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There are 23 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: the Na's language? Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Fwd: Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: About making a translator
From: Alexander Savenkov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Senyecan Babel Text, Part 1
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: About making a translator
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Senyecan nouns (for Doug Dee)
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
From: "Jonathyn Bet'nct" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Senyecan nouns (for Doug Dee)
From: Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Senyecan nouns (for Doug Dee)
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Toki Pona survey
From: Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Welsh "w" and "y"
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Possible base-20 numeric system
From: Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Possible base-20 numeric system
From: Danny Wier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Larethian
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Question about Latin.
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: experimental crocodile phonology questions
From: Pablo Flores <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Question about Latin.
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. C-15 (JRRT-inspired)
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Inuktitut & C-14 interlinear
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Inuktitut & C-14 interlinear
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:26:59 +0300
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: the Na's language? Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Mills" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 7:31 PM
Subject: Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal
> John Cowan wrote:
> > If so, the mediating element with Southeast Asia almost has to be
> > Sinitic, despite the disappearance of [N-] over most of the Sinitic
> > area. No other language group is simultaneously in contact with Turkic,
> > Tungusic, Tai-Kadai, and Austro-Asiatic.
out of curiosity, to which language/language family do the Na people
belong?
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:59:14 +0200
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Question about word-initial velar nasal
Kou wrote:
> So, /w-/ and zero are out there. /R/? If that's pinyin "r",
No, it's Pinyin zero initial, which Pulleyblank says some
speakers realize as a uvular voiced continuant.
--
/BP 8^)
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
(Tacitus)
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 20:39:09 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
This is very interesting!! When I wrote these characters in my
original, they appeared (at least on my monitor) perfectly formed,
not just on the edit screen and the preview screen, but also on the
message screen after the message had been posted:
0154 ��is s-caron
0158 � is z-caron
230 � is mu
Here the characters are displayed properly on my monitor.
In the response from Muke Tevers (see below) they do indeed appear as
the spacing umlaut and the spacing cedilla. The mu is intact.
My logical deduction is that I can make those characters and he
can't. My logical deduction doesn't make sense to me. It's no
wonder I'm only semi-literate on the computer. I have no idea what
makes things tick. No need to waste a message on this in reply. I'm
just wondering outloud. But I would like to know (as a P.S. in other
messages?) what others saw, "my" characters or "Muke's" characters.
�t�mi tend�mi t�rc�a yuz���ye yus�fe=c�e!
the while thru live prosper=and
Charlie
>> Danny Wier scripsit:
>>> You could also use S and Z with carons since you can input those
>>> with Alt+0xxx too!
>>>
>>> S-caron = Alt+0138
>>> Z-caron = Alt+0142
>>> s-caron = Alt+0154
>>> z-caron = Alt+0158
John Cowan:
>> Unlike the other characters, however, these are strictly Windows-
>> only; they shouldn't be used on this list.
Me:
> Why is that, John? � (whoops) ���
Muke:
If you have a poorly-behaved Windows mail client, it will try to send
cp-1251 (the Windows codepage) as Latin 1, which doesn't have these
characters.
A well-behaved mail client will thus try to display them thus:
S-caron = broken pipe
Z-caron = spacing umlaut
s-caron = spacing trema
z-caron = spacing cedilla
If you have a better-behaved mail client, it will tell you you're
trying
to send characters your encoding doesn't say exists. Opera's mail
client
does it, anyway, though its default is Latin 9, which _does_ include
the caronned characters. [I would have included the characters for
broken
pipe, etc., above but they aren't in Latin 9, so it yelled at me....]
*Muke!
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 02:30:28 +0400
From: Alexander Savenkov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: About making a translator
Hello,
2004-10-26T16:06:04+03:00 Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But, as Richard has written & I have discovered from experience, it
> is a highly non-trivial task.
According to what I've read, this is an impossible task for now.
Machine translation will be possible with the invention of AI.
Alexander
--
Alexander Savenkov http://www.xmlhack.ru/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.xmlhack.ru/authors/croll/
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 23:19:37 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Senyecan Babel Text, Part 1
I'll do this in several parts since it is quite long. I translated
it directly from the Hebrew.
sun s�lun v��tu-n �i y�ca-s �i yexmo-s=c�e
the whole earth-NM.SG one language-GN.SG one speech-GN.SG=and
(And) the whole earth one of-language one of-speech-and
e-n-�s-a.
PST-it-is-IND.
(1) I have not indicated the gender of the nouns, believing it to be
obvious: i-class, e-class, etc.
(2) The time augment is always hyphenated: e-n�sa.
(3) The co-ordinating conjunction "and" is never used to connect
clauses or sentences, only individual words.
�pi tam aa�sa-m �ha e-nu-c�l�-a,
as the east-AC.SG from PST-they-travel-IND
(And) as the east from they-traveled,
l��pom tos r�o-s sin�r-m�a-s �na c��lno-m
level the land-GN.SG shinar-(6)-GN.SG in valley-AC.SG
a level the land shinar in valley
n�-mi e-d��s-a e-n-�s-a.
they-AC.PL PST-find-IND[INF] PST-it-is-IND
them to-find it-was.
(4) Postpositions, not prepositions.
(a) with the acc. if there is motion: tam aa�sam �ha.
(b) with the gen. if there is no motion: tos r�os �na.
(5) Apposition is expressed by parallel structure without the use
of "of": the land Shinar.
(6) The suffix -m�a is used to name a country.
(7) The subject of an inf. is in the acc. case; no personal pronoun
prefix is attached to the inf.
To be continued.
Charlie
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:34:56 -0700
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: About making a translator
On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 02:30:28AM +0400, Alexander Savenkov wrote:
> Hello,
>
> 2004-10-26T16:06:04+03:00 Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > But, as Richard has written & I have discovered from experience, it
> > is a highly non-trivial task.
>
> According to what I've read, this is an impossible task for now.
> Machine translation will be possible with the invention of AI.
[...]
Impossible to be 100% correct, yes. But may be possible to do an
approximation.
The essence of the problem is that natural language is inherently
ambiguous, and requires (usually implicit) context to interpret
correctly. Take for example the following quote, which I got from
somebody on this list:
Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.
The second sentence is particularly pathological, in that it has two
possible parses, both of which have sensible semantics:
1) Fruit-NP flies-V like-ADV (a banana)-NP
2) (Fruit flies)-NP like-V (a banana)-NP
The problem with this kind of ambiguity is that it is an inherent
ambiguity in English grammar. (And it's not just English alone; I
believe most, if not all, natlangs are inherently ambiguous.) We don't
have good algorithms for dealing with ambiguous grammars: it will
require an exponential-complexity algorithm to determine all possible
parses of these ambiguous sentences. Furthermore, once this has been
done, you need some way to decide which of these parses is the correct
one.
But worse yet, context is required to properly interpret natlang
sentences. We don't have good algorithms for dealing with
context-sensitive grammars. In fact, I doubt if anyone even knows how
to go about writing a context-sensitive grammar that expresses basic
context-sensitivity, such as whether a referent has occurred earlier
in the given text. Even if such a grammar were written, it would be
extremely complex and difficult to understand. And we still don't have
a feasible algorithm for parsing text according to context-sensitive
grammars.
Now, existing computer language compilers do deal with
context-sensitivity, but only to a limited extent. The programming
language's context-sensitive grammar is reduced to a non-ambiguous,
context-free grammar, and the context-sensitivity is implemented as
ad-hoc rules applied after the parse. The language would be designed
and refined so that these rules are relatively straightforward to
implement. When it comes to natural language, however, we don't have
this option. And the context-sensitivity rules aren't as well-defined
as in the computer language case, but are usually mere heuristics.
Add on top of this the fact that most natlang texts leave out a lot of
context that is required to properly interpret it. For example, some
technical jargon uses common English words, but with different
meanings from common usage. In technical journals, however, the
explanation of such words is usually not included because it is
well-known among the audience. From a computer's standpoint, this
means that the context required to interpret such a text is not
available, and so ambiguity cannot be resolved. Sometimes, the
necessary context is *never* defined anywhere, simply because it is
culturally understood. To write an algorithm to interpret such texts
would require the coding of cultural conventions, which I doubt we
even know how to represent digitally in a form usable by a parsing
algorithm.
And this doesn't even begin to account for regional differences,
dialectal differences, and personal differences, which can sometimes
play a big role in properly interpreting a given piece of text. And
even if you can somehow surmount all these barriers, you still have to
resolve the problem of how to map the highly-idiosyncratic parse
you've just constructed to the grammar, context, and convention of the
target language. Most of the time, the mapping is very non-trivial.
What ends up happening most of the time is that you take the common
denominator between the two and throw out everything else.
Unfortunately, most of what gets thrown out is usually what carries
the most important information.
Having said all this, all hope is not lost; it is still possible to
write approximate algorithms that can more-or-less parse natural
language and produce approximate translations. Heuristics can be
applied to make guesses that are right 90% of the time. Approximate
being the keyword here, however, because currently existing
translators fall woefully short of the quality needed for general use.
As someone once said, "Heuristics are buggy by definition, because if
they weren't buggy, they'd be algorithms." Perhaps AI might help in
improving this, but with the current state of AI, I'm not holding my
breath.
T
--
Creativity is not an excuse for sloppiness.
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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 00:08:14 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Senyecan nouns (for Doug Dee)
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>A remark on terminology: I think linguists in general would say that
>your six "classes/declensions" _are_ "genders" by the usual
>definition of gender. ("Genders are classes of nouns reflected in
>the behavior of associated words" according to Charles Hockett as
>quoted by Greville Corbett in his book _Gender_). "Inanimate" nouns
>would then fall into 2 of these genders (the -o and -a genders)
>and "animate" nouns into the rest. So, "animate" and "inanimate"
>wouldn't be genders, but sets of genders.
>Is there a reason you don't describe it that way?
>Doug
I didn't know that was a use of the word. All my linguistic life
I've been calling the inflection of nouns "declensions." 5
declensions in Latin, 3 in Greek. While studying Swahili, I became
familiar with the use of the word "class" to distinguish groups of
nouns, although they are not inflected: the KI VI class, the M MI
class, the M WA class, etc. I checked my own linguistic "bible,"
David Crystal's "A Dictionary of Linguistics and
Phonetics." "Gender: a grammatical category used for the analysis of
word-classes displaying...contrasts." "Word-classes can be
established, by analysing...and grouping words into classes on the
basis of formal similarities (e.g., their inflections...)."
Mr. Hockett used the phrase "behavior of associated words." If I'm
not mistaken, he is referring to the use of words other than the noun
itself to determine gender, e.g., the definite article. In my
conlang associated words are not necessary to see (or hear) the
similarity between certain words. The similarity among certain nouns
is inherent in the noun itself.
I thank you for your response. It has led me to give more thought to
this aspect of my conlang.
Charlie
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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:34:10 -0700
From: "Jonathyn Bet'nct" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
On Tuesday, October 26, 2004, at 01:39 PM, caeruleancentaur wrote:
> This is very interesting!! When I wrote these characters in my
> original, they appeared (at least on my monitor) perfectly formed,
> not just on the edit screen and the preview screen, but also on the
> message screen after the message had been posted:
>
> 0154 ��is s-caron
> 0158 � is z-caron
> 230 � is mu
> Here the characters are displayed properly on my monitor.
>
> In the response from Muke Tevers (see below) they do indeed appear as
> the spacing umlaut and the spacing cedilla. The mu is intact.
>
> My logical deduction is that I can make those characters and he
> can't. My logical deduction doesn't make sense to me. It's no
> wonder I'm only semi-literate on the computer. I have no idea what
> makes things tick. No need to waste a message on this in reply. I'm
> just wondering outloud. But I would like to know (as a P.S. in other
> messages?) what others saw, "my" characters or "Muke's" characters.
I saw the proper characters.
It has to do with character encodings. In Windows' character set, which
most people can see, the characters are in the positions you say they
are. If all the email programs, operating systems, and servers along
the way from your computer to mine handle character encodings properly,
the characters should appear properly. Whatever OS and mail client
combination Muke is using is changing the encoding. When this happens,
mu stays intact because it is one of the few characters that is in the
same position no matter what encoding you're using (Windows, Mac Roman,
or Unicode). The others aren't in the same position so they get
reencoded as different characters.
Something like that. Without more details I can't tell exactly what's
going on.
Hasta la pasta,
Jonathyn Bet'nct
--
Web site: http://kreativekorp.cjb.net
AIM: tamchel215718
Yahoo: jonrelay
MSN: jonnie1717
ICQ: 76731065 Why would I need an icy cucumber?
I'm hardly ever on IM, but I'll usually answer my e-mail in less than a
day.
Spam sent to this email address disappears on contact!
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Message: 9
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 21:14:24 EDT
From: Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Senyecan nouns (for Doug Dee)
In a message dated 10/26/2004 8:09:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>I didn't know that was a use of the word. All my linguistic life
>I've been calling the inflection of nouns "declensions." 5
>declensions in Latin
. . .
>Mr. Hockett used the phrase "behavior of associated words." If I'm
>not mistaken, he is referring to the use of words other than the noun
>itself to determine gender, e.g., the definite article.
Yes, I agree. To put it another way: a declension is a group of nouns that
make all their own case/number forms the same way (like the 1st declension in
Latin, with -a in the nom. sg., -ae, in the gen. sg., etc), while a gender is a
group of nouns that require the same agreements on adjectives, articles etc
(like the feminine gender in Latin). I was making the terminological point
that your declensions seem to be genders as well. That is, you have a perfect
match between your declensions and your genders (by Hockett's definition, six
genders), unlike Latin, where there is substantial overlap between, for example,
feminine nouns and first declension nouns, but the two sets are not identical.
>In my conlang associated words are not necessary to see (or hear) the
>similarity between certain words. The similarity among certain nouns
>is inherent in the noun itself.
Yes, I see. You have what Corbett would call an "overt" gender system, in
which the gender of every noun is obvious from the form of the noun itself.
Another gender-related question: how do you deal with mixed groups, like "The
woman and the centaur are (both) angry"? Which form of "angry" would be
used, given that "woman" and "centaur" are in different classes?
Doug
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Message: 10
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 02:12:23 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Senyecan nouns (for Doug Dee)
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Another gender-related question: how do you deal with mixed groups,
>like "The woman and the centaur are (both) angry"? Which form
>of "angry" would be used, given that "woman" and "centaur" are in
>different classes?
Rule 184 in the Senyecan grammar: A predicate adjective when
qualifying more than one substantive, agrees in gender, number, and
case with the nearest substantive.
sun g��nun s�n �ir���nc�e m�l�n n�sa.
the woman the centaur-and angry they-are.
Rule 183 is similar: An attributive adjective qualifying several
nouns agrees with the nearest and is understood with the rest.
sen ��va�en ��en r��unc�e nuf��la.
the injured horse rider-and they-fall.
What I find interesting is the use of the personal pronoun prefix on
the verb. In these examples the subjects have been loquent beings in
the u-class.
If the subject is of another class, the appropiate personal pronoun
prefix must be used.
s�n �ir���n n�f��la. sin aab�lin nif��la.
the centaur he-falls. the appletree it-falls.
This was not evident in the example above because the verb began with
a vowel. In this case, the vowel of the personal pronoun prefix is
not used.
nu-f��l-a, but n-�s-a.
he-fall-IND he-is-IND
Thanks for the question. You're keeping me on my toes. And at 63,
that's not always easy!!
Charlie
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Message: 11
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 01:53:17 -0400
From: Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Toki Pona survey
On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 22:22:38 -0400, Jeffrey Henning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Have any of you tried to learn Toki Pona? (http://www.tokipona.org)
The one time I looked for it, it was undergoing a major revision, and
apparently still it. So I can't really answer the questions. But I haven't
tried to really learn any conlangs except my own, which takes more than
enough effort already.
Jeff
>What do you like about it?
>
>What do you dislike about it?
>
>
>Best regards,
>
>Jeffrey
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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 07:00:31 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Welsh "w" and "y"
On Tuesday, October 26, 2004, at 02:57 , Christian Thalmann wrote:
> --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> "land, country", gwn- [gwn] as in _gwneud_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] "to make, to
> do" and
>
> Is |eu| always [EMAIL PROTECTED], or only after labialization? I would
> have expected [ej]...
Welsh doesn't have [ej], nor indeed does 'Welsh English'. In Wales as in
some pats of England & Scotland, a word like "game" is pronounced [ge:m].
Welsh has in fact borrowed the word and spells it _g�m_.
The diphthong |ei| is always [EMAIL PROTECTED] as is |eu| in the south. In north Wales,
the semi-vocalic element tends towards the high center rather than high
front, but it begins [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>> (a) CLEAR
>> This is exactly the same as Welsh |u|, that is a high central unrounded
>> vowel in the north nnd exactly like |i| in the south.
>
> Then a spelin reeform replacing all clear |y| with |u| is
> practically inevitable. =P
Nope - nothing's inevitable in natlangs :)
> Would it hurt to write |dyn|
> as |dun|?
Not a great deal, but the plural is |dynion| ['[EMAIL PROTECTED]; the Welsh feel
happier with |dyn| ~ |dynion| :)
> Speaking of spelin reeforms... I just had a deeper look
> at that Irish Gaelic Kauderwelsch booklet... argh!
> Irish never fails to give me a headache! =\
:)
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 02:03:39 -0400
From: Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Possible base-20 numeric system
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 08:41:25 -0500, Danny Wier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>From: "Andreas Johansson"
>
> > It would be a load on memory, but there's no reason in principle you
> > couldn't have unanalyzable atomic words for 0-59 just like we've got
> > for 0-9 in decimal.
>
> I was thinking digit symbols, but Hindi has such an irregular naming
> system for 1-100 the words have to be memorized by rote.
Didn't know that about Hindi. I suppose Sanskrit is no worse than Polish?
I'm considering an ordinary hum-drum base 1280 number system for one of my
projects. This could be broken down into an alternation of base 32 and base
40.
Jeff
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Message: 14
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 02:33:11 -0500
From: Danny Wier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Possible base-20 numeric system
From: "Jeffrey Jones"
> Didn't know that about Hindi. I suppose Sanskrit is no worse than Polish?
I know little Sanskrit, but I think its number system is probably pretty
complicated. A lot of it is probably due to those sandhi rules.
> I'm considering an ordinary hum-drum base 1280 number system for one of my
> projects. This could be broken down into an alternation of base 32 and
> base
> 40.
I was just contemplating base-840, which can be divided by all whole numbers
from 1 to 8. Or base-2520, for 1 to 10. Then I just decided to stick with
base-60, which can handle 1 through 6. At least for now.
(All this work on Just Intonation is making me obsessed with prime numbers.)
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Message: 15
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:04:28 +0200
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Larethian
Quoting Simon Richard Clarkstone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > . SG PL
> > NOM korz [kO4T] korzu [kO4DU]
> > ACC korza [kO4Da] or [kQ4Da] korzum [kO4DUm]
> > JAC korzi [k24DI] korzim [k24DIm]
> I don't know why, but I have a feeling that this language might feel
> more natural and (as you put it) "Germanic" if the jackallative plural
> were the same as either the jackallative singular or the accusitive
> plural. Assuming the jackallative plural isn't used commonly, its
> historic form could plausibly have merged with another form, leading to:
> king.JAC.PL = korzum
> or (my more likely, due to sounds of -o-)
> king.JAC.PL = korzi
That's a possibility. I do, however, not see that the jackallative plural would
be particularly rare - probably about as common as the German dative plural,
say.
That's no reason there shouldn't be a merger in a declension or two, tho.
Andreas
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Message: 16
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:22:10 +0200
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Question about Latin.
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 01:41:03 EDT, John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have always wondered if the Korean particle -kwa, which is used very much
> as -que is used in Latin could be related, or if that is just a coincidence.
I thought that Korean expresses "A and B" by "A gwa B" or "A wa B"
(the choice of the form being conditioned by the form of A... I
believe by whether it ends in a vowel or not?). The Latin
construction, on the other hand, would be "A B-que".
Those don't look like very similar constructions to me.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 17
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 10:38:00 +0200
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:10:11 -0400, John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Danny Wier scripsit:
>
> > You could also use S and Z with carons since you can input those with
> > Alt+0xxx too!
> >
> > S-caron = Alt+0138
> > Z-caron = Alt+0142
> > s-caron = Alt+0154
> > z-caron = Alt+0158
>
> Unlike the other characters, however, these are strictly Windows-only;
> they shouldn't be used on this list.
Unless, I suppose, the mail client sends with UTF-8, though that has
its own set of problems when used on the list. (Or UTF-7; I'm
surprised that Gmail doesn't support displaying this.)
In my experience, even Billware encodes such
Windows-1252-but-not-Latin-1 characters correctly when sending as
UTF-8.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 18
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 07:56:03 -0300
From: Pablo Flores <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: experimental crocodile phonology questions
On Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:57:03 -0000, caeruleancentaur
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am presuming from the context that, by "sentient," you
> mean "speaking" as opposed to ordinary crocodiles that cannot speak.
>
> In reality, the word "sentient" does not mean that. It means
> either "conscious" or "experiencing feeling or sensation." Thus,
> ordinary crocodiles are, indeed, sentient.
I've seen the word "sentient" used as a synonym of "self-conscius",
i. e. "aware of _ego_" a lot. That's common use in science fiction,
along with the much less common "sapient".
> P.S. When the Buddhists speak of the Buddha saving all sentient
> beings, they are not referring just to humans, but to all animate
> life.
I was thinking, "how can a non-self-conscious animal be saved?",
when I realized that reaching salvation (Nirvana) implies abolishing
self-consciousness. Could you elaborate?
ObConlang:
I'm also remembering the character in (Delany's?) _Babel-17_ who
had no awareness of self (or the 1st/2nd/3rd person split for that
matter). Has somebody tried a conculture/conlang without that
distinction?
--Pablo
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Message: 19
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 07:29:35 -0400
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Senyecan ortho. breakthrough
Philip Newton scripsit:
> In my experience, even Billware encodes such
> Windows-1252-but-not-Latin-1 characters correctly when sending as
> UTF-8.
Microsoft's support for Unicode is in general excellent, both in
breadth and in conformance. Of course, it took them a while to get
there, and their obsession with absolute backward compatibility means
that there are still plenty of broken versions of tools out there.
--
The man that wanders far [EMAIL PROTECTED]
from the walking tree http://www.reutershealth.com
--first line of a non-existent poem by: John Cowan
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Message: 20
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 07:31:18 -0500
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Question about Latin.
From: John Leland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I have always wondered if the Korean particle -kwa, which is used very much
> as -que is used in Latin could be related, or if that is just a coincidence.
> Certainly if the languages asa whole are related it must be very distantly.
Almost certainly, they are not related. Such chance similarities
arise all the time between any two given languages, whether or not
they are related: English 'bad' is not cognate with Persian /b&d/,
but they mean the same thing; mod. Greek _oma_ 'eye' is likewise not
related to Malay _oma_ 'eye'. Mark Rosenfelder has a good essay
on the subject:
<http://zompist.com/chance.htm>
NB his comparison of Quechua and Semitic lexical items.
==========================================================================
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: 21
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 01:42:25 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: C-15 (JRRT-inspired)
inspired by the Appendix E of 'The Lord of the Rings'...
Dipthongs:
ui, iu, ai, ae, aie, eu, oi, oia, au, aua, oae, uae,
Non-Vowels:
y, *, k, m, t, v,
(* represents the circle with the dot in it (in X-Sampa), a click)
Variants within the non-vowels:
t, ht, d, dt, th, td,
k, hk,
v, f,
m, mn, nm, n, mb, nd,
Note:
A prefixing letter does not have the same meaning as that same letter in a
suffixing position.
Ie, /y-/ means 'past tense', while /-y/ means 'plural form' [save for when
the plural is explicit, rather than implicit...see the tuber example below].
Interlinears:
yeunaud-eit-kaudae
y- / eun / aud / eit / kau / ae
past / burn / action / wood / saying / common
[it is a common saying that] wood burns.
y*hkeumaun v*faudea
y- / -*- / hk- / eumaun / v- / -*- / f / audea
past / both / future / walk / here / both / there / without particular
then and to come, walking all about with no (aim/goal).
aka, "wandering".
_however_, if /audea/ had been /aumnea/, it would no longer have been a
negative statement.
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Message: 22
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 00:08:32 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Inuktitut & C-14 interlinear
please scroll downwards...
----- Original Message -----
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: C-14 interlinear
> Rodlox wrote:
>
> >CONLANG # C-14 (no official name as yet)
> >rough description: an Isolating, semi-tonal, somewhat OVS language.
> >
> >Interlinear...
> >
> >fish = 'ehuu
> >water = bapah
> >
> >fish breathes water
> >bapahnaq 'ehuu
> >water-breathe fish
> >
> >
>
> Suddenly I had a vision of Inuktitut. This may not have been your
> intention, but you know.
if I might ask, what about it reminded you of Inukitut?
>
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Message: 23
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:49:25 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Inuktitut & C-14 interlinear
please scroll downwards...
----- Original Message -----
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2004 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: C-14 interlinear
> Rodlox wrote:
>
> >CONLANG # C-14 (no official name as yet)
> >rough description: an Isolating, semi-tonal, somewhat OVS language.
> >
> >Interlinear...
> >
> >fish = 'ehuu
> >water = bapah
> >
> >fish breathes water
> >bapahnaq 'ehuu
> >water-breathe fish
> >
> >
>
> Suddenly I had a vision of Inuktitut. This may not have been your
> intention, but you know.
if I might ask, what about it reminded you of Inukitut?
>
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