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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Composition of conlanger population
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Mooré language sources?
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Conlang Indexes
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Person distinctions in languages?
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Conlang Indexes
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Person distinctions in languages?
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed.
From: Donald Boozer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. The Five-Page Language.
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Person distinctions in languages?
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Mooré language sources?
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed.
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Person distinctions in languages?
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Tonogenesis
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Person distinctions in languages?
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: The Five-Page Language.
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Tonogenesis
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Tonogenesis
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. OT: Re: Composition of conlanger population
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 15:13:20 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Composition of conlanger population
Yep... it is true that there's a strong tendency for the various areas
in the brains of left handed people to be in different places to those
of other left handed people and of right handed people. We tend to have
non standard brains. ;) I believe the thing I read also claimed that
left handed people were more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than
right handers, but I'm not sure.
For the record, in case someone wants to do another survey, I'm male,
left handed, bi, and... well, as far as mental illness is concerned, the
university councellors told me at one point that I suffered from an
anxiety disorder and depression, but so far no schizophrenia. ;)
>Physiologically, most right-handed brains are cut from the same cloth,
>as it were, with the major functional areas laid out fairly predictably.
>Left-handers, on the other hand, have brain maps which differ not only
>from right handers, but from each other. Apparently, if you have a
>"normal" brain, you're right-handed; if you're left-handed, that's a
>sign that your brain is not "normal", and at that point all bets are
>off.
>
>
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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:16:58 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mooré language sources?
Hi!
I'd like to learn a few basic words in the Afrikan language Mooré,
probably Ouagadougou dialect, spoken in Burkino Faso. Any sources?
I found a few things in the web, but probably someone of you has good
pointers! :-)
Of course, I'm also interested in a language classification, i.e.,
phonology and grammar description would be greatly appreciated! :-)
Bye,
Henrik
--
------------------------------ Dr. Henrik Theiling -------------
Tel: +49 681 83183 04 AbsInt Angewandte Informatik GmbH
Fax: +49 681 83183 20 Stuhlsatzenhausweg 69
http://www.AbsInt.com/ D-66123 Saarbruecken
Encrypted e-mail preferred. Private: http://www.theiling.de/
0x9E314CA5 FA 1C 02 C9 58 04 57 6E 53 9C DF 94 B4 45 AE 24
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:22:18 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlang Indexes
--- "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb:
> Do people think that this approach is a good idea?
> Are there any comments, advice and suggestions?
> Should I go ahead and ask for submissions?
I absolutely _love_ your idea! I'm currently a bit
starved for ideas for conlanging myself, and if I had
models of other's conlangs to base features on, maybe
I could come up with something.
Maybe someone could do that for natlangs, too, though
the list'd be insanely long and we'd have to weed out
a lot of categories we'd think 'weird' (like some
dialects of German using the same set of words for
pronouns, determiners and articles, which is pretty
weird, now that I think of it).
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:36:15 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages?
--- joao eugenio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
schrieb:
Both interesting ideas, but they still have to
describe things in terms of 'person'. I think I should
explain what I have, before anything else.
In this new conlang I'm coming up with, I'm trying to
figure out a way of dividing pronouns and verbal
inflections along the lines of discourse participation
and level of animacy; i.e., whether the thing in
question is involved in the discourse (1st/2nd person)
or not (3rd person) and its level on the animacy
hierarchy (deities/humans/predatory animals/prey
animals/plants/objects/etc). I'm sorely tempted to
scrap the animacy thing altogether and go with a
system that sort of mimics the Japanese classifier
system, which would be a thousand times less
ambiguous.
Examples:
'tsnare' - to hear
'-nak' - discourse participant, human
'-s(a)' - patient marker
'-a' - honorific marker
'tsnare nak-a-sa'
'[I] hear you'
And I disambiguate further using honorifics, something
like the Japanese using the '(g)o-' prefix to
distinguish between one's own family member and the
other's family members in discourse (or something like
that?)
Someone mentioned that Ebisedian has a strange
pronominal system; is there a website where I can see
examples?
> In portuguese, we have the three usual persons, but
> if we want to say something in the 2nd person
> (singular or plural), the verbs are conjugated as
> 3rd person. For the second person, we use the
> conjugation of the 3rd person, but we change the
> pronoun. Instead of "ele" and "eles", we use "você"
> and "vocês":
> --- # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb:
> In Spanish, if you don't use the pronouns and only
> use conjugation, using the 3rd person singular
> marker can indicates that it is a 3rd person subject
> (el, ella) or a respected 2nd person(usted)
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Message: 5
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:49:29 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlang Indexes
* Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) said on 2005-02-02 07:01:18 +0100
> I had an idea for a Conlang index with a difference ... one that
> emphasises the interesting and unusual grammatical approaches that
> constructed languages can use, and can therefore be a source of
> grammatical ideas for others.
>
> Here is the prototype:
> http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/create/language/twisted.htm
>
> Do people think that this approach is a good idea? Are there any
> comments, advice and suggestions? Should I go ahead and ask for
> submissions?
Go ahead! I've actually thought of the "opposite", sorting by language
but only listing the rare features for each.
t.
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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:17:45 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
Hey everyone,
I read the thread about contractions in colloquial German. Very
interesting! It made me think that, in the not-so-distant future, German
(or (one of) its descendant(s)) may have a more complex system of personal
verb endings. I think it's interesting to explore the possibilities now,
from a conlanging point of view. Here's an idea of what I'm thinking:
haben "to have":
habe ich > hasch [hAS] "I have"
hast du > haste ['hA.st6] "you have"
hat er > hate ['hA.t6] "he has"
hat Sie > haze ['hA.ts)6] "she has"
hat es > haz [hAts)] "it has"
haben wir > hame ['hA.m6] "we have"
haben ihr > hanje ['hAn.j6] "y'all have"
haben Sie > hanse ['hAn.s6] "they have"
Perhaps also there may be direct-object suffixes, like enclitic -n
for 'den, ihn':
habe ich ihn > haschen ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "I have him/it"
hast du ihn > hasten ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "you ' ' "
hat er ihn > haten ...
hat Sie ihn > hazen
hat es ihn > hazen
haben wir ihn > hamen
haben ihr ihn > hanjen
haben Sie ihn > hansen
Another verb, gehen "to go":
gehe ich > gehsch
gehst du > gehste
geht er > gehte
geht Sie > gehze
geht es > gehz (already there, but written "geht's")
gehen wir > gehme
gehen ihr > gehnje
gehen Sie > gehnse
There could even be an enclitic negative: haschennisch ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "I
don't have it".
What do y'all think?
- Rob
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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 09:37:20 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities
--- Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> On 2 Feb 2005, at 6.26 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka
> Flesh-eating Dragon)
> wrote:
> > A few people say "chook" for all purposes,
> including references to
> > food. My cousin, for one.
That's what I love about this group. I'm always
hearing odd and obscure words I've never heard before.
First it was that champion mushroom thingie and now
it's "chook". Where has that word been hiding all my
60 years? I've never heard it before.
--gary
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Message: 8
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 11:31:00 -0600
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages?
>From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>Are there any languages that break the pattern of
>first-second-third-(fourth) person? I'm trying to
>model a system that doesn't use such distinctions, but
>I can't figure out how to make it coherent or
>intelligible without perhaps a model to base it on.
There are, of course, a number of languages which are more concerned with
the _relative_ position of a noun phrase on that heirarchy than the actual
position, but they still distinguish person after a fashion. I'm pretty
sure (95%+) that a 1st-2nd-3rd person distinction is universal in natlangs.
Of course, where you make that distinction can vary a lot. Many languages
make it only in pronouns (or their equivilant: I'm of the school of thought
that Japanese doesn't have pronouns), and make entirely different
distinctions of verbs. That's probably what you're looking for.
Animacy/gender/class, plurality alone, relative importance,
proximacy/obviation, definity*, deixis, whether the noun phrase is overt or
dropped, and where the noun phrase falls in the sentance are all things I've
seen or heard of being marked on the verb in natlangs, although many of
those only occur within a personal inflection structure.
ObConlang: Þewthaj marks person on the noun, not the verb, and only when
it's an argument of the verb. It's the normal 1-2-3 person distinction,
though, if with an inclusive/exclusive distinction**.
Athey
*I like this word. A lot.
**In the first person plural, of course. I've seen this somewhere in the
second person plural, but I don't remember where. I don't even remember if
it was a natlang or a conlang, although I'm mostly sure it was the former.
Can anyone help me with that?
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Message: 9
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 09:46:42 -0800
From: Donald Boozer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed.
I've decided to take the challenge posed by Roger
Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for newer members to take a
stab at the phrasebook. Below is my attempt at Section
1 in Elasin. Could someone point me to the remainder
of the book on the web? I will apologize for the
length of the post, and I would appreciate any
feedback my fellow conlangers are willing to give. Be
gentle on the X-SAMPA transliterations, it's my first
time:
A Traveller’s Phrasebook:
Pleasantries:
Hello!
Aulemwatu shemul ebek! [Au.le.mwa”tu Se.mul” e”bEk]
Aule-mwa-tu shemu-l ebek
Pleasing-is-it seeing-you me (DAT)
Seeing you is pleasing to me!
Goodbye!
If the parting is taking place outside:
Maka nitaloth sharinen! [mA”k@ ni.tAl”OT Sa”rinEn]
Ma-ka nital-oth sharine-n
Walking-IMP light-ACC sun-GEN
Walk in the light of the sun!
Reply: Avu li’i [A”vu li?i]
And you. (the final ‘i is part of the conjunction
particle set avu...i)
Said to the party staying inside:
Shivwagi thelanam ebel. [Sivwa”gi [EMAIL PROTECTED] e”bEl]
Shi-vwa-gi thelan-am ebel.
Wishing-PRES.-I peace/well-being-ACC you (DAT)
I wish peace for you.
Yes.
No one word for “yes.” Use the positive form of the
verb in the question.
Vo makwali marva vo? Are you walking to the city?
Makwagi. I am walking.
No.
Hau le. [hAu le]
These are the particles used to bracket a negative
statement, therefore, used on their own they
constitute a negative response.
Vo makwali marva vo?
Hau le. (Hau makwagi le marva. “I am _not walking_ to
the city.” or Makwagi hau marva le. “I am walking
[but] _not to the city_.)
Please...
Kopai aulemuditu ebel ko... [ko”pAi Aulemudi”tu ebEl
ko...]
Kopai aulemu-di-tu ebel ko...
If pleasing-future-it you-DAT (dependent clause
particle)
If it will be pleasing to you ...
Ex. Kopai aulemuditu ebel ko aimuna umadem ebek. If it
will be pleasing to you, give the book to me.
Thank you.
Topalwagit. [topalwA”git]
Topal-wa-gi-t.
Thanking-present-I-you.
I thank you.
Do you speak (English, Spanish, French, etc.)?
Vo fathwalit (enlish, sapanish, frensh, etc.) vo? [vo
fATwA”lit ...vo]
Vo fa-thwa-li-t ...vo?
(Interrogative particle)
speaking-present-you-it...(interrogative particle)?
I don’t speak Elasin very well.
Fathwagit sohoki elasinam. [fATwA”git soho”ki
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fa-thwa-gi-t so-hoki elasin-am.
Speaking-present-I-it intensifer-well/good Elasin-ACC.
My name is...
Mabwagit manalam ...in. [mAbwA”git [EMAIL PROTECTED] ...in/In]
Ma-bwa-gi-t manal-am ....in. (i.e. Mabwagit manalam
Donaldin.)
Holding-present-I-it name-ACC ...GEN.
I hold the name of .....
Names are very important in Elasin society, with long
lineages. One’s name is held in trust to both past
generations who have held it, as well as future
generations who will carry it.
What is your name?
Vo mabwalit manalam kopathin vo? [vo mAbwA”lit [EMAIL PROTECTED]
kopATin vo]
Vo ma-bwa-li-t manal-am kopath-in vo?
Int. particle holding-present-you-it name-ACC who-GEN
Int. particle.
Who’s name are you holding?
How are you?
Vo wali hoki vo? [vo wA”li ho”ki vo]
Vo wa-li hoki vo?
Int. particle Present tense copula-you good/well vo?
Are you well?
Alternative: Vo wali thelanoth vo? ...thelan-oth...
peace/well-being-LOC (inessive)
I am well.
Wagi hoki./Wagi thelanoth. [...TelA”n.OT]
I am not well.
Wagi hau hoki le/Wagi hau thelanoth le.
I am the walrus, coo coo ca choo.
Wagi salithe haponi, ku ku ka shu. [wA”gi sAli”Te
hApo”ni...]
I am the ungainly/clumsy animal...
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Message: 10
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 10:04:27 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: The Five-Page Language.
First of all, I do not believe in the the whole
auxlang concept. I think any auxlang is doomed before
it even gets off the ground. That said, it's still
interesting to play with "make believe" auxlangs.
Here's my idea for what I call a "five-page auxlang."
I recently found a copy of the book FRATER (LINGUA
SISTEMFRATER) by Pham Xuan Thai and subtitled "The
Simplest International Language Ever Constructed".
It's a proposed auxlang which uses Latin and Greek
roots and a Chinese-like isolating grammar. Since I
had already begun an isolating Latin project, the
first thing I did was look for ways to modify and
improve on "Frater".
The grammar consists of 12 rules on two pages, but the
vocabulary is "hand made" by picking and choosing from
among the available Greek and Latin words and
modifying those originals in one way or another.
While looking through the glossary it occured to me
that what would really make this language "the
simplest" would be to have a fixed set of rules for
deriving the Frater word from the Latin dictionary
entry. Instead of having to build up the glossary
word by hand-crafted word, any ordinary Latin
dictionary could be used to stand in for a Frater
dictionary.
My proposal, then, is to completely specify an auxlang
in five pages. There would be one page covering
orthography and pronunciation, two pages covering all
the grammar rules, and two pages covering the rules
for deriving words from any Latin dictionary entry.
Thus, by learning five pages of material the auxlang
would be completely mastered. What could be easier?
:)
--gary
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Message: 11
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:13:48 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:11:58 +0100, Philip Newton
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> fallen: du fällst/er fällt but ihr fallt.
I just realised that due to the umlaut, du fällst/er fällt is
ambiguous as it could mean not only "you fall" but "you fell" :) In
that case, it would, of course, be "ihr fällt" in 2pl (infinitive:
fällen).
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:11:58 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:17:45 -0500, Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What do y'all think?
a) Why do you put the personal pronoun after the verb in order to fuse
it into an ending? The usual position is before the verb.
b) Why do you use the 1pl/3pl form also for 2pl? It usually ends in
-t, though without the umlaut that may come in 2sg/3sg form (e.g.
lesen: du liest/er liest but ihr lest; fallen: du fällst/er fällt but
ihr fallt).
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:57:54 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
--- Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb:
> Hey everyone,
> There could even be an enclitic negative:
> haschennisch ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "I
> don't have it".
>
> What do y'all think?
Ha! Brilliant! I was trying the same thing, though my
knowledge of German colloquial contractions extends
only as far as 'haste' for 'hast du' and a few others.
I like what you have.
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Message: 14
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:21:59 -0500
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages?
Steven Williams wrote:
>In this new conlang I'm coming up with, I'm trying to
>figure out a way of dividing pronouns and verbal
>inflections along the lines of discourse participation
>and level of animacy; i.e., whether the thing in
>question is involved in the discourse (1st/2nd person)
>or not (3rd person) and its level on the animacy
>hierarchy (deities/humans/predatory animals/prey
>animals/plants/objects/etc). I'm sorely tempted to
>scrap the animacy thing altogether and go with a
>system that sort of mimics the Japanese classifier
>system, which would be a thousand times less
>ambiguous.
_____________________
The description of your proposed system sounds somewhat like my system for
Ithkuil, where discourse participation plus animacy/inanimacy are two of
several parameters which make up the personal reference adjunct system
(equivalent to personal pronouns in other languages). For details, see
Chapter 8 of the Ithkuil grammar at http://home.inreach.com/sl2120/Ithkuil
--John Quijada
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Message: 15
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:24:20 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Mooré language sources?
Henrik Theiling wrote:
> I'd like to learn a few basic words in the Afrikan language Mooré,
> probably Ouagadougou dialect, spoken in Burkino Faso. Any sources?
>
> I found a few things in the web, but probably someone of you has good
> pointers! :-)
>
I'll assume you've tried Ethnologue?? Google turned up several refs. too,
among them http://www.dcaccess.net/~huhtaman/primer/ French sources ought
to have something........
Amazing coincidence: at my first teaching job, there were _two_
Mooré-speaking students from that area-- at least one from Ouagadougou who
served as informant in a Field Methods course I taught. Sorry to say, I
don't have my notes anymore, but I do recall it had 7 or 8 noun classes,
distinguished by how the plural was formed (you get a glimpse of this in the
"body parts" section of the Primer); and it turned out to be sort of tonal.
One student did find a journal article (probably late-60s/early 70s), but
again, I don't have a ref. Sorry.
Fascinating language-- good luck.
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Message: 16
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:18:12 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities
Gary Shannon wrote:
> --- Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>>On 2 Feb 2005, at 6.26 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka
>>Flesh-eating Dragon)
>>wrote:
>>
>>>A few people say "chook" for all purposes,
>>
>>including references to
>>
>>>food. My cousin, for one.
>
>
> That's what I love about this group. I'm always
> hearing odd and obscure words I've never heard before.
> First it was that champion mushroom thingie and now
> it's "chook". Where has that word been hiding all my
> 60 years? I've never heard it before.
Oh, the rest of the English-speaking world outside of North America's
heard it before: on blasted awful Aussie soaps like Neighbors and
Home and Away. Grrr!
K.
P.S. I like Australia, just not the soaps. And they're everywhere here!
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 17
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:34:36 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed.
Donald Boozer wrote:
> I've decided to take the challenge posed by Roger
> Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for newer members to take a
> stab at the phrasebook. Below is my attempt at Section
> 1 in Elasin. Could someone point me to the remainder
> of the book on the web?
I should have answered before-- Part 2 never appeared. :-(((((
> A Traveller's Phrasebook:
>
(snip) Well done!
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Message: 18
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:45:40 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages?
--- John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb:
> The description of your proposed system sounds
> somewhat like my system for Ithkuil, where discourse
> participation plus animacy/inanimacy are two of
> several parameters which make up the personal
> reference adjunct system (equivalent to personal
> pronouns in other languages). For details, see
> Chapter 8 of the Ithkuil grammar at
> http://home.inreach.com/sl2120/Ithkuil
Ha! That's twice Ithkuil has been a base for features
for my conlangs (the first time was when I asked about
the division of theta roles). I'm not sure if I'm
borrowing features without realizing it, because I
looked at Ithkuil with considerable interest, or if
it's because I tried to think of something entirely
wacky, and you beat me to the punch.
Anyways, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
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Message: 19
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:13:02 -0600
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Tonogenesis
Can anyone point me to some good sources (website or book) about natlang
tonogenesis? I'm particulary but not exclusively interested in tonal
systems originating from sources other than loss of stop voicing
distinctions (as in Chinese).
In a related question, has anyone else dealt with tonogenesis in their
conlangs? I try to make my work as natural as possible, which makes
diachronic linguistics a terrible pain anyway, and with tonogenesis to boot
I'm feeling a little out of my depth.
Athey
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Message: 20
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 11:50:22 -0800
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages?
On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 08:15:53PM -0800, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> Emaelivpeith Steven Williams:
> > Are there any languages that break the pattern of
> > first-second-third-(fourth) person? I'm trying to
> > model a system that doesn't use such distinctions, but
> > I can't figure out how to make it coherent or
> > intelligible without perhaps a model to base it on.
>
> My conlang, Asha'ille, uses (long-term) emotional closeness between
> speakers to distinguish persons. Check out my description at:
>
> http://arthaey.mine.nu:8080/~arthaey/conlang/grammar/persons.html
>
> Teoh's Ebisédian also has an intimate/non-intimate distinction, but
> I'll leave that to him to discuss. :)
[...]
Ebisédian's system is similar to Asha'ille's: there is a set of
singular 1st person pronouns, but no plurals. There are no 2nd/3rd
person pronouns, but instead a set of intimate and distant pronouns,
inflected for gender/number/case. The Ebisédian mode of thought is
that there is the speaker himself/herself, then a set of people whom
the speaker consider to be intimate (close friends, family, spouse,
associate), and then the set of everyone else (acquiantances,
strangers, etc.).
The intimate pronouns always refer to someone intimate with the
speaker, or at least someone the speaker considers to be "on my side".
The distant pronouns are used to refer to everyone else. (The distant
pronouns are also used for everyone in formal contexts, but we will
disregard them for the purposes of this discussion.) Note that this is
*independent* of who the speaker is addressing. Because of this,
Ebisédian has the unusual property that often the exact same sentence
can be spoken to different people, and they will each get a different
understanding of it, yet their interpretations are consistent with
each other.
Take for example, King A speaking with male servant B and his daughter
Princess C. King A may say something like this:
uso' chi'd0 th0're jobu' uro 3k3'.
please DIST:MASC:SG:ORG give INTIM:FEM:SG:RCP this inscription:CVY
Now, if King A were addressing servant B, he would understand this to
mean that _chi'd0_ referred to him, and _jobu'_ referred to princess
C, and that he was to give the inscription to Princess C. If King A
were addressing Princess C, she would understand that _chi'd0_
referred to servant B, and _jobu'_ to herself, and that servant B was
about to give her the inscription.
In fact, the King could be addressing them both at the same time, and
each of them would understand correctly which pronoun was referring to
whom. The King could in fact be addressing the populace, and not
servant B or Princess C directly, and they would understand that he
wishes for servant B to hand the inscription to princess C. (The
singular distant masculine pronoun _chi'd0_ could not refer to the
populace themselves, you see; the King would use a plural epicene
distant pronoun for that.)
Now, I can hear people in the back objecting that this doesn't quite
work in all cases, and that there are many cases where it would be
ambiguous to whom the pronouns refer. And I agree, there are many
cases of ambiguity, and Ebisédian is highly context-dependent.
However, Ebisédian also has what are called "noun association markers"
which can be prefixed to pronouns to distinguish between different
people referred to by the same pronoun. This is sometimes employed to
resolve ambiguities that arise from the pronominal system.
There are 3 noun association markers, corresponding with the 3
prefixes ki-, ci-, and ro-. (In the most literal sense, they mean
"red", "green", and "blue", but so do many other grammatical morphemes
in Ebisédian, so a literal reading is not tenable. In any case, it is
useful to think of them as "coloring" pronouns differently in order to
disambiguate between different referents.) By convention, ki- is used
for the first pronoun referent, roughly meaning "the former", ci- the
second, roughly meaning "this one", and ro- the third, roughly
meaning "the other".
Let's see this at work in a conversation between a party of 4 men, who
are therefore considered to be "intimate" by each other.
Man A (speaking to Man B):
ni ghi' di iso'i le's ki-cw'm3 moo'ju?
REL:LOC what AUX:LOC time:LOC go #1-INTIM:MASC:CVY city:RCP
When will you [ki- hereby established to refer to Man B] go to
the city?
Man B: oro ky'ri.
next day:LOC
Tomorrow.
Man C (nodding at Man D):
a'ne lyy's iro ro-cw'm3 zo ki-cw'm3?
INTERROG go:PERF EMPH #3-INTIM:MASC:CVY and #1-INTIM:MASC:CVY
Will he [i.e., Man D, henceforth associated with ro-] go with
him [i.e. Man B, associated with ki-] ?
(Note that Man C could have addressed this to anyone or everyone in
the party and they would get the correct interpretation.)
Man D: my'e.
Not_so
No.
eb3' zo uro ro-cw'm3 zokyy' mangu' loo'ru.
1sp:CVY and this #3-INTIM:MASC:CVY follow horse:RCP countryside:RCP
I will be with this-him [referring to man A - ro- cannot refer
to the 1st person, so it is available to be assigned to man A
when man D is speaking] following the horse into the countryside.
Man A: ji'e. i're ro-cw'm3 zo eb3'.
yes indeed #3-INTIM:MASC:CVY and 1sp:CVY
Yes. Indeed he [man D] is with me.
Man C: ghe' ebi'?
what:ADV 1sp:LOC
What about me?
Man A (replying to Man C): b0'mu cu-cw'm3 uu'ri.
wait #2-INTIM:MASC:CVY here:LOC
You wait here. (Or, "he remains here",
to the other party members.)
Man B: oso cu-cw'm3 zo eb3'.
wish #2-INTIM:MASC:CVY and 1sp:CVY
I wish him (or "you", if spoken to man C) to come with me.
Man A: 0so'.
ought_to_be
Let it be so.
So you can see that the noun association markers can be used to
disambiguate up to 4 parties referred to using the same pronoun (the
association tag referring to yourself is "free" for you to assign to
another party, since it is clear that the same tag cannot refer to
yourself when you're speaking). So although this conversation is very
contrived (in a more realistic setting, the men would be addressing
each other by name), it does work better than it could with, e.g., the
English pronominal system under the same circumstances (if you didn't
use names, you'd get very confused who "he" refers to after a few
lines into this conversation).
T
--
First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely
repeat each other.
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Message: 21
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 20:08:36 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Five-Page Language.
Gary Shannon wrote:
> My proposal, then, is to completely specify an auxlang
> in five pages. There would be one page covering
> orthography and pronunciation, two pages covering all
> the grammar rules, and two pages covering the rules
> for deriving words from any Latin dictionary entry.
> Thus, by learning five pages of material the auxlang
> would be completely mastered. What could be easier?
> :)
And I am, of course, prepared to reveal my far superior system that fits
on to just *four* pages, it being a streamlined and more logical variant
upon your own. :-)
K.
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Message: 22
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:32:20 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Tonogenesis
--- Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb:
> In a related question, has anyone else dealt with
> tonogenesis in their
> conlangs? I try to make my work as natural as
> possible, which makes
> diachronic linguistics a terrible pain anyway, and
> with tonogenesis to boot
> I'm feeling a little out of my depth.
In my most recent conlang, Gi-nàin, there existed
three tones (rising, high and low), which were the
remnants of a previous pitch-accent system. There was
also quite significant tone sandhi.
Basically, the rising tone was the result of a LH word
collapsing into a single syllable, giving a rising
tone in the process. A collapsed HL word would just
give a low tone; it just 'seems' the more logical
thing, from me actually pronouncing these words. High
and low tones were still present, but since most
polysyllabic words collapsed, only those words that
started out with level or falling tone contours
remained level. Examples (circumflex represents high
tone):
nâgin -> nàin
kânu -> kàn
anâ -> ná
...and so on.
That's pretty simple tonogenesis; I'm sure some
language out there has a more complex, involved process.
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Message: 23
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:38:02 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Tonogenesis
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:13:02 -0600, Kevin Athey
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Can anyone point me to some good sources (website or book) about natlang
> tonogenesis? I'm particulary but not exclusively interested in tonal
> systems originating from sources other than loss of stop voicing
> distinctions (as in Chinese).
Google "tonogenesis Tibetan"?
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 24
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:18:41 -0500
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: OT: Re: Composition of conlanger population
>Yep... it is true that there's a strong tendency for the various areas in
>the brains of left handed people to be in different places to those of
>other left handed people and of right handed people. We tend to have non
>standard brains. ;) I believe the thing I read also claimed that left
>handed people were more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than right
>handers, but I'm not sure.
But the question all experts ask: Are these differencies in the left-handers
brain the cause of the left-handing or its result?
The fact that the brain works in a different and inegual way could only be a
consequence of manipulating the world by the hand controlled by the right
side of the brain that is more imaginative instead of the left side that is
logic and analysing.
The fact of using a hand makes the brain half who controls it more important
than the other
And if a side is more important, it is responsible of the division of the
roles in the brain parts
So, it is simply that the the right side of the brain will divide the tasks
in a imprevisible way contrarily to the left side
an imprevisible way to divide the tasks and roles in the brain makes that
there's more chance that the brain takes the form that produces mental
illness
That's what I know about it but it is only a theory
- Max
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Message: 25
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:26:50 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in
colloquial German)
On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:11:58 +0100, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:17:45 -0500, Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> What do y'all think?
>
>a) Why do you put the personal pronoun after the verb in order to fuse
>it into an ending? The usual position is before the verb.
I guess I assumed that, at a later date, the VSO word-order for
interrogative and imperative sentences would also become default (at least
colloquially) for declarative sentences as well.
>b) Why do you use the 1pl/3pl form also for 2pl? It usually ends in
>-t, though without the umlaut that may come in 2sg/3sg form (e.g.
>lesen: du liest/er liest but ihr lest; fallen: du fällst/er fällt but
>ihr fallt).
My bad, I meant to use the standard 2pl form. Do any colloquial German
dialects use the 1pl/3pl form for the 2pl also?
- Rob
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