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There are 14 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3. Re: Hyperlinking a dictionary to a corpus
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Baby speech
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: OT: Wedding
From: Jonathan Chang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Navajo Evening Prayer in Senyecan
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: THEORY: Information Structure; Topic/Comment, Focus/Background,
Given/New.
From: tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: How to name the languages of sentient beings?
From: Aaron Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: OT: Wedding
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: How to name the languages of sentient beings?
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: OT: Wedding
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: OT: Wedding
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 13:35:26 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
On 11/22/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Vowels: a (_e_lbow), e (_A_labama), i (V_ea_l), o (fi: ö), u (fi: y)
Curious! All front vowels and no back vowels?
Why not represent /&/ with |a| and /E/ with |e|?
> Dipthongs: ei, oi, uo
That is, I suppose, /E2/, /2j/, /y2/?
> Consonants: c (s), v (f), h (_kh_ochu), l, m, n, s (sh), t (th)
All fricatives and nasal, and no stops? I like the orthography,
anyway.
> Subject and object can be skipped if they can be filled by endings in the
> verb.
I think this is called "pro-drop".
> plurality:
> *specifying a number is allowed and indicates that number of objects.
> *leave it out to specify singular.
> *quantity listings, like "few" or "many", are used for plurals
So are there just the two number marks -- paucal and plural
-- or is there a large (or even open-ended) set of quantifier
morphemes that can fit in between the noun radical
and the case ending? Could you put in quantifiers
like "none", "all", "most of them", "enough", "enough", etc.,
and/or specific numbers like "two", "seventeen", or "pi"?
> Cases: As many or as few of these cases as needed can be used. The
> arrangement of these cases allows several ideas in each sentence.
>
> Subject: Indicates the subject of the sentence.
> Object: Indicates the object of the sentence.
This doesn't really tell us whether the language is nominative
or ergative or active or what. If an entity is described as being
in a certain state or "doing" something involuntary like sleeping,
would the noun referring to the entity be in the subject or object case?
What if some entity is described as doing something
voluntary described by an intransitive verb?
> Method: Indicates the method of the sentence.
The method by which the action of the verb is done?
> Temporal: Indicates the time of the sentence.
> Assistive: Indicates an object used to help perform the action.
I think this is usually called "instrumental case".
> Obstructive: Indicates an object that hindered the action.
Interesting. Could you use this case both
in sentences like "I tried to read but the light(OBSTR)
was too dim" and "I managed to read it although
the light-OBSTR was fairly dim"?
> Cause: Indicates the cause of the action.
> Result: Indicates the effect of the action.
> Means: How the action happened.
How is this different from Method case?
> English:
> Because I ran out of gas, I had to run a mile through the woods to the
> bus stop this morning, and take the bus to work. The end result was
> that I was covered in sweat.
> Equivalent with cases
> car-empty-gas-CAUSE-OBSTRUCTIVE I-SUBJECT run
> distance-long-woods-inside-MEANS stop-bus-OBJECT morning-TEMPORAL
> work-arrival-RESULT me-covering-sweat-RESULT
Hmmm... here the noun in the obstructive case is not hindering the actual
action of the sentence, but hindering some other implied action
which you would have preferred to be performing (driving) instead of running
through the woods etc.
> The following tenses exist: I, you, they, the-object-of-this-sentence,
> the-subject-of-this-sentence. They must also be used with pronouns if
> pluralized.
Usually tense refers to the time when the action
of the verb takes place, sometimes also to the way
the action is distributed through time (though the latter is
more properly called aspect, but many languages mark
both of them with the same morphemes).
> A verb consists of the following structure:
>
> verb root + all applicable tense markers + subject tense marker +
> object tense marker.
>
> Tense markers consist of the following: past, present, future,
> conditional, subjunctive, negative, command.
OK... separate morphemes for each of those, and they
can be combined as needed? Some of those are actually
mood markers rather than tense markers. Is there a
required order to combine them in?
E.g. is
run-PRS-NEG-CMD
equally valid as
run-NEG-CMD-PRS
> Subject and object tense markers refer to the real subject or object.
> If either of these is simply I, you, or they, a separate pronoun is
> not necessary. If they are pluralized or refer to a separate item in
> the sentence, they must be marked as such.
I think these are called "personal endings" (maybe there's a better
term) -- they're not tense markers, anyway. Some example
sentences would help clarify what you mean about
their use.
> Subclauses: each subclause begins and ends with a particle.
What kind of particle? Are there different particles for
marking subclauses with different relationships to
the main clause, or with different evidentiality/validationality/
etc?
> Adverbs are added to the verb root.
Neat.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 11:34:48 -0800
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
>Curious! All front vowels and no back vowels?
Yeah...I guess.
>Why not represent /&/ with |a| and /E/ with |e|?
Done.
> Dipthongs: ei, oi, uo
That is, I suppose, /E2/, /2j/, /y2/?
Um...sure...those are based on the vowels I listed.
> Consonants: c (s), v (f), h (_kh_ochu), l, m, n, s (sh), t (th)
All fricatives and nasal, and no stops? I like the orthography,
anyway.
h BTW is like "X" in Russian. I thought of this like something that
could be spoken quickly, and these can all just be "rolled over". I
wanted to have an "r" sound, but there's too much difference in
pronounciation. On the stops, I left them out because they just
seemed "slower".
I think this is called "pro-drop".
Yeah, but there are no grammatical "pronouns", only
inflections/agglutinations on the verb.
>So are there just the two number marks -- paucal and plural
>-- or is there a large (or even open-ended) set of quantifier
>morphemes that can fit in between the noun radical
>and the case ending? Could you put in quantifiers
>like "none", "all", "most of them", "enough", "enough", etc.,
>and/or specific numbers like "two", "seventeen", or "pi"?
Yes...there is no formal plural marking (cars v. car), but you would
instead say "car-(a-few)" or "car".
>This doesn't really tell us whether the language is nominative
>or ergative or active or what. If an entity is described as being
>n a certain state or "doing" something involuntary like sleeping,
>would the noun referring to the entity be in the subject or object case?
>What if some entity is described as doing something
>voluntary described by an intransitive verb?
"Voluntarity" does not matter. There is a "null object" ending if
there isn't an object, so basically "my dog sleeps" would be something
like "dog-my-POSS.SUBJ sleep-INDICATIVE-PRESENT-(given-subject)-(no
object)".
>The method by which the action of the verb is done?
Yes...so "I went to work by car" would be something like "work-OBJECT
go-INDICATIVE-PAST-1P-(given-object) car-METHOD".
>I think this is usually called "instrumental case".
I didn't care about "real" case names.
>OBSTRUCTIVE: Interesting. Could you use this case both
>in sentences like "I tried to read but the light(OBSTR)
>was too dim" and "I managed to read it although
>the light-OBSTR was fairly dim"?
Yes. That would be something like
"read-INDICATIVE-NEGATIVE-PAST-1P-(null object)
light-dim-HASPROPERTY-OBSTR" and "read-INDICATIVE-PAST-1P-(null
object) light-dim-HASPROPERTY-OBSTR". If the action did happen, it's
positive. If not, it's negative.
>How is this different from Method case?
It's not. This has been taken out.
>Hmmm... here the noun in the obstructive case is not hindering the actual
>action of the sentence, but hindering some other implied action
>which you would have preferred to be performing (driving) instead of running
>through the woods etc.
Good point. This is more of an "indirect obstructive", which might be
a separate case.
>Usually tense refers to the time when the action
>of the verb takes place, sometimes also to the way
>the action is distributed through time (though the latter is
>more properly called aspect, but many languages mark
>both of them with the same morphemes).
Mistake--I meant pronoun.
>OK... separate morphemes for each of those, and they
>can be combined as needed? Some of those are actually
>mood markers rather than tense markers. Is there a
>required order to combine them in?
>E.g. is
>
>run-PRS-NEG-CMD
>
>equally valid as
>
>run-NEG-CMD-PRS
Yes. First, I've more accurately classified these, so now there are
more categories. These are _affirmativeness (positive or negative,
although there is no modifier for positive)_, _mood_, and _time_. The
order that I usually use is the one in the last sentence. This is (by
my decree at the moment :) mandatory.
>I think these are called "personal endings" (maybe there's a better
>term) -- they're not tense markers, anyway. Some example
>sentences would help clarify what you mean about
>their use.
They are not tenses, but personal endings. First, there's a null
object now, which is used if there isn't a real object.
Example sentences of pronoun use: "The dog goes to the store" =
"dog-SUBJ store-OBJ go-INDICATIVE-PRESENT-(given-subject)-(given
object)". "I go to the store" is "store-OBJ
go-IND-PR-1P-(given-object)." "We go to the store" = "many-SUBJ
store-OBJ go-IND-PR-1P-(given-object)."
>What kind of particle? Are there different particles for
>marking subclauses with different relationships to
>the main clause, or with different evidentiality/validationality/
>etc?
Subclauses are functionally nouns. So it would be somewhat like
(going-to-the-store)-ness bothers me. The ending particle is always
the same, but the opening particle is different, like because vs. but
vs. resulting in.
Thanks for all the constructive criticism.
also a note on the cases--rather than acting like prepositions (like
Finnish etc.) they instead fill relations, cause, effect, etc. There
will be no prepositions--instead of "to go" it's "to go to a place"
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 11:37:00 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hyperlinking a dictionary to a corpus
--- Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 11/30/05, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snop>
> It might be easier to
> create a special file of just sample sentences
> and generate the links to that rather than
> try to write a script that will search the grammar,
> semantics and translation documents for
> sample sentences,
Yes, this is what I did. I cut and pasted the sample
sentences into a single corpus file, and then
generated from that a sample sentence file that
repeats each sentence as many times as there are words
in the sentence. Thus, using Enlgish as an exmpale, "I
will run" will generate three separate lines in the
samples files:
i - I will run
run - I will run
will - I will run
The anchor names are the words themselves so the
dictionary entry for "run" only has to have the anchor
"#run" added to the link to the single samples file.
At this anchor will be all the sample sentences that
contain the word "run". You can see the actual sample
sentences file at http://fiziwig.com/concord.html
--gary
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 21:14:19 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Baby speech
Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> So my baby's speech has a curious feature - he is apparently unable to
> pronounce final /r/ (presumably [r\] or similar; American English...).
> But rather than speaking non-rhotically, he seems to feel the need to
> substitute something there, because he hears us saying something, and
> what he puts there is a glide [j]. For instance, "car" comes out
> [koj] - why [o], I don't know. The word "door" is [doj], which is
> more understandable. And "water", which ends in a consonantal [r\]
> the way we pronounce it, he pronounces with a final [i] instead. I
> find all this fascinating, if just a tad disturbing on the
> developmental front. Has anyone heard of such substitutions before?
> I guess it's live evidence of /r/'s status as a glide in rhotic
> Englishes.
In stereotypical little kid's speak here, /r/ gets realized as [j] or [j\] - eg.
_jag orkar inte längre_ becomes [jA: Ujkaj IntE lENjE].
So, I've been aware of substitutions of the kind for as long as I can remember.
Unfortunately, I don't therefore have any interesting insights about it to
share, tho I can note that I don't think it would make much sense to treat /r/
as a glide in Swedish.
> Oh, and GMail has added the ability to send email as another account,
> once you verify that the other account is actually you, and as part of
> this identity revamp you can apparently finally leave the Reply-To:
> header off completely. I'm trying to do that with this message, so
> let's see if it works.
It works.
Andreas
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 13:42:12 -0800
From: Jonathan Chang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Wedding
on 11/30/05 3:49 PM, Henrik Theiling at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Dear fellow conlangers!
>
> I married on last Friday. :-)
CONGA-RATS ;)
nifty...
--
Hanuman Zhang
"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told,
'I am with you kid, Let's go!'" - Maya Angelou
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 16:59:44 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Navajo Evening Prayer in Senyecan
Ancient history :-) found in my Saved file:
Charlie wrote, on 31/05/05:
> hózhóogo naasháa doo
> in-beauty I-walk
ri amirik maharan
> shitsijí' hózhóogo naasháa doo
> before-me in-beauty I-walk
>
ri amirik ri kandimi maharan
>
> shikéédéé' hózhóogo naasháa doo
> behind-me in-beauty I-walk
>
ri amirik ri çelumbi maharan
>
> shideigi hózhóogo naasháa doo
> above-me in-beauty I-walk
ri amirik rivitami maharan
> t'áá a£tso shinaagóó hózhóogo naasháa doo (£ = l slash)
> around-me in-beauty I-walk
ri amirik ri ciyumbri maharan
> hózhó náhásdlíí'
> beauty has-become-again
?* e amirik cis yayukar (literal, but odd)
? e amirik cis yayuka-yukar ("beauty happens again")
? e amirik cis yaçukale ("beauty begins-to-be ~beauty exists again")
Of these three, #1 is odd because yukar usu. requires a compliment--
"becomes _something_". #2,3 are more grammatical, and I feel #3 may be
closer to the Navajo (which is not entirely clear...). Perhaps "e amirik
cis yaçutikas" ...becomes visible ~emerges...??? Also, inserting "mende"
(the perfect marker) between cis and the verb would translate the "has
become" more exactly, but I'm not sure it's necessary... (however, it would
improve the metre :-)) )
Yet another alternative (which I like better):
maharan yam amirik "I walk _with/accompanied by_ beauty" etc.
maharan yam amirik ri kandimi
maharan yam amirik ri çelumbi
maharan yam amirik ri vitami
maharan yam amirik ri ciyumbri
e amirik cis yaçukale (omit the ya- for better metre)
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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 23:46:54 -0000
From: tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: THEORY: Information Structure; Topic/Comment, Focus/Background,
Given/New.
--- In [email protected], Jonathan Knibb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [snip]
> My difficulty is in distinguishing this use of 'about' from the
> given/new axis. Can given information occur other than within
> the topic, and can information be new when it is a topic?
> Of course a topic is new in the sentence where it is first
> introduced into the discourse - but can it be a topic *in that
> sentence*?
> [snip]
Hi Jonathan.
I Googled around with various combinations of search arguments for
several days and came across several articles written by Ivana
Kruijff-Korbayova. She summarizes everyone's terminologies and
theories and their "pedigrees" and dependencies on each other.
Most people, she points out, have two partitions of the information
structure; for instance, topic vs comment and focus vs ground. In at
least one article, she says who makes one of these divisions
subordinate to the other (thus coming up with a maximum of three
parts) and who makes this divisions orthogonal to each other (thus
coming up with possibly four parts).
Here are some URLs to look at;
www.iccs.informatics.ed.ac.uk/~steedman/tl/tlnotes09ahandout.pdf
www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~korbay/esslli01-wsh/Proceedings/intro.pdf
www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~korbay/Courses/esslli04/Slides/lect1.pdf
www.helsinki.fi/esslli/courses/readers/K50.pdf
www.ling.gu.se/projekt/siridus/Publications/deliv5-1.pdf
w3.msi.vxu.se/~per/IVC743/LM/wsh-is-dstr-dsem.pdf
I hope they are fun; I hope you get to read at least the shortest
ones.
(I googled on
nucleus focus known unknown presupposition theme rheme context
dependent independent accent topic comment bound unbound given new
orthogonal background structured meanings DRT alternative set narrow
wide link tail C/Q alternatives kontrast
to get them, in case I copied any of them wrong.)
Tom H.C. in MI
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Message: 8
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 17:40:37 -0800
From: Aaron Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to name the languages of sentient beings?
Elms can't communicate? Some of my best conversations have been with
Elms. :)
þ
caeruleancentaur wrote:
>On 11/30/05, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>>What's a good word for the set of languages, nat and con, that are
>>meant for communication between sentient beings -- i.e. excluding
>>computer programming languages, data modelling languages, and so
>>on, >but including languages for aliens, and unusually smart
>>hamsters, >and what-have-you? "Human" languages is wrong, as
>>
>>
>is "natural". I'm >rather at a loss.
>
>I don't believe that any form of "sentient" is adequate. It seems
>to me that, in any given conculture, some sentient beings speak and
>some don't. "Sentient," after all, has nothing to do with the
>ability to speak, but the ability to feel.
>
>What is needed is a word (an adjective, it appears) that includes
>all the species that can communicate. Since anything is possible in
>a conculture, that could very well include animal as well as plant
>life (or any other form imagined). And the word has to distinguish
>between forms that can communicate and those that can't, _e.g._,
>oaks can communicate but elms can not. I don't believe there is
>such a word, at least in English.
>
>I found in the OED the word "loquent" meaning having the ability to
>speak, and that's the word I use in my conculture for the dragons
>and the six human-like races that can speak, the other life forms
>being merely sentient. I call these the loquent peoples or races or
>nations.
>
>Charlie
>http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
>
>
>
>
>
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 21:33:05 +1300
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Wedding
On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 05:13, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Tomhchappell writes:
> > --- In [email protected], Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >...
> > > I married on last Friday. :-) Take a look:
> > >...
> >
> > Congratulations, and, Good luck, to you both!
And likewise congratulations to you from me! In these times when most of the
news is bad, it's great to share someone's joy!
>
> Thanks!
>
> Also thanks to all the others for the nice wishes. :-)
>
> > Will your new father-in-law provide you with free mead for the first
> > month? I heard somewhere that's where the "honey moon" comes from.
>
> Interesting, I did not know. It would be nice, I like mead. However,
> no-one knows where he lives. But maybe my father could provide it to
> Uta, then.
Juha was talking to the complaints of a young friend of his who had recently
got married.
"You know how they say marriage is like a barrel of onions with honey at the
top? My marriage has been onions from the very start!"
Juha looks at him.
"You opened the barrel at the wrong end!"
(Egyptians and other Arabs refer to marriage as being composed of honey and
onions - for obvious reasons. Juha =Goha=Mullah Nasruddin=Nasredin ;)
Wesley Parish
>
> **Henrik
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 21:44:06 +1300
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How to name the languages of sentient beings?
On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 02:33, caeruleancentaur wrote:
> On 11/30/05, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >What's a good word for the set of languages, nat and con, that are
> >meant for communication between sentient beings -- i.e. excluding
> >computer programming languages, data modelling languages, and so
> >on, >but including languages for aliens, and unusually smart
> >hamsters, >and what-have-you? "Human" languages is wrong, as
>
> is "natural". I'm >rather at a loss.
>
> I don't believe that any form of "sentient" is adequate. It seems
> to me that, in any given conculture, some sentient beings speak and
> some don't. "Sentient," after all, has nothing to do with the
> ability to speak, but the ability to feel.
>
> What is needed is a word (an adjective, it appears) that includes
> all the species that can communicate. Since anything is possible in
> a conculture, that could very well include animal as well as plant
> life (or any other form imagined). And the word has to distinguish
> between forms that can communicate and those that can't, _e.g._,
> oaks can communicate but elms can not. I don't believe there is
> such a word, at least in English.
>
> I found in the OED the word "loquent" meaning having the ability to
> speak, and that's the word I use in my conculture for the dragons
> and the six human-like races that can speak, the other life forms
> being merely sentient. I call these the loquent peoples or races or
> nations.
If the use of a conlang is fine with you, my Lakhabrech make a distinction
between "speaking beings" and "nonspeaking beings" - nonspeaking beings are
legal prey, speaking beings aren't. (It's not really that much fun to eat
your infuriatingly irritating neighbour, particularly when your
midwife-chieftainess is going to publically gut you when she finds out, then
leave you for the ants and wasps... ;)
Consequently, taking humans - "hauk" - as the baseline, the definition: yhe
hauk valaya, the speaking human-type beings; going for a more abstract term:
yhe yayhe valaya - the speaking beings.
Wesley Parish
>
> Charlie
> http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 12:41:08 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Wedding
Hi!
Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>...
> And likewise congratulations to you from me! ...
Thanks! :-)
>...
> Juha was talking to the complaints of a young friend of his who had recently
> got married.
> "You know how they say marriage is like a barrel of onions with honey at the
> top? My marriage has been onions from the very start!"
> Juha looks at him.
> "You opened the barrel at the wrong end!"
> (Egyptians and other Arabs refer to marriage as being composed of honey and
> onions - for obvious reasons. Juha =Goha=Mullah Nasruddin=Nasredin ;)
I *love* onions! :-)
**Henrik
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 13:54:36 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Wedding
* Henrik Theiling said on 2005-12-02 12:41:08 +0100
> Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Juha was talking to the complaints of a young friend of his who had
> > recently got married.
> > "You know how they say marriage is like a barrel of onions with
> > honey at the top? My marriage has been onions from the very start!"
> > Juha looks at him.
> > "You opened the barrel at the wrong end!"
>
> I *love* onions! :-)
You can eat a lot more (fried) onions than raw honey anyway - I
especially recommend (~ means "about"):
Onion-jellied steak
===================
~1 kg deboned steak of preferred meat[0]
~3 ordinary yellow onions
~1 whole garlic, be it chinese (one piece) or divisible
maybe a little bit of vegetables (mini-carrots, broccoli...)
other kinds of onions
Get a ceramic cooker/pot or whatever it's called in English, it's not
mentioned in my dictionary. It's a pot/casserole/container made of
terracotta[1], with matching lid. Make sure it's glazed/blank on the
inside (eases cleaning) and that the glaze and terracotta does not
contain lead/is safe for cooking.
Rub steak with salt+pepper, then fry it quickly to lock in juices.
Slice yellow onions, other onions, garlic into boats, chop veggies into
thimble-sized pieces or smaller.
Fill the bottom of the pot with a layer of onion/garlic.
You now have a choice to make. Either put a cooking-termometer in the
piece of meat, choice a), or don't, choice b).
If choice a) put the steak in the pot, fill around the edges (but not so
it touches the termometer) with the rest of the onion and veggies. If
choice b), put the steak in the pot, attempting to completely
surround-and-cover it with onions and veggies.
Put the lid[2] on the pot, put it in the oven.
If choice a)[3], the oven needs to be preheated to about 200 degress
celcius. Let the pot stay there for at least 30 minutes then start
checking the termometer (about every ten minutes) for the correct
cooking/roasting-temperature for that type of meat. 70 degrees celcius
is usually plenty whatever you're making.
If choice b) you can preheat the oven to the correct temperature for
that meat and let the pot stay in forever, it will eventually reach the
correct temperature then stay there until you're ready to eat. -OR- you
could preheat to 200 celcius, let the pot stay for 30-40 minutes then
wait for the onions to collapse.
Onion-collapse: When the onions are sufficiently warm they will
collapse, meaning the steak will sit visibly lower in the pot, on top of
a thick sauce/soup of veggie-spiced onions. When this occurs the steak
itself (100% of tries so far) will also be sufficiently cooked. There is
nothing more to be gained when the onions have collapsed so turn off the
oven, sneak the steak out of the pot and let it rest for at least ten
minutes.
Eat the steak and the yummy onion/veggie-mix that's left in the pot with
something that can soak up the sauce, like bulgur or fluffy rice or
potatoes. If you let the onion-sauce cool it will jellify and look
positively strange, and it will be a lot harder to clean the pot :)
If you remove the onion-and-veg remains you can freeze the sauce and
use it as stock for some other food later on.
It's a lot of food for two people but the steak-remains can be used on
sandwiches the day after and the onion/veggie-mix is so yummy it will
probably have mysteriously disappeared all by itself, as it tastes much
better than honey and the baked garlic tastes better than apples!
You can do this with other cuts of meat as well but remove the bones
or there won't be much room for the onions in the pot!
-------------------
Congrats and do take care of eachother!
[0] I usually wind up using porc, it's cheaper and comes in smaller
amounts
[1] a word found by google but missed by dict(1), wow.
[2] might have to water-soak the lid first, depends on the lid
[3] good choice for larger steaks, not so good for several pieces of
meat or smaller steaks
t.
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 08:36:27 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
On 12/1/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I think this is called "pro-drop".
> Yeah, but there are no grammatical "pronouns", only
> inflections/agglutinations on the verb.
OK, I see how you avoid needing a subject or object
pronoun because you have the personal endings on the verb;
but what if you want to mark first or second person
or some previously mentioned third-person referent
as being in one of the other cases --- for instance,
"In spite of you I managed to escape your dungeon"?
Wouldn't you need a second-person pronoun
to mark with the obstructive case ending?
> >So are there just the two number marks -- paucal and plural
> >-- or is there a large (or even open-ended) set of quantifier
> >morphemes that can fit in between the noun radical
> >and the case ending? Could you put in quantifiers
> >like "none", "all", "most of them", "enough", "enough", etc.,
> >and/or specific numbers like "two", "seventeen", or "pi"?
> Yes...there is no formal plural marking (cars v. car), but you would
> instead say "car-(a-few)" or "car".
Or really car-FEW-METHOD or whatever, always with
a case ending after the plurality marker?
Or
car-hundred-almost-OBJ sell-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)
I sold almost a hundred cars.
> "Voluntarity" does not matter. There is a "null object" ending if
> there isn't an object, so basically "my dog sleeps" would be something
> like "dog-my-POSS.SUBJ sleep-INDICATIVE-PRESENT-(given-subject)-(no
> object)".
Hm, sounds like it could get verbose. Can you show some
examples of actual text in the language? Are some of these morphemes
just a consonant or a vowel or are some of them mutations
or whole syllables?
> >What kind of particle? Are there different particles for
> >marking subclauses with different relationships to
> >the main clause, or with different evidentiality/validationality/
> >etc?
> Subclauses are functionally nouns. So it would be somewhat like
> (going-to-the-store)-ness bothers me. The ending particle is always
Neat.
> also a note on the cases--rather than acting like prepositions (like
> Finnish etc.) they instead fill relations, cause, effect, etc. There
> will be no prepositions--instead of "to go" it's "to go to a place"
OK. How would you express spatial relationships like
"under", "inside", etc? Will they be marked by
affixing the location or motion verb rather than adpositions
on the noun phrase?
What about ditransitive verbs like "send" and "give"?
Would "I sent a letter to my brother" be something
like
brother-1P-OBJECT letter-ASSISTIVE send_to-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)
or
brother-1P-RESULT letter-OBJECT send-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/esp.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 07:11:19 -0800
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: New language grammar--what needs work?
On 12/2/05, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 12/1/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > > I think this is called "pro-drop".
> > Yeah, but there are no grammatical "pronouns", only
> > inflections/agglutinations on the verb.
>
> OK, I see how you avoid needing a subject or object
> pronoun because you have the personal endings on the verb;
> but what if you want to mark first or second person
> or some previously mentioned third-person referent
> as being in one of the other cases --- for instance,
> "In spite of you I managed to escape your dungeon"?
> Wouldn't you need a second-person pronoun
> to mark with the obstructive case ending?
Yes, and you do for plurals. Then you can just use the pronoun and
put any cases. It's only pro-drop for subjects and objects.
> > >So are there just the two number marks -- paucal and plural
> > >-- or is there a large (or even open-ended) set of quantifier
> > >morphemes that can fit in between the noun radical
> > >and the case ending? Could you put in quantifiers
> > >like "none", "all", "most of them", "enough", "enough", etc.,
> > >and/or specific numbers like "two", "seventeen", or "pi"?
>
> > Yes...there is no formal plural marking (cars v. car), but you would
> > instead say "car-(a-few)" or "car".
>
> Or really car-FEW-METHOD or whatever, always with
> a case ending after the plurality marker?
> Or
Of course, but FEW isn't a market, it's a separate entity.
> car-hundred-almost-OBJ sell-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)
> I sold almost a hundred cars.
That works.
> > "Voluntarity" does not matter. There is a "null object" ending if
> > there isn't an object, so basically "my dog sleeps" would be something
> > like "dog-my-POSS.SUBJ sleep-INDICATIVE-PRESENT-(given-subject)-(no
> > object)".
>
> Hm, sounds like it could get verbose. Can you show some
> examples of actual text in the language? Are some of these morphemes
> just a consonant or a vowel or are some of them mutations
> or whole syllables?
Everything follows the syllable structure (consonant or cluster)(verb,
optionally doubled)n, where the n is only at the end of a word
>
> > >What kind of particle? Are there different particles for
> > >marking subclauses with different relationships to
> > >the main clause, or with different evidentiality/validationality/
> > >etc?
>
> > Subclauses are functionally nouns. So it would be somewhat like
> > (going-to-the-store)-ness bothers me. The ending particle is always
>
> Neat.
Actually I changed my mind. The starting and ending particles would
always be the same but the ending particle would have case markers.
(but would be the obstructive, etc.)
>
> > also a note on the cases--rather than acting like prepositions (like
> > Finnish etc.) they instead fill relations, cause, effect, etc. There
> > will be no prepositions--instead of "to go" it's "to go to a place"
>
> OK. How would you express spatial relationships like
> "under", "inside", etc? Will they be marked by
> affixing the location or motion verb rather than adpositions
> on the noun phrase?
Those would be the verbs. i.e. The phrase "I am sitting under the
chair" would not have a verb "to sit" , but "to sit under".
> What about ditransitive verbs like "send" and "give"?
> Would "I sent a letter to my brother" be something
> like
>
> brother-1P-OBJECT letter-ASSISTIVE send_to-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)
>
> or
>
> brother-1P-RESULT letter-OBJECT send-INDIC-PAST-1P-(given object)
there's a separate second object now. brother-OBJECT letter-SECOBJ
send-I-P-1P-(given object)-(given 2obj)
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/esp.htm
> ...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
>
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