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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: counting morphemes (was: What's a good isolating language to look
at)
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: counting morphemes (was: What's a good isolating language to look
at)
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: isolating is equivalent to inflected
From: Kyle Curia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: counting morphemes (was: What's a good isolating language to look
at)
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: IPA/CXS questions
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: IPA/CXS questions
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: IPA/CXS questions
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: IPA/CXS questions
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: IPA/CXS questions
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: IPA/CXS questions
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Sources of Irregularity (was: Re: Isolating, Inflected, Word
Building, ETC.)
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Unsubscribing from this list
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: PIE past time (was: isolating is equivalent to inflected)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Synthesis index of conlangs
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: IPA/CXS questions
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 16:16:37 -0700
From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
On 12/7/05, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I checked the gjâ-zym-byn version of the Babel text
> (not on my web site yet; I finished the second draft
> translation awhile ago, but got busy with other things
> before I had time to do an interlinear gloss). It has 208 words
> and 359 morphemes*, so an index of synthesis of 1.726.
> Like many engelangs** it's purely agglutinative; I don't have to
> count to see that the agglutinativity index is 1.0.
Oh yeah. There's the agglutinativity index as well (plus lots of other
kinds of things Greenberg mentions).
> John C. Wells, in _Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto_,***
> quotes the Greenberg article and calculates indexes
> of synthesis and agglutinativity for Esperanto.
> With texts from various authors he came up with
> indexes of synthesis from 1.80 to 2.05 -- a lot more
> variation than in the three different English texts
> Greenberg analyzed. Wells found indexes of
> agglutinativity of 1.0 in the texts he analyzed,
> but guessed that the actual index in the corpus
> as a whole is probably around 0.9999. (There
> are two affixes, -cxj- and -nj-, that act fusionally
> rather than agglutinatively.)
Cool! Saves me the trouble of trying Esperanto myself (I had planned
on it). Now how about Klingon ...
Dirk
--
Gmail Warning: Watch the reply-to!
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 00:59:00 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
Quoting Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Dirk Elzinga wrote:
> > There is an easy way to find out which language is more
> > analytic/synthetic. Take representative texts from each language,
> > count up the number of words and then the number of morphs. You can
> > then make a ratio of morphs/words--the "synthesis index"--for the
> > languages in question. In a 1960 paper, Greenberg used this method and
> > came to the conclusion that English had 1.68 morphs per word, on
> > average. Vietnamese had 1.06. (snip etc.)
Meghean, or at least my translation of the Lord's Prayer into it, comes out at
1.84.
Andreas
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:03:04 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:36:21 -0500, Jörg Rhiemeier
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Taka Tunu (who is it, by the way, hiding behind that sobriquet?),
> judging from his flamewar with Henrik, seems to have more opinion than
> sense anyway, and tends to comment on posts he hasn't read or at least
> hasn't understood. (I have observed that people hiding behind
> pseudonyms often post more bull of all sorts than people using their
> real name, by the way.) Just my impression.
The original inventor of Tunu, who may or may not be Taka Tunu (I have no
wish to speculate), back when the list was young, was a good-minded
individual, as smart, judicious and courteous as the median of the group,
at least.
I think there has been a clash of communication styles, though.
Paul
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:40:14 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: counting morphemes (was: What's a good isolating language to look
at)
Dirk Elzinga wrote:
> > There is an easy way to find out which language is more
> > analytic/synthetic. Take representative texts from each language,
> > count up the number of words and then the number of morphs.
I found a 79 word Kash text*, and began... then realized I wasn't sure about
something: _ne_, for ex.-- that's {Sing. - 3d pers. - anim. -Dative} = 4
morphemes??? What about forms not specifically marked "nominative"-- like
Engl. as well as Kash nouns; but Kash has other cases that áre marked. So
_ka/ceva_ 'traveler' would be AgentN - base - nominative??? Certainly
_ka/ceva/yi 'gen.case' would be 3.
Shocking to think that Engl. 'I' would be 3(4?) morphs.,
1st/sing/nom.(anim.?), or "a~an" would be 2, sing/indef.
What say you?
-----------------------
*the North Wind and the Sun. There's a longer text, a John Cowan mystery
translation from some years back, which contains a lot of compounds and
would be interesting-- e.g. _andakembut_ 'billboard' < NOML/base/adj.
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 01:55:50 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
Hi!
On 12/7/05, Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There is an easy way to find out which language is more
> analytic/synthetic. Take representative texts from each language,
> count up the number of words and then the number of morphs. You can
> then make a ratio of morphs/words--the "synthesis index"--for the
> languages in question. In a 1960 paper, Greenberg used this method and
> came to the conclusion that English had 1.68 morphs per word, on
> average. Vietnamese had 1.06. (Other languages that Greenberg looked
> at were Sanskrit, 2.59; Anglo-Saxon, 2.12; Persian 1.52; Yakut, 2.17;
> Swahili, 2.55; and Eskimo, 3.72. I looked at Shoshoni and my own
> conlang, Miapimoquitch, and came to 1.57 and 2.43, respectively.)
Unfortunately, the corpus is small for Qthyn|gai. Anyway, not
surprisingly, it has very high ratio -- it was designed to have a high
ratio of course. The Pater Noster has 19 words and 162 morphs, making
a synthesis index of 8.53.
I don't know exactly how to count the stems, however. Usually, they
consist of a class consonant, a root consonant, a stem vowel, and
maybe a few additional syllables (seldom). The pattern is:
<classcons> <GAP> <rootcons> <stemvowel> <stemsyllables>
\__________affix_stem________________/
\__________________full_stem___________________________/
The <GAP> is for infixes (usually the case).
Of course, such a composition is one lexicon entry, so I might want to
count it as 1. OTOH, it is perfectly transparent and regularly
composed, so I could count it as 3 at maximum (stem vowel + stem
syllables are definitely a unit). Due to the fact that the class
consonant is dropped when a stem is used as an affix, such a lexicon
entry has two morphological parts, so I decided I'll count that: the
class consonant is one morpheme, and the other pieces are a second
morpheme. So that's 2 then.
Tyl Sjok is easy: it has an index of 1 by construction.
Da Mätz se Basa is less pure (it's my only a posteriori lang and has
some fused lexicon entries), but it also has a synthesis index of 1, I
think. The fused forms are archaic constructions and lexicalised.
Let's check Fukhian (from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy):
107 morphs in 37 words makes a synth index of 2.89.
Interesting! :-)
I'm a bit surprised about the Eskimo index, BTW, but this is probably
Inuktitut, right? Modern Kalaallisut probably has a bit more, but I
can't find my grammar which contains an annotated text. Grrr.
Anyway, my counting would not mean much as the variation is probably
quite high from text to text.
**Henrik
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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:49:46 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:59:00 -0500, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Quoting Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>> Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>> > There is an easy way to find out which language is more
>> > analytic/synthetic. Take representative texts from each language,
>> > count up the number of words and then the number of morphs. You can
>> > then make a ratio of morphs/words--the "synthesis index"--for the
>> > languages in question. In a 1960 paper, Greenberg used this method and
>> > came to the conclusion that English had 1.68 morphs per word, on
>> > average. Vietnamese had 1.06. (snip etc.)
>
> Meghean, or at least my translation of the Lord's Prayer into it, comes
> out at 1.84.
These are guesses, based on my plans for the languages:
Lizardman is very marginally more than one, due to the fusional but
optional gender particles, and a small number of words that can be
analysed as compounds.
Br'ga is probably right around the 2.0 mark, since ... well, since almost
all words are noun-verb pairs.
Thagojian might be as high as 3.5, at a guess. Maybe even a nadge higher.
I have been having ideas for another language in, I suspect, the 3.0
range, with a large standard deviation. The consonant set is inspired by
the posts on pregreek and on consonant harmony, and the vowel system and
bits of morphology have come from an abandoned project:
Onsets:
p /p/
t /t/
d /t/
k /k/
g /q/
q /?/
h /h/
Glides:
y /j/
w /w/
Vowels:
a á â /V A A:/
e é ê /e E E:/
i í î /I i i:/
o ó ô /o O O:/
u ú û /U u u:/
Syllable structure is C(Y)V.
Words contain either
A) bilabials, alveolars, velars, glottals, or
B) bilabials, retroflexes, uvulars, glottals
The letter |p| may optionally be written |b| in B-harmony words.
Paul
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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 02:33:58 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: counting morphemes (was: What's a good isolating language to look
at)
Quoting Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>
> > > There is an easy way to find out which language is more
> > > analytic/synthetic. Take representative texts from each language,
> > > count up the number of words and then the number of morphs.
>
> I found a 79 word Kash text*, and began... then realized I wasn't sure about
> something: _ne_, for ex.-- that's {Sing. - 3d pers. - anim. -Dative} = 4
> morphemes???
It's one morpheme - assuming it's not divisible -, but four "sememes", asuming
that to be a word. IOW, it would count as 1 morpheme/word for the synethesis
index, but 4 sememes/morpheme for the agglutinativity index (oughtn't that
rather be called a fusionality index, BTW?).
Andreas
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Message: 8
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 20:05:01 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>>I'd think someone who'd compare the "semantical efficience" of kanji (a
>>writing
>>system) and European systems of derivation (an entity vague enough to approach
>>meaninglessness, but certainly not a writing system) is a lost case anyway.
>
>
> Well put. How do you compare writing systems with (subsystems of)
> languages? That's meaningless. But there are countless crackpots who
> cannot tell one from the other, uttering such claims as "Sumerian is
> the world's oldest language". Beep beep. And "European language" is a
> meaninglessly vague concept anyway.
Well, specifically with the kanji you have a case where a character
tends to correspond with one or more morphemes of similar meaning that
are used in word derivation, so it's not a totally meaningless
comparison. It can be an interesting exercise to play around with how
Latin elements of English words can be written with Chinese characters,
for instance.
è·æ¾ compose
åæ¾ dispose
å
§æ¾ impose
å
§æ impend
ä¸æ suspend
ä¸æ subject
å
§æ inject
etc. You could make a list of elements of Latin words in English and
compare them with Chinese elements in Japanese. As far as the meanings
of the individual kanji in Sino-Japanese compounds, I suspect they'll
end up looking about as vague as the corresponding elements of compounds
in Latin or other European languages. (Look at the Japanese word
"sensei" meaning "teacher", for instance, from roots meaning "before,
previous" and "life, birth"; you might assume that this word refers to
ancestors if you didn't know its meaning.) In fact, I'd say it's pretty
likely that the fewer the semantic elements that can be combined, the
vaguer the meanings of the roots will be. But the meanings of the
compounds will be learned individually, just like the meanings of the
English words "compose", "dispose", "impose", etc. (does it really help
in learning the meanings of these words that they all share the root
"pose"?)
I don't have any idea if a direct comparison of languages as different
as Japanese and Latin would necessarily provide any information useful
to linguists, but surely conlangers can find useful inspiration from the
comparison.
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Message: 9
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 20:19:54 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
caeruleancentaur wrote:
> I am presently using _ÿéðmëdênqon_, "land tongue," for peninsula and
> cape, but I'm looking for a better word.
Arm? Tail? Branch?
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Message: 10
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 18:24:34 -0800
From: Kyle Curia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: isolating is equivalent to inflected
On Dec 5, 2005, at 12:27 PM, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Quoting caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>> --- In [email protected], João Ricardo de Mendonça
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> So, for example, English "played" cannot be broken down into two
>>> words play + did. You can't have words between them (compare: "He
>>> will _probably_ play with us", but not * "He play probably did").
>>> The fact that sometime in the past people actually spoke "He play
>>> did" instead of "He played" does not affect the way current English
>>> speakers analise their language.
>>
>> 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. The imperfect is _laudabam_ and the perfect is
> _laudavi_, without a
> dental ending.
>
> 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".
>
> Andreas
Hi!
Andreas, actually laudatus is perfect passive participle.
<<
cantatus = perfect passive participle = shows the stem for passive
voice and perfect tenses = having been sung
>>
Just thought I would clear that up.
Kyle
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Message: 11
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 21:45:06 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: counting morphemes (was: What's a good isolating language to look
at)
On 12/7/05, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It's one morpheme - assuming it's not divisible -, but four "sememes", asuming
> that to be a word. IOW, it would count as 1 morpheme/word for the synethesis
> index, but 4 sememes/morpheme for the agglutinativity index (oughtn't that
> rather be called a fusionality index, BTW?).
I reckon it's called an agglutinativity index because the higher
the value, the more agglutinative the language is. You count
the number of morpheme-junctions (J) and then number of junctions
that are agglutinative rather than synthetic (A) and divide J/A.
Wells, citing Greenberg, says "Cxe cxiu paro oni esploras,
cxu cxiu el la du vortelementoj povas varii, aux ne. Se ili
ambaux estas nevariivaj aux varias auxtomate, oni nomas la
konstruon aglutina." (For each pair one checks whether
both elements can vary. If both are invariable or vary
automatically [by phonological conditioning?], one calls
the construction agglutinative.)
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 22:16:39 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 21:05:01 -0500, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> But the meanings of the compounds will be learned individually, just
> like the meanings of the English words "compose", "dispose", "impose",
> etc. (does it really help in learning the meanings of these words that
> they all share the root "pose"?)
Well, if you know that "pose" means "place (v)", it helps. At least, it
helps me. I never could get the hang of "invoke" vs "evoke" until I
cottoned the connection to "vocare".
I'm wondering whether Latin might not be more suited to Kanji than
English, if only because there would (it seems to me) be fewer eroded and
degraded parts of words to have to wonder about. For that matter, what
about the failed but IMO brilliant-at-least-in-concept IAL Glossa? That's
got good, robust compounding elements that combine logically, or at least
the mechanics of it are logical in that they have no sandhi that I recall.
Paul
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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 22:54:24 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IPA/CXS questions
Mark Reed wrote:
Jim Henry wrote:
> 2. How to transcribe the retroflex vowel (or rhoticized schwa?)
> > that's final in English "finger", initial in "earn"? Some
> > transcriptions
> > I've seen just use schwa, which I reckon must be based
> > on non-rhotic dialects that lack this retroflex vowel.
>
>
> Correct. In rhotic dialects of English, that's regarded as a syllabic
> (vocalic) version of the consonantal "r" phoneme, so it's represented by
> the
> symbol for that sound with the "syllabic" diacritic - an underdot in IPA,
> a
> trailing = in CXS. The specific sound varies by dialect but r\= (IPA
> ɹ plus an underdot) is a popular choice.
>
There's also "reversed epsilon" (CXS [3]) which I at least modify with
circumflex (IPA hook) for the retroflexed _stressed_ vowel of bird, hurt et
al. [3^]. But I'm not sure this is proper CXS. Your [r\=] gets the point
across too.
The unstressed final version (as in the -er suffix) would then be [EMAIL
PROTECTED]; the
two vowels are phonetically distinct IMO. One advantage of this system is
that for non-rhotic dialects, you simply drop the diacritic ^.
I may have mentioned-- a Brit came to the school in Java where I was
teaching and exposed the students to a quite unfamiliar accent. He read from
a TIME mag. article that included the word "smirk" [sm3:k]-- The Indo.
students apparently didn't know the word at all and were totally flummoxed.
I was too, a bit, but managed to figure it out from context...........
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Message: 14
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 23:04:09 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IPA/CXS questions
On 12/7/05, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> There's also "reversed epsilon" (CXS [3]) which I at least modify with
> circumflex (IPA hook) for the retroflexed _stressed_ vowel of bird, hurt
> et
> al. [3^]. But I'm not sure this is proper CXS. Your [r\=] gets the point
> across too.
I thought the CXS for rhotic hook was `, not ^?
The unstressed final version (as in the -er suffix) would then be [EMAIL
PROTECTED]; the
> two vowels are phonetically distinct IMO.
Not IMD; "bird" and "encumbered" and "burred" are a three-way perfect
rhyme. But that way lies YAEPT.
I may have mentioned-- a Brit came to the school in Java where I was
> teaching and exposed the students to a quite unfamiliar accent. He read
> from
> a TIME mag. article that included the word "smirk" [sm3:k]-- The Indo.
> students apparently didn't know the word at all and were totally
> flummoxed.
> I was too, a bit, but managed to figure it out from context...........
>
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 15
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:22:33 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IPA/CXS questions
On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 23:04 -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On 12/7/05, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> There's also "reversed epsilon" (CXS [3]) which I at least
> modify with
> circumflex (IPA hook) for the retroflexed _stressed_ vowel of
> bird, hurt et
> al. [3^]. But I'm not sure this is proper CXS. Your [r\=] gets
> the point
> across too.
>
> I thought the CXS for rhotic hook was `, not ^?
Yes, that's true. ` is a rhotic hook on vowels and a retroflexion
diacritic on consonants. I can't think of what ^ means though---I think
some people might use it to denote superscripts, thus t^h instead of t_h
> The unstressed final version (as in the -er suffix) would then
> be [EMAIL PROTECTED]; the
> two vowels are phonetically distinct IMO.
>
> Not IMD; "bird" and "encumbered" and "burred" are a three-way perfect
> rhyme. But that way lies YAEPT.
I don't mean to take you up on the YAEPT, but I am slightly curious---is
it really a perfect rhyme, and the difference in stress doesn't get in
the way? I thought most dialects had the last syllable of "encumbered"
unstressed, and rhyming is usually considered to occur from the last
stressed syllable unwards---thus "encumbered" can normally only rhyme
with two-or-more syllable words.
(At this point, Roger wrote and Mark snipped:)
> > One advantage of this system is
> > that for non-rhotic dialects, you simply drop the diacritic ^.
Not quite true---most transcriptions of non-rhotic dialects mark length,
whereas American English at least is typically written without length
marked, thus /3`/ -> /3:/ and /@`/ -> /@/. Still, in the normal way of
writing RP you can always work out from the symbols whether a length
mark should follow or not. (One common way of writing Australian English
doesn't mark length used by frex. the Macquarie Dictionary; it strikes
me as pretty silly because then the only phonetic difference
between /fVs/=[fa_"s] and /fAs/=[fa_":s] is not even mentioned.)
--
Tristan
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Message: 16
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 01:08:27 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IPA/CXS questions
Tristan wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 23:04 -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > On 12/7/05, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > There's also "reversed epsilon" (CXS [3]) which I at least
> > modify with
> > circumflex (IPA hook) for the retroflexed _stressed_ vowel of
> > bird, hurt et
> > al. [3^]. But I'm not sure this is proper CXS. Your [r\=] gets
> > the point
> > across too.
> >
> > I thought the CXS for rhotic hook was `, not ^?
>
> Yes, that's true. ` is a rhotic hook on vowels and a retroflexion
> diacritic on consonants. I can't think of what ^ means though
You're right. It could be I was thinking of X-Sampa, plain Sampa or even
Kirshenbaum, but I know I've seen it used....and it does look quite like the
hook in IPA.
> > Not IMD; "bird" and "encumbered" and "burred" are a three-way perfect
> > rhyme. But that way lies YAEPT.
>
> I don't mean to take you up on the YAEPT, but I am slightly curious---is
> it really a perfect rhyme, and the difference in stress doesn't get in
> the way? I thought most dialects had the last syllable of "encumbered"
> unstressed, and rhyming is usually considered to occur from the last
> stressed syllable unwards---thus "encumbered" can normally only rhyme
> with two-or-more syllable words.
Agree on that; false rhyme at best.
>
> (At this point, Roger wrote and Mark snipped:)
> > > One advantage of this system is
> > > that for non-rhotic dialects, you simply drop the diacritic ^.
>
> Not quite true---most transcriptions of non-rhotic dialects mark length,
> whereas American English at least is typically written without length
> marked, thus /3`/ -> /3:/ and /@`/ -> /@/.
You are correct again.
Still, in the normal way of
> writing RP you can always work out from the symbols whether a length
> mark should follow or not. (One common way of writing Australian English
> doesn't mark length used by frex. the Macquarie Dictionary; it strikes
> me as pretty silly because then the only phonetic difference
> between /fVs/=[fa_"s] and /fAs/=[fa_":s] is not even mentioned.)
>
Umm, what words are these? fuss and farce?
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Message: 17
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 01:23:05 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IPA/CXS questions
On 12/8/05, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Tristan wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2005-12-07 at 23:04 -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > > Not IMD; "bird" and "encumbered" and "burred" are a three-way perfect
> > > rhyme. But that way lies YAEPT.
> >
> > I don't mean to take you up on the YAEPT, but I am slightly curious---is
> > it really a perfect rhyme, and the difference in stress doesn't get in
> > the way?
> Agree on that; false rhyme at best.
They don't actually rhyme in the sense that I could make a poetic couplet
out of them, no, but the last syllable of "encumbered" is phonetically
identical with the word "bird": despite the lack of stress in the former,
the vowel quality is not reduced. It's the same vowel as in "heard",
"cured", and "demurred", but, perhaps oddly, not "lured", which has a [u] in
it.
I find the non-rhotic version of words like "bird" to sound strangely
exotic; I'd expect [bV:d] or [bU:d] but the actual vowel seems to be not
quite either of those but something in between.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 18
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 17:36:42 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IPA/CXS questions
On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 01:08 -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
> Still, in the normal way of
> > writing RP you can always work out from the symbols whether a length
> > mark should follow or not. (One common way of writing Australian English
> > doesn't mark length used by frex. the Macquarie Dictionary; it strikes
> > me as pretty silly because then the only phonetic difference
> > between /fVs/=[fa_"s] and /fAs/=[fa_":s] is not even mentioned.)
> >
> Umm, what words are these? fuss and farce?
Yes. Though actually, I'm wrong and "farce" should've been written
as /fas/ if we're going by the so-called Mitchell & Delbridge scheme
(which is the one used in the IPA), as opposed to the various revised
schemes which would denote them as /fas/ and /fa:s/ or /f6s/ and /f6:s/.
--
Tristan
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Message: 19
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 23:14:31 -0800
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sources of Irregularity (was: Re: Isolating, Inflected, Word
Building, ETC.)
Jim Henry Wrote:
> Something similar happened in French with three or
> more
> different verbs combining to be the different stems
> of "être" in various persons, tenses and moods. But
> I can't
> recall what the specific Latin or Old French verbs
> were.
> I think one was related to "suivre" (to follow);
> indeed
> the first person singular present indicative active
> is the same for both "être" and "suive", "je suis".
> A quick Google search didn't turn up anything.
Etre in French (with no accents):
present
suis, es, est, sommes, etes, sont
imperfect:
etais, etais, etait, etions, etiez, etaient
past (simple)
fus, fus, fut, fumes, futes, furent
subjunctive
sois, sois, soit, soyons, soyez, soient
imperfect subjunctive
fusse, fusses, fut, fussions, fussiez, fussent
future
serai, seras, sera, serons, serez, seront
conditional
serais, serais, serait, serions, seriez, seraient
past participle
ete
present participle
etant
infinitive
etre
Origin:
1) All of the present is from Latin: sum, es, est,
sumus, estis, sunt. The -s in "suis" is analogical,
Old French was "sui".
2) Unsure where the Imperfect came from. The Old
French imperfect had two variants, one survived in
Modern French, one did not: iere, ieres, iert/iere,
eriiens, eriiez, ierent. (from Latin: eram, eras,
erat, eramus, eratis, erant) The one that did survive
was: estoie (etc etc). This was from the imperfect of
the Latin verb: stare "to stand"
3) Past Simple is from Latin: fui, fuisti, fuit,
fuimus, fuistis, fuerunt
4) The subjunctive wasx some how derived from Latin:
sim, sis, sit, simus, sitis, sint.
5) The impefect subunction derived from Latin's
Pluperfect Subjunctive: fuissem, fuisses, fuisset,
fuissemus, fuissetis, fuissent
6) The future is from the Latin Verb: sedere "to
sit". In Old French, the Latin future of "esse"
survived: (i)er, (i)ers, (i)ert, (i)ermes, no 2nd
plural, (i)erent. This was from Latin erim, eris,
erit, erimus, eritis, erunt. Another future was, in
Old French, estrai, estras, estra (etc). This was the
future of the Vulgure LAtin verb "essere".
7) The past participle is the past participle of the
Latin verb stare: statum
8) The present participle is from Latin "stare" also:
stans
9) The infinitive is from Vulgar Latin "essere" a
form build from Classical "esse" plus the usual
infinitive ending.
So, there are 5 bases:
esse (present, OF imperfect, OF future,
subjunctive)
essere (infinitive, OF future)
sedere (Future, Conditional)
fu- (Indo-European -bhew-, English "be", past,
impft subj)
stare (imperfect, participles)
Of course, essere and esse are originally just one
Latin base.
-Elliott.
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
> ...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
>
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Message: 20
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 07:48:43 +0000
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Unsubscribing from this list
Okay, I've done what people say, but it ain't working. Can anyone offer me
any advice, or could an administrator just remoove me, please, as this is
getting a little bit longsome now. :)
Cheers,
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: 21
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:10:01 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
Rob Haden wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Dec 2005 21:20:17 +0100, =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
>>
>>Irish has _inis_, Welsh has _ynys_, and Latin _insula_ looks
>>like a diminutive of a similar word (perhaps _insula_ < *inis-ula?).
>>So this looks like an Italo-Celtic etymology, but there may be
>>problems with this I do not see. Ray?
As you will have seen, I quite independently wrote in with the some
etymology :)
>>=========================================================================
>
>
> AFAIK, *inis-ula would have given Latin *inirula or *inilla (< *inirla).
That assumes that the original was *inisula and, presumably, that the
second 'i' was long. The comparison with the Celtic forms does not AFAIK
demand this.
In his "An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language", Alexander
McBain gives the etymon of the Celtic forms as *n=ss. This would give
Latin *inss- and thus the (originally) diminunitive would be ins(s)ula.
Now, I am not an expert in Celtic etymology, so I cannot tell how sound
McBain's etymology is. But if he is correct about *n=ss, then there is
no problem with the Latin form as far as I can see.
What I find less convincing is relating this stem to the Greek forms
that I cited in my last mail.
--
Ray
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Message: 22
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 09:10:24 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: PIE past time (was: isolating is equivalent to inflected)
Rob Haden wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Dec 2005 14:06:15 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>
>>_laudatus_ just is _not_ past. It shows perfect aspect, but is
>>indifferent as regards tense.
>
>
> It is also (generally, at least) passive. That is, _lauda:tus_
> meant 'having been praised', not 'having praised'.
Yes, I know - but the question was about _tense_, which often gets mixed
up with aspect, so I didn't see much point in mentioning voice. But,
generally, they were passive, it is true; tho there are some notable
active forms such as 'cenatus' = "having dined, having had supper".
Also, of course, the perfect participles of deponent verbs were always
active in meaning.
But the point I was making is that the participle denotes perfect
aspect, not past time.
>
>>>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.
>
>
> Current speculation has the Latin imperfect and future tenses arising from
> forms of the IE verb *bheux- 'be(come)' (here I use <x> for 'h2').
> Corroborating evidence for this hypothesis comes from related Italic
> languages, such as the closely related Faliscan: cf. Faliscan _carefo_ 'I
> will be without' vs. Latin _care:bo:_ (here Faliscan has */bh/ > /f/ in
> medial position, while Latin does not).
Correct - tho this only applies to the futures of the 1st & 2nd
conjugations, and to the alternative 'non-standard' 4th conj, forms such
as _audibo_ "I shall hear". The futures of the 3rd conj. and the
standard 4th conj. forms seems to have been derived from earlier
subjunctive forms.
However, yes, all imperfect indicatives are though to have originated
from the IE verb *bheux- with the sole exceptions of 'eram' "I was" and
'poteram' "I could".
>>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 two-way usage here probably comes from the fact that the Latin "perfect
> tense" had its origins in the IE stative conjugation.
I agree.
[snip]
> . In any case, the Latin "perfect tense" is the result of combining the
> earlier stative conjugation with other IE elements (including some eventive
> endings, such as the present-indicative marker *-i in 1/2sg, 3sg *-t, and
> the sigmatic aorist suffix *-s).
Yep.
[snip]
>>
>>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.
>
>
> What's interesting about the IE verb system is that it must have been a
> system in flux. Namely, at the time of "breakup" (i.e. earliest dialectal
> divergence to interfere with intelligibility), IE's verb system was
> shifting from a primarily aspect-based scheme to a tense-based one.
I am sure you right. Indeed PIE must always have been in a state of flux
as there was no authority for standardizing language at the time. The
idea, which sometimes seems to be given, that at some time in the past
there was a standard, monolithic PIE is surely incorrect.
The rest snipped - but read with great interest. Thanks, Rob, for the
info. I found it very informative.
--
Ray
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Message: 23
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 10:28:56 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Synthesis index of conlangs
Having done some quick stats on a sample of relay texts, I estimate the
synthesis index of Khangaþyagon to be 2.59
Number of morphemes Words
1 72
2 80
3 100
4 40
5 18
6 6
Total 818 morphemes in 316 words.
Pete
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Message: 24
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 11:05:15 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IPA/CXS questions
Staving Mark J. Reed:
>Not IMD; "bird" and "encumbered" and "burred" are a three-way perfect
>rhyme. But that way lies YAEPT.
Which we must circumvent by invoking Bleackley's Law of English Pronunciation:
Somebody Says It Differently
Pete
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Message: 25
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 12:35:22 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
Hi!
Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 21:05:01 -0500, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > But the meanings of the compounds will be learned individually, just
> > like the meanings of the English words "compose", "dispose",
> > "impose", etc. (does it really help in learning the meanings of
> > these words that they all share the root "pose"?)
>
> Well, if you know that "pose" means "place (v)", it helps. At least,
> it helps me. I never could get the hang of "invoke" vs "evoke" until
> I cottoned the connection to "vocare".
>
> I'm wondering whether Latin might not be more suited to Kanji than
> English, if only because there would (it seems to me) be fewer eroded
> and degraded parts of words to have to wonder about. For that matter,
> what about the failed but IMO brilliant-at-least-in-concept IAL
> Glossa? That's got good, robust compounding elements that combine
> logically, or at least the mechanics of it are logical in that they
> have no sandhi that I recall.
I thought about trying this for German, but never did. :-) Further, my
idea was to write the inflectional endings in a different script just
like in Japanese or Korean. I never really started, though. I think
I've seen a Wiki somewhere where a project of this kind is started. I
rembember it had some 50 entries or so and indeed decomposed Latin
loans in English (but not exclusively these words) into Kanji.
The transparency of the compounds written in Chinese must really be a
help in understanding one's own language. Especially for Japanese and
Koreans etc. who have a lot of Chinese loans, which become clear by
how they are written. I even read in a Chinese forum that people
whose mothertongue is Shanghainese had this 'aha!' when they learned
to write, because some compounds (non-loans! native ones!) was already
heavily fused and unanalysable from spoken language alone.
Exactly the way you describe, I still find Latin or Greek words I
suddenly understand compositionally by identifying a stem. If they
were written in a Kanji style writing system, I'd have understood them
much earlier, of course.
A Korean told me that many from the the younger generation lose this
insight now, because Hanja aren't used much anymore. He found it very
sad that this heritage is lost (and so did I) -- Korean has a vast
amount of loans from Chinese.
**Henrik
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