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There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: how many cases is too many?
From: Mia Soderquist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: how many cases is too many?
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: how many cases is too many?
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Referent Tracking
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Voice and dynamicity
From: Aidan Grey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: how many cases is too many?
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: how many cases is too many?
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: 115 different language to say i luv u....
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: A more challenging poetry translation challenge
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: how many cases is too many?
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 17:17:55 +0200
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
> > then again, there's finnish, which has frontness-harmony, with the >
>vowels [y], [2], [&] as front and [u], [o] and [A] as back. 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.
>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]
Schwaaaaa? Of course we do hear the difference - it's just that eg.
/olympiA/ or /pAst2roidA/ ("to pasteurize") sound *wrong* to our
harmony-attuned ears, so most people assimilate them. I can even
provide a few minimal pairs of harmonic native word vs. non-harmonic
loanword:
/myonia/ <> /muonia/
muon|PART. <> food provisions|PL|PART
/pyro/ <> /puro/
fire- <> creek
/s2rkkA/ <> /sorkkA/
(a part of Helsinki; colloquial) <> cloven hoof
/pyyt2n/ <> /pyyton/ <> /puuton/
hazelgrouseless <> python <> treeless
"Olumpia" just happens to be one of the more common assimilations, probably
because sports reporters tend to concentrate on speed more than accurate
pronounciation. Most if not all Finns are perfectly capable of producing
this sort of a distinction if they want to. In my experience, the difficulty
is the greatest with two same-height vowels separated by one consonant
(directly adjacent it looks so bizarre that people tend put more effort into
pronounciation then.)
...And there're also the few native words which do violate the harmony
rules. Most just add back suffixes to neutral roots (a special case of which
are the 1P and 2P singular pronouns which end with <ä> in the nominative but
have <a> in its stead all inflected forms); then there's at least
<tällainen> ("this kind of") and <hyla> ("low-lactose"> which were
originally compound words but have been
shortened until somewhat non-transparent.
OTOH, /A/ and /&/ are in some dialects starting to merge into /a/ when
unstressed, and this AFAIK would eliminate practically all of these
exceptions.
>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.
/i e/ are certainly not backed to [M 7] in back-vowel words, not even [i\
@]. There IS some backing in back-vowel words, even when stressed, but it's
much subtler. Furthermore, [M i\ 7 @] would actually be perceived as /y y 2
2 - kinda weird, isn't it? :)
John Vertical
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 11:51:56 -0500
From: Mia Soderquist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how many cases is too many?
On 11/22/05, Reilly Schlaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> how many in you personal opinions is too many?
>
Since you asked for personal opinion, I'd say it is your language-- put into
it whatever makes you happy. You'll know you've got too many cases when they
start getting on your nerves.
I have usually tended toward languages without cases, myself, but my latest
sketches have cases aplenty. I like to change up when I find myself doing
the same thing for too long.
M.
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 10:32:05 -0800
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
--- In [email protected], Tristan Mc Leay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 19:35 +0000, tomhchappell wrote:
>> [snip]
>> .... Front vs. Back frequently has at least three, and sometimes
>> has more than three values;
>
> Really? I thought having even three values was pretty rare, well,
> except phonetically. But I'm of the impression that phonemically the
> third value is almost always not relevant and so it'd be invisible to
> vowel harmony. So a language with [i] [u\] [u] would have /i y/ as
> front and /u/ as back; or one with [i] [i\] [u] would have /i/ as front
> and /i\ u/ as back.
> And certainly I was of the understanding that three was an
> absolute upper limit, and *no* language had more than three
> backness values.
> (Excepting when it's actually something like a tense-lax
> distinction that is concomitant with a height distinction.)
--- In [email protected], caotope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> tomhchappell wrote:
>> [snip]
>> Front vs. Back frequently has at least three, and sometimes has
>> more than three values;
>
> It's been asked already, but you are here talking phonetically, not
> phonemically, right? /a/ is quite common of course, but I've thought
> it usually analyzes as front (whenever that is relevant anyway)
I am afraid that I do not understand enough about the details of your
questions, where they concern the differences between phonemics
and phonetics and phonology, to see how the following examples
answer them.
However, the following examples are among the reasons I thought
frontness/backness of vowel phonemes might have more than three
values.
They all come from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language,
Second Edition, by David Crystal.
Cambridge University Press 1997
ISBN 0-521-55967-7
P29.C64 1997
Part IV: The Medium of Language -- Speaking and Listening
Section 28: The Linguistic Use of Sound
Topic: Comparative Phonology
Page 169
-----
Panjabi, an Indo-European Language, has a 20-vowel system.
They occupy 5 levels of Frontness/Backness,
and 6 levels of Closeness/Openness.
It has these Front vowels: /i/ /i~/ /e/ /e~/ /&/ /&~/ /a/ /a~/
It has these Near-Front vowels: /I/ /I~/
It has these Central vowels: /@/ /@~/
It has these Near-Back vowels: /U/ /U~/
It has these Back vowels: /u/ /u~/ /o/ /o~/ /Q/ /Q~/
-----
English, an Indo-European Language, has a 12-vowel system.
They occupy 5 levels of Frontness/Backness,
and 7 levels of Closeness/Openness.
It has these Front vowels: /i/ /e/ /&/
It has this Near-Front vowel: /I/
It has these Central vowels: /@/ /3/
It has this Near-Back vowel: /U/
It has these Back vowels: /u/ /V/ /O/ /A/ /Q/
-----
Masai, a Nilo-Saharan language, has a 9-vowel system.
They occupy 4 levels of Frontness/Backness,
and 5 levels of Closeness/Openness.
It has these Front vowels: /i/ /e/ /E/ /a/
It has this Near-Front vowel: /I/
It has this Near-Back vowel: /U/
It has these Back vowels: /u/ /o/ /O/
-----
Kunama, a Nilo-Saharan language, has a 7-vowel system.
They occupy 4 levels of Frontness/Backness,
and 4 levels of Closeness/Openness
(thus are a counterexample to a "universal" that every vowel system
has more levels of Closeness/Openness than of Frontness/Backness)
It has these Front vowels: /i/ /e/ /a/
It has this Near-Front vowel: /I/
It has this Near-Back vowel: /U/
It has these Back vowels: /u/ /o/
----------
So, anyway, those were some of my reasons for thinking that
languages could have sets of vowel phonemes having more than three
distinct levels of frontness and backness. Granted, none of those
examples has a set of four vowels all having the same value of
closeness/openness, roundedness, nasality, and tongue-root
position, distinguished only by frontness/backness; indeed, among
those languages I have just cited, no more than two vowels have all
other features equal except frontness/backness. But I don't know if
that proves Tristan's point, or answers John's question; I really didn't
understand them.
I'd be happy to have someone explain it to me --
offlist or on, as you prefer.
Thanks,
Tom H.C. in MI
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Message: 4
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 14:12:23 -0500
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how many cases is too many?
John Vertical wrote:
>So, what's the record for *monomorphemic non-local* cases? It seems that all
>the huge case systems just have metric buttloads of local cases but still no
>more than half a dozen non-local ones.
>=========================================================================
Of Ithkuils eighty-one cases, only twelve are spatial/local, leaving 69
non-local cases. The revised version of Ithkuil which is almost completed
(tentatively named Lishkái), has 64 of Ithkuils non-local cases, plus 24
new cases associated with comparisons, for a total of 88 non-local cases.
--John Quijada
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Message: 5
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 14:19:55 -0500
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how many cases is too many?
Jim Henry wrote:
>gjâ-zym-byn has over 350 spacetime postpositions, plus an open-ended
>set of derived abstract postpositions.
>The gzb spacetime postpostions are composed of
>an orientation morpheme, a directional morpheme, and a proximity
>morpheme. See:
>
>http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/grammar.htm#postp
>=========================================================================
This is one of the most comprehensive and elegant parts of gzb in my
opinion. It's like systematizing the Dagestanian languages'
spatial/local system to its logical, idealized extreme, all with
mono-phonemic morphemes. A very nice system! If I were to design a more
"natlangish" conlang, I'd be tempted to steal it!
--John Quijada
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Message: 6
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:03:51 -0800
From: Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
--- In [email protected], caotope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> tomhchappell wrote:
>> Close vs. Open, Front vs. Back, Round vs. Unround, ATR vs.
>> notATR, Nasal vs. notNasal, are essentially all the features there
>> are to vowels;
>
> What about phonation? Or is breathyness/creakyness etc. of
> vowels always considered a question of tone?
I completely forgot about phonation, John!
Thanks for reminding me.
I am referring to "Principles of Phonetics" by John Laver, Professor
of Phonetics at University of Edinburgh, one of the "Cambridge
Textbooks in Linguistics", copyrighted and published 1994 by
Cambridge University Press. Its ISBN is 0-521-45644-X and its
Library of Congress number is P221.L293 1994.
Laver says pulmonic egressive sounds can have three kinds of phonation;
"Voiceless", "Whisper", and "Voiced". He further divides "Voiceless" into two
kinds, "Nil Phonation" and "Breath Phonation", and also divides "Voiced" into
three kinds, "Normal Voice", "Falsetto", and "Creak".
So there are six (6) simple kinds of phonation.
Nil, Breath, Whisper, Normal, Creak, Falsetto.
Some of them can be combined. "Nil" phonation can't be combined with
anything; and "Breathy" phonation can't be combined with anything except
"(normal) Voice", to yield "Breathy Voice" or "murmur". Also, "Normal Voice"
and "Falsetto" cannot be combined.
So there are six (6) combinations of two kinds of phonation.
Breathy Voice,
Creaky Falsetto or Falsetto Creak,
Creaky Voice,
Creaky Whisper or Whispery Creak,
Falsetto Whisper or Whispery Falsetto,
Whispery Voice.
There are also two (2) combinations of three kinds;
Creaky Falsetto Whisper
or Creaky Whispery Falsetto
or Falsetto Whispery Creak;
and Creaky Whispery Voice.
Laver says Falsetto is never applied one-segment-at-a-time linguistically,
but rather, to whole utterances.
He also says there is no linguistic use made of the three-way-combinations.
That leaves the following nine phonation types as possible distinctive
features of segments;
Breath,
Creak,
Modal or Normal Voice,
Nil,
Whisper,
Breathy Voice,
Creaky Voice,
Creaky Whisper,
Whispery Voice.
But I can't imagine all nine of them occuring simultaneously and
being distinguishable in allegro speech.
However, on pp. 295-297, in Part IV "Linear Segmental Analysis"
Chapter 10 "Resonant Articulations" Section 10.10 "Voiceless and
Whispered Vocoids", Laver mentions minimal pairs of words in
Comanche that differ only in that a certain vowel is voiced in one and
voiceless in the other -- otherwise that vowel is identical in the two
words. In the same place he mentions other languages with voicless
vocoids; Ik (Eastern Sudanic); Dafla (Nisi), Sino-Tibetan Mirish
language; and Nyangumarda or Nyangumarta, an Australian
language.
In those languages, the question of whether the vowel is voiced or
unvoiced makes a difference in its meaning, so it couldn't be a matter
for harmony; but in Tlingit (Alaska), Enga (New Guinea), and
Machiguenga (Peru), if I understand what Laver is saying correctly,
perhaps it could be.
> [snip]
>
>> Round vs. Unround sometimes has more than two values in
>> conlangs, although I am not personally aware of any natlang in
>> which it has more than two values.
>
> Don't some dialects of Swedish shift /u\/ to /y_c/ - hence
> contrasting three degrees of roundedness in high front vowels?
On pp. 278-280 (section 10.4 "Labial Elements of Vocoid Segments),
Laver says there are actually four levels of roundedness available:
stretched, neutral, open-rounded, and close-rounded.
The lip-opening may be expanded horizontally, or contracted
horizontally, or left alone horizontally.
Independently of what happens horizontally, the lip-opening may be
expanded vertically, or contracted vertically, or left alone vertically.
If the lips are expanded horizontally, then, no matter what happens
vertically, the sound will be perceived as "stretched".
If the lips are contracted horizontally and expanded vertically, then
the sound will be perceived as "open-rounded".
If the lips are contracted horizontally and not expanded vertically --
either contracted vertically, or left in their neutral position vertically --
the sound will be perceived as "close-rounded".
If the lips are neither expanded horizontally nor contracted
horizontally, then, regardless of what happens vertically, the sound
will be perceived as "neutral" in regard to rounding.
He doesn't give examples of languages making these distinctions;
if you say Swedish does so, I'll believe you.
>> I don't think anyone has even proposed that Nasal vs. notNasal
>> can be given a third value.
>
> How about oral vs. nasal approximant vs. nareal fricative? ... Hell, I
> can even pronounce nareal *trills*! :)
>
> (Of course, I can only make these work if the oral component is a
> stop. But nevertheless, it's certainly possible to have more than two
> values of nasality...)
Well, that's true, but fricatives and trills and stops aren't vowels.
I was saying that nasality or the lack of it _for vowels_ was an
all-or-nothing thing.
And I was wrong.
On pp. 291-295, section 10.9 "Nasal Vocoid Articulation", Laver says
there are two degrees of nasality of vocoids in the Applecross dialect
of Scottish Gaelic. But his best evidence is in Palantla Chinantec an
Otomanguean Mesoamerican language -- he quotes a reference whith a minimal
triplet, ?e 'leach', ?e~ 'count', ?e~~ 'chase', all identical in tone. He also
mentions Breton and Bengali as well.
>> "consonant harmony" if it occurs is likely to apply just to syllable
>> onsets or just to codas; or, even, just to onsets of
>> stressed syllables or just to codas of stressed syllables.
>
> Couldn't the frequent POA assimilation of nasal+plosive clusters
> (and maybe some other sorts of clusters too) be considered a sort
> of consonant harmony? I have a phonology sketch around which
> extends this to almost all consonant clusters and also prohibits
> certain kinds of POA combinations in successive syllables.
"Harmony" refers to the situation where all of a certain kind of
phoneme in a word (or part of a compound word) must come from a
single one of two or more disjoint (or nearly-disjoint) lists.
The kind of assimilation where two consecutive segments must come
to resemble each other, or the earlier must take on some
characteristic of the later, or the later must take on some
characteristic of the earlier, or some epenthetic sound intermediate
between them must be inserted between them -- that is not enough to
call it "harmony".
Nothing that happens just to clusters is really "harmony", by the
definition I just quoted; it has to happen to separated phonemes as
well somehow, to count as "harmony".
> Sibilant harmony (that is, /s/ may not mix with /S/ etc) is,
> however, the only obvious natlang case of consonant harmony I've
> read about.
Your memory appears to be better than mine.
I believe I read that early stages of some major "dialects" of ancient
Indo-European had "voicing" harmony for consonants.
Other than that I can't be specific; I just have a vague notion I've read
of other kinds.
Thanks for writing,
Tom H.C. in MI
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Message: 7
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 22:13:37 +0100
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Referent Tracking
On Sat, 26 Nov 2005, 19:55 CET, Chris Bates wrote:
[ explanation snipped ]
/me bangs head on the table
I have to read that again when I've got more time -- didn't
understand everything.
> 1) are your triggers the syntactic pivot of the clause?
What is a syntactic pivot? Sorry, but I haven't got Trask on
my shelf.
> 2) what factors are involved in the choice of trigger?
Good question. When doing something quickly, I can't get rid
of always marking the agent as trigger, making it some sort
of subject. When I think a bit harder, I often choose the
patient or an oblique object to be the trigger. As I
understand it, *the* argument of the sentence gets the
trigger that shall be emphasized. Whether this is the topic
or the comment (new info vs. old info) is not set.
> [If you want to read more about trigger vs topic vs
> subject in Tagalog, I suggest you read a paper in the
> book:
>
> Subject and Topic
> Edited by: Charles Li
>
> If you can get hold of it, that is]
The problem is, I've planned to study after school and
scientific books you usually don't get at the local library.
The only chance to get this is *buying* it at Amazon.
> Oops, you pretty much answered question (1) in your reply
> before, so I guess (2) just remains. But, can I ask...
> does your language try to retain trigger (and thus perhaps
> topic) continuity over long stretches of dialogue?
I haven't yet composed "long streches of dialogue". As long
as both speakers are o fthe opinion that the triggered
argument is still the most important ... I'd say triggering
an argument might last some sentences, but not so very long.
Carsten
--
Keywords: trigger_systems
"Miranayam cepauarà naranoaris."
(Calvin nay Hobbes)
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Message: 8
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 14:20:01 -0800
From: Aidan Grey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Voice and dynamicity
After reading some more of Morneau's LS, and with input from you folks, I've
come up with a tentative arrangement of voice dynamics for Taalen. I wondered
if you could give me some input on the arrangement I have at the moment.
Verbs are polysynthetic, as in many Native American langs. There is a
specific marker in one of the "slots" for voice, with active marked by a null
affix. These markers indicate the nature of the subject. In Morneau's terms,
they indicate the following:
Active: subject is A
Middle: subject is AP
Passive: subject is P
None of these address the nature of the object (except middle, obviously) or
the presence of Morneau's Focus. I think the arrangement is pretty simple, and
logical (though logic is not a real consideration - this is not a loglang). In
addition verbs can take affixes indicating a static or dynamic situation (I am
blue vs. I am becoming blue, respectively, or I carry (habitually) vs. I am
starting to carry - I think).
One of the verbs that would have the Passive affix is "heal", where the
subject is actually a patient of the verb. But this isn't really a passive, in
the traditional sense; that would mean something like "is healed".
So the question: what should my "passive" be called? Is there already a term
for this? And what would a likely method for creating a traditional passive be?
I already have a methodology for creating stative verbs (no adjectives in
Taalen, just stative verbs). For example, to bear "rag-" (an active verb)
creates the stative verb "raede-", which corresponds to a past participle
carried or borne. Intuition says that"'is borne' is not the same as a true
passive. With the heal verb example, the passive "pal-" would have the stative
form "palle-", which emphasizes the state of having been cured, as opposed to
the process of being cured by someone else. Could the static/dynamic
distinction be involved at all, to clarify?
Thanks for your help!
Aidan
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Message: 9
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 00:14:17 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how many cases is too many?
Hi!
Reilly Schlaier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> one of my older conlangs has: Nom., Accu., Dative, Benefactive,
> Genitive, Posessive, Ablative, Allative, Vocative and Insrumental.
> how many in you personal opinions is too many?
> most of the time i prefer to keep it down to Nom./Accu., Dative,
> Posessive and Instrumental.
This totally depends on the design goals of the conlang.
My own extremes range from one (Tyl Sjok has no cases) to unbounded
(Tesäfköm has something you might call 'case', but which is actually
an open lexical class). Inbetween there are Qthyn|gai with around 21
and Fukhian with 10.
**Henrik
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Message: 10
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 00:16:07 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how many cases is too many?
Hi!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Basically, anything to mark the agent, patient, and a means for the
> action will be enough.
Not marking anything is enough, too. There are 'clairvoyant' natlangs
where the participant assignment is inferred from context.
**Henrik
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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 04:15:17 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
--- caotope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> tomhchappell wrote:
>
> Sibilant harmony (that is, /s/ may not mix with /S/
etc) is,
> however, the only obvious natlang case of consonant
harmony
> I've read about.
I've read about retroflexion harmony in some language
families, but I can't for the life of me remember
which ones (perhaps Dravidian or Indo-Aryan?).
Basically, dental [n_d] tends to harmonize with
retroflex [n`], even at a distance of a syllable or so
in a word. Not sure about the plosives, though.
If it *is* a feature of some Dravidian or Indo-Aryan
languages, then it might be related to the sibilant
assimilation phenomenon (idle speculation).
Plenty of languages have systems of consonant
_dis_harmony to varying degrees. Ancient Greek and
pre-modern Japanese are both accessible examples, just
to name two that I could come up with off the top of
my head. I like toying around with this quite a bit.
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Message: 12
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:23:53 +1100
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 115 different language to say i luv u....
Hi,
Let's add a couple more ways from natlangs:
Iban: Aku rindu ka nuan.
Kadazan: Zou diau guminavo - I love you. (IG: I you love.) And a couple of
variants:
Ih zou no oh diau guminavo - *I* love you - It's I who loves you. (IG:
Subject I emphatic Object you love.)
Oh diau no ih zou guminavo - I love *you* - It's you that I love. (IG:
Subject I Object you emphatic love.)
I'll have to practice the Leipzig Rules for Interlinear Glosses, but I hope
you get the picture.
Regards,
Yahya
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Message: 13
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:12:23 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
Quoting caotope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > Round vs. Unround sometimes has more than two values in
> > conlangs, although I am not personally aware of any natlang in which
> > it has more than two values.
>
> Don't some dialects of Swedish shift /u\/ to /y_c/ - hence contrasting
> three degrees of roundedness in high front vowels?
Not as far as I'm aware.
However, something similar happens in what I believe is the majority
pronunciation, where long /u\/ is realized as [2_w:] - that's a labialized long
[2]. This gives ju three-way distinctions like _mer_ [me:r] "more", _mör_ [m2:r]
"tender", _mur_ [m2_w:r] "wall".
Andreas
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Message: 14
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:55:46 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: A more challenging poetry translation challenge
--- In [email protected], Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>She by the river sat, and sitting there,
>She wept, and made it deeper by a tear.
Thank you for the wonderful translation exercise. I was especially
taken by the ambivalence of "by." By means of? To the extent of?
I have decided upon a few ways to express poetry in Senjecan:
1) alliteration - voiced may be used with unvoiced.
2) non-standard word order
3) alteration of primary and secondary pitch.
4) parallelism, à la Hebrew.
ü = labialization; ß = dz); ç = ts)
Standard word order:
dâân-es cóma n-e-sêd-a, cái tóru sêd-ant-un,
river-STAT.sg by 3sg.-past-sit-indic. and there sit-STAT.part.-
NOM.sg.
n-e-câlü-a, dârs-os rééßa nem e-çâl-ant-un.
3sg.-past-weep-indic., tear-STAT.sg. by 3sg. past-deepen-STAT-part.-
NOM.sg.
Poetic word order;
nesêda dâânes cóma, (8 syl.) / tór'cüe sêdantun, (5 syllables)
necâlüa, dârsos rééßa, (8 syl.) / nem e-çâlantum. (5 syllables)
Note:
1) the parallelism of the first half of each line (I forget the
technical name!): verb, noun, postposition, AND each part has 8
syllables. Likewise 5 syllables in the 2nd halves.
2) the second word in each first half begins with "d."
3) the particple in each 2nd half is preceded by "e": "cüe" and "e-."
4) the "s" of "sêdantun" and the "ç" of "çâlantun" are alveolars.
It's a start!
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 15
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:29:20 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how many cases is too many?
On 11/27/05, John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Jim Henry wrote:
> >gjâ-zym-byn has over 350 spacetime postpositions, plus an open-ended
> >set of derived abstract postpositions.
> >The gzb spacetime postpostions are composed of
> >an orientation morpheme, a directional morpheme, and a proximity
> >morpheme. See:
> >
> >http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/grammar.htm#postp
> This is one of the most comprehensive and elegant parts of gzb in my
> opinion. It's like systematizing the Dagestanian languages'
> spatial/local system to its logical, idealized extreme, all with
> mono-phonemic morphemes. A very nice system! If I were to design a
Thanks. If I were starting over, I would probably have
the most common abstract postpositions (some
of the theta role markers) be monosyllabic, giving them
a single-phoneme prefix, and have some of the less
commonly used spacetime orientation prefixes
be whole syllables instead of single phonemes,
so the postpositions would be disyllabic. gzb's
system is very precise and symmetrical, but it could
be more concise without losing much if any precision.
However, I'm not changing parts of gzb that I've
already learned to use fluently, and the postposition
system is certainly such a part.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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