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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Re: Trigger languages� �� Re: Further language development Q's
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Trigger languages (Was Re: Fur�ther language development Q's)
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: I'm back!
From: Philippe Caquant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Re: Trigger languages� �� Re: Fur ther language development Q's
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Trigger languages� �� Re: Fur ther language development Q's
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Trigger languages Re: Further language development Q's
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: I'm back!
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: I'm back!
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: obliques? Re: THEORY: transitivity
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: CHAT: reign names
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. new conlang - " *aiinodbus' "
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Imperatives in split-S languages (was Anomaly of the (apparent) Cebuano
uvulars and Guarani info request)
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Replying to Rodlox (Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?) and obliques)
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)
From: Tamas Racsko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:15:54 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Re: Trigger languages� �� Re: Further language development Q's
David Peterson wrote:
Rodlox wrote:
<<what is a trigger language? are there language groups/families in
which
> > triggers are not found? what purpose do triggers serve?>>
>There's no simple way to explain this, because there's no simple
answer. Triggers are things found in languages like Tagalog, and
other languages like Tagalog, and they don't work in a cut-and-dry
way. >
I also replied (directly, though I meant it for the list) to Rodlox, saying
much the same things...I think.... Anyway your explanation is very good.
> (In fact, Matt Pearson doesn't seem to think that there are
any triggers at all, if I understood that paper correctly [which I
probably didn't].)>
What's the ref. on that paper? Is it available online? (Reply privately to
avoid quota)
Although so many of the non-Philippine languages have lost so much of the
morphology and become more active/passive, so to speak, you can still get
glimpses of the system. It takes some gymnastics, but it can be shown to
still be somewhat operative in Malay/Indonesian, and I'm sure in Malegasy
(Matt's field, IIRC).
Leonard Bloomfield, way back in the 20s or 30s, did an extensive study of
Tagalog-- probably one of the first in English. I read it so long ago I've
forgotten everything; but for someone interested, it might be worthwhile to
see how he handled it from his Structuralist POV.
I also mentioned the Tsou (Formosan) examples I posted some time back.
(Search for _Tsou_ in the archive.)
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:28:08 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Trigger languages (Was Re: Fur�ther language development Q's)
The Hamster God wrote:
<<Do you know of anyway I could get�that put into a larger nutshell?� a book
or a�webpage or something?� You have only whetted my thirst for knowledge and
my searches on the internet prove futile.>>
Online...? Not that I can think of. I also can't think of any books.
There are individual articles here and there. I'll upload my paper
in a minute. The bibliography might be a place to start. Give me
five minutes, but you can download it in .pdf form here:
http://dedalvs.free.fr/dl.html
This sounds interesting, though:
Roger wrote:
<<Leonard Bloomfield, way back in the 20s or 30s, did an extensive study of
Tagalog-- probably one of the first in English.� I read it so long ago I've
forgotten everything; but for someone interested, it might be worthwhile to
see how he handled it from his Structuralist POV.>>
Also, search the archives. Trigger languages come up every couple of
months.
-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: 3
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 13:55:22 -0700
From: Philippe Caquant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I'm back!
--- "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi.
>
> What think ye of this idea? What kind of terms might
> a language spoken
> in a 4D world have, which we do not have? At least
> one curious mind
> thirsts to know. :-)
Why, all spatial terms, of course (prepositions,
adverbs...) I guess one has to consider the relation
between a cube and hypercube, for ex. A cube has, let
us see, 6 faces, 8 vertices, 12 edges. A hypercube (or
a supercube, as Gamow says) has 24 faces, 16 vertices
and 32 edges (Gamow has drawn a nice 'supercube' on
page 67 of "One, two, three... infinity", Dover Ed.).
So the number of spatial words should be multiplied
more or less in the same proportions. Instead of:
before / behind / on the right side / on the left side
/ above / under, for ex, you should have 24 different
words.
Of course, if your original 3d-language already has
specific words for "approaching from below while
rotating anti-clockwise", then it will be a little
harder in 4d. Good luck.
=====
Philippe Caquant
Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intellegor illis (Ovidius).
Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo (Horatius).
Interdum stultus opportune loquitur (Henry Fielding).
Scire leges non hoc est verba earum tenere, sed vim ac potestatem (Somebody).
Melius est ut scandalum oriatur, quam ut veritas relinquatur (Somebody else).
Ceterum censeo *vi* esse oblitterandum (Me).
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Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
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________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:44:06 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Re: Trigger languages� �� Re: Fur ther language development Q's
Dan Saunders wrote:
> Do you know of anyway I could get that put into a larger nutshell? a
> book
> or a webpage or something? You have only whetted my thirst for knowledge
> and
> my searches on the internet prove futile.
>
Not surprising; it's rather complex for the average web-page :-((
Most discussion is likely to be in journal and conference articles, devoted
to Austroneian in general, Phillipine or Formosan languages in particular.
If you have access to a really good Univ. or Public library, you might try
to find
--Schachter, Paul and Fe Otanes, Tagalog Reference Grammar; U.Cal. Press
1972
--John Wolff, Beginning Cebuano [Bisayan]; Yale U.P. 1966-- a teaching
grammar, but Wolff is pretty good at explaining things.
It's fair to say that Tag. and Bis. are _the_ models for systems of this
type.
--The journal "Oceanic Linguistics" publ. by U. Hawaii, and in particular:
Paz B. Naylor 1975, "Topic, focus and emphasis in the Tagalog verbal
clause", OcL 14:12-79
And the Bloomfield I just mentioned:
--Leonard Bloomfield, 1917, Tagalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis.
Studies in Lang. and Lit. Vol. 3, U. of Illinois
The SIL Ethnologue site has lots of bibliographic info, but it's often
difficult to find in their own publications or obscure/local journals. But
they've done lots of work in the Philippines over at least the past 50
years.
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 14:39:47 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Trigger languages� �� Re: Fur ther language development Q's
On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 04:55:43PM -0400, Dan Saunders wrote:
[...]
> Do you know of anyway I could get that put into a larger nutshell? a book
> or a webpage or something? You have only whetted my thirst for knowledge and
> my searches on the internet prove futile.
Hmm, you're right, Pablo Flores' pages on this seem to have vanished
off the net. Fortunately, you can still get at the relevant snippet
from Google cache:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:wrfPcDmv5moJ:www.angelfire.com/ego/pdf/ng/lng/how/how_wordorder.html+trigger+conlang&hl=en&start=10
I'm going to save a copy of this just in case it doesn't come back.
:-/
T
--
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes." -- E.W. Dijkstra
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 15:13:15 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 01:55:22PM -0700, Philippe Caquant wrote:
> --- "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi.
> >
> > What think ye of this idea? What kind of terms might a language
> > spoken in a 4D world have, which we do not have? At least one
> > curious mind thirsts to know. :-)
>
> Why, all spatial terms, of course (prepositions,
> adverbs...) I guess one has to consider the relation
> between a cube and hypercube, for ex. A cube has, let
> us see, 6 faces, 8 vertices, 12 edges. A hypercube (or
> a supercube, as Gamow says) has 24 faces, 16 vertices
> and 32 edges (Gamow has drawn a nice 'supercube' on
> page 67 of "One, two, three... infinity", Dover Ed.).
> So the number of spatial words should be multiplied
> more or less in the same proportions. Instead of:
> before / behind / on the right side / on the left side
> / above / under, for ex, you should have 24 different
> words.
Hmm. I've done a little bit of research myself, and I believe that
it's probably more accurate to consider the hypercube as being the 4D
volume (super-volume?) surrounded by 8 cubical cells, rather than
considering the 24 faces directly. Considering that a 4D being would
necessarily see in 3D (i.e., have a 3D retina), this seems to lead me
to just 4 pairs of directions: up/down, left/right, front/back,
"in"/"out" (or whatever you call it... this is different from being
actually "inside" or "outside" a 4D volume).
But of course, once you add behind/beside, above, below, etc., it does
get quite a bit hairier than that.
> Of course, if your original 3d-language already has
> specific words for "approaching from below while
> rotating anti-clockwise", then it will be a little
> harder in 4d. Good luck.
[...]
Heh... what I'm afraid of would be various necessarily distinct words
for 'twist', 'turn', etc., since there are 6 perpendicular planes of
rotation in 4D (as opposed to only 3 in 3D), and 4D does not have the
nice 3D property that the combination of two rotations equals a 3rd
rotation. I don't even know what two simultaneous rotations in 4D
looks like yet, let alone what they might correspond with.
Yikes, I think I need to understand 4D a lot more than I currently do,
before I can even start considering a conlang for it! :-(
But besides spatial words, I'm struggling with this concept of either
having no knots in my 4D con-world, or having knots that can only be
tied by twisting 2D sheets (because knotted 1D strings in 4D are
identical to the unknotted string, so you can't tie a knot with a 1D
string without it coming apart trivially in 4D). So the conlang would
either have NO words for tie, knot, etc., or it would need a new set
of words for whatever bizarre operations one would need to perform to
get 2D sheets to "knot" in 4D. (I'm not even sure this is possible to
begin with.)
T
--
"640K ought to be enough" -- Bill G., 1984. "The Internet is not a primary
goal for PC usage" -- Bill G., 1995. "Linux has no impact on Microsoft's
strategy" -- Bill G., 1999.
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 23:18:11 +0100
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Trigger languages Re: Further language development Q's
H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 04:55:43PM -0400, Dan Saunders wrote:
> [...]
>
>>Do you know of anyway I could get that put into a larger nutshell? a book
>>or a webpage or something? You have only whetted my thirst for knowledge and
>>my searches on the internet prove futile.
>
> Hmm, you're right, Pablo Flores' pages on this seem to have vanished
> off the net. Fortunately, you can still get at the relevant snippet
> from Google cache:
<snip>
> I'm going to save a copy of this just in case it doesn't come back.
> :-/
Seeing as one of the reasons I put up the wiki[1] was so that these
things could be collected together, you could throw it up there.
If nobody writes up something by the morning, I'll throw an article
on it up myself.
My T�rnaru[2] is a simple (accidental: didn't know about triggers at
the time, but they rock) trigger language. If anybody wants an example,
it's there. It also does other nifty things with the particles to do
things like reflexion and the like.
It works slightly differently from what David described. There's a bunch
of particles, more or less like prepositions, that mark the functions of
the various noun phrases in the sentence. When you want to make
something the focus of a sentence, you leave that NP unmarked, and mark
the verb complex instead with the role of the focused NP. You can also
mark an NP with two particles, e.g.
an-a-L�du �l t�k
ACT-PAT-L�du PAST hit
L�du hit himself
L�du �l an-a-t�k.
(It was) L�du (who) hit himself. (uh, roughly translated)
K.
[1] http://talideon.com/concultures/wiki/
[2] It's still at http://hereticmessiah.buzzword.com/conlangs/ternaru
for now, but should be at http://talideon.com/concultures/ternadi/
soon.
--
Keith Gaughan -- talideon.com
The man who removes a mountain begins
by carrying away small stones...
...to make place for some really big nukes!
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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 15:37:43 -0700
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I'm back!
On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, Philippe Caquant wrote:
> --- "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi.
> >
> > What think ye of this idea? What kind of terms might
> > a language spoken
> > in a 4D world have, which we do not have? At least
> > one curious mind
> > thirsts to know. :-)
>
> Why, all spatial terms, of course (prepositions,
> adverbs...) I guess one has to consider the relation
> between a cube and hypercube, for ex. A cube has, let
> us see, 6 faces, 8 vertices, 12 edges. A hypercube (or
> a supercube, as Gamow says) has 24 faces, 16 vertices
> and 32 edges (Gamow has drawn a nice 'supercube' on
> page 67 of "One, two, three... infinity", Dover Ed.).
> So the number of spatial words should be multiplied
> more or less in the same proportions. Instead of:
> before / behind / on the right side / on the left side
> / above / under, for ex, you should have 24 different
> words.
>
> Of course, if your original 3d-language already has
> specific words for "approaching from below while
> rotating anti-clockwise", then it will be a little
> harder in 4d. Good luck.
Don't forget also, that strange things can happen in the world of
4-dimensional geometry: there are no such things as knotted strings,
but you can tie spheres into knots... Klein bottles also live in this
world.
Prepositions will be strange: in/out/etc. will have to have new meanings,
and new prepositions: if you tie a rope "around" something then do you
also tie a sphere "around" something?
Do the people live on the "surface" of a hypersphere? What do they
look like?
Sorry I can't say more, but my brain is already falling apart trying to
visualize this stuff.
--Apollo
PS
A useful trick that I use when I try to visualize 4-dimensional geometry
is to imagine objects in 3-space but with color (say running from red to
blue) where the color indicates location in 4-space. This means that
if two things are colored differently, they don't actually intersect.
Thus it is clear that there are no knotted strings in 4-space, as you
can take a string (say red) and push a bit of it until it is blue and
then the blue part can cross any red parts, unknotting the string easily.
(Easier to see with a picture...)
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Message: 9
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:57:04 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I'm back!
On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 03:37:43PM -0700, Apollo Hogan wrote:
[...]
> Don't forget also, that strange things can happen in the world of
> 4-dimensional geometry: there are no such things as knotted strings,
> but you can tie spheres into knots... Klein bottles also live in this
> world.
Ah yes. I've been waiting to train my mind enough that I can "see" a
Klein bottle. I think they're the coolest thing ever! :-)
> Prepositions will be strange: in/out/etc. will have to have new meanings,
> and new prepositions: if you tie a rope "around" something then do you
> also tie a sphere "around" something?
Interesting, can you actually tie a sphere into a knot in 4D? I
thought you could only do it to a 2D surface in 4D. But maybe I'm
wrong.
> Do the people live on the "surface" of a hypersphere? What do they
> look like?
I'd like to think so, yes. Or at least, on some kind of "flat" 3D
volume. Maybe they walk around on a flat 3D hyperplane. I think having
a 4th spatial dimension is enough to make the language incredibly
weird, so I'd like to keep it as analogous to Earth as possible. No
need for Ebis�dian-style weird physics here to add to the confusion.
:-P
As for what they look like... I'm hoping that I can get away with
humanoid creatures... but I have my doubts whether having 2 feet is
enough for one to stand on steadily in 4D. If 2 eyes were enough for
4D stereovision I'd go for it, but I'm not sure if it captures enough
parallax to be useful.
> Sorry I can't say more, but my brain is already falling apart trying to
> visualize this stuff.
LOL, I know what you mean... although I scare myself by having
developed an ability to rotate 4D objects in my mind.
(Well, kindof... I definitely haven't gotten to the point I can
rotate arbitrary 4D objects or rotate things in arbitrary planes yet.
But I can definitely visualize rotating spherical hypercones, cubical
cylinders, cubical pyramids, cylindrical prisms, etc. I can see how
the tip of a hypercone "sticks out" at me from the center of its
spherical projection, how it moves outside the sphere when the
hypercone turns, and how it disappears "behind" the sphere when it
turns on the other side to point away from me. I haven't dared try
rotating the 600-cell in my head, though. *That* one still makes
smoke come out my ears. :-P)
> PS
> A useful trick that I use when I try to visualize 4-dimensional geometry
> is to imagine objects in 3-space but with color (say running from red to
> blue) where the color indicates location in 4-space. This means that
> if two things are colored differently, they don't actually intersect.
Yep.
> Thus it is clear that there are no knotted strings in 4-space, as you
> can take a string (say red) and push a bit of it until it is blue and
> then the blue part can cross any red parts, unknotting the string easily.
> (Easier to see with a picture...)
I know precisely what you mean. The interesting thing is that even if
the string has 4D width (i.e., it's not just a 3D rope, which would be
trivial to un-knot in 4D), it *still* can be unknotted in the same
manner.
What I want to visualize, though, is how exactly one knots a sphere...
what does it look like???
But speaking of 4D visualization, I've actually written up a webpage
describing the process by which I do this. It's actually not *that*
hard, believe it or not; the key to the whole thing being that a 4D
being would have a 3D retina and would see 3D images in its eye, and
that although we only see in 2D, our mind pretty much has a very good
grasp of 3D. So it's just a matter of imagining a 3D image in our
mind, and then inferring 4D depth from it. Well, I'm starting to
repeat what I wrote on the webpage here, so let me just post the URL
instead:
http://eusebeia.dyndns.org/~hsteoh/4d/vis.html
But back to conlanging, one problem that suddenly occurred to me is
that a 4D being's mouth has a 4D cavity, which means that the tongue
has 4 degrees of freedom... and even if you assume it normally only
moves up/down in speech, that's still 3 degrees of freedom. Does that
mean the vowel chart is now 3D ????? (My aural perception explodes at
this proposition...) Also, unless I seriously deprive my 4D people of
teeth, they should probably have 2D areas of teeth. Does that mean
there are N^2 possible dental sounds now?? And worse, 4D lips would be
able to make 3D shapes... suddenly I have an incredible amount of new
labial sounds as well! And can you imagine having 2 degrees of freedom
with which to produce laterals? You'd have two distinct sets of
uni-laterals, and a set of bi-laterals. (Owie, my head hurts...)
If I were to take all this into account, I could end up with a
language easily more pathological than Ebis�dian, without even trying!
(And I'm not even going to try thinking about the writing system,
which would necessarily involve 3D characters... this is worse than it
seems at first glance---just imagine the difference between a letter
represented by a (hollow) sphere and a letter represented by a ball.
They are completely different things to 4D eyes, but when viewed on
the outside by us, they look identical.)
T
--
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed
room with a mosquito. -- Jan van Steenbergen
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Message: 10
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 22:04:06 -0400
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 03:13:15PM -0700, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> Considering that a 4D being would necessarily see in 3D (i.e., have a
> 3D retina), this seems to lead me to just 4 pairs of directions:
Exactly so.
> up/down, left/right, front/back, "in"/"out" (or whatever you call
> it... this is different from being actually "inside" or "outside" a 4D
> volume).
The terms I've most often heard for the extra two directions along the extra
spatial dimension in fourspace are "ana" and "cata" - presumably the same
as the prefixes in e.g. anaphoric and cataphoric.
-Marcos
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Message: 11
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 20:46:41 -0700
From: Apollo Hogan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: 4d-world [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 03:37:43PM -0700, Apollo Hogan wrote:
> [...]
>
> Interesting, can you actually tie a sphere into a knot in 4D? I
> thought you could only do it to a 2D surface in 4D. But maybe I'm
> wrong.
Well, I meant S^2, the _skin_ or surface of a ball, not the solid ball.
(I.e. the unique-up-to-homeomorphism compact two-manifold without boundary
and with genus -2, :-) But I do think that you can tie it into a knot
in 4-space. You can also link together spheres (S^2) inseparably, just as we
can link rings inseparably in 3-space.
One way (not the only way) to generate knotted spheres in 4-space is to
"suspend" ordinary knots in 3-space... The idea is something like the knot
becomes the "equator" of the sphere... just take two hemispheres, sew them
together along the knot (of course you can't do this in 3-space, because of
the twisting of the knot, but there's room in 4-space). Voila, you've got
a knot. (Warning: I've not thought very much about this, so I'm bound to
say something wrong, but the idea is something like this.)
> > Do the people live on the "surface" of a hypersphere? What do they
> > look like?
>
> I'd like to think so, yes. Or at least, on some kind of "flat" 3D
> volume. Maybe they walk around on a flat 3D hyperplane. I think having
> a 4th spatial dimension is enough to make the language incredibly
> weird, so I'd like to keep it as analogous to Earth as possible. No
> need for Ebis�dian-style weird physics here to add to the confusion.
> :-P
>
> As for what they look like... I'm hoping that I can get away with
> humanoid creatures... but I have my doubts whether having 2 feet is
> enough for one to stand on steadily in 4D. If 2 eyes were enough for
> 4D stereovision I'd go for it, but I'm not sure if it captures enough
> parallax to be useful.
Well, just pull out the geometry books and static/dynamic mechanics and
generalize everything to dimension N! Then it'll be easy to plug in N=4
and you'll have the answers to all your questions :-)
> What I want to visualize, though, is how exactly one knots a sphere...
> what does it look like???
See above for one method. Another method is to "spin" a 3d knot around
a plane in 4d... I guess you want the center inside the knot. Good luck
visualizing this :-)
> But speaking of 4D visualization, I've actually written up a webpage
> describing the process by which I do this. It's actually not *that*
> hard, believe it or not; the key to the whole thing being that a 4D
> being would have a 3D retina and would see 3D images in its eye, and
> that although we only see in 2D, our mind pretty much has a very good
> grasp of 3D. So it's just a matter of imagining a 3D image in our
> mind, and then inferring 4D depth from it. Well, I'm starting to
> repeat what I wrote on the webpage here, so let me just post the URL
> instead:
>
> http://eusebeia.dyndns.org/~hsteoh/4d/vis.html
Nice. I haven't had time to read it all, but it looks very interesting. Needs
more pictures, though :-)
> But back to conlanging, one problem that suddenly occurred to me is
> that a 4D being's mouth has a 4D cavity, which means that the tongue
> has 4 degrees of freedom... and even if you assume it normally only
> moves up/down in speech, that's still 3 degrees of freedom. Does that
> mean the vowel chart is now 3D ????? (My aural perception explodes at
> this proposition...) Also, unless I seriously deprive my 4D people of
> teeth, they should probably have 2D areas of teeth. Does that mean
> there are N^2 possible dental sounds now?? And worse, 4D lips would be
> able to make 3D shapes... suddenly I have an incredible amount of new
> labial sounds as well! And can you imagine having 2 degrees of freedom
> with which to produce laterals? You'd have two distinct sets of
> uni-laterals, and a set of bi-laterals. (Owie, my head hurts...)
Well, I wouldn't get too carried away, as we have one dimension of teeth,
but we don't have much variance with them. (Basically non-dental vs dental
vs lateral but we don't have front-dental vs front-side-dental vs side-dental,
etc.) And the vowel chart is really based on the fundamental formants of
the speech signal, so depending on the nature of 4-dimensional sound-waves...
and ears... maybe it's the same general shape?
> If I were to take all this into account, I could end up with a
> language easily more pathological than Ebis�dian, without even trying!
> (And I'm not even going to try thinking about the writing system,
> which would necessarily involve 3D characters... this is worse than it
> seems at first glance---just imagine the difference between a letter
> represented by a (hollow) sphere and a letter represented by a ball.
> They are completely different things to 4D eyes, but when viewed on
> the outside by us, they look identical.)
Quite fun :-)
--Apollo
PS
Have you looked at the book "Knotted surfaces and their diagrams" (?). It's
a hefty mathematical tome that I've only browsed in the bookstore, but it seems
to give ways to draw knotted surfaces in 4d and techniques for manipulating
them... It may be worth a gander just for some ideas.
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Message: 12
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 23:40:31 -0500
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
Ray wrote:
> English is also hesitant. This side of the Pond we tend treat collective
> nouns as plural while the American tend to use the singular. We would say
> "The committee are all agreed" the Americans, I believe, would say
> something like "the committee is entirely agreed".
Yes, generally. Though note that some dialects (e.g., mine) have
number attraction, whereby a plural noun in some kind of subordinate
relation (relative clause, prepositional adjunct, etc.) may trigger
plural number agreement even though the formal subject of the verb
is singular. This can in fact occur for me even with noncorporate
NPs.
Note, also, that, IIRC, on both sides of the pond we say "The
United States of America *is*"; certainly semantically and
morphologically plural, but it takes singular agreement. (Although
they are united into one federation, they are still notionally
sovereign entities in many respects, and have far more autonomy
than any of the entities united into the United Kingdom, or
indeed in some ways of the European Union.)
==========================================================================
Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637
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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 09:46:55 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: obliques? Re: THEORY: transitivity
----- Original Message -----
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Constructed Languages List <>
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 11:00 PM
Subject: Re: obliques? Re: THEORY: transitivity
>
> > The point is that it is not clear what a 'transitive' construction
> > really is outside of such criteria. The fact that a verb has two
> arguments
> > does not automatically imply that one is a subject and one an object,
> > since in some languages various kinds of tests (passivization, e.g.)
> > show the second one to be some kind of oblique.
>
> out of curiosity...what is an oblique?
>
> thanks.
>
>
>
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Message: 14
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 09:46:41 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT: reign names
----- Original Message -----
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: Constructed Languages List <
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 11:02 PM
Subject: Re: Re: CHAT: reign names
>
> > There is indeed a Sargon I of Assyria, but he belongs to a period when
> > Assyria was a vassal of Babylon, and it is not even known
> > how long he reigned; it was around the time of Hamurabi. I was
> > given to understand (and this may be wrong) that by the time of Sargon
II
> > of Assyria, over a thousand years later, it was the first Sargon that
> > was really salient, and that Sargon II conscientiously took that throne
> > name to echo the Great One's martial glory. But I suppose the question
> > is ambiguous; I'm not even sure the Assyrians used regnal numbers.
>
> oh, it gets better. :)
>
> the Ancient Egyptians, it turns out, didn't start with Menes, or even
> Narmer. they began with the Scorpion King (okay, actually "King
> Scorpion")...and they had *two* of them!
>
>
>
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Message: 15
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 09:46:24 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
----- Original Message -----
From: Rodlox
To:
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2004 12:46 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 10:24 PM
Subject: Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?)
Rodlox wrote:
<<"Que wot be thee."
" ? / what is / state-of-being / you "
"What are you?">>
>I still see two question words: "que" and "wot". I mean, right in
the translation you translate "wot" as "what is". That's about as
much of a question word as you can get.
okay, sorry for not being too clear...."what is" is a statement..."that which
is" basically.
<<that would probably have an interlinear more like "state-of-being / teacher /
you"...though I may be wrong.>>
>So, in essence, you have a VOS language, like Malagasy.
cool.
> And
what you have are two question words: "que" and "wot". If I
were to conjecture as to how this system works, it'd be this:
>(1) Taking a standard GB root, let's say that there's a Q feature
somewhere that causes WH words to move in front of the verb.
minor question - what are 'GB' and 'WH' ?
>So, in "wot be thee", the "wot" comes from the direct object position
and moves in front of the verb.
>(2) Unlike GB, the Q feature is actually extent, and that Q feature
is "que".
'extent'?...is existing on its own?
(I derived that from "extant", so I'm likely wrong).
>(3) Further conjecturing: If you wanted to say "Are you a teacher?",
you'd have the following: "Que be teacher thee?"
>Is that what you were thinking of?
yep.
thanks!!
>-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: 16
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 07:27:47 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
On Tuesday, September 21, 2004, at 08:18 , Philippe Caquant wrote:
[snip]
> We also find in some computer languages the concept of
> "null", for ex, "true / false" is no more simply
> binary, it becomes "trinary" (or ternary ?):
Both words exist in English but IME 'ternary' is the more common (<--
Latin _ternarius_ [adj.] "consisting of three" <-- _terni_ [distributive
plural adj.] "three each")
> true,
> false or null.
Yep - tristate logic is fun & tristate computers have been built - I don't
know what the current position is in this world of binary machines :0
> So I would always preserve at least one
> possibility for "undefined" in every opposition (and
> probably, express this "undefined" by using no mark at
> all). For ex, male / female:
Ah - you mean like Novial:
home (man or woman, person, human being) ~ homa (woman) ~ homo ([male] man)
> if you see a mouse
> running on the floor, I guess you'll find it hard to
> decide, without closer examination, if it's a male or
> a female one. Clearly here we should have the
> possibilities of saying: a male mouse, a female mouse,
> or a mouse of undefined sex (or gender).
But we can and do! Indeed in many languages, like English, you must!
A mouse = a small rodent of genus Mus, sex undefined; a female mouse; a
male mouse.
Cf. also Novial: muse (undefined sex); musa (female mouse); muso (male
mouse)
> French says
> "la souris" but "le chat", while German and Russian
> both say "la souris" and "la chat".
> The gender has absolutely no meaning, because "la souris" can be male
> while "le chat" can be female. This is a natlang
> aberration.
Only some natlangs :)
Fortunately we anglophones don't have examine mice closely before we talk
about the little critters.
Many languages, for example Chinese & Japanese, are also undefined as
regards number. In Chinese h�oze may be just one mouse or several or many
mice. We have either to relay on context or to specifically mark
singularity or plurality, just as in English the sex of the mouse has to
be marked if we deem it important.
[snip]
> I don't speak Hopi neither, I just mentioned the Whorf
> (was it Whorf ?)
I wouldn't get too hung up on Whorf or Sapir. If you apply Sapir-Whorf
theory strictly then you (I mean Philippe) have to see the world in a very
animate way where everything is either male or female. You would be
convinced, for example, that bridges were all male. Then if you visited
Wales and discovered that the Welsh for bridge is 'pont' you would think
"How sensible"; but on learning that in Wales every 'pont' is a feminine,
you would be either, I guess, assume the Welsh were crazy not to be able
to spot that bridges are obviously male! But I don't suppose for one
moment you think like that.
Now somewhere I've got a Hopi grammar... umm, I had better start looking
:)
[snip]
> third one being hidden in my drawer) ? So we could
> think that there is such a thing as "three in
> presence", "three in the same moment", "three in
> history"...
Just different ways that ephemeral objects of our "shadow world"
participate in Threehood which.....
> The idea that these are all "three" is an
> abstraction, I guess that might not be so obvious for
> everybody in the world.
... for Plato was not an abstraction, but a universal unchanging reality.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO September, 2004
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Message: 17
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 02:25:29 EDT
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
In a message dated 9/19/04 1:32:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< he archetype itself (perhaps "maleness"?)
the set of instantiations of the architype ("all men")
a subset of the complete set
an individual member of the set ("a/the man")
And then I started wondering if any languages "number" system actually
makes this four way distinction... >>
In principle, I intended to be able to indicate roughly these distinctions in
Rihana-ye, though they have not worked out consistently in practice.
The best example that did come out relatively close to what I intended is
derived from
the verb fo (to live).
The form foha (verb root plus noun suffix) means life in general.
The form fomiha participle plus noun suffix) means "a living body"
The related noun root form fa means "an animal"
The form faha (noun root plus the noun suffix) means "herd of animals"
John Leland
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Message: 18
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 09:59:55 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: new conlang - " *aiinodbus' "
(name drawn from arbitrarily sellected letters in the conlang).
concept: narration-based [all Implied First Person]
other features:
trigger prefix
implied acceptance & accuracy
phoneme pronounciation:
gh
kh [X]
o (like "cOt" & "Octopus")
u (like "tUt & "bUnk") [U\] ?
I [I] or [I\]
ii (like "sIght" and "strIve")
a (like "bAt" & "cAn")
b [b]
d [d] (? [d'] or [d_<] ?)
dy [dz\]
n [n] or [N\]
m [m]
sy [s\]
zy [z\]
s [s]
s' [S]
h [h] (?) [h\] or [H\] ?)
* [O\]
rules:
no double vowels.
no triple consanants.
'dy' can not be used to prefix or start a word; nor can 'sy' 'zy' or (_).
'gh' can not be used to suffix or end a word; nor can ('kh')* or (_).
suffixes can not be used as prefixes.
prefixes can not be used as suffixes.
clicks can only prefix words.
clicks can not prefix particibles or non-word single-phonemes. (ie, the man
threw *a* ball").
prefixes can not prefix clicks.
clicks can prefix prefixes that are attached to words.
there are no double clicks.
* = I'm of two minds about that one.
vocabulary:
ghere = narrate, narration
ghore = he narrates [thusly]
ghure = she narrates [thusly]
ghoure = it was relayed [to me] that it was narrated [thusly]
*for the ending of a narration, replace GH with KH;
khore = [and so] he narrated
s'aih = you
s'aoh = they
s'aeh = other
sobe = to
sabe = from
sebe = with
sibe = by
siibe = of
throw = ghekh
hit = ghedh
kick = ghadh
butting = ghakh
but = dusu
and = sudu
as well (as) = susudu
and then = sudusudu
so, therefore = dususu
because = susu
however = dusudu
dyen = man
dyon = woman
dyiin = anon.
dyiinaum = unknown
(so...what function does the -aum serve? how does it go from Anonymous ->
Unknown ?).
dyaen = person, people [abstract concept]
* is a trigger, an emphasis-marker. Some speakers of this language, use *
to place emphasis on whether the recipient or the giver is older or
higher-ranked than the other person.
ie, "dyenasy *dyonaze [toaster]" = "the man gives a toaster to
_the_woman_" or "he gives _her_ a toaster"
postfixes:
past tense:
-(a)zye
-(a)sye
ie, "dyenazye" = "man got"
present tense:
-(a)zy = recipient
-(a)sy = bestower
-aum = (?)
ie, "dyenasy" = "man is given"
future tense:
-(a)zya = recipient
-(a)sya = bestower
ie, "dyenasya" = "man will get"
accuracy is implied by context...
"dyenasy s'aoh ghedh" = "the man gives / they / hit" = "the man hits,
they are not hit" -> "the man hits and misses them".
acceptance is implied by context. to use the toaster of earlier...
"dyenasy dyon [toaster]" = "the man gives / the woman / a toaster"
in this example, the woman does not accept the toaster.
"dyenasy dyonazy [toaster]" = "the man gives / the woman recieves / a
toaster"
in this example, she does accept the toaster.
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Message: 19
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 02:59:25 -0400
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 4D conlang [Was: Re: I'm back!]
On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 15:13:15 -0700, H. S. Teoh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>But besides spatial words, I'm struggling with this concept of either
>having no knots in my 4D con-world, or having knots that can only be
>tied by twisting 2D sheets (because knotted 1D strings in 4D are
>identical to the unknotted string, so you can't tie a knot with a 1D
>string without it coming apart trivially in 4D). So the conlang would
>either have NO words for tie, knot, etc., or it would need a new set
>of words for whatever bizarre operations one would need to perform to
>get 2D sheets to "knot" in 4D. (I'm not even sure this is possible to
>begin with.)
What struggles me most is how many dimensions could language itself have in
environments of higher dimensions. Spoken language is essencially two-
dimensional: time and sound (or syntagmatics and paradigmatics). If there
were an additional dimension, then language could have an additional
dimension, too. I couldn't imagine it, though.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 20
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 03:13:23 EDT
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
In a message dated 9/21/04 12:30:53 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< English is also hesitant. This side of the Pond we tend treat collective
> nouns as plural while the American tend to use the singular. We would say
> "The committee are all agreed" the Americans, I believe, would say
> something like "the committee is entirely agreed".
In American English, nouns singular in form take singular agreement
only, without regard to their semantics. The only exception is *some*
but not all pluralia tantum nouns (ones which do not have a syntactic
singular form): the news is, the scissors are, the pants are, e.g. >>
Actually, according to the American English grammar texts I use in teaching
composition, a collective noun like "committee" takes the singular when
acting as a unit e.g."The committee presented its report" but takes the
plural when
its members are acting individually,e.g. "the committee took their seats."
John Leland
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Message: 21
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 03:10:11 EDT
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
In a message dated 9/21/04 9:42:26 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< "The
United States of America *is*" >>
I believe Shelby Foote or some pundit on the Civil War TV series said that
the normal usage before the Civil War was "The United States are"
John Leland
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Message: 22
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 09:46:54 +0200
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language
On Sep 22, 2004, at 9:27 AM, Ray Brown wrote:
On Tuesday, September 21, 2004, at 08:18 , Philippe Caquant wrote:
> [snip]
>> We also find in some computer languages the concept of
>> "null", for ex, "true / false" is no more simply
>> binary, it becomes "trinary" (or ternary ?):
> Both words exist in English but IME 'ternary' is the more common (<--
> Latin _ternarius_ [adj.] "consisting of three" <-- _terni_
> [distributive
> plural adj.] "three each")
ObConlang...
In David Brin's _Uplift_ books, the 'uplifted' sapient (neo-)Dolphins
speak a whistled language called "Trinary", possibly because it has
only three basic phonemes or something like that.
-Stephen (Steg)
"rest / rest and listen / rest and listen and learn, creideiki /
for the startide rises in the currents of the dark /
and we have waited long for what must be..."
~ _startide rising_ by david brin
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Message: 23
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:10:30 +0200
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Imperatives in split-S languages (was Anomaly of the (apparent) Cebuano
uvulars and Guarani info request)
Quoting Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> The problem is, lots of "quality" verbs, in English and many languages,
> can't have imperatives either, and it may be a near-universal. There are
> questions of logic, real-world possibility, applicability to humans,
> volition. Thus, "don't be ill/sick" is not an acceptable sentence, just
> like "don't be green", "don't be intelligent". Similarly, "don't know
> that!", "don't understand that!"-- some in this last class are acceptable as
> positives, though rather formal.
I think these are more weird than wrong - in sufficiently weird circumstances,
they could be acceptable. A case of colorless green ideas sleeping furiously, I
guess.
FWIW, I've been told "don't be so fucking bright!". :)
Andreas
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Message: 24
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 04:34:46 EDT
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Replying to Rodlox (Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?) and obliques)
Rodlox wrote:
<<out of curiosity...what is an oblique?>>
An example from English:
"I ate a hot dog."
Both "I' and "a hot dog" are core arguments of the verb "ate".
If you passivize it, though...
"A hot dog was eaten (by me)."
...only "a hot dog" is a core argument. "By me" is now considered
an oblique--that is, it is *not* a core argument of the verb. In
English, it isn't even necessary (a clue for whether or not something
is an oblique in English). Obliques work differently in different
languages, but they tend to not be core arguments of the verb, and
tend to be marked differently than other arguments (for example,
core arguments of English verbs tend not to be marked, whereas
the oblique must always be preposed by "by").
Rodlox also wrote:
<<minor question - what are 'GB' and 'WH' ?>>
GB stands for Government and Binding--a syntactic framework I
was taught recently. This fact isn't worth remembering. WH, however,
is worth knowing. A WH-word is a question word. Why is it called a
WH-word? Because most all English WH-words have "wh" in them--
and most of them begin with WH:
WHo
WHat
WHere
WHen
WHy
HoW
This was an anglocentric coinage, but it seems to have stuck. WH-word
is now universally understood to mean "question word" (pretty much).
But it's not just any question word. So, for example, in your Orinoco
English,
"wot" would be a WH-word, but "que" would *not* be. A WH-word has to
stand for something--kind of like a pronoun. So, in Arabic, for example,
you have "maa" meaning "what" and "man" meaning "who", and those are
WH-words. All yes/no questions, though, begin with the particle "hal"
(similar
to your "que"). So, an example:
hal tatakalam al-?/arabiija?
/Q you-speak Arabic/
"Do you speak Arabic?"
"hal" above, like "que", just lets the speaker know that the phrase is
a question. A WH-word asks about a specific something. So, in English,
"what" asks about a thing; "who" a person; "when" a time; "where" a place;
"why" a reason; and "how" a method or means.
Hope that makes sense.
-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: 25
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:59:07 +0200
From: Tamas Racsko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)
On 21 Sep 2004 Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> basques can use special auxilliary
> verb forms which also reflect the gender of the addressee!
Basque makes inanimate vs. animate distinction in another
connection. Before locative suffixes animate noun phrases are
marked by a suffix |ga|, but |ta| is inserted in case of inanimate
noun phrases that have no singular determiner (inanimate noun
phrases with singular determiner take zero suffix).
Therefore I think about the gender marking in personal agreement
slots of Basque verbs as subclasses of animate class. In this
respect, it is not grammatical "gender" but natural "sex". Sex in
2nd-person utterances is often expressed even in languages which
have no gender marking (in 2nd person or at all) by
supragrammatical means, cf. |Come here, _boy_|, |How are you,
_girls_|.
> the auxilliary verb agrees with the Actor, Patient, Recipient, and
> the Gender of the addressee (if that addressee is familiar or
> intimate)
AFAIK synthetic verbs (not just auxiliary but a few others also)
have three functional slots for personal agreement marking: "nor"
or absolutive slot, "nori" or dative slot, "nork" or ergative slot.
Patient fills "nor" slot, Actor is ambivalent: it tries first to
connect to "nor" slot; but if it is already occupied by Patient,
Actor opens and fills "nork" slot. (A similar interesting
precedence rule determines the actual position of "nork" slot in
the suffix chain.)
Gender (or sex) marking is possible only in "nori" and "nork"
slots, "nor" slot has a single allomorph for both male and female
2nd person morpheme.
> I don't think even Inuit can beat this level of agreement lol...
I am not aware of Inuit grammar, but polysynthetical languages
may have additional slots for further case agreement. I have an
example from Sumerian where locative marking is involved in
addition: |mu-na-ni-n-du-{}| 'he/she has built it there for
him/her'; |mu| ventive modality: Actor is animate; |na| < |ra| -
dative marker: sg3 animate Recipient; |ni| - locative marker; |n| -
ergative and aspect marker: sg3 Actor from perfective (=hamtu)
series; |du| - verbal stem: to build; |{}| (terminal zero morpheme)
- absolutive marker: sg3 inanimate Patient.
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