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There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: OT, and religeous
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: ?? Re: a "natural language" ?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Voices
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
From: Mark Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 19:07:13 -0500
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 14:17:27 +0100, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Hi!
>
>Is it worse to leave out diacritcs totally or to put them just
>anywhere?
With German umlauts (���), both is equally bad, as an umlaut can totally
change the meaning of a word.
Examples:
lugen: to look stealthily from a hiding place
l�gen: to tell a lie
Mose: the guy with the ark from the Bible
M�se: a nasty word for the female genitalia
arger: worse
�rger: trouble
You see, leaving out the umlaut dots is a *very* bad idea!
It always really irks me when I see some English speakers writing "uber" or
"doppleganger" (instead of "�ber" and "doppelg�nger").
--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of Choton
official Choton homepage:
http://www.choton.org
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 19:32:26 -0500
From: "Pascal A. Kramm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT, and religeous
On Thu, 2 Dec 2004 15:00:26 +0000, Chris Bates
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip>
>This argument is enough to convince me that there are
>only a few realistic possibilities:
>a) There is no God
That's what I'm advocating :)
At the very least, "God" is no god, but just a being that is somewhat higher
developed than an earth human, and out of low self-esteem or something he
felt the need to show off and pretend he's a god to the stupid humans, who
fell for it.
Likewise, if someone from today would go back in time to the time of Jesus
and show off some technical innovations which are very commonplace today and
pretend he's a god because of that, they would believe him as well.
>b) God isn't in fact all loving and fair but biased towards one
>particular ethic/linguistic group
There are several parts in the Old Testament which underline this.
>c) God wasn't involved in any way, through Jesus, apostles, or anyone
>else, in creating any bible or mythology on the planet
Many parts of the Old Testament existed already way before the advent of
Jesus and stuff, and were only slightly modified for inclusion.
>d) God is very different from the way he is portrayed in the Bible,
>Quran etc, and has been involved in the creation of numerous
>contradictory bibles and mythologies for purposes unknown ie he has
>purposefully lied on a massive scale to his creations
Possibly just done to have some fun with the stupid humans.
>e) God was involved in the creation of the Bible, but has been
>misunderstood or misrepresented, ie the original was something that was
>universally applicable.
The original bible texts were changed uncounted times by whoever was
currently in power at the church to express just what what they wanted it to
express, going along with intentional misinterpretation.
--
Pascal A. Kramm, author of Choton
official Choton homepage:
http://www.choton.org
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 19:54:03 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 6:29 PM
Subject: Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)
> caeruleancentaur wrote:
Chris wrote:
>>> you have to include way more than
>>>just one word just to get across the basic idea of Mary riding on a
>>>donkey.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>I agree with you in principle. Missionaries do have problems in
>>translating terms that are culturally bound. Just a reminder,
>>though, that the donkey is not mentioned in the Christmas stories of
>>Matthew and Luke. Neither are camels or oxen. It would be very easy
>>to translate the Christmas stories without mentioning donkeys. I
>>would be more worried about the espousal custom in Matthew or the
>>census in Luke. Or the manger.
Well exactly. Or even angel in Matthew. Or Holy Ghost. Or frankincense.
Or myrrh.
Joe wrote:
> Personally, and this is just me, I'd insert an approximate phonetic
> rendition of said object and follow it with an explanation.
Ah! An "annotated" Gospel in a conlang! I like the idea.
Sally
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 20:02:07 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
Do you mean in nouns, rather, #1? I think it's a promising idea.
Static Dynamic
standing water rain, river, flood
snow on ground falling snow, blizzard
log/seed growing tree
air wind, breath
building habitation
earth mountain, earthquake
coal conflagration, hearthfire
saddle horse
girl woman
boy man
child adult
idea creation
But the problem of course, along with the verbs, is that there is seldom a
binary relationship, as you can see with the first example given. However, it
would be interesting to have a root word that represents the stative concept
from which dynamic concepts are derived, and maybe a grammar that would
indicate a passive or agentive difference between these categories. Or an
ergative absolutive difference. Or a range of cases. And perhaps
stative/dynamic verbs that go along with these to describe being vs. motion and
direction, movement into or out of, up or down; nascent vs. matured or
achieved, etc.
Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: # 1
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
Create a Dinamic/Static opposition for the vers is a good idea. But there is
something that could complete that kind of division.
It would be possible to create the same opposition in the verbs
Dinamic Static
rain water
horse monture
wind air
violence anger
(and maybe...)
habitation house
text letter
wrinting ink
audition ear
Would it be a good idea?
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 20:12:30 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ?? Re: a "natural language" ?
On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 10:38:17PM +0000, Joe wrote:
> The only suppletive form that I can think of that still retains a
> seperate root is 'fast~quickly', if that counts.
I don't think so. At least IMD, "fast" and "quick" are both still in
productive use despite being nearly exact synonyms. The adverbial form
of "fast" is irregular - zero-suffixed "fast", as in "Run fast!" -
but not suppletively supplied by "quick".
-Marcos
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 20:17:20 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 07:07:13PM -0500, Pascal A. Kramm wrote:
> You see, leaving out the umlaut dots is a *very* bad idea!
> It always really irks me when I see some English speakers writing "uber" or
> "doppleganger" (instead of "�ber" and "doppelg�nger").
Except that those have now been borrowed into English, and therefore
get spelt Englishly - and we don't have umlauts in English, only
the all-but-abandoned use of the trema/diaresis mark to indicate
syllabicity, as in "na�ve", "co�perate", et sim.
If you're talking about the German words, then yes, use
the umlaut or the -e spelling, but if you're just speaking English:
"Man, that dude is so uber! Which is weird, 'cause I'm totally not, and
he's like my doppelganger..."
. . . okay, for certain values of "English" . . .
:)
-Marcos
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 20:30:32 -0500
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)
caeruleancentaur wrote:
>
> I agree with you in principle. Missionaries do have problems in
> translating terms that are culturally bound. Just a reminder,
> though, that the donkey is not mentioned in the Christmas stories of
> Matthew and Luke. Neither are camels or oxen. It would be very easy
> to translate the Christmas stories without mentioning donkeys. I
> would be more worried about the espousal custom in Matthew or the
> census in Luke. Or the manger.
I can understand the difficulty of explaining espousal customs
or angels to a different culture, but what's so hard about
explaining a manger?
On another note, a hundred years ago people wrote such
things as "The infant Jesus was laid in a manger" which I
suppose reflected the rural life of most Americans. Today
I hear many people say "The infant Jesus was born in a
manger." When I ask them what a manger is, they tell me
that it's the building in which Jesus was born. With few
Americans living on farms anymore, they've never heard
the word "manger" except in reference to the Nativity.
--Ph. D.
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 20:44:04 -0500
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Voices
Yann wrote:
<<
Hi! I was wondering if you knew any other voices besides active, passive,
middle and antipassive voice. And, can I call the reflexive form of a verb
the reflexive voice?
>>
Quite frankly, I'd like to see "voice" defined. Everything that's been
discussed
has been a mechanism in a language that somehow changes the valency
of a verb (I think only causatives haven't been mentioned yet, of the most
common ones). How *all* these different things could be called "voices" is
something that strikes me as odd.
Anyway, you mentioned "passive" and "antipassive" above. There's also
"ambipassive", used in a duative-unitive system. Each of these, though,
is the same mechanism that achieves the same goal--the only thing that's
different is the type of system it's used in (the first, nominative-accusative;
the second, ergative-absolutive; the third, duative-unitive [or transitive-
intransitive, if you prefer]). You can't have all three of these in a language
unless you have a split system. Thus, an antipassive is different from
English's
"eat", where you could have:
I eat an apple.
I eat.
The second is *not* the antipassive version of the first.
So, I'd answer the question you end with the same as others have: Sure, call it
the reflexive voice. Why not?
And my question: Is there any sound definition of "voice"? Here's what SIL's
glossary of linguistic terms says:
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsVoice.htm
Incidentally, it says that what you'd call the reflexive voice is actually the
middle voice. Here's its definition:
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsMiddleVoice.htm
That's certainly very different from saying, "The soup that eats like a meal."
(I
believe that was from a Campbell's Chunky Soup commercial.) It's not the soup
that eats itself like a meal, nor is it the soup that's eaten for its own
benefit. It's
a soup that one eats as if it were a meal, or that is similar in quantity (and
quality?)
to a meal.
So anybody want to jump in here and say what "voice" exactly is?
-David
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Message: 9
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 01:55:35 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)
"Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I can understand the difficulty of explaining espousal customs or
>angels to a different culture, but what's so hard about explaining a
>manger?
I had in mind missionaries to a culture that had no domesticated
animals. They might find it strange that a place had to be provided
to feed animals.
BTW (not to you, Ph.D.), neither the Matthean annunciation story
(1:24) nor the Lucan (1:35) mention The Holy Spirit/Ghost. In those
verses the definite article is not used, so the translation would
be "a holy spirit." To insert "the" is to paraphrase, to add a
theological nuance not found in the text.
Charlie
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:17:46 -0500
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:44:18 -0500
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 19:41:12 -0700
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:17:46 -0500, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Sorry but I think you are wrong. It's not Moses who had build the ark, it's
> Noah.
> Moses is the one who liberated the egyptian slaves.
The Ark of the Covenant, not the other one.
*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 22:01:51 -0500
From: Mark Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 19:41:12 -0700, Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:17:46 -0500, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> > Sorry but I think you are wrong. It's not Moses who had build the ark, it's
> > Noah.
> > Moses is the one who liberated the egyptian slaves.
>
> The Ark of the Covenant, not the other one.
Well, if you ask just about anyone who "the guy with the ark from the
Bible" is, they'll almost certainly answer Noah. Besides, IIRC,
despite Moses being the one who brought down the Ten Commandments,
which is what were stored in the Ark of the Covenant, the actual Ark
wasn't built until after Moses was gone. I could be wrong on that
score, though.
>
>
>
>
> *Muke!
> --
> website: http://frath.net/
> LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
> deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
>
> FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
> http://wiki.frath.net/
>
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Message: 14
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 03:20:52 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ignorant people & diacritics
Mark Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Besides, IIRC, despite Moses being the one who brought down the Ten
>Commandments, which is what were stored in the Ark of the Covenant,
>the actual Ark wasn't built until after Moses was gone. I could be
>wrong on that score, though.
Exodus 35:7 begins the story of Moses instructing the people on how
to construct the Dwelling Tent and all its appurtenances. It
includes instructions on building the Ark of the Covenant (37:1-9).
The story of the construction ends in 40:33 with the words "Thus
Moses finished all the work." Of course, he didn't do all the work
himself, as detailed in the account, but he was certainly present
when the Ark was built and when it was consecrated by the presence of
God (40:34-38).
Charlie
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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 22:56:35 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
#1, or whatever your name is, I hope you read the rest of my suggestions. Of
course such a language does not have to be perfect. Perfect languages are
dull. I wrote:
>>
But the problem of course, along with the verbs, is that there is seldom a
binary relationship, as you can see with the first example given. However, it
would be interesting to have a *root word* that represents the stative concept
from which dynamic concepts are *derived,* and maybe *a grammar that would
indicate a passive or agentive difference between these categories.* Or an
ergative absolutive difference. Or a range of cases. And perhaps
stative/dynamic verbs that go along with these to describe being vs. motion and
direction, movement into or out of, up or down; nascent vs. matured or
achieved, etc.
<<
By which I meant that subtleties in meaning could be conveyed through these
means, such that it would be easy to tell the difference between rain, river,
and flood. :)
I think the idea has promise. Go for it.
Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: # 1
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 9:44 PM
Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. Stative Verbs
A distinction of the Dinamic/Static verbs extented to the nouns does not has
to be perfect.
If we have:
Static Dinamic
water Rain/river/flood
It would be conceivable that the language could have the same word for river,
rain and flood that should be impossible to translate into one of the three but
only in "moving or falling water"
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