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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: conlang names
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Kash miscellany
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Conlangs in the movies
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: CHAT: The Alex Charalabidis Guide to Souvlaki
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Sk�lansk - History and Babel text
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. kudos (was: most looked-up words)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: HELP: Drawing Arcs
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Dual (was: Devanagari handwriting?)
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Semitic word order (was: Sk�lansk - History and Babel text)
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: CHAT Re: Souvlaki (was most looked-up words)
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: kudos (was: most looked-up words)
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: German style orthography
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Swahili, Saying, Telling and Applicatives
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Dual (was: Devanagari handwriting?)
From: azathoth500 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Devanagari handwriting?
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: does Language require Deception to exist?
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: The Need for Debate
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: Swahili, Saying, Telling and Applicatives
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 07:41:05 +0200
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: conlang names
You guys should consider yourselves lucky - you're naming your Conlangs
now as [presumably] sane adults. I named my Conlang when I was 14,
building my language during dull moments in math classes... The result
is (pretty embarrasingly) that my Conlang has ever since born the name
Tesk. Why? (*Blush*) Because I saw the Conlang as a manifestation of
my intelligence [bear in mind that I thought I was the only person in
the world doing this]; intelligence led me to the organization Mensa
[NOT a road I'd go down today]; mensa = table; and table in my Conlang
is tesk.
Happy naming!
Kabirr pax mix qyts�t
[rr = r-hacek]
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of caeruleancentaur
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2004 5:59 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: conlang names
On 9 Dec 2004, at 2.13 pm, # 1 wrote:
> I've started my first conlang but I encountered a problem: the name
>What do you take as names? It is logic when you call it by the name of
>the imaginary people who speak it but I don't have any history about my
>conlang.
I would imagine that a language doesn't need a name unless there are
other languages from which it needs to be differntiated. Senyecan had
no name until other languages began to evolve from it. Then it was
decided to call it Senyecan, i.e, ancient language, to differentiate it
from the others.
Charlie
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 01:05:24 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Kash miscellany
The beginnings of a web page on various aspects of Kash culture have been
posted:
http://cinduworld.tripod.com/various_notes.htm
Comments and suggestions welcome.
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 00:10:17 -0600
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlangs in the movies
From: Thomas Leigh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I just got back from seeing "Blade: Trinity", and there's Esperanto in
> the movie!
There are actually whole movies in Esperanto. "La Eta Knabino",
which has mostly Swiss cast and an Iraqi director, is one, and there
are at least 12 that contain some Esperanto. More to be found:
<http://imdb.com/Sections/Languages/Esperanto/>
There are not surprisingly even more in Klingon:
<http://imdb.com/Sections/Languages/Klingon/>
Found this a couple weeks ago looking for Georgian movies (more than
594 of them, shockingly for a nation of 5 million souls). I find it
rather sad that there are only 5 movies containing any Navaho,
which makes the Onion article of some years back depressingly accurate.
==========================================================================
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: 4
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 00:12:05 -0600
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT: The Alex Charalabidis Guide to Souvlaki
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> A "doner" is another name for "gyros" (the Turkish original, I
> presume) and a term more widely used in the city centre rather than in
> the neighbourhood "souvlatzidiko."
It is indeed from Turkish, though the first vowel is a front mid
rounded one. Most big German cities are littered with little stores
advertising D�ner-kebap; in Berlin, the (non-Turkish) locals eat them
like Americans eat hamburgers, or indeed more frequently. Also oddly:
they stand-up while doing so.
==========================================================================
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: 5
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 07:21:00 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sk�lansk - History and Babel text
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:08:49 +0000, Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ray Brown wrote:
>
> > On Tuesday, December 7, 2004, at 07:36 , Philip Newton wrote:
> >
> >> I think OSV is the rarest word order, with few known natlangs using it.
> >
> > Yes, I think it is. Somewhere I have some statistics on this but I can't
> > find them. From what I remember OS order languages are far less common
> > than the SO langs, irrespective of where the verb is. IIRC the most common
> > words orders are SVO and SOV (and I cannot remember which comes 'top') -
> > but in 3rd place comes VSO languages.
>
> The joy of the archives:
>
> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0308d&L=conlang&F=&S=&P=5853
Interesting! My "OSV" was typo for "OVS" (as in Klingon), but it turns
out that OSV is indeed rarer than OVS :)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 07:30:58 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: kudos (was: most looked-up words)
On Wednesday, December 8, 2004, at 03:25 , Muke Tever wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 18:46:59 +0000, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> which is itself a reanalysis of Greek _kudos_ [ku:dOs] 'glory',
>>
>> neuter singular. [ku:dOs] was Doric Greek, [ky:dOs] was Attic & Koine,
>> and
>> ['kiDOs] is Byzantine & modern.
>
> Isn't it generally taken that the Ancient Greek short omicron, unusually,
> was
> [o] rather than [O]?
Good point - yes, the secondary lengthening, spelled in early inscriptions
with just plain omicron and then later with omicron-upsilon, was
undoubtedly [o:] which rather suggests the short sound was indeed [o] in
the Classical period. So indeed [ku:dos] is early & Doric, [ky:dos] is
Ionic & Attic.
When [o:] shifted to [u:] which probably began as early as the late 5th
cent BCE and was certainly well establish, as Roman transcriptions show,
by the mid 4th cent BCE, then the contrast between the earlier long vowels[
o:] and [O:] had gone. I guess in the Koine there would have been quite a
bit of regional variation in the pronunciation of omicron between [o] and
[O]. Indeed, confusion in popular spelling between omicron and omega had
already begun as early as the 3rd cent BCE and was commonplace by the 2nd
cent CE. Whether it is indicative of the breakdown of phonemic vowel
length or not at this is unclear, but it does show a breakdown in any
phonemic distinction between [o] and [O].
===========================================
On Tuesday, December 7, 2004, at 08:45 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> Ray wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 7, 2004, at 06:43 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:
[snip]
>>> _kudo_ [k_hudo/@u] is a backformation from _kudos_ [k_hudo/@uz](pl.),
>>
>> Ach!!
>
> Don't blame me! I'm a classicist enough to use a classicizing
> pronunciation.
I wasn't blaming you - just showing my horror both at the pronunciation
[k_hudouz] which diphthongizes the final vowel no good reason at all, and
for the false back formation.
>> neuter singular. [ku:dOs] was Doric Greek, [ky:dOs] was Attic &
>> Koine, and ['kiDOs] is Byzantine & modern.
I got the first two wrong - see above :)
> That may be, but the British schoolboys probably learnt the word
> from reading Homer. If so, then there's the question of whether
> the vowel had fronted yet in Attic/Ionic.
That is quite irrelevant. Whether schoolboys of the 19th cent met the word
in Homer, Plato, Thucydides or whatever has _no_ bearing on the
pronunciation - they were taught the same pronunciation for _all_ ancient
& Koine Greek and it ha little to do with actual Greek pronunciation. The
system used in Brit schools of the 19th & early 20th centuries is well
known; basically, you mentally transcribed it into Roman letters, so to
speak, and pronounced it like English!
So, for example, _nous_ "mind, intellect" was pronounced /naws/ and _naus_
"ship" was pronounced /nO:s/ and _kudos_ was pronounced /kju:dOs/.
Ach! indeed - but at least they knew the final vowel of _kudos_ was short
:)
> (Well, Homeric dialect was a mix of many different dialects anyways.)
It is indeed - and comes to us through 5th cent BCE Athenian recensions -
but that had no bearing on the way schoolboys pronounced the stuff.
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: 7
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 03:00:18 EST
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: HELP: Drawing Arcs
Keith wrote:
<<
I think I've mentioned it on the list before. GraphViz[1] is an
excellent graph and network drawing tool that's probably exactly what
you're looking for. It uses a simple (very simple) declarative language
for specifying the graphs and generates output in a whole host of
formats. It comes with a variety of layout algorithms so you can get it
looking exactly the way you want.
>>
Wow! This program is AWESOME! Thanks a lot, Keith! I've
figured out everything, except how to turn my graph upside-
down... (I've got a syntax where each node can have multiple
parents and branches can cross, and it seems to want to work
this kind of thing so that the words are on top and the rest on
the bottom...)
-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: 8
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:24:58 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Dual (was: Devanagari handwriting?)
azathoth500 wrote:
> I was under the impression that the dual wasn't used much in modern Hebrew
But why? It is still used for pair body parts (oznaim, yadaim etc.), two
units of measure (shnataim, shvuaim etc.), that is keeps most of its
Biblical period usage.
-- Yitzik
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Message: 9
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:25:24 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Semitic word order (was: Sk�lansk - History and Babel text)
Keith Gaughan wrote:
> Isaac Penzev wrote:
>
> > And don't forget the Biblical Hebrew: it's predominantly VSO, esp. in
> > narratives.
>
> You're right! And Classical and Modern Arabic too.
>
> What about the other Semitic languages; are they mostly VSO too?
I'm not sure. Modern Ethiosemitic lgs (Amharic, Tigri�a) are SOV under the
influence of Kushite substrate, in contrast to older Ge'ez that keeps VSO.
Tigr� has free word order. At least that's what my "Linguistic Encyclopaedic
Dictionary" says.
-- Yitzik
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Message: 10
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 09:31:25 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT Re: Souvlaki (was most looked-up words)
Quoting caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >The only other bearer of the name I can recall hearing of is the
> >Frankish 7th C king.
>
> Andreas
>
> Dagobert I - Austrasia 623-628; the Franks 629-633.
> Dagobert II - Austrasia 674-678
> Dagobert III - the Franks 711-716
Dagobert I would be the one.
Almost certainly, I've come across the later two in on history book or kinglist
or another, but they apparently failed to impress themselves securely on my
memory.
Andreas
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Message: 11
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 03:21:18 -0600
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell
Geoff Horswood wrote:
> Specifically, I was wondering whether all the words were strictly necessary
> in a language, or whether you could postulate a language with only one word
> meaning speak, say, tell or talk, depending on context. How realistic is
> this?
It's difficult to answer. In highly polysynthetic languages, one
often creates new stems from a variety of different morphological
sources. In Ives Goddard's dictionary of Meskwaki, there are no
fewer than 25 different variations of things that can be translated
as 'tell': a:teso:hka:ne:wa 'he tells legends of him', a:teso:hka:we:wa
'he tells him a sacred story', ina:cimo:he:wa 'he informs him thus',
seka:cimowa 'he tells a terrifying tale', tana:cimowa 'he reports his
story there', ocime:wa 'he tells him therefore', etc. etc. So, are
there two 'words' here, or six? The first two are morphologically
related, as are the last four. Sometimes questions themselves cloud
the issue because of what they presume.
==========================================================================
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: 12
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:25:17 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: partial letter replacement in languages?
On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 02:48:04 +0200, Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> is there a term for when a language is evolving/being changed, & replaces
> one letter with another (ie, /d/ becomes /t/) in nearly all instances...yet
> there are still words in the resultant language which retain (to continue
> the example) /d/ ?
I don't know a term for it, but just wanted to note that some
instances of this come when there are two (nearly) concurrent sound
changes such that, say, /d/ becomes /t/ while, say, /D/ becomes /d/ --
so all or most original /d/'s disappeared but there are still /d/'s in
the resulting language that used to be a different sound.
(Perhaps Greek is an example, where /b/ -> /v/, but modern Greek has a
/b/ phoneme which comes from, I assume, earlier /mp/ -- it's certainly
written |mp|.)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 13
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:36:41 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: kudos (was: most looked-up words)
On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 07:30:58 +0000, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The
> system used in Brit schools of the 19th & early 20th centuries is well
> known; basically, you mentally transcribed it into Roman letters, so to
> speak, and pronounced it like English!
>
> So, for example, _nous_ "mind, intellect" was pronounced /naws/ and _naus_
> "ship" was pronounced /nO:s/ and _kudos_ was pronounced /kju:dOs/.
Ouch! Reminds me of a Frenchman I met in Greece who had studied a
little Ancient Greek and tried to convince me that back then, the verb
ending -euw was pronounced /2o/. (And of my [English] father, whose
one Greek word is /hoU b&zI"lus/.)
OTOH, I pronounce all Greek the same way as well -- with Modern Greek
pronunciation. I'm sure that there are enough classicists who will
shudder at /En arCi in o lOGOs, k_jE o lOGOs in prOs tOn TEOn/ and
/patEr imOn o En tis uranis, ajiasTito tonoma su/.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 14
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 05:10:42 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: German style orthography
[I've used unicode in this message, but I don't know how to tell the
web-interface to mark this message as UTF-8 encoded.]
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 16:29:35 -0800, bob thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>/D/ ð (edh)
I have the impression that nineteenth century German linguistics would
rather use đ (d with stroke).
>/s/ s
>/s_m/ ß (esszat)
>/z/ s
>/z_m/ ß (esszat)
I guess that if eszett would be used for a pronunciation, then rather for
/s/, as opposed to |s| for /z/.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 15
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 20:40:12 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
I wrote:
> I've uploaded another file, which demonstrates the words:
> "Holy, wholly, holly"
> followed by the sentence:
> "This is our purest tour where all our tourists are pure".
>
> http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/say/vowels2.mp3
I'm wondering why Tristan hasn't responded to this yet, given that it
was his query that I was responding to in turn. I don't mean this
critically, and I can think of some quite plausible possibilities, but
it's a little disconcerting to not yet have a reply I am expecting.
Adrian.
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Message: 16
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:30:22 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell
As far as I know Basque doesn't have an intransitive verb "speak". If
you wanted to just say speak, you'd probably say "hitz egin" which means
"make word(s)" (but which takes a transitive auxilliary). Similarly,
tell would just be "say" with a bitransitive auxilliary (ie X said Y to
Z). The other translations along similar lines I've seen involve simply
omitting what was said, but since the auxilliary agrees with the
absolutive, ergative and dative the verb is still clearly transitive and
has an abs argument:
esan du
say-perf 3rd.abs.present-3rd.erg
he/she has said (it)
esan dio
say-perf 3rd.abs.present-3rd.dat- 3rd.erg
he/she has told him/her it
Making the verb intransitive makes it passive, since Basque morphology
is strictly ergative, so if the verb only agrees with one argument then
it's the ABS argument (that's why "speak" isn't just "esan" with an
intransitive auxilliary):
esan da
say-perf 3rd.abs.pres
(it) has been said
As far as I'm aware there is no anti-passive construction in Basque.
Many language simply make do with one word for "say"/"tell", for example
Spanish (and I think the other romance language), where "decir" can mean
either, and I think merging all three into one word/verb-root is common,
sometimes with intransitive marking of some kind for speak, etc. So
really exactly one is necessary. :)
As for the exact difference between them: speak is intransitive, you
can't mention what was said. Say is either transitive or bitransitive,
you must mention what was said and optionally who it was said to. Tell
is always bitransitive, you must say who said what to whom. So the
difference is mainly one of valence, and it's very easy to get by
without having different roots for these things, especially if your
language has an extensive valence marking/adjusting system.
>Hi,
>
>I was thinking about the English words "speak", "say", "tell" (and "talk"),
>and trying to quantify the exact difference between them.
>
>Specifically, I was wondering whether all the words were strictly necessary
>in a language, or whether you could postulate a language with only one word
>meaning speak, say, tell or talk, depending on context. How realistic is
>this?
>
>(Kazakh has 3 words: /ajtu/ to speak or tell, /deu/ to say, and /s2jleu/ to
>talk, plus the compound /djep ajtu/.)
>What about other natlangs?
>
>Geoff
>
>
>
>
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Message: 17
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:49:02 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Speak-Say-Tell
When I said speak was intransitive I was of course forgetting that it
can take an object... a language. However, apart from that it is usually
intransitive, and you can't mention what was said easily. Tell is also
not always bitransitive, since what was said can be omitted, but who it
was said to can't. So the difference between say and tell is actually
one of focus really: say focuses on what was said, whereas tell focuses
on who it was said to, and both can optionally have a third argument.
But anyway... there's definately no reason not to merge all three.
I would point out though that in many languages you "know" a language
rather then "speak it".... "I know Spanish" is good English, although
I'm not sure if "conozco ingles" sounds strange in Spanish. In Basque
its "badakit ingelesez" (literally "I know (it) in/by English"). I'm
sure there are many other languages where you simply don't say "I speak
language X" but rather "I know language X".
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Message: 18
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:55:13 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Swahili, Saying, Telling and Applicatives
Since Swahili promotes obliques to direct object to handle datives, I'm
surprised that there is an unrelated word for tell. I would have
expected sema + applicative, although tell does look like it is formed
in this way. Is there a verb amba? I actually have the Madan (I think)
Swahili-English dictionary so I guess I can look it up.
>
>I know of three in Swahili:
>ambia = say to, tell.
>ongea = talk
>sema = say, speak
>
>Charlie
>
>
>
>
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Message: 19
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 06:17:22 -0500
From: azathoth500 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dual (was: Devanagari handwriting?)
Oh yeah, I forgot about those.
On Thu, 9 Dec 2004 10:24:58 +0200, Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> azathoth500 wrote:
>
> > I was under the impression that the dual wasn't used much in modern Hebrew
>
> But why? It is still used for pair body parts (oznaim, yadaim etc.), two
> units of measure (shnataim, shvuaim etc.), that is keeps most of its
> Biblical period usage.
>
> -- Yitzik
>
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Message: 20
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 06:19:28 -0500
From: "J. 'Mach' Wust" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Devanagari handwriting?
On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 23:23:53 +0200, Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Pascal A. Kramm wrote:
>
>
>> They just bear it, same as with amny other over-complicated thing in
>> Sanskrit not found in most other languages (e.g. dual case).
>
>Hmm. You meant dual number, didn't you? It's not as rare as you may think.
>It was present in Old Russian (its remnants are still found in all East
>Slavic lgs as a "counting form", to be used with numerals 2, 3 and 4 in
>Nom. and Acc.), Old English (in personal pronouns), florishes in Hebrew
>and Arabic etc.
There's also a relict of the former presence of a dual in German: The
Bavarian dialect pronoun for the second person plural isn't based on the
plural of old, but of the dual of old: they say "enk", not "ihr".
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
j. 'mach' wust
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Message: 21
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 22:23:18 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
On 7 Dec 2004, at 9.29 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)
wrote:
> Tristan McLaey wrote, quoting [Adrian]:
>
>> > I am not aware of any dialect of Australian English in which 'steam'
>> > has a diphthong! It's always /sti:m/ as far as I know.
>>
>> /sti:m/, perhaps, though my sometimes inability to distinguish between
>> [i] and [I] without a context suggests otherwise, but certainly not
>> [sti:m] for the most part. And this isn't perculiar to Australian
>> English either, it's kin in England often have a diphthong. It's
>> something like [Ii] or [EMAIL PROTECTED], with the second element being
>> dominant.
>
> Glide, certainly, depending somewhat upon the syllable onset. But the
> difference between a diphthong and a glide really only boils down to
> whether or not the 'diphthong' is present at the phonemic level as
> well as the phonetic.
Well, it shares features and history with the other diphthongs that it
doesn't share with the long vowels so it seems to me to be sensible to
have three categories of vowels, short, diphthong and long.* Also as
I've observed elsewhere I have difficulty distinguishing between
(short) [i] and [I] when I'm not expecting it and have been reported at
least once of using [i] for /I/ and I couldn't hear the difference. On
the other hand, I can quite clearly hear the difference between [I] and
[I:], and use the latter for the vowel in 'beard' (in some contexts).
In fact, I'm not sure I can pronounce it tense enough that it sounds
more like 'bead' than 'beard', but I know the purpose of the experiment
so it mightn't be valid ;)
But in any case, this was irrelevant to my first comment. By
'diphthong', I meant a phonetic one. I don't think it's possible to
judge the phonemicity or otherwise of the diphthongal nature of a vowel
from the examples you gave. I just your vowel in 'steam' wasn't
diphthong enough for my tastes. But you South Australians are
stereotyped as being conservative (in speech and otherwise) so I
suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
* According to this division, 'beard' is a long vowel not a diphthong.
Which just means we're focussing on a different allophone...
>
>> I think of 'holy' etc. with the 'goatee' vowel being a thing of posh
>> old-fashioned British women (or perhaps posh old-fashioned Australian
>> women pretending to be British). I didn't realise it was current
>> amongst
>> any dialects... Very definitely the 'oldie' vowel for me. On a related
>> note, do you distinguish between 'poll' and 'pole' and similar?
>
> No distinction between 'poll' and 'pole'.
>
> I've uploaded another file, which demonstrates the words:
> "Holy, wholly, holly"
> followed by the sentence:
> "This is our purest tour where all our tourists are pure".
>
> http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/say/vowels2.mp3
It sounds incredibly British to my ears, or like Alexander Downer---and
*I'm* accused of sounding British by my peers. I think every word
sounds at least slightly different from how I'd say it. Would you
describe how you speak as General Australian? or something more like
Cultivated? (I'd call me General, but perhaps it takes about 200 years
for regional varieties to develop.)
(Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner; I'm finally in a position where
I can appreciate my holidays and have been busy doing a million things
at once. One in particular was tidying my room so that I could find my
book with stuff in it about Ancient F�tisk (haven't conlanged all
semester), but now that there's almost no stone left unturned I'm
getting worried. I'm also presently between two computers and getting
my email (and memory;) stuffed up.)
> With wma files I use 64 kbps because wma is significantly more
> efficient than mp3. With mp3 I find that 96 kbps is necessary.
>
> Just to prove I'm not mad,
I'm sure you're not mad. I didn't dispute that they were good enough
for you, just provided my opinion that they weren't good enough for me.
(They were at one stage, certainly, but mid last year I had to change
my soundcard to a lower quality one, and found that I had to re-rip all
my music; the stuff I'd encoded at 96 kbps simply wasn't listenable-to.
listen-toable. somethingababble.) You may delete them.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 22
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 11:25:14 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: does Language require Deception to exist?
This seems to me like a difficult question to answer since there's so
much we still don't know about language and its origins: for instance,
did language evolve once or many times? I've read arguments that all
languages spring from a common source somewhere in the depths of human
history, and others that many languages developed independently at about
the same time, and this seems to me like it'd make a major difference.
The first seems to make more of an assumption that language was a
natural development for our species, whereas (like life) if the
evolution of language only happened once for early human beings that it
must be a lot less likely to happen. Examples involving modern humans
don't seem to me to answer the question, since we don't know when
language at any level was first used, and if it first occured amongst
some sub-species before homo sapiens and then developed slowly as we
evolved, then we'd be much more suited to developing language that the
first people to speak were. So since we don't know much (as far as I'm
aware) about the conditions in which language first developed, or what
the first speakers were like, its very difficult to even guess from the
human experience what conditions (apart from a certain level of
intelligence) are necessary for communication systems we'd call language
to develop.
Having said that, I'm not sure that this argument applies to the
initial development of language. I have heard arguments that deception
amongst our ancestors drove the increase in our intelligence in a kind
of intellectual arms race, and I admit that if that were true then it
would follow that deception was at least partially to thank for the
invention of language given the assumption that intelligence is
necessary, but that's by no means proved. :) It seems to me that even if
a species were completely honest, if they were reasonably intelligent
(and I think these two are unlikely to go together, since usually
intelligence and deception go together) then some way of efficiently
passing on knowledge would be useful, whether it's a simple and
immediate system like the warning cries of various monkeys ("there's a
snake nearby etc"), or an extended system that helps pass on the
knowledge of how to craft weapons, make fire, which plants are poisonous
etc.
> not kidding, folks.
>
> In order to have a language, does a species first need to be able to
>lie/decieve/trick/fool/bluff others of their species?
>
> *If* a deception-free species could & did have a language, would it be
>easily translatable?
>
>
> food for thought, yes?
>
>
>
>
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Message: 23
Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 01:15:59 +1300
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Need for Debate
On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 20:27, Ray Brown wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 7, 2004, at 08:04 , Andreas Johansson wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > Horned helmets was used back in the bronze age, in both Scandinavia and
> > the
> > British Isles.
>
> Right - so that was the source for those Victorian illustrations.
>
> > There seems to be no evidence that actual vikings used them, tho.
>
> That's what I was thinking of. They have now become associated in the
> popular mind in Britain with Vikings. "If he's a Viking he will wear ha
> horned helmet" - "If he is wearing a horned helmet, he must be a Viking"
> Both statements quite without foundation of course!
>
> > Presumably they were part of formal attire rather than for combat - they'
> > re rather big and clumsy.
Absolutely useless for deflecting a sharp sword. They'd come off in the first
stoush.
>
> Yes, indeed - but that does not stop the popular picture of these warriors
> streaming from their long boats in the horned helmets, all set for a
> weekend of rape of pillage :)
>
> > One shouldn't make blanket statements whether the Vikings were
> > destructive or
> > not; _some_ certainly were mere destroyers, pillagers and killers, who
> > civilization would have done better without; others were constructive,
> > setting
> > up cities and trade routes.
>
> Absolutely!! How I detest stereotypes.
>
> > And, of course, most Scandinavians of the period weren't Vikings at all.
I'm reminded of Jorge Luis Borge's put-down of a Spaniard, who had claimed
that the Spanish had established an empire, etc. JL Borge's response was
that they were his ancestors and the Spaniards' were the lazy stay-behind
ones.
That being said, I've noticed a number of my English ancestors are from the
Danelaw, and other yet came from Normandy, ergo I've got vikingr ancestry. I
presume that means I'm ready for a weekend of pillaging as soon as I can
stomach fitting into absurdist stereotypes. ;)
It would not do to mention it as a reason for migrating to the United Kingdom
- "I'm just here for the pillaging. It's an ancestral tradition, don't you
know!? Where do I start?" :-)
>
> That's your story and you're sticking to it! (just kidding :)
> ===============================================
>
> On Tuesday, December 7, 2004, at 05:52 , John Cowan wrote:
> > Ray Brown scripsit:
> >> Galileo's problem was....
>
> [snip}
>
> > His other problem was that he was a lifelong flamer, a troll, and
> > a net.assassin of the very worst kind, and probably had a profitable
> > sideline selling the Italian edition of "How to Lose Friends and Alienate
> > People". He had the regrettable habit of calling a spade a God-damned
> > shovel, even when it was being wielded by a Prince (of the Church or the
> > State, it hardly mattered). As a result of having cheesed off everyone
> > in Italy, he was brought up on charges of making the Pope look like a
> > fool (which he had unquestionably done), was shown the instruments of
> > torture (but they were never used on him), and was told to go home and
> > stay there, which he duly did.
>
> So, not a good debater, then? It seems to me he was very fortunate to have
> been born in Italy at the time he was.I cannot imagine anyone like that
> living long in Tudod England! To make henry VIII look a fool was to sign
> one's own death warrant; and his off-spring were no better.
>
> >>> There's also often the problem of
> >>> perspective: for instance, the "barbarians" (Goths, Vandals etc) who
> >>> eroded the roman empire near the end. Were they really that bad? Was
> >>> there nothing important that was good to say about them?
> >>
> >> Yes, particularly the Goths.
> >
> > The reason the Goths took over the Western Roman Empire (basically just
> > Italy at this point) was to protect the remaining glories of Roman
> > civilization
> > from the real thugs, like the Franks and the Bulgars.
>
> Yep - and didn't they hold off the Huns a bit as well? The Visigoth
> kingdom in Spain was IIRC on balance "a good thing".
>
> --
> Here lies the Christian, John Cowan
> judge, and poet Peter,
> http://www.reutershealth.com
> Who broke the laws of God http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
> and man and metre. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> 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" ]
--
Wesley Parish
* * *
Clinersterton beademung - in all of love. RIP James Blish
* * *
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."
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Message: 24
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 14:42:28 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Swahili, Saying, Telling and Applicatives
Chris Bates wrote:
> Since Swahili promotes obliques to direct object to handle datives, I'm
> surprised that there is an unrelated word for tell. I would have
> expected sema + applicative, although tell does look like it is formed
> in this way. Is there a verb amba? I actually have the Madan (I think)
> Swahili-English dictionary so I guess I can look it up.
My Kamusi ya Kiswahili Kirusi says:
-amba (poet., rare) to speak (usu. bad about sb);
recip. -ambana; pas. -ambwa; dir. -ambia to tell, to inform;
dir.-recip. -ambiana; dir.-stat. -ambilika; double dir. -ambilia to talk
much
-- Yitzik
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Message: 25
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 23:52:31 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: USAGE: Vowel recordings
Tristan McLeay wrote, quoting myself:
> > I've uploaded another file, which demonstrates the words:
> > "Holy, wholly, holly"
> > followed by the sentence:
> > "This is our purest tour where all our tourists are pure".
> >
> > http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/say/vowels2.mp3
>
> It sounds incredibly British to my ears, or like Alexander Downer---and
> *I'm* accused of sounding British by my peers. I think every word
> sounds at least slightly different from how I'd say it. Would you
> describe how you speak as General Australian? or something more like
> Cultivated? (I'd call me General, but perhaps it takes about 200 years
> for regional varieties to develop.)
Well, A.D. is South Australian even if we might not like to admit it. :-)
With the exception of the controversial "holy" I would say that every
word in the sample is pronounced the same as most people I know would
pronounce it. That's all I can say, really. I'm not quite sure where
the division is between general and cultivated.
I'm surprised you find that every word differs noticeably from your
own pronunciation: I know there are other ways of pronouncing words
like "our" and "tour" but my way is the way of the overwhelming
majority of Australians who I know; the alternatives I associate
mostly with old people.
Of course, in the samples I articulate the words a lot more clearly
than I would in everyday conversation (simply because it isn't
everyday conversation but a phonetic demonstration) and I _could_ make
a recording in which I simply read, say, this paragraph without being
self-conscious about it. But as long as you pay attention to the sound
of the vowels and not to the (somewhat exaggerated) intonation, then
the recordings I gave are perfectly adequate.
> (Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner; I'm finally in a position where
> I can appreciate my holidays and have been busy doing a million things
> at once. One in particular was tidying my room so that I could find my
> book with stuff in it about Ancient F�tisk (haven't conlanged all
> semester), but now that there's almost no stone left unturned I'm
> getting worried. I'm also presently between two computers and getting
> my email (and memory;) stuffed up.)
I wondered if perhaps you were planning to wait until you had a chance
to record some comparative phonetic samples of your own before you
replied. Or perhaps you're heavily involved in several threads and
couldn't say everything you wanted to say in five posts (I haven't
checked your posting count). Or perhaps there were technical
difficulties involving computers. Or something.
I will be interested in hearing your samples when you get to it (as I
think you said you intended to do). Will help me put your remarks into
perspective.
Adrian.
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