a pretty odd pronoun system.
It's spoken by one man in a mental institution, and was probably
invented by him, which explains a good deal of its oddness (which
extends to far more than just its pronoun system).
It has no second-person pronouns - no second-person forms at all,
whether pronouns, or inflections, or anything else. The man generally
doesn't address others, but just speaks to himself
It has third person pronouns, which have some sort of gender system,
but it's based on uncharacteristic properties - something like size, or
motion, or something like that, not masculine/feminine or
animate/inanimate.
It has no 1st-person plural pronoun. It seems to have a 1st-person
singular pronoun, but there are some factors that suggest that it may
not actually be a first person pronoun, but may instead be a specific
gender of 3rd-person pronoun that the single speaker only uses in
referring to himself. I forget what exactly were the properties that
pointed toward it being 1st person or 3rd person :(
-Estel
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Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
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Message: 13
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 17:03:47 +0930
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Magic languages was Re: Trying GMail
> their cars to keep them from road hazards ? I can see
> little difference with believing that English is a
> magic language.
Yeah, but the difference is that in the case of the Yolngu this is one
symptom of a much wider problem.
Adrian.
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Message: 14
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 04:00:56 -0400
From: "I. K. Peylough" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:08:40 -0400, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Mark P. Line (and others) have written.
>
>> Philip Newton said:
>> > From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> > [on Mexican |ll|]
>> >> I've only ever heard a mixture between
>> >> [j], [Z] and [dZ]. Both "ll" and "y" get pronounced this way
>> >
>> > A friend of mine, a Japanese who had spent a year or two on Mexico and
>> > picked up a little Spanish, gave me the phrase [dZo mE dZamo <name>],
>> > which confused me since I could imagine [dZ] for |ll| but had never
>> > heard of any pronunciation for |y| but [j]. Yet she insisted that that
>> > was the pronunciation she had learned there.
A well known fact: LL and Y have the same pronunciation throughout American
Spanish, whatever that pronunciation is.
>> I've heard Cubans use [dZ] for |y| in their *English* and always assumed
>> it was because the do the same in their variety of Spanish.
>>
>I suspect a range from [j] > [j\] > [Z] > [dZ] (progressively more closure)
>is permissible in the Spanish speaking world. I'm a little suspicious of
the
>[dZ], however-- perhaps we Americans are hearing their somewhat frictional
>[j\] as our more familiar affricate (this might also apply to the Japanese
>speaker someone mentioned)-- or maybe the Spanish speaker thinks it sounds
>more "American" to use [dZ]. I heard [Z] a lot in Argentina, and
>occasionally [dZ] which I attributed to the Italian background of 50% of
the
>population. (That was 30 some years ago; Pablo Flores usually transcribed
>"ll, y" as [S]. Perhaps there's some on-going change.
The sound is not quite the same as English [dZ]. Alveopalatal perhaps? Hard
to tell, because it's also pronounced more "crisply". I saw a map of the
distribution of ll/y phones somewhere that would be about 50 years old now.
It seems that the affricate was mainly in Argentina, and everybody used a
[j] with just a little friction. Now the stronger sounds seem to be
widespread. The current stereotype of Argentine speech uses [Z], but I
wouldn't be surprised is some have shifted to [S] (which is used elsewhere
sporadically for ch). I once heard a recent arrival from Italy speak
Spanish. She sounded just like the Argentines I'd heard!
>A really long time ago, there was a comedian on TV who went by the name
Bill Dana
>Jos� Jimenez-- I don't think he was actually Hispanic-- and part of his
schtick
>was to pronounce Engl. y as j, and almost every routine included something
>like--
>--Well, Jos�, what were you doing in New Haven?
>--I went to "Jail"
>and so on.............
>(In these PC times, I doubt that an Anglo could get by with parodying the
>accent. Mr. Leguizamo can do it, but he's entitled.)
IKP
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Message: 15
Date: Sun, 29 Aug 2004 04:05:49 -0400
From: "I. K. Peylough" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT Re: English /T/, was Re: Spanish ll in different dialects
On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:17:59 -0400, Mark Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Sat, 28 Aug 2004 19:40:10 -0400, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I'm willing to
>> concede that for some, the tongue tip might touch the bottom of the
>> incisors.
>
>How generous of you! Good to know I wasn't lying/mistaken/incapable
>of determining how I make that sound. :)
This seems to be EPT day, so
how about the tongue right at the gap between lower and upper teeth without
going through? Obviously there's a continuum with an effish sound at one
end as used in Central Spain.
IKP
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