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There are 19 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Kit La Touche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Darwinistic or ancient strata?
From: tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Elomi!
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Darwinistic or ancient strata?
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Kit La Touche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Language change among immortals
From: Aaron Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Language change among immortals
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Elomi!
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Language change among immortals
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Elomi!
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:57:42 -0500
From: Kit La Touche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
it seems to me likely that lexical items preserve a pattern like
this, which is called harmony for largely historical reasons, but
that affixation wouldn't be vowel-harmonic, simply because speakers
wouldn't have enough evidence that it's a harmony pattern when
acquiring the language to keep it that way. harrison is doing
research on this at the moment - i don't know whether he's published
anything about it yet or not. he's a specialist in siberian turkic
languages, tuvan particularly, so i should ask him about modern
mongolian. (he teaches at my school.)
then again, there's finnish, which has frontness-harmony, with the
vowels [y], [ø], [æ] as front and [u], [o] and [A] as back (pardon
the mix of SAMPA and IPA). the vowels [i] and [e] are neutral. yet
how would an infant acquiring the language pick up on this? there is
a somewhat weak featural way of describing the difference, i guess.
hm. musings.
kit
On Nov 21, 2005, at 6:50 PM, Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
> As I understand it, Mongolian nowadays makes a distinction between
> "front" /e u o/ and "back" /a U O/, with /I/ being neutral. Seems
> pretty
> arbitrary to me. Obviously this is based on an earlier distinction
> that
> I presume actually *was* front vs back.
> [snip]
> Tristan.
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:25:33 -0800
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
I want to thank many people for their
contributions in reply to my survey.
On this list, in particular, I want to thank the following for contributing
from their conlangs;
Jim Henry for Esperanto, "eldonejo"(= publishing house, literally
"out-giving-place" )
(yes, I'm aware Jim Henry doesn't claim Esperanto as his conlang.)
Toki Pona "tomo tawa"= automobile (lit. "house go").
(unspecified languag(s)) conventional kenning for "falsehood" that glosses as
"devil's truth".
gjâ-zym-byn,
"-jqa" means "something rotated 90 degrees from the referent of the root",
"swynx" = desk, table; "swynx-jqa" = shelf.
Andreas Johansson for a Meghean idiom: _techreuth rhuñco_ ,
lit. "he/she has lost (his/her) feet",
meaning that is this someone procastrinates.
The idea, of course, is that if you've lost your feet, you can literally not
get going.
R A Brown for "out-giving-place" -- could be a soup-kitchen
instrument+receptacle+liquid+complement = 'corkscrew'
Roger Mills for
Indonesian _rumah sakit_ (house+sick) 'hospital'
Kash house+health for 'hospital'
Kash verbs with prefix caka-,
caka/ñoni 'to nitpick, quibble' (ñoni 'test, try').
ca/kanjik 'gluttonous; s.o. who'll eat anything (fig. gullible)'
(hanjik 'bite of food, mouthful').
related ca/kacip 'picky about one's food; (fig.) fastidious',
vele ('give') hacip 'to give a small bribe/payoff' (hacip 'a little
bite/nibble of food')
nonce-forms like caka/fanu 'obsessed with the number 8' (fanu '8').
Carsten Becker for Deutsche "abkupfern", to copy someone else's work for one's
own purposes, i.e. steal intellectual property -- yes, I know that's a natlang,
not Carsten's conlang
Carsten didn't say which conlang _Angutáy!_ for "Thank You"
which is from _Ang cutáyin!_ resp. _Cutáyang!_ for "I thank".
caeruleancentaur for
"It is raining cats and dogs"
Equivalent expressions in other languages are more logical.
Spanish: llueve a cántaros, it is raining by the buckets.
French: il pleut des hallebardes, it is raining halberds.
Italian: piove a catinelle, it is raining by the basins.
German: es regnet Bindfaden/Strippen/in Strömen, it is raining
threads/strings/in streams; es gießt wie mit Mollen/Scheffeln, it
pours as if with beer-glasses (I love this one!)/bushels.
"It is raining cats and dogs"
Senjecan
rijáðrëßômi nimêrsa.
rijáðr-ëß-ôm-i n-i-µêrs-a.
waterfall-great-mutative-pl. it-pres. time-rain-indicative
great-waterfalls it-rains.
ß [dz)] = augmentative suffix.
µ = m_0
Senjecan(?) words all using "bear," as in ursus, as the modifier.
rþßêlcin; rþßen, bear, + êlcin, hungry = ravenous
rþßëpââltin; rþßen, bear, + pââltin, wide = huge, enormous
rþßëßêmvin; rþßen, bear, + ßêmvin, toothed = grumpy
NOTE: ß = dz); c = k.
Senjecan
nouns based on the root _dêmon_ from the verbnoun _dêma_ build.
-on tells us that it is a concrete noun related to the stem. It means
building.
It can be any type of building that humans (or other intelligent beings)
construct.
These nouns all denote buildings wherein the action of the verb takes place,
"building for assembling, building for imprisoning, etc."
cüérïdêmon > cüêrïa, buy, purchase = store.
I had to make a decision here.
Was a store a place for buying or selling?
jeexdêmon > jêêca, heal = hospital.
Another decision here: was a hospital a place to be sick or a place to be
healed?
ménðëdêmon > mênða, learn = school.
Another decision here: was a school a place for teaching or for learning?
ÿéélmuuldêmon > ÿêêlon, glass & mûûla, plant = greenhouse.
neçínðëdêmon > nêçon, corpse & înða, burn = crematory.
cántïdêmon > cântïa, assemble = assembly hall, meeting house.
coldêmon > côla, imprison = prison.
cúdïdêmon > cûdïa, cast, found = foundry.
eðdêmon > êda, eat = restaurant.
étengooldêmon > etênon, grain & gôôla, store = granary.
gooldêmon > gôôla, store, garner = warehouse.
lédëdêmon > lêda, perform, act = theater.
liiqdêmon > lîîga, model, throw = pottery.
miildêmon > mîîla, grind, mill = mill.
µaðdêmon > µâða, pledge, guarantee = pawnshop.
písdëdêmon > pîsda, mint = mint.
poojdêmon > pôôja, drink = tavern.
qoordêmon > qôôra, tower up = tower.
çécüdêmon > çêcüa, defecate = latrine, outhouse.
vérðëdêmon > vêrða, saw = sawmill.
viðdêmon > vîða, cooper = cooperage.
vosdêmon > vôsa, train naked, practice gymnastics = gymnasium.
veritosproject for:
> He doesn't have both oars in the water.
masola file "laasa". masola fifu niasa.
hand-GEN-3PS go-COMMAND up-TOWARD. hand-GEN-3PS go-PRESENT down-TOWARD.
He tells his hand to go up, but it goes down.
> He's a few bricks shy of a full load.
mesalafu soma.
hold-up-3PS-PRESENT building-ACCUSATIVE.
He is holding up a building.
> He couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the
> heel.
nosila iosa.
blind-3PS sun-TOWARD.
He is blind to the sun.
> He's so dense, light bends around him.
laalo esa laalama.
God NEGATE lift-3PS-ACC.
God himself cannot lift him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also want to thank the following participants for contributions of idioms
from natlangs;
Carsten Becker for German
"Es regnet Bindfäden".
"Es pisst" (It's pissing).
"Es regnet wie aus Eimern/Kübeln"
"Es regnet in Strömen"
Henrik Theiling for German
'Es gießt'.
'es schüttet' (~'pours').
'Es plästert ['plE:st6t].' 'heavy rain'.
and Henrik Theiling again for West Greenlandic
a school is a 'reading-place' (atuarfik).
Herman Miller for
"I'm not clear"
"there we go"
"can't seem to find"
(BTW Herman: Did you find out what an "implicature" is?
See:
An implicature is anything that is inferred from an utterance but that is not
a
condition for the truth of the utterance.
www.sil.org/linguistics/ GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAnImplicature.htm
Conversational implicature is a nonconventional implicature based on an
addressees assumption that the speaker is following the conversational maxims
...
www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsConversationalImplicatur.htm
Hancher, "Grice's 'Implicature'" (1978)
A 1978 essay by Michael Hancher. An introductory essay aimed at a literary
audience.
mh.cla.umn.edu/grice.html )
Yahya Abdal-Aziz for
20. Weigh in with ... (Contribute.)
19. Sweating like a pig.
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.
15. Gunna catch me some shut-eye / some Zees. (Meaning 'I'm going to sleep'; )
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. 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. (the straight line distance)
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.)
1. Flat out like a lizard drinking.
0. 'Go figure!'
and:
"boldly weave buttongrass bridles for butterflies"
but didn't quite complete:
"All cats are grey in the dark" (Yahya left out the "in the dark" part.)
Rene [EMAIL PROTECTED] for
Dutch (expressing surprise):
Wat heb ik nou aan mijn fiets hangen?
What is hanging from my bike?
Roger Mills for
'pulling someone's leg',
'kick the bucket'
---------------------------------
Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:08:03 -0500
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
caeruleancentaur wrote:
>
> Senjecan is, to a large extent, a language based on verbs.
> However, the inflection of verbs is minimal, resulting in very
> simple verb forms.
>
> Nouns are the parts of speech that show the greatest elaboration.
> Prefixes from all the other parts of speech are permitted on root
> nouns. One category of nouns is those based on the root _dêmon_
> from the verbnoun _dêma_ build. -on tells us that it is a concrete
> noun related to the stem. It means building. Please don't
> think "skyscraper." It can be any type of building that humans (or
> other intelligent beings) construct.
>
> I have found the following nouns in the dictionary:
>
> [snip]
>
> ÿéélmuuldêmon > ÿêêlon, glass & mûûla, plant = greenhouse.
Nice set of compounds.
The word for "glass" given here has the form of a concrete
noun related to a stem. Is it from "ÿêêla"? meaning what?
(or is it just a coincidence?)
--Ph. D.
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 01:51:09 -0000
From: tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Darwinistic or ancient strata?
--- In [email protected], Raivo Seppo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Does some conlangs, or even natlangs, reflect Darwinistic views? That
> is,
> the words designating apes and men, birds and reptiles, could they be
> cognate? I don´t mean figurativeness ("apeman") but really ancient
> strata in
> language.
1. First, you are confusing Darwinistic views with Linnaean
classification.
That makes a simple yes-or-no answer to your question complicated;
either answer would be false.
2. As for the question; Does any natlang designate apes and men by
basically the same or very similar words? The answer is "Yes; indeed
some people are of the opinion that most languages spoken by peoples
who have no reading nor writing, but do have contact with great apes,
call great apes 'people'". An example is "orang-utan", "man of the
forest".
3. Linnaeus's taxonomy classifies living things into Kingdom, Phylum,
Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. There are two different and
competing forces involved in this nomenclature; cladism and
systematism. Systematism has no underlying theory; but cladism
basically believes that more similar organisms descended from a more
recent common ancestor than dissimilar organisms.
4. Cladism need not be Darwinian. Lamarkianism was a different
evolutionary theory than Darwinism. Cladism need not even be
evolutionist.
5. Please don't get annoyed by all my numbered paragraphs. I wasn't
bawling you out; I was just trying to make my thoughts clear while the
librariy's loudspeaker was telling me I had to leave in ten minutes. I
actually enjoyed your question.
-----
Tom H.C. in MI
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:23:49 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 19:57 -0500, Kit La Touche wrote:
> it seems to me likely that lexical items preserve a pattern like
> this, which is called harmony for largely historical reasons, but
> that affixation wouldn't be vowel-harmonic, simply because speakers
> wouldn't have enough evidence that it's a harmony pattern when
> acquiring the language to keep it that way. harrison is doing
> research on this at the moment - i don't know whether he's published
> anything about it yet or not. he's a specialist in siberian turkic
> languages, tuvan particularly, so i should ask him about modern
> mongolian. (he teaches at my school.)
I would be interested to hear anything. I'm just basing that on the
Wikipedia article on the same, which is all I know about Mongolian, and
which is rather thin and potentially of dubious quality. It only says
that "all the vowels of the word" must be the same, and doesn't mention
anything about vowel harmony in the minuscule section on grammar. (It
does, however, observe that "short /o/ is phonetically [8]" (i.e.
close-mid central rounded), but given that all vowels exist in
length-distinguished pairs, and nothing is mentioned about the phonetics
of /o:/, one assumes /o:/ is back, approx. [o:].)
> then again, there's finnish, which has frontness-harmony, with the
> vowels [y], [ø], [æ] as front and [u], [o] and [A] as back (pardon
> the mix of SAMPA and IPA). the vowels [i] and [e] are neutral. yet
> how would an infant acquiring the language pick up on this? there is
> a somewhat weak featural way of describing the difference, i guess.
> hm. musings.
I imagine in large just because that's just the way it is. People seem
to be pretty flexible when it comes to learning the intricacies of
language. Also, it seems to be more than just a lexical-type process
like noun genders, it's rather a neutralisation of phonemes in
unstressed syllables. As I understand it, Finns don't even hear/produce
the difference between [y] and [u] there e.g. "olymia" is for most
people pronounced ["olumpia], not *["olympia] (I gather it's something
along the lines of "lama" vs "yama" for "llama" in English, except
phonologically motivated). No doubt we can blame the absence of /M 7/ in
stressed syllables for the neutral behavior of /i e/. So if Finns don't
pick up on/use [+/- front] in unstressed syllables, and if there is no
[-back +high -rounded +short] phoneme, then [+high -rounded +short] has
no choice but to equal /i/, whereas [+low -rounded +short], which
remains ambiguous, is given a final interpretation based on the
syllable's stressed vowel.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 02:53:00 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
--- In [email protected], "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Nice set of compounds.
Thank you.
>The word for "glass" given here has the form of a concrete
>noun related to a stem. Is it from "ÿêêla"? meaning what?
>(or is it just a coincidence?)
I am trying to make all dictionary entries verbs, but I haven't
succeeded yet. It's difficult to discern what verb might be the
base
for _elephant_!
_ÿêêlnon_ provides some good examples of Senjecan compounding. The
verb base is, as you have discerned, _ÿêêlna_ which means "to glass,
to glaze" and, connotatively, "to ice, to glaze [pastry]." BTW, the
new orthography writes "ÿ" as a barred-h, which won't print here.
It represents j_0.
Because of the double consonants "ln," an epenthetic ë (E) must be
inserted before a base noun that begins with a consonant. Some
other compounds of _ÿêêlnon_ are:
ÿééln-ëlêmon (shard) = glass shard.
-ëµêlon (wool) = glass wool.
-ëpââlton (wide thing) = glass pane.
-ësîîmon (knife) = glass cutter.
-ëtêmun (smith) = glass blower.
-ëjêgon (ice) = thin coating of ice on rock.
-ëtââla (become) = vitrify (both trans. & intrans.).
-ôlµon (paper) = glass-paper, glassine.
-un (agentive suffix on verb) = glassmaker.
-ëlon (diminutive suffix) - microscope slide.
Adjectives would be:
ÿêêl-nënin - glasslike
-nin - glassy, vitreous.
-nïônin - made of glass.
Obviously, not all of these words are original to the vocabulary,
but were created as needed.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 7
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:39:44 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Elomi!
Taka Tunu wrote:
> Just combine the foreign word X with another word explaining what it is:
> Person
> X, Country X, City X, Fruit X, etc. Things get pretty clear that way.
>
> Natural languages with "poor" phonologies have had centuries to consider that
> and their speakers still can express and use foreign words--some of them even
> broadcast TV shows abroad! :-)
Every language has difficulties of this sort; English speakers have
trouble with German ch, ö, and ü sounds for instance, and phonotactic
problems with names like Zbigniew Brzezinsky [sp?]. But the situation of
a language without native speakers is a bit different. In that case a
speaker of one language is trying to understand a name from a third
language through the intermediate language which has a more limited
phonology. This situation would benefit from having a more explicit set
of guidelines for representing names.
One of my motivations for starting Minza was that I grew dissatisfied
with all the hacks for representing foreign names in Lindiga. So I
revised Lindiga to be a fictional language of the Azirian universe
(spoken by the human-like Yitha), and moved the "real-world" vocabulary
into Minza. But on the other hand it can be an interesting puzzle to
figure out names in a language like Japanese, which has some informal
rules for foreign names but nothing very consistent. So it might be an
interesting or useful exercise to come up with a list of some common
names (major cities, famous people, or whatever) represented in Elomi,
and see if they come out in a recognizable form.
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Message: 8
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:31:13 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Darwinistic or ancient strata?
Raivo Seppo wrote:
> Does some conlangs, or even natlangs, reflect Darwinistic views? That
> is, the words designating apes and men, birds and reptiles, could they
> be cognate? I don´t mean figurativeness ("apeman") but really ancient
> strata in language.
I don't think that related groups of animals would be likely to have
names that are cognates; more likely, a familiar name would be used for
a newly discovered group that's similar in one way or another, without
necessarily being related. English for instance has "robin" for a number
of unrelated birds (two of them in the thrush family but different
genera, and a group of Australian birds that turn out to be more closely
related to crows and shrikes). The word "robin" is already pronounced
differently in these dialects, so it's possible that someday these might
be considered as cognates...
I had explicit rules for naming of animal categories in Eklektu, which I
suppose must have been inherited by Ludireo (since I don't recall
changing them). The rules allowed for using a word like "finch" at
varying levels of specificity (with the addition of prefixes), from a
very specific class (for instance, one that includes chaffinches and
goldfinches, but not Darwin's finches of the Galapagos islands) to a
more general class (which might include cardinals, tanagers, wood
warblers, and even Hawaiian honeycreepers if you want it to correspond
with the Fringillidae of the Sibley/Monroe classification). Whether
"reptiles" counts as a group that includes birds would depend on your
opinion of the position in the tree of groups like turtles (which at
least at one time were not known with much certainty; I don't know much
about the current state of knowledge of the reptile family tree).
Eklektu pretty much followed the rules of cladistics (a system that
seems to be popular among biologists), which doesn't allow giving names
to groups that are considered to be "paraphyletic" (meaning that not all
of the descendants of the ancestral group are included). So an Eklektu
word for "reptile" would have to include birds, and possibly also
mammals depending on whether the mammal-like reptiles are included in
the overall category.
I've reconsidered the rules for naming groups of species, and I'm
allowing names for some paraphyletic groups (like "reptile" and "fish")
in Minza. It might be cool to have the word for "ape" also include
humans, though. I like Desmond Morris' phrase "naked ape".
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Message: 9
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:38:30 -0500
From: Kit La Touche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
at least according to harrison's research, they're not flexible in
this matter, which is what's interesting: he's been studying the loss
of vowel harmony in uzbek (yeah, he specializes in turkic languages,
as i said). it seems that as the incidence of vowel harmonic words
above the likelihood of vowel harmonic words by a random distribution
of vowels* drops below a certain percent (i forget what it is, but
it's steady across languages), the language pretty quickly looses
vowel harmony with affixes.
(sorry, hideous sentence that was. ah well)
do i need to clarify? i feel i wrote that poorly.
kit
* through, say, sound change.
On Nov 21, 2005, at 9:23 PM, Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
> I imagine in large just because that's just the way it is. People seem
> to be pretty flexible when it comes to learning the intricacies of
> language. Also, it seems to be more than just a lexical-type process
> like noun genders, it's rather a neutralisation of phonemes in
> unstressed syllables. As I understand it, Finns don't even hear/
> produce
> the difference between [y] and [u] there e.g. "olymia" is for most
> people pronounced ["olumpia], not *["olympia] (I gather it's something
> along the lines of "lama" vs "yama" for "llama" in English, except
> phonologically motivated). No doubt we can blame the absence of /M
> 7/ in
> stressed syllables for the neutral behavior of /i e/. So if Finns
> don't
> pick up on/use [+/- front] in unstressed syllables, and if there is no
> [-back +high -rounded +short] phoneme, then [+high -rounded +short]
> has
> no choice but to equal /i/, whereas [+low -rounded +short], which
> remains ambiguous, is given a final interpretation based on the
> syllable's stressed vowel.
> --
> Tristan.
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 10
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:51:58 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
> I would be interested to hear anything. I'm just basing that on the
> Wikipedia article on the same, which is all I know about Mongolian, and
> which is rather thin and potentially of dubious quality. It only says
> that "all the vowels of the word" must be the same, and doesn't mention
> anything about vowel harmony in the minuscule section on grammar. (It
> does, however, observe that "short /o/ is phonetically [8]" (i.e.
> close-mid central rounded), but given that all vowels exist in
> length-distinguished pairs, and nothing is mentioned about the phonetics
> of /o:/, one assumes /o:/ is back, approx. [o:].)
That's a funny coincidence, I was just listening to the Routledge
Mongolian tapes earlier today, and thought that the sound spelled with
the Cyrillic letter that looks like "o" with a line through it sounded
quite a bit like [8]. Considering that the IPA symbol for [8] looks like
this Cyrillic letter, I wonder if there's some relation (one borrowed
from the other). I do recall that the vowels they were calling "front"
vowels didn't sound a bit like front vowels, and that the Cyrillic
letter that looks like a capital Y moved downward was pronounced pretty
much like /u/ in American English (not a fully back [u], but not far
enough forward to be anywhere near [u\], either). I don't recall if
there was any difference between short [8] and the long equivalent, but
if anything, the long equivalent of [U] sounded a bit like [o:] (or
perhaps [7:]).
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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:02:16 -0800
From: Aaron Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language change among immortals
My thought is that, in this scenario, you would most likely see about as
much language as we have seen in English over the past 200 +- years.
That's based on the intuitive impression that linguistic change is
primarily a function of the number of intervening generations, not the
raw number of years. However, I believe that language tends to change at
different rates depending on the literacy of the population. A language
which is spoken only will probably change at a much higher rate than one
which is written. And one with formal dictionaries may change slower
still. Also, written language and spoken language seem to change at
different rates, within the same language, with the spoken version of a
given language changing faster than the written version.
þ
è½¡è« wrote:
>>and a very good question it is.
>>
>>
>
>I was hoping someone would say it was a very stupid, easy question. =P
>
>
>
>>my own guess about the language-change rate of immortals of any sort...is
>>that it'd partly depend on if they're in regular or semi-regular contact
>>with mortals (who'd have their own language).
>>
>>
>
>I might as well describe my particular scenario in case anyone on the
>list thinks its relevant:
>
>I'm writing a pair of stories that take place five thousand years
>apart. The people and the country are the same. The people
>(human-like, not dragons or anything) live, on average, 1000 years.
>Humans are a minority in their part of the world, so I don't think
>they would have much of an affect.
>
>I want to create the language as it's spoken in these two different
>times but I have no idea how much change would have taken place. Could
>I simply use a natural language as an example, calculate the
>generations, and scale up the number of years to fit? Or would
>language change continue at a similar pace, because people's language
>evolves continually throughout their lives, not just primarily at one
>stage of it?
>
>I really have no idea, and I don't even know if I'm thinking about the
>problem in the right way.
>
>--
>kutsuwamushi
>(watch my reply-to, gmail user!)
>
>
>
>
>
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Message: 12
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:19:17 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language change among immortals
kutsuwamushi wrote:
> I might as well describe my particular scenario in case anyone on the
> list thinks its relevant:
>
> I'm writing a pair of stories that take place five thousand years
> apart. The people and the country are the same. The people
> (human-like, not dragons or anything) live, on average, 1000 years.
> Humans are a minority in their part of the world, so I don't think
> they would have much of an affect.
It's an interesting situation to speculate on. Here's my take: consider
that humans average 3-4 generations per century. Then assume your immortals
average 3-4 generations per _millennium_.
5 millenia = 15-20 generations :: 5 centuries human, ditto
For human languages, that puts us back in the 16th Cent., 1500s; Engl. and
Spanish (the ones I know best) of that period are certainly readable, but
would probably sound rather strange (Engl. moreso than Spanish I suspect).
By the end of the cent., both are quite readable (cf. Shakespeare and
Cervantes; Engl. would still sound strange). How about 16-17th Cent.
Japanese???
Assuming your immortals' culture is literate and perhaps rather static, my
guess would be that there'd be probably minor changes in pronunciation only.
Probably new vocab. to keep up with technological innovations. Some factors
that might upset this conservative scheme: revolutions, dynastic changes,
migrations (whereby in such cases a previously non-standard or stigmatized
dialect might become favored)... etc.
>
Could
> I simply use a natural language as an example, calculate the
> generations, and scale up the number of years to fit?
That's what I've assumed. It depends on your people reproducing at a slow
rate. Even if they don't, with many generations in contact, there would be
some need to maintain communication.
Or would
> language change continue at a similar pace, because people's language
> evolves continually throughout their lives, not just primarily at one
> stage of it?
Personally I feel it takes quite a jolt for a person's language to change
noticeable within their lifetime. (Excluding emigration to a foreign
country, of course.) The principal factor would be exposure to a dialect
that is perceived as more prestigious than one's own.
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Message: 13
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:27:28 -0500
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
caeruleancentaur wrote:
>I am trying to make all dictionary entries verbs, but I haven't
>succeeded yet. It's difficult to discern what verb might be the
>base
>for _elephant_!
>
A few ideas:
"to possess elephants" - This breeder elephants a lot.
"to treat as an elephant" - Hey I'm not that big, stop elephanting me!
"to transform into an elephant" - For this trick, I will elephant someone in
the audience
"to use an elephant" - You would better elephant to get there
"to travel with an elephant to" - Tomorrow, I will elephant the other city
"to give birth to a baby elephant" - She(a female elephant) is going to
elephant.
"to put smthg on an elephant" - These packages are heavy, you would better
elephant them than carry them yourself
And these possibilities work for any animal used for transportation; horse,
bull, lama, yack, camel, dog...
For any kind animal, all but the 2 or 3 last ones work, depending if there
are animals that cannot be _used_ at all or not.
Personnaly, I like the idea of having every word derived from verbs and I
think it is possible, it needs reflexion to find meanings but it is probably
possible.
I hope this helps
- Max
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Message: 14
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:10:41 -0500
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Elomi!
On 11/21/05, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> So it might be an
> interesting or useful exercise to come up with a list of some common
> names (major cities, famous people, or whatever) represented in Elomi,
> and see if they come out in a recognizable form.
That's a good idea, Herman. I have only a few in the sample sentences
("Tammy", "Melanie", "Canada", "Ford", "England", "English", "Baker
Street"). I'll create more and provide Elomi-ised, Elomi-shaped, and foreign
forms for each.
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Message: 15
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:18:43 +1100
From: Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 23:38 -0500, Kit La Touche wrote:
> at least according to harrison's research, they're not flexible in
> this matter, which is what's interesting: he's been studying the loss
> of vowel harmony in uzbek (yeah, he specializes in turkic languages,
> as i said). it seems that as the incidence of vowel harmonic words
> above the likelihood of vowel harmonic words by a random distribution
> of vowels* drops below a certain percent (i forget what it is, but
> it's steady across languages), the language pretty quickly looses
> vowel harmony with affixes.
>
>
> (sorry, hideous sentence that was. ah well)
>
>
> do i need to clarify? i feel i wrote that poorly.
>
Yes, I'm afraid to say I'm not sure I completely understood you.
Perhaps: if a series of changes (borrowings or phonetic drift or
whatever) in a language cause a large enough proportion of words to no
longer obey some sort of structured vowel harmony, that language would
pretty quickly lose its harmony in affixes? So that perhaps if in
"Starte", a language like Finnish, u: > y: (with y: remaining as is),
and A: > O: and &: > A:, perhaps, and that brought Starte above the
cut-off, then Starte would very likely loose its vowel harmony?
If so, that's certainly interesting!
And you're saying this to contradict my conjecture "I imagine in large
just because that's just the way it is", implying that a language could
have vowel harmony between [i 2: o: 3 a:] in one set and [i: e: u o A:]
in another with [2 e] being neutral. Which probably is a bit outlandish
actually and certainly not something I would wish to imply whilst
thinking about it! :)
Do I understand? Have I missed something you said, or miss-interpreted
something?
>
(PS: Is Uzbek presently losing its vowel harmony, or is it something
that has happened while Uzbek has been a written language or something?)
> >
--
Tristan.
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Message: 16
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:49:52 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
Sorry - I seem to have got behind a bit with reading this list.
Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
[snip]
> Ah, shoot, I gave the wrong verb -- a school is a 'reading-place'
> (atuarfik).
>
> The meaning *is* more special than what can be deduced.
Yes, I agree. This I would consider idiomatic since it suggests (a) that
the place set aside for reading is a school, and (b) that the main
activity in a school is reading. Both are incorrect.
One would expect "reading-place" to mean something like a reading-room
or maybe a (public) library.
[snip]
> Maybe more examples: eat-place = table. sleep-place = bed.
> Deducible, yes, but they are more special than what they express
> literally.
Yes - 'twould be OK is all occurrences of VERB+place denoted the item of
furniture at which the activity (if indeed 'sleep' can be so described)
normally takes place. But the example of "reading-place" shows that this
is not so.
FWIW the same nouns in Speedwords are:
ryu <-- ry (building) + u (FAVORABLE) = school
tab [monomorphemic] = table
dorm
>>...
>>What I would call 'idiomatic derivation' are things like "evue":
>> e- v- u- e
>>be-ASSOCIATION-one-AUGMENT = "corporation"
>
> Ok, I fully understand! :-O
==================================
Paul Bennett wrote:
[snip]
> Idiomatic, for sure, but no more so than the Latinate incorporate, which
IMO it is a *lot* more idiomatic. The vast majority of English speakers
do not, I am certain, think in terms of the languages from which each
English words is derived, in some cases from languages spoken some two
millennia or more ago!
In _synchronic_ terms 'evue' is four morphemes and is IMHO idiomatic. It
is as tho in English we were to say something like "Mega-one
beingish[ness]" (Speedwords compounds are head-modifier sequences).
> I parse as something like into-body-become, and indeed corporation,
> which I think is something like that_which_is_made_into-a_body.
In _English_ 'corporation' is, at best, trimorphemic. I think it is
arguable whether the adjective 'corporate' is bimorphemic or not, but
assuming for the sake of argument that it is, we have:
corpor- bound morpheme = 'body'*
-at(e) - bound morpheme forming adjective denoting a perfect passive state.
corporate = united into a body (so as to act as a single unit)
From 'corporate' we derive quite unidiomatically IMO the words:
corporation, corporatism, corporatist, corporative.
I see nothing idiomatic in this.
*body has several meanings in English, as did 'coprus' in Latin, one in
both languages being "a community of people (united by some common
tie)". This might well be described as 'metaphor' which IMO is not the
same as 'idiom'.
==============================================
But, strewth, why this obsession with finding so-called idioms in the
_diachronic_ derivation of words? By these arguments we might as well
claim that 'lord' and 'lady' are both idioms as lords do not really
guard loaves or ladies (for the most part) no longer knead bread.
===============================================
FWIW I now, after some thinking around the matter, adhere to Trask's
definition of 'idiom':
"An expression consisting of two or more words whose meaning cannot be
simply predicted from the meanings of its constituent parts."
Thus a single word cannot, by this definition, itself be an idiom.
I think, however, we can talk in terms of whether morphemes used in some
compound or derived word are used idiomatically or not. Thus I am in
perfect agreement with Rick Harrison when he says of Speedwords:
"Unfortunately, the definitions of most of these affixes are vague, and
their uses are very unpredictable and idiomatic."
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 17
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:36:31 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language change among immortals
--- In [email protected], è½¡è« <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>How would a population being immortal, or at least very long-lived,
>affect the way that their language evolves?
In my Senjecan conculture there are six races of loquent beings.
The first (in order of creation) is immortal. The second & the
third are long-lived. The fourth is immortal, unless actually
killed; they are not subject to disease. The fifth (the humans) you
know about. The sixth is also long-lived.
Senjecan purports to be the original language. According to the
myth, there was a "fall from grace" which resulted in a
proliferation of languages accompanied by the usual evolution of
languages with which we are all familiar. However, the original
Senjecan is still spoken by the first race and has developed an aura
of the sacred. Compounds and borrowings are used to express new
experiences. And, although vocabulary increases, the original
grammar is still used and unmodified.
I have not yet investigated how the original Senjecan evolved into
PIE nor what dialect developed in the other loquent races.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 18
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 07:32:59 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Elomi!
On 11/21/05, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> into Minza. But on the other hand it can be an interesting puzzle to
> figure out names in a language like Japanese, which has some informal
> rules for foreign names but nothing very consistent. So it might be an
> interesting or useful exercise to come up with a list of some common
> names (major cities, famous people, or whatever) represented in Elomi,
> and see if they come out in a recognizable form.
Here is a set of guidlines for how to render foreign names
into Toki Pona, which has a very similar phonology. Maybe Larry
can adapt those?
http://tokipona.esperanto-jeunes.org/learn/tpize.html
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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Message: 19
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:27:29 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
On 11/22/05, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> FWIW I now, after some thinking around the matter, adhere to Trask's
> definition of 'idiom':
> "An expression consisting of two or more words whose meaning cannot be
> simply predicted from the meanings of its constituent parts."
>
> Thus a single word cannot, by this definition, itself be an idiom.
>
> I think, however, we can talk in terms of whether morphemes used in some
> compound or derived word are used idiomatically or not. ........
So a single word can't be _an idiom_, but might be _idiomatic_. OK.
This makes sense to describe English usage, but for an engelang
or auxlang one would probably want to have an adjective meaning
"idiomatic", or (in a noun-based engelang) a root morpheme
meaning "idiomaticity", applied to "word" and "phrase" to get:
phrase + idiomatic = En. "idiom" (& "kenning"?)
word (+ compound) + idiomatic = En. "idiomatic compound"
[maybe:]
sentence + idiomatic = En. "proverb", "saying", "expression"...?
those don't quite fit...
I reckon I probably want to add a morpheme to gzb meaning
"idiomaticity", but I'll have to look around and see if I don't
already have something with a close enough meaning already.
Or maybe something meaning more broadly "such that it's
meaning/use/nature cannot be predicted/deduced from its
component parts" -- that might be applied beyond the
domain of language, perhaps. Can y'all think of concepts
that morpheme of broader meaning would be useful
for deriving? (It seems close to but not synonymous with
English "synergetic"; I already have an (idiomatic!) compound
meaning "synergetic", "cu-rô" -- system+quality.)
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
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