------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page
http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/GSaulB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: cthulhu fhtagn
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Lenition or Elision or What?
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: The WD theory
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: cthulhu fhtagn
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: The WD theory
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language to
look at)
From: Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: The WD theory
From: Christian Köttl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: The WD theory
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Update of gjâ-zym-byn site
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: cthulhu fhtagn
From: Aaron Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 09:36:19 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:10:01 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>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.
I suppose the second 'i' would indeed have to be long; otherwise, it would
have been lost to syncope in Latin.
>In his "An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language", Alexander
>McBain gives the etymon of the Celtic forms as *n=ss.
Is that a syllabic /n/? If so, why is the whole form zero-grade? I'm
assuming that the IE etymon (if there was one) would mean 'not (something)'.
>This would give Latin *inss- and thus the (originally) diminunitive would
>be ins(s)ula.
Sure, that could work. Many other words in Latin traditionally spelled
with a single intervocalic <s> originally had <ss>, e.g. <casus> < <cassus>
(from IE *kadtos).
>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.
Where did the medial vowel in the Irish and Welsh forms come from?
>What I find less convincing is relating this stem to the Greek forms
>that I cited in my last mail.
>--
>Ray
I'll have to look those up. :)
- Rob
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 17:13:36 +0200
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: cthulhu fhtagn
Aaron Grahn wrote:
>My belief (with not much basis, except that I don't think Lovecraft
>was a conlanger) is that it has no precise meaning.
I don't think he was one either ... however, why should that stop us from
speculating? :)
>I would render fhtagn as to wait, third person singular present
>indicative, simply because "Cthulhu fhtagn" is repeated as a single
>unit, and "Cthulhu waits" makes sense in an eerie kind of way.
Hmm ... could be. I have no idea where I got the "fhtagn = dead" connection
from. As far as eerieness goes, it could even mean "to wait dead"; or how
about a fairly wide sense of "to hibernate" with grammatical particles in
the full phrase specifying deadness and/or awaitingness?
>For those who may not have read Lovecraft:
>Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
>In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
>
>The questions are: Where is the "at" in "at R'lyeh"?
Perhaps in the word itself? Human worshippers might have borrowed an
inflected form of the city's name from the mantra. See below for more on
this theory.
BTW, the lesser city by Innsmouth is "Yha-nthlei".
>Is there a significance to "'n" (repeated thrice) or "'na" (twice)?
Probably, it doesn't appear in proper names almost at all so it's likely not
merely a phoneme/cluster. "gl" is another unit that repeats thrice here but
very little in proper names.
It's also notable that both <fh> and <ph> appear as digraphs; this seems a
little unlikely. My guess is that the former has a breathy vowel of some
sort, while the latter is just /p_h/.
There's also a somewhat common -oth ending (shoggoth, Yog-Sothoth,
Yuggoth...), tho eventually a question comes up: which terms can actually be
considered to be proper middle R'lyeh (the classical language of the Deep
Ones?)
>Are the word boundaries even correctly placed? Lovecraft says that
>"the word divisions [were] guessed at from traditional breaks in the
>phrase as chanted aloud".
So the existing ones are probably correct, but there might be others? Maybe,
but we really don't have a clue where they might be... If even word
boundaries aren't known for sure, how could the transcriber use the
apostrophe to mark an enclitic? I vote for a (as clishaic as it sounds) a
glottal stop.
I also figure <'n> and <gl> might be compulsory infixes of some sort. Start
with "phi mw.f wg.ah" = "dream possessed-abode dead-wait". Infix <'na> after
the first consonant cluster of each word to refer to Cthulhu (the roots <f>
and <wg> are already governed by another word) and mark the locative by <-h>
= /h\=/ to get "ph'nai mw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'na". This only leaves the
<gl> affix. It inserts in the middle of the <mw> root and the <'na> in
<ph'nai>, but *after* the <'na> in <wgah'na>. My best guess at the moment
is that it is some sort of a verbality marker; possession and dreaming could
be regarded as kind of participes, while "to wait" acts as an auxiliary. The
<u> in "Ph'nglui" might be due to assimilation with the [+high] of <i> and
the [+back] of <gl>.
So, "ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
would translate approx. as
"dreamful-3SP possesful-3SP-abode-in Cthulhu R'lye-in dead-waits hibernate"
/p_h?nL\aI mL\w?nafh\= kt_hUKU [EMAIL PROTECTED] wgah?naL\ fh\=taN\/
[pf)_>NL\UI]
However, I still don't know why does the <gl> appear inside the nominal
referent marker in "ph'nglui" but inside the root in "mglw'nafh"? Furher
theories welcome :)
>And, I just can't resist including this URL:
>http://cthulhu.slimyhorror.com/hpl.html. Enjoy.
>
>þ
I see your plushies and raise http://www.hello-cthulhu.com/ :b
John Vertical
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 10:10:52 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:10:01 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>What I find less convincing is relating this stem to the Greek forms
>that I cited in my last mail.
Found them. :)
>Some people connect the Celtic & Latin forms also with the ancient Greek
>/na:sos/ or /nE:sos / (according to dialect; the modern Greek is /nisos/).
I suspected that's what you meant before I knew for sure. The Greek forms
seem to go back to *nexsos, if from a root *nexs-. Now interestingly
enough, the IE root for 'nose' is very similar, if not the same:
Latin _na:ris_ (< *na:sis) 'nostril', _na:sus_ 'nose' (however, we should
expect _na:rus_ here, so this may be a loanword (from Greek?))
Greek _na:sos_ / _ne:sos_ 'island'
Sanskrit _na:sa:_ 'nose'
English _nose_ < Old English _no:su_ 'nose', possibly _snore_ if from
*sna:re
German _Nase_ 'nose'
Russian _nos_ 'nose'
All of these forms seem to point to an IE root *nexs- (> *na:s-). However,
some descendants show a short vowel (Germanic, Slavic) and others a long
one. Reconciling these different 'grades' has been an ongoing problem.
Anyways, it seems to me like the word for 'nose' could be metaphorically
extended to mean 'island' (after all, they often look like "noses" of land
poking up out of the water). Then with a feminine diminutive, we'd get
*nxsláx > *nslá: 'little nose'. Add the sound changes from IE to Latin and
we should get _insula_.
- Rob
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:16:15 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
Rob Haden wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:10:01 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[snip]
>>In his "An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language", Alexander
>>McBain gives the etymon of the Celtic forms as *n=ss.
>
>
> Is that a syllabic /n/? If so, why is the whole form zero-grade?
That is what I understand McBain to mean.
>I'm
> assuming that the IE etymon (if there was one) would mean 'not (something)'.
I assumed it was not of IE origin, but came from otherwise unknown
western (or central) European source. But McBain is silent on this. He
does quote someone called Strachan who suggested that it was derived
from *eni-sti^ [sic] meaning "in-standing" - but I find that
unconvincing and so, I think, did McBain.
[snip]
>>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.
>
>
> Where did the medial vowel in the Irish and Welsh forms come from?
Presumably it was originally an epenthetic vowel but, as I wrote, I am
no expert on Celtic etymology. But a similar thing seems to happen with
the word for 'mountain':
>
>>What I find less convincing is relating this stem to the Greek forms
>>that I cited in my last mail.
===================================
Rob Haden wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 08:10:01 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[snip]
> Found them. :)
>
>
>>Some people connect the Celtic & Latin forms also with the ancient Greek
>>/na:sos/ or /nE:sos / (according to dialect; the modern Greek is
/nisos/).
>
>
> I suspected that's what you meant before I knew for sure. The Greek
forms
> seem to go back to *nexsos, if from a root *nexs-. Now interestingly
> enough, the IE root for 'nose' is very similar, if not the same:
I have seen them related to PIE root for "swim" also, but your etymology
is easier as regards the sound changes, I think.
>
> Latin _na:ris_ (< *na:sis) 'nostril', _na:sus_ 'nose' (however, we
should
> expect _na:rus_ here, so this may be a loanword (from Greek?))
Um - the vowel is OK, as the earliest Latin borrowing from Greek were
from the Doric dialect (spoken in southern Italy) which preserved /a:/.
But the meaning is against it, I think. The meaning 'nose' had long been
forgotten by the Greeks (whose word for 'nose' was _rhis_ (gen:
_rhinos_)). I suspect it is from a Italian dialect form.
> Greek _na:sos_ / _ne:sos_ 'island'
>
> Sanskrit _na:sa:_ 'nose'
>
> English _nose_ < Old English _no:su_ 'nose', possibly _snore_ if from
> *sna:re
>
> German _Nase_ 'nose'
>
> Russian _nos_ 'nose'
>
> All of these forms seem to point to an IE root *nexs- (> *na:s-).
However,
> some descendants show a short vowel (Germanic, Slavic) and others a long
> one. Reconciling these different 'grades' has been an ongoing problem.
> Anyways, it seems to me like the word for 'nose' could be metaphorically
> extended to mean 'island' (after all, they often look like "noses" of
land
> poking up out of the water). Then with a feminine diminutive, we'd get
> *nxsláx > *nslá: 'little nose'. Add the sound changes from IE to
Latin and
> we should get _insula_.
Interesting theory. I wonder if McBain's *n=ss could be cognate also.
Interesting that, like Greek, the Celtic langs do not retain a
derivative of *nexs- to denote 'nose'.
Breton: froan
Welsh: ffroen
Gaelic & Irish: sròn (sro`n)
These are apparently derived from a Proto-Celtic *srogna-
The Breton and welsh words mean 'nostril' rather than nose. the normal
welsh word for 'nose' is _trwyn_ (Cornish _trein_), and the Breton is _fri_.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 12:00:46 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:16:15 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>I have seen them related to PIE root for "swim" also, but your etymology
>is easier as regards the sound changes, I think.
Plus, the semantics are way off -- how can one derive 'nose' from 'swim'
(or vice-versa)?
> > Latin _na:ris_ (< *na:sis) 'nostril', _na:sus_ 'nose' (however, we
> > should expect _na:rus_ here, so this may be a loanword (from Greek?))
>
>Um - the vowel is OK, as the earliest Latin borrowing from Greek were
>from the Doric dialect (spoken in southern Italy) which preserved /a:/.
>But the meaning is against it, I think. The meaning 'nose' had long been
>forgotten by the Greeks (whose word for 'nose' was _rhis_ (gen:
>_rhinos_)). I suspect it is from a Italian dialect form.
It could be. Or, the original Greek form was *na:ssos -- see below.
> > Greek _na:sos_ / _ne:sos_ 'island'
> >
> > Sanskrit _na:sa:_ 'nose'
> >
> > English _nose_ < Old English _no:su_ 'nose', possibly _snore_ if from
> > *sna:re
> >
> > German _Nase_ 'nose'
> >
> > Russian _nos_ 'nose'
> >
> > All of these forms seem to point to an IE root *nexs- (> *na:s-).
> > However, some descendants show a short vowel (Germanic, Slavic) and
> > others a long one. Reconciling these different 'grades' has been an
> > ongoing problem. Anyways, it seems to me like the word for 'nose' could
> > be metaphorically extended to mean 'island' (after all, they often look
> > like "noses" of land poking up out of the water). Then with a feminine
> > diminutive, we'd get *nxsláx > *nslá: 'little nose'. Add the sound
> > changes from IE to Latin and we should get _insula_.
>
>Interesting theory. I wonder if McBain's *n=ss could be cognate also.
>Interesting that, like Greek, the Celtic langs do not retain a
>derivative of *nexs- to denote 'nose'.
There's another slight problem, actually. Intervocalic */s/ becomes /0/
(via */h/) before Greek. So, either the original Greek word was *na:ssos,
or */s/ became */h/ before */x/ (= 'h2') was lost.
Also, interestingly enough, both West (Insular) Germanic and North Germanic
retain a long vowel in their words for 'nose'. This suggests to me that
Old High German (_nasa_) shortened the root vowel in the nominative, either
through analogy with the weak cases (which would have preserved a short
vowel, AFAIK) or through independent sound change. I also think that this
was the case with Slavic, since the Lithuanian word for 'nose' is _nósis_,
with an acute (i.e. long) /o/. Furthermore, both Germanic and Balto-Slavic
appear to have continued the root noun, which would have had a declension
like this (in IE):
nom sg. néxss pl. néxses
acc sg. néxsm pl. néxsns
gen sg. nxsós pl. nxsóm
dat sg. nxséi pl. nxsbhyós
abl sg. nxséd pl. nxsbhyós
loc sg. néxsi pl. néxssu
ins sg. nxséh pl. néxsbhis ~ nxsbhéis
For most IE descendants, this would have quickly become:
nom sg. ná:s pl. ná:ses
acc sg. ná:sm pl. ná:s
gen sg. nasós pl. nasóm
dat sg. naséi pl. nasbhyós
abl sg. naséd pl. nasbhyós
loc sg. ná:si pl. ná:ssu
ins sg. nasé: pl. ná:sbhis ~ nasbhéis
So, you can see, most IE descendants would have had a paradigm for 'nose'
with alternating long /a/ and short /a/. In the Germanic and Balto-Slavic
descendants, these diverged, with one preserving a-timbre and the other
acquiring o-timbre (Germanic and Baltic have /a:/ > /o/, Slavic has /a/
> /o/). There are still problems with the Germanic languages (at least),
but I think that has to do with later changes in those languages. Mainly,
English 'nose' shows an historically long /O/ (normally spelled with <oa>)
which could only come from earlier long /a/. That clashes with "Old
English" (probably West Saxon) _nósu_ which reflects IE */a:/ > Germanic
*/o:/. It can't be the inherited form, because we would then expect *noose
in Modern English. So, how did the /a/ in (presumably) East Anglian _nasu_
get lengthened?
>Breton: froan
>Welsh: ffroen
>Gaelic & Irish: sròn (sro`n)
>
>These are apparently derived from a Proto-Celtic *srogna-
>The Breton and welsh words mean 'nostril' rather than nose. the normal
>welsh word for 'nose' is _trwyn_ (Cornish _trein_), and the Breton is
>_fri_.
>
>--
>Ray
It looks rather tempting to try to link the Celtic words for 'nose' with
Greek _rhî:s_, _rhinós_ (if from something like *srign-), but it's probably
too good to be true.
- Rob
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 12:23:08 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
On 12/8/05, Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:16:15 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >I have seen them related to PIE root for "swim" also, but your etymology
> >is easier as regards the sound changes, I think.
>
> Plus, the semantics are way off -- how can one derive 'nose' from 'swim'
> (or vice-versa)?
Erm - I think he meant that the words for "island" were related to "swim"
(instead of "nose"), not that "nose" was related to "swim" (instead of
"island"). :)
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 7
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 17:46:44 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Lenition or Elision or What?
There is a phonetic phenomenon in Senjecan that occurs when the
personal pronoun nominative + the present tense marker are prefixed to
a verbnoun with an initial vowel.
m-i-ât-a /mi'at_da/
1sg.-pres.-go-indic.
I go.
This becomes mïâta. m_j'at_da
Is there a proper name for this phenomenon? It doesn't seem to me to
be either lenition (as David Crystal defines it) or elision.
Thanks.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 8
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:50:50 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
Charlie wrote:
> There is a phonetic phenomenon in Senjecan that occurs when the
> personal pronoun nominative + the present tense marker are prefixed to
> a verbnoun with an initial vowel.
>
> m-i-ât-a /mi'at_da/
> 1sg.-pres.-go-indic.
> I go.
>
> This becomes mïâta. m_j'at_da
>
> Is there a proper name for this phenomenon? It doesn't seem to me to
> be either lenition (as David Crystal defines it) or elision.
>
Vowel reduction...? (full vowel reduced > glide preceding stressed V
(perhaps in other envs. too?-- "in pre-tonic position" would cover other
cases too), fairly common IMO
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 9
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:52:54 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
Hi!
caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> There is a phonetic phenomenon in Senjecan that occurs when the
> personal pronoun nominative + the present tense marker are prefixed to
> a verbnoun with an initial vowel.
>
> m-i-ât-a /mi'at_da/
> 1sg.-pres.-go-indic.
> I go.
>
> This becomes mïâta. m_j'at_da
I'd just call it 'palatalisation'.
**Henrik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 10
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:59:36 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The WD theory
Mark Reed wrote:
> This would be funny if it didn't hit so close to home.
>
> http://www.livejournal.com/users/q_pheevr/33337.html
>
It's hilarious, and certainly deserves wider circulation on Ling-oriented
lists!! (as indeed several responders suggested.) I loved this--
"linguistics is widely and justifiably seen as the centrepiece of the
high-school science curriculum" ROFLetc., AS IF!! (Well, if my 50-yr old
goodfernothin nephew can get a job teaching geography to hapless
high-schoolers, maybe there's hope for me too.....;-)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 11
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 14:35:52 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: cthulhu fhtagn
John Vertical wrote:
> There's also a somewhat common -oth ending (shoggoth, Yog-Sothoth,
> Yuggoth...),
Isn't that the Hebrew fem. plural? (the bases look Hebrew-ish, though I
doubt they are.) In "The Dunwich Horror" IIRC he actually employs the term
"Sab(b?)aoth".
I used to quite enjoy HPL, until I read a (posthumous?) tale that dealt with
some guy who hangs around with ghouls et al...But the line "...a ghoul is a
ghoul, for all that, and no fit company for a man" elicited just a great big
laugh, and I haven't been able to read him with a straight face since.
Still, you and others are doing an nice job trying to parse the
"language"...
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 12
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 15:21:22 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The WD theory
In case anyone didn't get the joke, "Wrathful Dispersion" is not real; the
whole thing is just a parody of the Intelligent Design brouhaha currently
making headlines (and, sadly, head*way*) in the USA. Recasting the debate
into a linguistic context makes it all the more ludicrous - especially if
you're a linguist by [a]vocation. So I thought y'all would enjoy it. (I
especially like the guarded admission that the Romance languages *might*
have actually come from Latin, but that doesn't prove anything about the
more general case. :)
Still, as a resident of Cobb "Evolution Is Just A Theory; It Says So On Our
Textbooks" County, Georgia, I find the whole thing just a little too
plausible; it makes me laugh, but it's more of a nervous chuckle than a
hearty guffaw.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 13
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:03:44 -0500
From: Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language to
look at)
--- In [email protected], Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> I checked the gjâ-zym-byn version of the Babel text
> ...[snip]...
> Like many engelangs** it's purely agglutinative; I don't have to
> count to see that the agglutinativity index is 1.0.
>
> John C. Wells, in _Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto_,***
> quotes the Greenberg article and calculates indexes
> of synthesis and agglutinativity for Esperanto.
> ...[snip]...
> ... 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.)
>
> [snip]
Are these ratios and averages "by type" or "by token"?
That is, for the agglutinativity index, do you count each morpheme
just once, no matter how many times it occurs in the text; or do you
weight more-frequently-used morphemes with more weight?
(For the synthesis index, the question would be, do you count each
_word_ just once, or weight more-frequently-used _words_ with more
weight?)
...
Are there languages with a "synthesis index" of more-than-4? (so
that, in the "average" word, the "average" morpheme would be neither
word-initial nor word-final.)
Is there a language with a "synthesis index" of less-than-3 which,
nevertheless, really deserves to be called "polysynthetic"?
I take it that the "agglutinating index" is a an average ratio of
number-of-morphemes per number-of-meanings. I would have thought,
instead, of a "fusing index", the average ratio of number-of-meanings
per number-of-morphemes.
Would a language whose "synthesis index" was less than 1.5, say, but
whose "agglutinating index" was less than 0.5 (or whose "fusing
index" was 2.0 or more), qualify as an "isolating fusing" language?
---
Tom H.C. in MI
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 14
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:58:03 -0700
From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
On 12/8/05, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > There is a phonetic phenomenon in Senjecan that occurs when the
> > personal pronoun nominative + the present tense marker are prefixed to
> > a verbnoun with an initial vowel.
> >
> > m-i-ât-a /mi'at_da/
> > 1sg.-pres.-go-indic.
> > I go.
> >
> > This becomes mïâta. m_j'at_da
>
> I'd just call it 'palatalisation'.
I wouldn't call it palatalization; if I understand the transcription
correctly, the high front vowel has *become* the glide, rather than
merely inducing a palatalized pronunciation of the /m/ due to
coarticulation.
I'd opt for the term 'gliding' or 'contraction'.
Dirk
--
Gmail Warning: Watch the reply-to!
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 15
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:37:42 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
On 12/8/05, Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > > There is a phonetic phenomenon in Senjecan that occurs when the
> > > personal pronoun nominative + the present tense marker are prefixed to
> > > a verbnoun with an initial vowel.
> > >
> > > m-i-ât-a /mi'at_da/
> > > 1sg.-pres.-go-indic.
> > > I go.
> > >
> > > This becomes mïâta. m_j'at_da
>
> I'd opt for the term 'gliding' or 'contraction'.
I vote for "approximantification".
:)
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 16
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 23:01:22 +0100
From: Christian Köttl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The WD theory
I have to admit that I had to google first just to be sure the
original blog entry was satirical. Only then I dared to comment ... .
I should have been formulating more carefully, though. Sorry for any
misunderstandings.
And now on to conlanging pleasures!
>In case anyone didn't get the joke, "Wrathful Dispersion" is not
>real; the whole thing is just a parody of the Intelligent Design
>brouhaha currently making headlines (and, sadly, head*way*) in the
>USA. Recasting the debate into a linguistic context makes it all
>the more ludicrous - especially if you're a linguist by [a]vocation.
>So I thought y'all would enjoy it. (I especially like the guarded
>admission that the Romance languages *might* have actually come from
>Latin, but that doesn't prove anything about the more general case.
>:)
>
>Still, as a resident of Cobb "Evolution Is Just A Theory; It Says So
>On Our Textbooks" County, Georgia, I find the whole thing just a
>little too plausible; it makes me laugh, but it's more of a nervous
>chuckle than a hearty guffaw.
>--
>Mark J. Reed <<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 17
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 23:03:43 +0100
From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
--- tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> P.S. I think English is primative/secundative, too;
I suppose that
> makes me one of those people who think English is
> dechticaetiative.
Ach! What are all these big words I've never seen
before? Primative/secundative? 'Dechticaetiative'?!?
How do you even *pronounce* that last monstrosity? [EMAIL PROTECTED]@.tIv]?
___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden:
http://mail.yahoo.de
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 18
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 22:02:37 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > There is a phonetic phenomenon in Senjecan that occurs when the
> > personal pronoun nominative + the present tense marker are
prefixed to
> > a verbnoun with an initial vowel.
> >
> > m-i-ât-a /mi'at_da/
> > 1sg.-pres.-go-indic.
> > I go.
> >
> > This becomes mïâta. m_j'at_da
On 12/8/05, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'd just call it 'palatalisation'.
--- In [email protected], Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>I wouldn't call it palatalization; if I understand the transcription
>correctly, the high front vowel has *become* the glide, rather than
>merely inducing a palatalized pronunciation of the /m/ due to
>coarticulation.
>I'd opt for the term 'gliding' or 'contraction'.
Sorry! I didn't give the complete picture. This also occurs
with "u" before a vowel with the possessive adjectives.
muâpa /mu'apa/
mu-ap-a
my-father-NOM.sg.
This becomes müâpa /m_w'apa/.
I am looking for a term that would cover both the palatalization and
the labialization. Thanks for the suggestions.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caerulean
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 19
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 17:17:37 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
On 12/8/05, Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --- In [email protected], Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > John C. Wells, in _Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto_,***
> > quotes the Greenberg article and calculates indexes
> > of synthesis and agglutinativity for Esperanto.
> Are these ratios and averages "by type" or "by token"?
>
> That is, for the agglutinativity index, do you count each morpheme
> just once, no matter how many times it occurs in the text; or do you
> weight more-frequently-used morphemes with more weight?
> (For the synthesis index, the question would be, do you count each
> _word_ just once, or weight more-frequently-used _words_ with more
> weight?)
I just re-read the passage in Wells 1989 and can't find anything
explicit one way or another. Perhaps someone with
access to the original Greenberg 1960 article can answer this.
(I just realized no one has cited the Greenberg article's title etc
in full; Wells gives it as
A quantitative approach to the morphological typology
of languages. _Int. J. American Linguistics_ 26.3.178-194.
A quick Google search shows it has been reprinted in
Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer(eds.)
On Language: Selected Writings of Joseph H. Greenberg,
pp. 3-25.Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.
> Are there languages with a "synthesis index" of more-than-4? (so
> that, in the "average" word, the "average" morpheme would be neither
> word-initial nor word-final.)
I suppose you mean natlangs -- we've already seen
at least one conlang with a synthesis index of >4 in
this thread. I don't know of any sources for synthesis
index figures for natlangs other than the Greenberg
source already cited.
> Is there a language with a "synthesis index" of less-than-3 which,
> nevertheless, really deserves to be called "polysynthetic"?
Hm... maybe a language whose verbs incorporate subjects and objects,
but whose voice, tense, aspect, mood, evidentiality etc. are
marked with optional stand-alone particles? I would still
hesitate to call such a language "polysynthetic", ignoring
the "poly-". Wikipedia says:
Many, if not most, languages regarded as polysynthetic include
agreement with object arguments as well as subject arguments in
verbs. Incorporation (primarily noun incorporation) has been an
issue that has historically been confused with polysynthesis and
also used as a criterion for its definition. Incorporation refers to the
phenomenon where lexical morphemes (or lexemes) are combined
together to form a single word. Not all polysynthetic languages are
incorporating, and not all incorporating languages are polysynthetic.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysynthetic_language)
> Would a language whose "synthesis index" was less than 1.5, say, but
> whose "agglutinating index" was less than 0.5 (or whose "fusing
> index" was 2.0 or more), qualify as an "isolating fusing" language?
I wouldn't have any problem calling it that.
Maybe, whenever Jeffrey Henning has time
to update Langmaker again, it would be good
to add these agglutinativity and synthesis indices
to the conlang database. & maybe these
should be added to the language template
on Wikipedia? More likely, just add figures
to individual articles on languages for which
data in published sources is available.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 20
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 23:53:36 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The WD theory
Hi!
"Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> In case anyone didn't get the joke, "Wrathful Dispersion" is not real;
Me did not get joke. :-/
Maybe because I am from Europe, I find seemingly absurd stories like
this more easily plausible when they're Leftpondian. But as you admit
yourself, it's just a little too plausible.
**Henrik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 21
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:35:38 -0700
From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
On 12/8/05, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 12/8/05, Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > --- In [email protected], Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > > John C. Wells, in _Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto_,***
> > > quotes the Greenberg article and calculates indexes
> > > of synthesis and agglutinativity for Esperanto.
>
> > Are these ratios and averages "by type" or "by token"?
> >
> > That is, for the agglutinativity index, do you count each morpheme
> > just once, no matter how many times it occurs in the text; or do you
> > weight more-frequently-used morphemes with more weight?
>
> > (For the synthesis index, the question would be, do you count each
> > _word_ just once, or weight more-frequently-used _words_ with more
> > weight?)
>
> I just re-read the passage in Wells 1989 and can't find anything
> explicit one way or another. Perhaps someone with
> access to the original Greenberg 1960 article can answer this.
Greenberg used passages of 100 words to calculate the value of various
indices, including the synthesis index. So it seems to be tokens
rather than types. This was my procedure as well; for Shoshoni the
passage was the story "Coyote and Mouse" (from Crum and Dayley's
Western Shoshoni Grammar), which ran to 500 words. For Miapimoquitch
the passage was the story "Eye Juggler", which ran to 58 words
(obviously not really a large enough sample to get a reliable number).
Greenberg does give sources for the texts; the Eskimo text (Henrik
asked about it) comes from Thalbitzer's contribution to the _Handbook
of American Indian Languages, Part I_, edited by Franz Boas (1911). I
don't know which variety Thalbitzer examined.
> (I just realized no one has cited the Greenberg article's title etc
> in full; Wells gives it as
>
> A quantitative approach to the morphological typology
> of languages. _Int. J. American Linguistics_ 26.3.178-194.
That's the one.
Dirk
--
Gmail Warning: Watch the reply-to!
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 22
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:06:29 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Update of gjâ-zym-byn site
I've just uploaded a batch of changes to the gjâ-zym-byn site,
including:
- improved phonology description with IPA and CXS symbols
for each phoneme, some more notes on allophony, nasal-vowel
harmony, and coarticulation of semivowels
- added information to the semantics document on many
suffixes not previously documented there
- added a section on evidentiality to the grammar document
(there's nothing new to you in that section if you read the evidentiality
thread here a few months ago)
So much still to be documented -- subject pronoun incorporation,
semantics of spacetime prepositions with various motion
verbs, effect of the opposite suffixes on ditransitive verbs,
rewriting the lessons to reflect the current language...
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 23
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 13:24:11 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 23:03 +0100, Steven Williams wrote:
> --- tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > P.S. I think English is primative/secundative, too;
> I suppose that
> > makes me one of those people who think English is
> > dechticaetiative.
>
> Ach! What are all these big words I've never seen
> before? Primative/secundative? 'Dechticaetiative'?!?
> How do you even *pronounce* that last monstrosity? [EMAIL PROTECTED]@.tIv]?
The normal rules of the English orthography demand that "cae" is
equivalent to "cea" (i.e. the "ae" is a long e and causes the c to be
soft), as in "Caesar", and normally, particularly in words from
Greek/Latin, "tia" in an unstressed syllable is /S@/. Thus, I'd
guess /[EMAIL PROTECTED]:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/. Speakers of non rabbit-abbot
merging dialects I
suppose would make the second syllable something like /tI/ or /ti/. (I
would've thought in American English it would be "dechticetiative", but
Americans have a tendency to retain "ae" and "oe" in learned words,
another example is "coelacanth" pr. /si:[EMAIL PROTECTED]&:nT/ based on an
American
dictionary on the web... (OTOH it isn't always true... "Apn(o)ea" is
another learned word, and the o-less spelling even rules in Australia
nowadays.)
In orthography, it'd be something like "DECK-ti-SEE-sha-tive", I think.
Exactly how you interpret that's up to you, but it might be easier than
converting Australian English IPA into one for your own dialect. Or it
might be misleading, I'd interpret it wrongly...
Wikipedia is kind enough to have an article on dechticaetiative
languages, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechticaetiative_language>. By
the looks of things, they treat indirect objects the same way as they
treat direct objects of verbs with no indirect object. that is, (I
think) they're the direct object/indirect object equivalent of
subject/object ergative languages. Something like: ...
I threw the baby his bottle.
I threw his bottle.
where "the baby" (IO) and "his bottle" (DO) both appear to be taking the
same spot in the sentence, and thus both "marked" in the same way. That
seems relatively convincing, but having skipped most of this thread I
knew nothing about them till I started writing this message ... I would
suppose arguments against English's dechticaetiativity (bwahaha!) would
go something along the lines of: "his bottle" is being marked in the
same way in both phrases, as the last non-prepositional noun phrase in
the sentence. Paul's observation that English can also do it differently
as "I threw the baby's bottle to him" probably means (to me and, I
spose, him) that English isn't dechticaetiative, but rather has the
capacity to express sentences dechticaetiatively.
I hope that's right, but I look forward to any corrections/additions!
--
Tristan.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 24
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 20:13:34 -0600
From: Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>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.
I've attempted to do this sort of thing with English a couple of times,
using (once) kana and (another time) zhuyin fuhao (aka bopomofo) for the
English affixes and words like "the". I didn't get very far, since I
don't know either Latin or Chinese characters very well, but here's one
attempt at writing "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog":
ããéè¤çè·³ãã¡ã©ã¦ããæ ç¬ã
ãã th-e
é quick
è¤ brown
ç fox
è·³ã jump-s
ã¡ã©ã¦ o-v-er
ãã th-e
æ lazy
ç¬ dog
Words like "quick", "brown", and "fox" work out without much trouble.
"Jumps" requires an inflection, but the character for initial s- can be
adapted as a plural suffix. You can use the same character (such as ä¸)
to represent Latin and Greek roots (mono-, uni-), and put them together
to form words like "unicorn" ä¸è§ and "pentagon" äºè§. (Note the same
character is used for "horn", "corner", "angle".) But you start running
into trouble with words like "squirrel" that don't have a convenient
Chinese or Japanese equivalent (Chinese has a two-character æ¾é¼ , but
this would be read as "pine rat" in English; Japanese has æ é¼ "chestnut
rat"). So you either end up with two-character combinations that have to
be read as a unit (like Japanese ä»æ¥ "kyou" or ä¸æ "heta"), or spell
out the word as zhuyin fuhao (ããã¨ã¦ã). After a while you begin to
see how the Japanese writing system got that way.
I tried to adapt Chinese characters for writing one of my own languages,
Kirezagi (http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/kirezagi.html), with similar
results. Kirezagi has a lot of compounds like "munai" for "tiger" (mui
"cat" + nai "fire") and "timui" for "owl" (ti "bird" + mui "cat"), which
work out well using Chinese characters. I also picked out specific
Chinese characters to use for inflections, like ç¾ for present tense and
å¾ for past tense. But at the time I didn't have any convenient way of
typing Chinese or Japanese characters, so that project didn't get very far.
> 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.
I've found that learning to read Japanese words can in some cases make
them easier to remember, or at least to draw attention to unexpected
similarities between words like "kana" ä»®å (characters of the Japanese
syllabary) and "namae" åå (name). For actually learning to read the
words, I've had better luck learning each word as a unit, rather than
learning individual characters and then learning how the characters are
combined to form words. For instance, I'll recognize 大ä¸å¤« as
"daizyoubu" ("okay", "all right", "safe"), but I don't easily recognize
the individual characters in other contexts except for 大 ("big"), and
the meaning of "big" doesn't help me recognize "daizyoubu".
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 25
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:51:56 -0800
From: Aaron Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: cthulhu fhtagn
It does have a Burnsish ring to it. :)
þ
Roger Mills wrote:
>I used to quite enjoy HPL, until I read a (posthumous?) tale that dealt with
>some guy who hangs around with ghouls et al...But the line "...a ghoul is a
>ghoul, for all that, and no fit company for a man" elicited just a great big
>laugh, and I haven't been able to read him with a straight face since.
>
>
>
>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
