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There are 19 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Words with built-in error correction
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: João Ricardo de Mendonça <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Thoughts on Word building
From: Taka Tunu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: The WD theory
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: The WD theory
From: Christian Köttl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Unsubscribing from this list
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. PIE past time (was: isolating is equivalent to inflected)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Unsubscribing from this list
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Unsubscribing from this list
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. TECH: Unsubscribing from this list
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Unsubscribing from this list
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Words with built-in error correction
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Words with built-in error correction
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Words with built-in error correction
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 22:12:45 -0800
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Words with built-in error correction
Gary wrote:
<<
A conlang design that is accent-proof:
>>
<snip rest>
So...this assumes, then, that all consonants will be pronounced
the same? And how many consonants were you thinking?
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 01:28:34 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
Gary Shannon wrote:
> I would really like to learn more about how a real
> live isolating language works. I've only ever studied
> Germanic and Romance languages, (and one semester of
> Russian). What would be a good isolating language for
> me to get a grammar for? Preferably one I can dig into
> the grammar of using only the Roman alphabet, if such
> a thing is possible.
Maybe Vietnamese????
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 04:57:03 -0200
From: João Ricardo de Mendonça <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
On 12/6/05, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I would really like to learn more about how a real
> live isolating language works. I've only ever studied
> Germanic and Romance languages, (and one semester of
> Russian). What would be a good isolating language for
> me to get a grammar for? Preferably one I can dig into
> the grammar of using only the Roman alphabet, if such
> a thing is possible.
>
> --gary
>
The usual examples of isolating languages are Mandarim and Vietnamese. I
guess Mandarim should be the easiest to find references for in the West.
João Ricardo de Mendonça
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 07:52:51 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
João Ricardo de Mendonça wrote:
> On 12/6/05, *Gary Shannon* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
>
> I would really like to learn more about how a real
> live isolating language works.
[snip]
> The usual examples of isolating languages are Mandarim and Vietnamese. I
> guess Mandarim should be the easiest to find references for in the West.
Yes, but Mandarin does have grammatical affixes; it is not purely
isolating. In fact it has been argued on this on this list (more than
once IIRC) that English is more isolating than modern Mandarin.
But by all accounts, Vietnamese is (almost) 100% isolating. The trouble
is that few natlangs sit nice and neatly in these language types thought
up by 19th century linguists.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 10:00:16 +0100
From: Taka Tunu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Thoughts on Word building
Henrik wrote:
<<<
> A conlanger could make up "country+love" and "king+country" (or
> reversely "love+country" and "country king", depending how his
> conlang works.) ...
But thes is not derivation, then, do we agree? This as compounding.
(snip)
But these are again compounds. I thought you said we're talking about
derivation here (see the beginning of my paragraph). I'm confused.
Are you saying these are derivation? Or do we agree these are
compounding?
>>>
Are you serious? Where did I write that this is derivation? I thought I already
made this clear in my two previous posts. And actually, who cares if you call
this "compounding" or else when the examples we pick are self-explanatory, that
is, you pick two or more plain words and stick them together instead of using an
affix?
<<<
E.g. let's use 'person' - 'ren2', and compare this to some other
compounds:
ai4-ren2 - lover; spouse bi1-ren2 - threatening
verb + noun verb + noun
Same structure: verb + object, different effect: the first one is the
noun specifying the object, the second is a compound adjective. So
'ren2' does not strictly derive the meaning in a predefined way: it
has to be guessed and is ad-hoc. 'ren2' can be used alone, too, so it
is clearly compounding.
ai4-gou2 - patriotism
verb + noun
Compare this is 'ai4-ren2'. It is also verb + object, and we cannot
say that 'ai4' works in the same way, so 'ai4' is also compounding,
so we cannot classify 'ai4' as a derivational prefix either.
Both 'ren2' and 'gou2' can be used alone and compose ad-hoc meanings
instead of in a well defined way. Both 'ren2' and 'gou2' can also
attach to nouns, so they are not restricted to certain contexts.
nü3-ren2 - woman
wang2-gou2 - kingdom
>>>
I was talking of COMPOUNDS. You are talking of me not talking about compounds.
You make a point in showing that these are mostly ccompounds.
I have to repeat here what I specifically mentionned in my previous post:
The "ambiguity" that you referred to in "ai-koku" and "bei-koku" for instance is
due to the mix of V+O, V+S AND modifier+modified in Sino-Japanese compounds.
Now, if you would like to consider compounds in natlangs with V+O, S+V and
modified+modifier, like Khmer or Indonesian, you will see that these problems
are SOLVED for a great part:
man+fishing = a fisherman
man+love+music = a melomane
bird+black = a blackbird
machine+compute = a computer
compute+data = data computing
Though something warns me that you won't get that one either.
<<<
ad a)
Be aware these are not derivational endings, but form compounds.
So when seeking lists of derivational endings, keep this in mind
and possibly narrow down and clarify usage. And if you really
want bound morphemes, even think of a bound form for each Kanji
used in derivation in your conlang.
>>>
I am very aware that I am not interested in derivation, so I am not seeking a
list of derivational endings, I don't want bound morphemes and I manage my
conlang without derivation.
Oh! And my two posts were about COMPOUNDING. Just in case you would missed that
one again.
<<<
ad b)
I'd say a typical reason could be historical development where
the conlangers engelang demands a systematical grid of atoms or
something.
>>>
"Atomism" in conlanging started when naturalists started describing plants and
animals in treelike diagrams. It is the dream to make a vocabulary resembling
nature. Personally, I feel that the vocabulary inside my head does not have
much to do with nature and I doubt the idea of hierarchising concepts that way.
I am more on the "white horse" side, so there.
<<<
snip...
Of course, it's a very good source of ideas. I use it myself all the
time when trying to make up vocab. I just say that in general, it is
compounding, not derivation.
>>>
Really? I thought it was about compounding, not derivation.
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 11:27:44 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The WD theory
Hi!
Jonathan Chang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> ack! Ya gotta be kiddin' me...
>
> /rant
>
> First Creationism, now this funny crap! What's next???? The
> dinosaurs were Fallen Angels?
No, of course 'the dinosaurs did not exist -- that's more than 6000
years ago!' :-P
If people could at least understand that religion is not about what we
see here on earth, and that science is about what we see here, then
there would be much less arguments. Religion and science easily
coexist without much interference. Why is this so often mixed up?
Maybe we were created a minute ago, who knows. It does not matter to
science, since if it was true, it would not change what we see here in
this universe (if the creator got it right, that is), and that's all
science tries to describe.
I basically don't understand all that. Science tells religion is
wrong and religion tells science is wrong. But they are both right.
And wrong they are both in their mutual accusations.
Well, this is trivial. But obviously not trivial enough.
**Henrik
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 13:02:19 +0100
From: Christian Köttl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The WD theory
This discussion (if real) has less to do with the "cross" (and thus I
think that "no cross, no crown" does not really apply), i.e. the
topic how science and religion relate, and more with power over
education. You will find that the proponents of such theories are not
backed up by any considerable large Christian confession, be it
Episcopalists or Lutherans or Catholics, or any other sizable
religious group. I think the cited blog entry states this as well.
This means that a rather small group of people tries to shape the
educational agenda and get a disproportional influence. Since this
list is about linguistics, I will not elaborate more on this, but
again I feel that it's more about power than content.
However, I also think that these discussions, especially in the
biological arena, are so vivid because the extreme poles on both
sides benefit: The "Literal Exegets" - those who treat their
religious sources as texts without deeper meaning - and,"Extreme
Evolutionists", those connecting a social, political and ethical
agenda with the Theory of Evolution. Both can immunize their
positions by accusing moderate critics of being in alliance with
their opponents, and pretend that you can only have their view or the
exactly opposite one. And both Extremists get prominence, headlines,
etc.
If both sides would not try to have public spending and teaching
tailored to their views, it would be better to simply ignore them.
ObConlang: But the Wrathful Disperser would make a nice proposition
for a ConWorld, since you can start with a variety of Ursprachen that
need not relate, and one older language that has special
(magical/priestly/animistic/...) properties and is known to only a
few. Has been done for sure, but I didn't think of it.
>Hi!
>
>Jonathan Chang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> ack! Ya gotta be kiddin' me...
>>
>> /rant
>>
>> First Creationism, now this funny crap! What's next???? The
>> dinosaurs were Fallen Angels?
>
>No, of course 'the dinosaurs did not exist -- that's more than 6000
>years ago!' :-P
>
>If people could at least understand that religion is not about what we
>see here on earth, and that science is about what we see here, then
>there would be much less arguments. Religion and science easily
>coexist without much interference. Why is this so often mixed up?
>Maybe we were created a minute ago, who knows. It does not matter to
>science, since if it was true, it would not change what we see here in
>this universe (if the creator got it right, that is), and that's all
>science tries to describe.
>
>I basically don't understand all that. Science tells religion is
>wrong and religion tells science is wrong. But they are both right.
>And wrong they are both in their mutual accusations.
>
>Well, this is trivial. But obviously not trivial enough.
>
>**Henrik
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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 12:41:08 +0000
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Unsubscribing from this list
How the hell do I do it?
Bryan
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
-- William Butler Yeats
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Message: 9
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:25:30 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
Hi!
Taka Tunu writes:
> Henrik wrote:
>
> <<<
> > A conlanger could make up "country+love" and "king+country" (or
> > reversely "love+country" and "country king", depending how his
> > conlang works.) ...
> But thes is not derivation, then, do we agree? This as compounding.
> (snip)
> But these are again compounds. I thought you said we're talking about
> derivation here (see the beginning of my paragraph). I'm confused.
> Are you saying these are derivation? Or do we agree these are
> compounding?
> >>>
>
> Are you serious? Where did I write that this is derivation?
*sight* I just try to understand your point, that's all.
Obviously I fail. Please don't get upset.
I'll try to analyse.
Your first post about this topic starts like this:
> Why not consider that any root word is a potential, valid
> "derivational affix"? See Chinese,Japanese, Khmer lexicons. ...
By now, we seem to agree that you are talking about compounding here.
When I first read that, I thought you *really* meant 'derivational
affix' here and gave Greenlandic as a possible example where
originally free roots are now used as derivational suffixes, and said
that, e.g., Chinese is not so good an example, because it uses
compounding.
Your paragraph then continues and contrasts derivation with
compounding:
> ... Indonesian uses both a very small set of affixes and loads of
> compounds. The so-called "power" of affixes is their fuzziness. For
> instance "invention" is either an process or a result. Affixing and
> compounding are different in the sense that affixing requires making
> a whole kind of lame second lexicon. With compounds, "Esthetics" may
> be more evocative "beauty feeling", "beauty yearning", "beauty
> concept", etc.
I agreed with that, but did not understand why you used 'derivational
affix' in the first sentence.
When reading your second post, I did not find much to disagree. You
were quite energetic in telling me that I did not understand, though.
You wrote that we definitely disagree. I tried to find disagreement
and identified two possible items:
a) the ratio between compounding and derivation on Chinese and
Japanese
b) whether compounding creates ad-hoc meanings
a) cannot be solved without counting, so we need numbers. It's futile
to discuss without them, so I did not. And maybe we don't even
disagree here, I thought.
So I inferred that b) was where we disagree. I inferred that you say
that the meaning in compounds of the kind you use in your conlang and
that is used in Indonesian, is clearly composed. I also inferred that
when only considering one type of compounding in Chinese, you say that
the precise meaning is easily inferable, too.
I gave more examples of Chinese compounds. You told me about the
ambiguity in Chinese since there are several types of composition
(which I know). Therefore, this time, I gave examples of only one
kind of compounding, namely verb + object, and explained that the
compounds still have ad-hoc meaning.
In your last post, you repeat that there are several types of
compositon that lead to ambiguity. I know that. I was not showing
ambiguity of modification, but ad-hoc composition of meaning.
You now give examples of compounds in Indonesian, and again, I agree,
there is no ambiguity of what modifies what. Still, the composition
of the meaning is ad-hoc. The semantical operation of the
modification has to be inferred. You always know that the head is
first in Indonesian, but not how the modifier changes the head's
semantics. You say it is 'consistent'. Do you mean the meaning is
consistently, predictably composed, or do you mean what modification
order consistently the same in every step of compounding, or do you
mean both?
I cannot answer but on the meta level now, because I do not get the
reason for this argument.
**Henrik
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Message: 10
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:06:15 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: PIE past time (was: isolating is equivalent to inflected)
Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
[snip]
>>
>>Are there some who believe that the past tense in English was formed
>>in this way, _verb_ + _did_? IIRC, a dental bound morpheme used to
>>indicate past time is as old as PIE.
>>
>>English: played, slept
>>Latin: laudatus
>
>
> Well, _laudatus_ isn't strictly speaking a past tense form - it's a perfect
> participle.
_laudatus_ just is _not_ past. It show perfect aspect, but is
indifferent as regards tense.
>The imperfect is _laudabam_ and the perfect is _laudavi_, without a
> dental ending.
The imperfect is certainly past and, as Andreas says, has no dental ending.
As for _laudavi_ that could be either _present_ perfect (I have praised)
or simple past (I praised); the difference between the two meanings was
felt by Classical writers in that if the so-called 'perfect tense' had a
present perfect meaning, 'primary tenses' of the subjunctive were used
in subordinate clauses; but if it had the simple past meaning, then
'historic tenses' were used. (Of course 'tenses' when referring to the
subjunctive forms did not have the strict meaning of "time reference").
The only two tenses that are unambiguously past in Latin are the
imperfect (laudabam) and the pluperfect (laudaveram) - neither has
dental endings.
> Everything I've read would indicate that the dental morpheme in Germanic pasts
> and imperfects are indeed derived from a form of the auxillary "do".
And everything I've read indicates that also. As for dentals showing
past time, one may, perhaps, think of the 'weak aorist' of ancient Greek
being formed withe dental fricative [s]. But, as the subjunctive,
optative, participle & infinitives forms of the aorist clearly show,
this was an _aspectual_ marking, not one of past time. Past time per_se
in ancient Greek was marked by the prefix e- (or, if verb with a vowel,
by lengthening the vowel): the so-called 'augment'.
I am not aware of dental being a mark of past time in PIE; but I must
confess I have not kept up to date with the latest thinking on PIE. I
should welcome enlightenment.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 11
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:12:29 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Unsubscribing from this list
--- In [email protected], Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>How the hell do I do it?
> Bryan
If I can do it, anybody should be able to do it.
My groups (I believe at the top of every page) > edit my groups >
leave group.
There, that wasn't so hard, was it? :-)>
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 01:37:11 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 07:52 +0000, R A Brown wrote:
> João Ricardo de Mendonça wrote:
> > On 12/6/05, *Gary Shannon* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
> >
> > I would really like to learn more about how a real
> > live isolating language works.
> [snip]
>
> > The usual examples of isolating languages are Mandarim and Vietnamese. I
> > guess Mandarim should be the easiest to find references for in the West.
>
> Yes, but Mandarin does have grammatical affixes; it is not purely
> isolating. In fact it has been argued on this on this list (more than
> once IIRC) that English is more isolating than modern Mandarin.
Could you perhaps direct me to one of these posts? With Google not
searching the archives anymore, and the only results the listserv's own
engine for "english mandarin isolating" being a post almost identical to
this one (you forgot to mention Thai! ;) and a couple of responses to
it, I can't find much...
--
Tristan.
> But by all accounts, Vietnamese is (almost) 100% isolating. The trouble
> is that few natlangs sit nice and neatly in these language types thought
> up by 19th century linguists.
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Message: 13
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 09:36:15 -0500
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Unsubscribing from this list
Send this message (not subject):
SIGNOFF CONLANG
to this address (not the address for sending messages to everyone):
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Original Message -----
From: Bryan Parry
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 7:41 AM
Subject: Unsubscribing from this list
How the hell do I do it?
Bryan
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
-- William Butler Yeats
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Message: 14
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 15:32:51 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: TECH: Unsubscribing from this list
Hi!
caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> --- In [email protected], Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >How the hell do I do it?
>
> > Bryan
>
> If I can do it, anybody should be able to do it.
>
> My groups (I believe at the top of every page) > edit my groups >
> leave group.
This only seems to be handle the Yahoo interface, which is a relay and
archive only, not the primary mailing list.
The main control center for this mailing list is at
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html
I told Bryan privately how to unsubscribe.
Please send technical questions to the list owners, so use
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> instead of bothering the list.
I will then try to help you! :-)
**Henrik
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Message: 15
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 01:45:16 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Unsubscribing from this list
On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 14:12 +0000, caeruleancentaur wrote:
> --- In [email protected], Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> >How the hell do I do it?
>
> > Bryan
>
>
> If I can do it, anybody should be able to do it.
>
> My groups (I believe at the top of every page) > edit my groups >
> leave group.
>
> There, that wasn't so hard, was it? :-)>
Most people aren't, I don't think, subscribed via the Yahoo! Groups
interface. (In fact, I'm surprised you can post at all via it ... there
used to be many problems!) The Yahoo! Groups conlang list is a mirror, I
believe unmaintained and unmaintainable which may or may not receive all
messages sent here, and all messages sent there may or may not get here.
(Well, that may've changed recently...) The real list is rather kindly
hosted by Brown University, which doesn't put ads anywhere, nor does it
ruin [EMAIL PROTECTED] transcriptions involving at-signs=schwas.
The intro email you get when you subscribed has detailed instructions (I
hope you kept it, it says to!), but sending a message "unsubscribe
conlang" to listserv (AT) listserv.brown.edu should do the trick.
--
Tristan
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Message: 16
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 09:55:50 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Words with built-in error correction
On 12/5/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I know it sounds a bit argumentative, but can't you just make the
> vowels farther apart? In other words, frontal a and frontal e won't
> exist, b/c they're too close.
The design goal was a hyper-redundant language
suitable for noisy environments. So there were
two layers of redundancy -- no minimal pairs among
the morphemes, and no two phonemes differing
by only one distinctive feature. I also thought
about having a gematria-checksum
at the end of each sentence, but never got
as far as implementing it, and I doubt
a language with that feature would really be speakable
in real time.
One of the phonologies I tried had these vowels:
/i:/
/e~/
/&/
/u
/o:/
/A~/
Each of those differs from all the others in at
least two out of four features -- POA, nasality,
length, rounding. There are two rounded
vowels, two nasal, and two long.
The consonants were:
/G\_h/
/N/
/j\/
/l/
/d_tD)/
/b/
All are unique in both point and manner of articulation:
one aspirated and one unaspirated stop, one nasal,
one fricative, one affricate, one lateral. (Since
the langauge is for noisy environments I made them all
voiced (except, partly, the aspirated voiced uvular stop).)
You can have a more euphonious phonology
if you just want the one layer of redundancy, though.
A slightly less strict version of my original
requirements might have no two consonants
differering only in voicing, so unvoiced fricatives
might contrast with voiced affricates and stops
at the same POA.
A less ambitious use of this kind of algorithm
would be to make the morphemes or words
*within a given semantic category* maximally
distinct. E.g., each color term would differ
by at least two phonemes from all others,
but there might be animal names or motion
verbs that differ by only one phoneme from
a color term, etc.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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Message: 17
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 07:35:32 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Words with built-in error correction
--- "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Gary wrote:
> <<
> A conlang design that is accent-proof:
> >>
>
> <snip rest>
>
> So...this assumes, then, that all consonants will be
> pronounced
> the same? And how many consonants were you
> thinking?
>
> -David
I haven't decided. My list varies between around 12
and around 22. I realize many consonants are
pronounced differently from place to place, and many
consonants do not exist in all languages, so I see
what you're getting at. But I was thinking more in
terms of people who share the same L1 and share pretty
much the same consonant set, yet still have trouble
with regional difference in vowels, much more so that
with regional differences in consonants. The really
significant differences as we go from Atlanta to
Boston to London to Bombay to Brisbane is not the
consonants as much as it is the vowels. (and 'R', of
course)
--gary
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Message: 18
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 10:47:56 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Words with built-in error correction
On 12/6/05, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --- "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > So...this assumes, then, that all consonants will be
> > pronounced
> > the same? And how many consonants were you
> > thinking?
> I haven't decided. My list varies between around 12
> and around 22. I realize many consonants are
> pronounced differently from place to place, and many
> consonants do not exist in all languages, so I see
> what you're getting at. But I was thinking more in
> terms of people who share the same L1 and share pretty
> much the same consonant set, yet still have trouble
> with regional difference in vowels, much more so that
> with regional differences in consonants. The really
In practice, I suspect that if such a language were
spoken, the fact that there is no negative feedback
(one's hearers misunderstanding one's meaning)
for mispronouncing vowels means all vowels
would be reduced to schwa in a few generations.
Or each would mutate into whatever vowel is
easiest to pronounce in the specific context
it's in -- maybe /u/ before bilabial consonants,
/i/ before palatals, /E/ or /a/ before velars, etc... One
vowel with a few allophones completely
conditioned by the neighboring consonants.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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Message: 19
Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 07:49:14 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
--- Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip>
>
> Maybe Vietnamese????
>
Whoa! That reminds me, I have Pham Xuan Thai's book on
his isolating Latin-based auxlang Lingua Sistemfrater
(aka Frater). I could have just pulled that off the
shelf. Thanks for reminding me. As I recall it's movie
adaptation would be called "The Return of Latin
Lexicon meets the Son of Vietnamese Grammar." In
living color.
--gary
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