------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page
http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/GSaulB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
There are 10 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3. Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Fwd: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:15:45 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
* Henrik Theiling said on 2005-11-16 12:58:45 +0100
> Hi!
>
> taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >... Norwegian-style letters (named "brev") ...
>
> Do you happend to have a link to this? What is it, I'd like to see
> these letters.
Lol. Letter as in piece of text sent in the mail. I don't think there
are any fonts for the old gothic-style hand-writing that was used early
last century.
t.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:31:32 -0800
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
Here be Gmail! Watch reply-tos!
There's another TeX implementation called TeTex, located at
www.tug.org/teTeX . Enjoy!
On 11/16/05, taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> * Henrik Theiling said on 2005-11-16 12:58:45 +0100
> > Hi!
> >
> > taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > >... Norwegian-style letters (named "brev") ...
> >
> > Do you happend to have a link to this? What is it, I'd like to see
> > these letters.
>
> Lol. Letter as in piece of text sent in the mail. I don't think there
> are any fonts for the old gothic-style hand-writing that was used early
> last century.
>
>
> t.
>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:43:06 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> There's another TeX implementation called TeTex, located at
> www.tug.org/teTeX . Enjoy!
And's using Windows, so what's really needed is MiKTeX[1]. TeTeX
is a Linux TeX distro.
K.
[1] http://www.miktex.org/
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:11:51 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: (La)TeX for a conlanger? Advice sought.
Hi!
taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> * Henrik Theiling said on 2005-11-16 12:58:45 +0100
> > Hi!
> >
> > taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > >... Norwegian-style letters (named "brev") ...
> >
> > Do you happend to have a link to this? What is it, I'd like to see
> > these letters.
>
> Lol. Letter as in piece of text sent in the mail. I don't think there
> are any fonts for the old gothic-style hand-writing that was used early
> last century.
:-) Now I see. (-:
**Henrik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:30:28 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
Thomas Wier wrote:
> From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Isn't that just a problem with trying to read more into a sentence than
>>the words imply? You can't tell if all of the dogs were seen at the same
>>time and place or one after the other in different places. Why would you
>>expect to be able to tell if each man saw the exact same three dogs, if
>>this is unspecified? If it's a significant fact, it can be expressed as
>>"every man saw the three dogs", or to be extra clear, "every man saw the
>>same three dogs". English has many problems, but trying to find one in
>>"every man saw three dogs" when there are much more radical problems in
>>other areas seems a bit strange.
>
>
> Well, it isn't just a trivial problem. Of course context will usually
> clarify which of the two scopal readings is possible, but not always.
Why just two? They could just happen to be the same three dogs, or one
or more of the dogs could be different and the others the same, or they
could all be different in each case. I don't see how leaving out this
particular detail is any different from leaving out any other detail.
> That's a crucial point, because it indicates that pragmatic implicatures
> are formally distinct from the truth-conditional semantic values a given
> utterance may have.
I'm afraid I don't have the slightest clue what an "implicature" might be.
And besides that, the goal of linguistics is to
> describe what it means to "know" a language, and without any such context,
> English speakers will generally readily agree on these judgements as
> something they know, and they will not accept other possible judgements
> (such that one or the other quantifier obligatorily takes wide scope).
>
> The point I was trying to make, in re idioms, was that languages differ
> on precisely such points: languages with nominal scrambling like Japanese
> IIRC do not get the same scope ambiguities that English does.
Could you give an example from Japanese (or some other language if
you're more familiar with one) to illustrate what you're trying to get
at here? I'm not familiar with this issue as it applies to Japanese. I
think it could be interesting to include a requirement like this in one
of my nonhuman languages (which is why it caught my attention), but I'm
not clear how it would work out in practice.
(There we go with one of those weird English idioms again, I mean "it's
not clear to me" :-) And "there we go" also deserves mention in a list
of idioms....)
So, trying
> to define what is an idiom, and what isn't, is not a straightforward
> enterprise, since there is a real sense in which any difference between
> languages is "idiomatic". We cannot just reduce the set of idioms to
> semantically noncompositional constructions like "kick the bucket",
> since there are other kinds of purely structural noncompositionality.
I think there's a distinction between "idiomatic" and "an idiom". Idioms
are expressions that can't be translated directly, but those aren't the
only idiomatic differences between languages. Your other example of
"can't seem to find" is a better one. It seems to me that "every man saw
three dogs" only includes the case of "every man saw the exact same
three dogs" as one possible meaning because that's one of many possible
configurations of three dogs, not from some peculiarity of English. I
wouldn't go so far as to consider that as one of exactly two alternative
readings.
(Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure that "every man saw
three dogs" is really all that likely in the case where each man saw the
exact same set of three dogs; "every man saw _the_ three dogs" seems
more natural in that case. The "the" would only be left out if it didn't
matter that they happened to be the same three dogs....)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:16:17 +1100
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
Hi all,
Thought I'd weigh in with a few more of what I consider
to be English idioms. I guess I'm using the word "idiom"
to mean any peculiarity of expression; some are dialectal,
while others are fairly widespread across dialect regions.
I expect it will take some long and ingenious thinking to
produce anything comparable to this variety in any of my
conlangs.
20. Weigh in with ... (Contribute. I don't know the origin.)
19. Sweating like a pig. (Pigs can't sweat, as they have
no sweat glands.)
18. He can't lie straight in bed.
17. It's coming down in buckets. (Said of heavy rain.)
16. Catch a cold, measles or other disease. (As if the
disease didn't catch us!)
15. Gunna catch me some shut-eye / some Zees. (Meaning
'I'm going to sleep'; the second variant MUST be North
American, 'cos the rest of us call the 26th letter of the
English alphabet 'Zed'.)
14. Well, butter me and call me toast! (Expresses surprise.)
13. Strewth! (Old Australian oath, meaning 'God's Truth'.)
12. Strike a light! (Expresses surprise or amazement.)
11. Let 'er down, Hughie! (Encouraging rain. Hughie, or
Huey, usually pronounced You-ie, is the putative rain god.
He might or might not be the same fella as God with a
capital G. Usually called on by rural folk.)
10. Stone the crows! (Yet Another Expression of Surprise.)
9. It's only two miles as the crow flies. (People will always
give you the straight line distance when the only available
track is steep, winding, dangerous and almost impossible to
find ...)
8. He's six foot tall. (for 'six feet'. Occasionally you may
still hear 'two mile' for 'two miles'.)
7. As bright as a two-bob watch. (Flashy and cheap; a
'bob' was a shilling, which in 1966 converted to 10 cents of
a decimal dollar.)
6. He's not the full two-bob. (The florin, or two-shilling
piece, was made of high-grade silver. It was a favourite
target of 'shavers' who took a little silver from the edge
of each coin for later resale. The person compared to
this shaved two-bob bit was allegedly mentally deficient.)
5. He's a few sandwiches shy of (or short of) a picnic.
(Another alleged idiot.)
4. He's got kangaroos in the top paddock. (This fella's
trouble is that thoughts just bounce around in his head.)
3. He took the king's shilling. (He became a soldier. Also:
'He went for a soldier.')
2. This weather plays merry hell with my bones. (An
arthritic's complaint.)
And finally, number 1! It starts out like this:
'Flat out like a ...' How does it finish? Is it?
a) '... rug',
b) '... doormat',
c) '... flying carpet',
d) '... bowling green', or
e) '... skating rink'?
No; it's none of the above; it's ...
1. Flat out like a lizard drinking.
'Go figure!'
Regards,
Yahya
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.3/173 - Release Date: 16/11/05
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 7
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:34:29 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
--- In [email protected], Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>(There we go with one of those weird English idioms again, I
>mean "it's not clear to me" :-)
I'm beginning to think that any definition of "idiom" is in the mind
of the beholder. Why is the above cited example an idiom?
David Crystal in "a Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics" defines
as idiom as "...a sequence of words which is semantically and often
syntactically restricted, so that they function as a single unit."
AHD gives as its fourth (of thirteen) definition of "clear": "plain
or evident to the mind." AHD defines idiom as "A speech form that
is peculiar to itself within the usage of a given language."
AHD's first definition of "clear" is: "free from anything that dims,
obscures or darkens; unclouded." Are we saying that any connotative
use of a word makes it idiomatic?
Each word in the sequence is, IMO, semantically and syntactically
independent and substitutions can be made. As Mr. Crystal says, one
can't say, "it's raining a cat and a dog."
I don't find "it's not clear to me" any more idiomatic/peculiar
than "it's not plain to me" or "it's not evident to me."
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 8
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:53:53 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
--- In [email protected], Yahya Abdal-Aziz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>13. Strewth! (Old Australian oath, meaning 'God's Truth'.)
Why is this an idiom? Is it because it is a contraction of a longer
expression? That doesn't fit any definition of "idiom" that I
know. That would make "don't," "won't," etc., idioms. If "strewth"
is any idiom, than so is "zounds!" and "whoops!" and "oh!"
and "heavens!" and any other interjection available to a language.
>9. It's only two miles as the crow flies. (People will always
>give you the straight line distance when the only available
>track is steep, winding, dangerous and almost impossible to
>find ...)
I had second thoughts about making a comment on this one, but then
I thought, "Oh, what the hell! In for a penny, in for a pound."
(Hey, that's an idiom!) It has to do, not with the crow thing which
is an idiom IMO, but with the "people always..." part. One of my
major pet peeves is generalizations when they aren't accurate. I
live in the Blue Ridge Mtns. of Virginia. Folks up here would never
give distances nowadays "as the crow flies." That crow doesn't have
to pay for gas. We actually have paved roads here and our vehicles
have odometers. We know how far it is from point A to point B. If
I tell an inquirer that it is 25 miles to my mission church, he
might not be pleased that the trip was 33 miles long! No, people
don't ALWAYS "give you the straight line distance, etc." But then
again, maybe I'm just overreacting to hyperbole. If so, I apologize
for the ranting!
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 9
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:07:15 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
* caeruleancentaur said on 2005-11-17 13:34:29 +0100
> * Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > "it's not clear to me"
>
> I'm beginning to think that any definition of "idiom" is in the mind
> of the beholder. Why is the above cited example an idiom?
>
> David Crystal in "a Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics" defines
> as idiom as "...a sequence of words which is semantically and often
> syntactically restricted, so that they function as a single unit."
Following is "idiom" in WordNet, my first choice for a dictionary these
days:
idiom
n 1: a manner of speaking that is natural to native speakers of a
language [syn: {parlance}]
2: the usage or vocabulary that is characteristic of a specific
group of people; "the immigrants spoke an odd dialect of
English"; "he has a strong German accent" [syn: {dialect},
{accent}]
3: the style of a particular artist or school or movement; "an
imaginative orchestral idiom" [syn: {artistic style}]
4: an expression whose meanings cannot be inferred from the
meanings of the words that make it up [syn: {idiomatic
expression}, {phrasal idiom}, {set phrase}, {phrase}]
The definition of "idiom" used in computational linguistics is *only*
number 4, so "raining cats and dogs" is an idiom (will need its own
expression-entry in a dictionary, while "(not) clear to <pronoun>" is
not an idiom.
t.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 10
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:32:35 +0100
From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
yahya wrote:
>14. Well, butter me and call me toast! (Expresses surprise.)
Very nice :)
Dutch has (also expressing surprise):
Wat heb ik nou aan mijn fiets hangen?
What is hanging from my bike?
Rene
Watch the reply-to.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
