------------------------ 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 18 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: OT: [TECH] MySQL 4.1.11 and Unicode I/O
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: migjan laggvage (my language)
From: Reilly Schlaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Language change among immortals
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. great lakes sound change
From: Reilly Schlaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: great lakes sound change
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Referent Tracking
From: Rik Roots <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: great lakes sound change
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: THEORY: Information Structure; Topic/Comment, Focus/Background,
Given/New.
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Referent Tracking
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Kit La Touche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Referent Tracking
From: Rik Roots <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Poetry Translation Challenge
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Thagojian news (was Re: how many cases is too many?)
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Immortal languages again
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:59:32 +0100
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: [TECH] MySQL 4.1.11 and Unicode I/O
On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, 22:12 CET, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> I trust that's shorthand or a typo? The full content-type
> header should look like this:
>
> Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
>
> You definitely need the charset= there.
>
> Let's try isolating the components. If you write a simple
> php script that just does a <?echo?> of a string with
> UTF-8 characters, does that work in your browser?
If you use MySQL Query Browser, or mysql from the command
line in a UTF-8-capable terminal window, can you get UTF-8
strings into and back out of MySQL without PHP in the way?
T'was but a typo. I thought that'd be clear, so I omitted
that. It's not due to PHP because PHP doesn't mangle UTF8
characters, and when querying MySQL with the program you
mentioned (downloaded it yesterday evening, might be handy)
it also works fine. It cannot be Apache's fault as well. I
really guess it's MySQL not being completely compatible with
Windows, just like PHP is restricted in some functions, e.g.
flock().
Which OS does your server use BTW?
Carsten
--
"Miranayam cepauarà naranoaris."
(Calvin nay Hobbes)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:17:54 -0500
From: Reilly Schlaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: migjan laggvage (my language)
oops i broke one of my own rules the title should be
'migjan laggvagje'
well while i am here might as well submit some more work to be
critisized (in an entirely nice way).
hvau dhii?
who 2.acc
who are you?
ig fye Amerikandjer.
1.nom be american.indf
i am an american
vii velg dje methjenhell-air.
1.plur walk.fut the meadhall-dat.
we will walk to the mead hall
degje valgaigg in dye asnau.
3.mix walking in the snow.
they are walking in the snow.
dhau ge-gebja-t miir dye hund-sja.
you pst-give.pst-pst 1.dat the dog-plur.
you gave me the dogs.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:27:42 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language change among immortals
Tom Chappell wrote:
> > [snip]
>
> Ah heck, Roger, I should have read your post before I posted mine!
> You'd already said that -- I didn't need to say it again.
Oh well, that happens...
I wrote:
> > 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.
>
> OK, here I quite disagree.
>
> (Let's leave aside, for the moment, the fuzzy question of whether
> moving from Texas to Michigan counts as "emigrating to a foreign
> country".)
Some would say...;-)))
In my reply to Dirk Elzinga, I amended that "prestigious" to "normative (for
a given region/occupation/status)"
>
> I agree that exposure to a dialect that, in some ways and in some
> circumstances, seems attractive, is either the "principal factor", or
> at least the biggest one I can think of.
>
> The thing is, "seems attractive" doesn't mean "is perceived as
> prestigious" -- not even if you vary who does the "perceiving" and
> what constitutes "prestige".
True enough. "Normative" I think fits better. No one want to stick out like
a sore thumb. The protruding nail gets hammered down. This would be the case
of PhD's brother who moved to Georgia (Yankee accents aren't popular down
there-- and vice versa too, or course).
In fact the particular exs. I had in mind when I used "prestigious" involved
the various Southerners I knew in NYC days, who were in high-status areas
like banking, publishing, and brokerage, almost all of whom, in short order,
had adopted (with varying success!) an upper-class "Larchmont Lockjaw"
accent. Or even myself, nerdy midwesterner shipped off at age 15 to a
hoity-toity Eastern prep school, then Harvard-- at the end of which I had
something resembling the stereotypical Harvard accent (mostly lost now,
since I didn't stay in that environment, physically or mentally ;-)) ).
>
> If I suddenly find myself having to talk over a tinny intercom a lot,
> or over a staticky radio, I may find Sealane English or CB slang
> becoming very attractive, and using the "military alphabet", just
> because it is a very quick way to make myself clear without having to
> repeat (by the way, use "say again", not "repeat").
>
> If I suddenly find myself having to help a large number of just-
> toilet-trained and almost-toilet-trained post-toddlers negotiate the
> path to the bathroom, I will find it useful to adopt the vocabulary
> they use, no matter what vocabulary is used in the pathology lab in
> the hospital or the zoologists' office at the zoo.
Ah, but you wouldn't be likely to tell your urologist, "My pee-pee (weenie,
thingy etc.) hurts...."
These to my view, are exs. of _register_, which we all do, whatever our
dialect. Most of us probably write differently here than in a chatty post to
parents or friends. We don't talk to the repairman at the garage the same
way we talk to the mortgage banker, to a professional colleague, to the
doctor etc.
>
> It so happens that habits acquired in one environment will become the
> most accessible behaviors in another environment. When I need to ask
> my daughter or my wife or my brother to repeat what they just said,
> I, now, always say, "say again?". Also, certain "linguisticsisms"
> are finding their way into my daily speech now, even though I have no
> friends nor family with whom I can discuss this subject by voice,
> instead of in type. And, long ago, mathematical, musical,
> scientific, and cybernetic terminology and ways of seeing things --
> "sorry, my mind was paged out" -- were coming into my speech,
> although I made more of an effort to think of something else if I was
> sure my audience wouldn't understand.
To me, these are exs. of transferring "jargon" from some specialized area
into ordinary speech.
>
> These all apply to differences that would constitute "dialect",
> rather than "accent". I change my "accent" just to be understood.
>
Casually meeting a southerner or a Bostonian, I don't change my
pronunciation for that occasion. OTOH, if I moved to Alabama or (back!!) to
Boston, (and were a lot younger :-(( ) I'd probably eventually adapt my
speech, to some degree at least, to the local norms.
> (and even if *these* folks call the Great Lakes "The 3rd Coast",
> people from Galveston and Noo Awlins know the Gulf of Mexico is the
> _real_ "3rd Coast".)
You may have missed the foofaraw a few years back, when the realtors out
here decided to call us "The White Coast". Lasted about a week, even after
they announced that they merely meant the color of the sand on our
beaches..........
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 15:27:45 -0500
From: Reilly Schlaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: great lakes sound change
i watched a show about american english on PBS and they said that
the great lakes area has an odd sound change.
black > bleck
block > black
and
boss > buss
i was wondering if there were any other vowel shifts in this area or any
other interesting dialects.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 15:57:13 -0500
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: great lakes sound change
Reilly Schlaier wrote:
>
> i watched a show about american english on PBS and
> they said that the great lakes area has an odd sound
> change.
> black > bleck
> block > black
> and
> boss > buss
> i was wondering if there were any other vowel shifts in
> this area or any other interesting dialects.
See information on the chain shift here:
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/ncshift/ncshift.html
I've probably said this before: I used to work on the edge of
Detroit (for eleven years) and I still do most of my work in the
suburbs around Detroit. I've lived my entire fifty years within
fifty miles of Detroit.
I'll take the experts' word on this chain shift, but I personally
have never heard any Detroit-area people speak in this way.
--Ph. D.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 21:07:44 +0000
From: Rik Roots <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Referent Tracking
On Wednesday 23 Nov 2005 08:23, Chris Bates wrote:
<snip - I don't remember seeing this post on ZBB>
> This area doesn't seem to have been giving much thought or through
> describing by people writing conlangs, which is why it interests me. I
> mean, people say "I have a switch reference system" or "I have a *topic*
> system" etc, but they don't go into detail when it comes to the role
> such systems play in things like reference tracking, and indeed whether
> for a given system that is one of its functions (Swahili, for instance,
> has a passive but does not use it as a major reference tracking device).
> So your thoughts? I'd love to hear details about how various natlangs
> accomplish reference tracking functions, and also about how any of your
> conlangs do it."
>
Gevey is guilty of such weirdnesses. I think the solutions I came up with for
the language work (though others may disagree).
SWITCH REFERENCING is a part of the language, but is confined to relative
clauses. A set of relative conjunctions go before the relative clause. The
choice of which conjunction should be used depends entirely on what object
(subject, direct or indirect object) is shared between the two clauses. The
only reason I chose to implement the system is because I wanted my relative
clauses to follow their main clause rather than be embedded in it. Examples:
Jone (s) yuush maey (o) wiekfase (v)
John cooks the rice
Jone (s) yesh thoel (o) tokase (v)
John likes birds
> Jone yuush maey wiekfase zhek yesh thoel tokase
> John, who likes the birds, cooks the rice
loife (s) yuu pouzuul (o) primase (v) ta'tuusrheks (i)
the man gives a stick to the dog
Jone (s) ye loif (o) gluefase (v) ïsta'deefsuubz (i)
John sees the man in the field
> loife yuu pouzuul primase ta'tuusrheks kozh Jone gluefase ïsta'deefsuubz
> the man that John sees in the field gives a stick to the dog
SWITCH FUNCTION doesn't really operate in Gevey because there's no
active/passive voice system in play, though if two clauses share the same
subject then the second clause can drop its subject on condition that this is
marked both on its leading conjunction and the verb itself.
Moving onto FOCUS - by which I mean identifying the most relevant piece of
information in a clause - this is achieved by word ordering, with the word
appearing directly in front of the verb being the most focussed word. I have
to mention focus because it clashes with the TOPIC-COMMENT system, which in
Gevey is shown by all "new" information going in front of the verb and all
"old" information after it (in direct contradiction to what most other
languages do). The new-old rule tends to overshadow the focus rules, so when
old information is more important to the speaker than new information they
run into a problem - which I solve by deploying three focus markers (a
promoter, a demoter and an intensifier) when necessary.
This is, of course a gross oversimplification of how these considerations play
together nicely in the language!
Rik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 7
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:31:27 -0500
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: great lakes sound change
On 11/23/05, Ph.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Reilly Schlaier wrote:
> >
> > i watched a show about american english on PBS and
> > they said that the great lakes area has an odd sound
> > change.
> > black > bleck
> > block > black
> > and
> > boss > buss
> > i was wondering if there were any other vowel shifts in
> > this area or any other interesting dialects.
>
>
> See information on the chain shift here:
>
> http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/ncshift/ncshift.html
>
> I've probably said this before: I used to work on the edge of
> Detroit (for eleven years) and I still do most of my work in the
> suburbs around Detroit. I've lived my entire fifty years within
> fifty miles of Detroit.
>
> I'll take the experts' word on this chain shift, but I personally
> have never heard any Detroit-area people speak in this way.
>
> --Ph. D.
>
I've heard "hardness" to open vowels and to "r" (I don't know the
SAMPA for the standard American "r") in the speech of some Detroiters
(Detroitois?). I have heard the vowel shift that the OP describes in
Chicago. Example: I once heard a Chicagoan asking a New Yorker (in
Westchester County) the question "What's it on?" (meaning "What is it
[a play the New Yorker had mentioned] about?"). Three times the
Chicagoan asked and three times the New Yorker answered with the
location. I stepped in and said "He's asking what the play is
_on_...what it's about." New Yorker said "I thought he said 'where's
it _at_". The flattened and broadened pronunciation of "on" was so
strong in the ears of the New Yorker that it won out over other cues
in the Chicagoan's utterance.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 8
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:57:46 -0800
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: THEORY: Information Structure; Topic/Comment, Focus/Background,
Given/New.
--- In [email protected], Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Likewise, if the sentence is "...X...Y...Z..."; it may be that
>> "...X..." is the most Given information; "...Z..." is the Newest
>> information; and "...Y..." is transitional between them.
>
> There's a language called Lisu spoken somewhere in South Eastern Asia
> which allows you to use its topic marker with more than one argument.
> If you want you can designate every single argument except the verb
> as the topic (forcing the verb to be the focus) or you can mark the
> entire clause except one argument as the topic (although to do that
> you need some kind of cleft construction).
[snip]
This next information comes from
"Information Perspective, Profile, and Patterns in Quechua" by David J. Weber
of Huanuco, Peru, which is Chapter Eight
in Part One: "Evidentiality in North and South America" in the 1986 book
"Evidentiality: the Linguistic Coding of Epistemology", edited by Wallace Chafe
and Johanna Nichols, which is Volume XX
in the series "Advances in Discourse Processes".
On ppages 137-155, he looks mainly at the dialects of Marias, Matihuaca, and
Llacon.
He makes three major points.
1.-mi/shi/chi ('-DIR/IND/CNJ')('direct/indirect/conjecture') give a
perspective on the information in the sentence. By "perspective" he means:
* How the speaker came by the information (firsthand/secondhand, i.e.,
evidential)
* The speaker's attitude to the information (fact/fiction/conjecture, i.e.,
validational)
* What the listener is expected to do with the information (believe/doubt/act
on it).
2. The relative order of the markers -qa ('TOPIC'), -mi/shi/chi, and the
verb, define a pattern which he calls an information profile, which he says
roughly characterizes the sentence's progression from topic to comment or given
to new or background to focus.
3. Deviating from the normal pattern is a rhetorical device.
----------
As for point 2;
he says in Conclusion 4 on pages 153 and 154 that "in 'ordinary' sentences,
the 'thematic' material [topic, given, background] is to the left [he means,
before] the evidential [-mi/-shi/-chi] suffix, and the 'rhematic' material
follows the last pre-verbal ["TOPIC" marker] "-qa".
-----
That means, there can be a gap between the Theme and the Rheme; or, the Theme
and the Rheme can overlap.
If I had a sentence like
A-qa B-qa C-mi D-qa V E-qa F-qa
A B is the Theme, while V E F is the Rheme.
C D is in a gap between the Theme and the Rheme.
If I had a sentence like;
A-qa B-qa V C-qa D-qa E-mi F-qa
A B V C D is the Theme, while V C D E F is the Rheme.
They overlape in V C D.
----------
In one dialect the pattern is;
from zero up to any number of arguments all marked by -qa
optionally followed by zero to one argument marked by one of -mi or -shi or
-chi
followed by a verb
followed by zero to two objects and subjects both marked by -qa
--
In another dialect the pattern is;
from zero to one arguments marked by one of -mi or -shi or -chi
optionally followed by from zero up to any number of arguments all marked by
-qa
followed by a verb
followed by zero to two objects and subjects both marked by -qa
--
A third dialect frequently has the following two patterns;
An argument, optionally marked by -qa, and then also marked by one of -mi or
-shi or -chi
followed by an argument marked by -qa
followed by a verb.
An argument marked by one of -mi or -shi or -chi
followed by from zero up to two arguments marked by -qa
followed by a verb.
--
There are three main deviations from these patterns.
Ah, heck, I'm about to get timed out.
Oh, well, the deviations are probably less germane to the thread's title
anyway; they are for rhetorical effect.
Tom H.C. in MI
---------------------------------
Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 9
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:48:01 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Referent Tracking
>SWITCH REFERENCING is a part of the language, but is confined to relative
>clauses. A set of relative conjunctions go before the relative clause. The
>choice of which conjunction should be used depends entirely on what object
>(subject, direct or indirect object) is shared between the two clauses. The
>only reason I chose to implement the system is because I wanted my relative
>clauses to follow their main clause rather than be embedded in it. Examples:
>
>Jone (s) yuush maey (o) wiekfase (v)
>John cooks the rice
>
>Jone (s) yesh thoel (o) tokase (v)
>John likes birds
>
>
>
>>Jone yuush maey wiekfase zhek yesh thoel tokase
>>John, who likes the birds, cooks the rice
>>
>>
THis is interesting, because it seems very different to me to other
switch reference systems (which are often used on verbs in complements
or on clause chains). It's also a very interesting (and slightly
strange) rule that bans relative clauses from occuring inside main
clauses and forces them to occur afterwards... but on the other hand,
the rule doesn't seem unnatural to me. One question: how do you handle
subordinate (complement) clauses like for instance "she was going home"
in "she said she was going home"? Are they mid-clause or shifted to the
end (or the beginning)? And if they're shifted to the end, do the
relative clauses occur before or after them? I do you say (roughly) "the
woman said she was going home who I met in the shop" or "the woman said
who I met in the shop that she was going home"?
>Moving onto FOCUS - by which I mean identifying the most relevant piece of
>information in a clause - this is achieved by word ordering, with the word
>appearing directly in front of the verb being the most focussed word. I have
>to mention focus because it clashes with the TOPIC-COMMENT system, which in
>Gevey is shown by all "new" information going in front of the verb and all
>"old" information after it (in direct contradiction to what most other
>languages do). The new-old rule tends to overshadow the focus rules, so when
>old information is more important to the speaker than new information they
>run into a problem - which I solve by deploying three focus markers (a
>promoter, a demoter and an intensifier) when necessary.
>
>
I believe that Hebrew (perhaps not Modern Hebrew, I'm unsure) has a rule
where (generally only one) NP that's new information occurs preverbally,
and old information occurs after the verb. I don't know of any language
with exactly the same rule as yours though. I'd be interested to hear
more detail about it.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 10
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:13:17 -0500
From: Kit La Touche <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
On Nov 22, 2005, at 5:18 AM, Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
> 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?
no, i think you understood correctly. despite my inarticulateness.
> (PS: Is Uzbek presently losing its vowel harmony, or is it something
> that has happened while Uzbek has been a written language or
> something?)
uzbek (i say this only from papers, no personal experience) has
largely lost harmony - there are still many harmonic roots, but not
enough for the pattern to generalize to affixes; for example, -lar is
the only form of the plural, with no -lar / -ler alternation (if
memory serves).
> --
> Tristan.
kit
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 11
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 01:02:34 +0000
From: Rik Roots <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Referent Tracking
On Wednesday 23 Nov 2005 22:48, Chris Bates wrote:
<snip>
> THis is interesting, because it seems very different to me to other
> switch reference systems (which are often used on verbs in complements
> or on clause chains). It's also a very interesting (and slightly
> strange) rule that bans relative clauses from occuring inside main
> clauses and forces them to occur afterwards... but on the other hand,
> the rule doesn't seem unnatural to me.
>
Before I rejigged the system relative clauses would have relative conjunctions
at the beginning and the end, and could be embedded anywhere within the main
clause - but it was clumsy and cumbersome. The system still needs a little
bit of tweaking I think, but I'm in no hurry.
> One question: how do you handle
> subordinate (complement) clauses like for instance "she was going home"
> in "she said she was going home"? Are they mid-clause or shifted to the
> end (or the beginning)? And if they're shifted to the end, do the
> relative clauses occur before or after them? I do you say (roughly) "the
> woman said she was going home who I met in the shop" or "the woman said
> who I met in the shop that she was going home"?
>
"she was going home" is a dependent clause, with "she said" being the main
clause. Adding "the woman I met in a shop", make that the main clause and
then the whole "she said she was going home" relative to that. Like I said,
the system could still do with some tweaking as I'm not confident it could
cope with every situation!
she said she was going home
ta'meevate ke shashose cuu roub let puuzote
ta'meeven - say to
(subject omitted - assumed to be self)
ke - she
shashos - that (affirming)
roubuu (yuu roub) house
let - uncompleted action
ta'puuzen - go to
second clause drops its subject, adds an e to shashos and shifts the verb from
puuzate to puuzote.
the woman said she was going home who I met in the shop
the woman I met in the shop said she was going home
I met the woman in the shop who [she] said that she was going home
ye gyan gaeshate ista'magzuubz te zhekteh ta'meevate shashose cuu roub let
puuzote
gyane (ye gyan) - woman
gaeshan - meet
ista'magzuubz - in the shop
te - I
zhekteh - relative pronoun (guest subject to host direct object)
<snip>
> I believe that Hebrew (perhaps not Modern Hebrew, I'm unsure) has a rule
> where (generally only one) NP that's new information occurs preverbally,
> and old information occurs after the verb. I don't know of any language
> with exactly the same rule as yours though. I'd be interested to hear
> more detail about it.
>
heres a page on Gevey focus and word order:
http://www.kalieda.org/gevey/focus.html#focustext
Rik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 12
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:46:23 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Poetry Translation Challenge
Just for fun: Translate this poem to your favorite
conlang:
-- elokuno animata --
ami i anke e atelu
ami i anlu e asoli
aki isi anikoto u ami
alami ikanto anofi ami
uwe ate ipo ikila?
The poem is in Larry Sulky's Elomi and a dictionary
can
be found here: http://fiziwig.com/lexicon.html
The form of the poem is called elokuno, or greater
eloku,
and is similar to Haiku, but since elomi words are
longer,
it has 5 lines with 9, 9, 11, 11, and 9 syllables.
Use whatever poetic form is best for your own conlang
translation.
--gary
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 13
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:14:59 -0800
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
Emaelivpeith Gary Shannon:
> Just for fun: Translate this poem to your favorite
> conlang:
>
> -- elokuno animata --
>
> ami i anke e atelu
> ami i anlu e asoli
> aki isi anikoto u ami
> alami ikanto anofi ami
> uwe ate ipo ikila?
Here's my smooth English translation:
"The Beginning of Elokuno"
I am (which?) and the world
I am the moon and the sun
The day watches my work
The night sing my happiness
Can you understand?
> Use whatever poetic form is best for your own conlang
> translation.
I haven't yet worked on native forms of poetry, so this is in standard
Asha'ille:
"Byaren 'sa Elokuno"
Jhor'ení t'nö aea
Jhor'ení t'chiró aró
Kén chuna ne amulen seni
Jha'sshav kuna ne ejhejh seni
Riyëvkosöte'ë?
It ends up being a syllable pattern of 7-8-9-10-6, which is sort of an
interesting pattern on its own. My dictionary is here:
http://dictionary.arthaey.com . However, Asha'ille is agglutinating,
unlike Elomi, so it's not as easy to just look up each token in the
dictionary.
Below is the text, interlinearized. Basic word order is VSO.
"Byaren 'sa Elokuno"
byarev -en alunsa elokuno
begin NOM PREV elokuno
Jhor'ení t'nö aea
jhorv ení te no -Q aea
COP self COP it QUEST world
Jhor'ení t'chiró aró
jhorv ení te chiró aró
COP self COP moon sun
Kén chuna ne amulen seni
kénillev chuna ne amulen s- ení
see day OBJ work POS self
Jha'sshav kuna ne ejhejh seni
jha'sshav kuna ne ejhejh s- ení
sing night OBJ happiness POS self
Riyëvkosöte?
riyev -k- -o- -sóte -Q
understand unable EPEN PRON QUEST
NOM nominalizer
PREV the word following "alunsa" describes the word preceding it
COP copula
QUEST question ablaut
OBJ the following word is the object of the verb
POS possessive
EPEN epenthetic sound
PRON pronoun (in this case, the informal one used for strangers)
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com/
(Gmail WARNING: watch the Reply-To!)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 14
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 04:03:30 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Thagojian news (was Re: how many cases is too many?)
On Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:08:42 -0500, Reilly Schlaier
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> one of my older conlangs has: Nom., Accu., Dative, Benefactive,
> Genitive, Posessive, Ablative, Allative, Vocative and Insrumental.
I've been following this thread, thinking "Y'know, I ought to add some
kind of benefactive to Thagojian". Lo and behold, I opened up my notes to
do just such a thing, and there it is, right there in the noun paradigm,
and empty row marked "benef.", clearly showing I'm smarter than I thought
I was. All I need to do is dig out my PIE resources and find some way to
fill that sucker in.
Also, I've decided how I'm going to implement the 3-way definiteness
system:
phólun (ÏÏλsν) /fOlun/ - a ball / any ball
oÿnon phólun (οÏνο ÏÏλsν) /oi\_^non fOlun/ - a specific ball
ha phólun (ϩα ÏÏλsν) /ha fOlun/ - the ball
It's not massively amazing, but it's rare that I find something that just
"clicks" and isn't messed around with until abandonment. The number of
things I've scrapped after seeing how ungainly they seemed when written
out for other people to see is staggering.
I don't have a solid grasp on the verb "to look for" yet, so I can't give
fuller examples. I think I'm going to look at PIE *seAg-yo-, which seems
obvious enough, and yields (I think) sakhyë- ÏαÏÏ×-, running the rules
from memory.
Paul
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 15
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 01:14:38 -0800
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
Emaelivpeni Arthaey Angosii:
> "Byaren 'sa Elokuno"
>
> Jhor'ení t'nö aea
> Jhor'ení t'chiró aró
> Kén chuna ne amulen seni
> Jha'sshav kuna ne ejhejh seni
> Riyëvkosöte'ë?
[snip]
> Below is the text, interlinearized.
Or, better yet, here it is online: http://writing.arthaey.com/elokuno.html
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com/
(Gmail WARNING: watch the Reply-To!)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 16
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:41:09 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
* Gary Shannon said on 2005-11-24 07:46:23 +0100
> Just for fun: Translate this poem to your favorite
> conlang:
>
> -- elokuno animata --
>
> ami i anke e atelu
^^^^ ^
i u
Don't you mean "anki", "sky" here? Harmonizes better with the following
line too.
> ami i anlu e asoli
u i
> aki isi anikoto u ami
Here there's an "u"...
> alami ikanto anofi ami
But not here? What gives? Guess: One is a noun, one is an adjective. But
not marked as such in the dictionary.
> uwe ate ipo ikila?
"anlu", "asoli", "anikoto", "alami", "ikanto", "anofi",
do not exist in the official dictionary, which threw me at first.
English:
I am sky and world
I am moon and sun
Day watches my work
Night sings my happiness
Can you understand?
t., who lacks a word for moon and possibly work
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 17
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:28:20 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Immortal languages again
A recent thread got me wondering how the language of a species that was
truly immortal would evolve. I came up with the following idea.
Suppose we have a species that's completely immortal, and therefore doesn't
need to reproduce. However, they're still material beings and there memory
is fallible. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the half-life of a
bit in their memory is about a thousand years. In the mental representation
of a word, a bit might represent the presence or absence of a distinctive
feature. Each time they hear a word in conversation, two processes occur-
1) They adjust their mental representation of the word towards what they
heard, in order to correct for inaccuracies in their pronunciation.
2) The likelihood of them using that word themselves increases slightly.
Some words will end up being used far more frequently than others. The
pronunciation of the most common words will on average be corrected more
quickly than it drifts, and hence the consensus pronunciation will remain
fairly stable over time. However, for less common words, the rate of drift
will be similar to or exceed the rate of correction, thus leading to the
pronunciation varying significantly over time. In some instances, by the
time somebody hears a word again, their mental model of it may have
diverged from the speaker's mental model so much that they no longer
recognise it as the same word, thus leading to the creation of a new
vocabulary item.
Pete
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 18
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 07:45:56 -0500
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Poetry Translation Challenge
Still haven't had a chance to look in detail at Gary's Eloku, but at least
I've put a link to Gary's unofficial dictionary on the main page. ---larry
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
