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There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: And Rosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Thoughts on Word building
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 00:48:21 -0500
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's a good isolating language to look at
Jim Henry 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.
...
>[**] - Or all engelangs? Ithkuil may be partly
>fusional, but I haven't studied it in over a year
>so I may be misremembering. I can't
>think of any others that aren't agglutinating
>or isolating.
>=========================================================================
Ithkuil morpho-phonology is high fusional. I have a question, though. Do you
count zero-marked (i.e., unmarked) morphemes in a word when measuring the
synthetis/agglutinativity index of a language? For example, Ithkuil verbs
mandatorily inflect for 17 morphological categories, however, any given
actual verb form is likely to have up to a dozen or more of these 17
categories manifested as morphologically unmarked "default" values,
analogous to the German nominative case being zero-marked. Do such
zero-marked default morpheme-values get included when counting morphemes for
purposes of determining the synthesis/agglutinativity index?
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 01:15:37 -0500
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
I'm not understanding something about this synthesis index. Do zero-marked
morpheme values get counted when determining the index? For example, all
finite English verb forms carry semantic values for person, number, tense,
mood, and voice. That's five separate morphological categories plus the
stem itself for a total of six morphemes. However, in a sentence such as
"We sing" only one of these six morphemes is morpho-phonologically
manifested/marked by the verb form, that being the stem; all the remaining
five morphemes are zero-marked "default" categories (present tense,
indicative mood, first person, plural number, active voice). So does the
word "sing" in "We sing" get counted as one morpheme or as six morphemes for
purposes of determining the morpheme count?
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 01:41:46 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
John Quijada wrote:
> I'm not understanding something about this synthesis index. Do
> zero-marked
> morpheme values get counted when determining the index? For example, all
> finite English verb forms carry semantic values for person, number, tense,
> mood, and voice.
(Snip much) See my msg. #129176 in the Archive, where I asked a similar
question-- and Andreas Johansson's reply-- (though I'm still not sure about
this....:-((( )
ME 05/12/05 > 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???
AJ 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?).
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 09:53:03 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
Staving Tristan McLeah:
>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.
You could argue, however, that "I threw the baby's bottle to him," wasn't a
ditransitive sentence, but a monotransitive sentence with an additional
prepositional argument.
(What do you mean, "you just did"? Oh, yes I suppose so...)
Pete
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:51:20 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: An unusual incorporation scheme
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 09:53 +0000, Peter Bleackley wrote:
> Staving Tristan McLeah:
>
>
> >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.
> You could argue, however, that "I threw the baby's bottle to him," wasn't a
> ditransitive sentence, but a monotransitive sentence with an additional
> prepositional argument.
>
> (What do you mean, "you just did"? Oh, yes I suppose so...)
I don't think counts as an argument just yet :P
I thought about it when writing my original message, and I wasn't quite
sure if that was legitimate, in English. As far as I can see, any verb
that takes three arguments can be rephrased as one (phonetically
equivalent) that takes two arguments and a prepositional phrase, while
at the same time one that takes two arguments may be invalid, hence:---
1a. I threw the baby his bottle.
1b. I threw his bottle.
1c. I threw the baby's bottle to him.
Okay, no problems, but using a different verb:---
2a. I gave the baby his bottle.
2b. * I gave his bottle.
2c. I gave the baby's bottle to him.
So it seems to me while (1b) and (1c) might seem to have otherwise the
same structure, (2b) and (2c) seem to be different, and so by analogy
I'd say that (1b) and (1c) are different.
I might've misunderstood something (or more!) in all of this, tho.
--
Tristan
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:26:16 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
Hi!
Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
> > ... I've seen a Wiki somewhere where a project of this kind is started. ...
Found it. It was in FrathWiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/Hangraphy
Still very small, though. But it's a Wiki!
>... 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. ...
Actually, my idea was to write inflections conceptually in German, not
by pronunciation. Alternatively, I though about having a hybrid
system for mixed phonological and morphological writing. In the first
for, there'd be a special character for 'plural'. So with only this
information, you'd need to know the grammar to read it out, but could
understand it without needing the precise forms. Would be a bit like
reading interlinears. :-) When writing the root semantics
conceptually, I wanted to write the grammar conceptually, too. This
is how Chinese handles it's affixes, too (often with pronunciation
hints, of course, just as with all other characters).
>.. I've found that learning to read Japanese words can in some cases
>make them easier to remember, ...
Yes, but in reading, they become more than uncommon strings of
phonemes.
> ... 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. ...
Hmm, I think my Chinese is not good enough to make a judgement about
this. Recognition of strings works just as well (or bad...) as
recognition of single characters.
**Henrik
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 11:56:59 +0000
From: And Rosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
caeruleancentaur, On 08/12/2005 17:46:
> 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.
'Synizesis' is the collapse of two heterosyllabic vowels into a
homosyllabic sequence of vowel + glide or glide + vowel. Also
'synaeresis'. 'Samprasarana' is alternation between glide and
syllabic forms of a vocoid. 'Coalescence' is when a sequence of
two segments fuses into a single segment. So the Senjecan
phenomenon might be called 'coalescent synizesis' or 'synizetic
coalescence'.
--And.
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 13:23:46 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on Word building
Hi!
Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >.. I've found that learning to read Japanese words can in some cases
> >make them easier to remember, ...
>
> Yes, but in reading, they become more than uncommon strings of
> phonemes.
My comment is misleading, I think: I fully agree, please delete 'but'
from my answer. Dunno how it crept in.
**Henrik
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:53:44 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Etymology of _insula_ (was Re: Thoughts on Word building)
Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On 12/8/05, *Rob Haden* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:16:15 +0000, R A Brown
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[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"). :)
Correct - or more exactly that I have seen it claimed that the Greek
words for 'island' are derived the PIE root "swim". Support for this is
said to be the frequent stories among the Greeks of floating (i.e.
swimming) islands. But I am not convinced by this.
I did not intend to suggest any connexion between noses & swimming.
===================================
Rob Haden wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:16:15 +0000, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
[snip]
>
>>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 [nasus] is from a Italian dialect form.
>
>
> It could be. Or, the original Greek form was *na:ssos -- see below.
{slaps head!} Of course - blush! i feel so ashamed at not noticing that.
[snip]
>
> There's another slight problem, actually. Intervocalic */s/ becomes /0/
> (via */h/) before Greek.
Of course it does. Yep, a Proto-Greek *na:sos would have give /na:os/
(Doric), /nE:os/ (Ionic) and /neO:s/ (Attic).
>So, either the original Greek word was *na:ssos,
> or */s/ became */h/ before */x/ (= 'h2') was lost.
I would think it was *na:ssos, which would also, of course, account for
the Latin _na:sus_
[snip]
>
>>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.
It does, doesn't it? :)
I am fairly certain that some have claimed this, but MacBain does not
suggest this nor quote any authorities. The vowels would take some
explaining, methinks.
However, he does connect the Celtic *srogn- with Greek _rhenkein_/
_rhenkhein_ "to snore", which I suppose is possible if we have
metathesis of -ghn- ~ ngh-
--
Ray
==================================
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==================================
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--
Ray
==================================
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http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:22:07 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
And Rosta wrote:
> caeruleancentaur, On 08/12/2005 17:46:
>
>> 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.
>
>
> 'Synizesis' is the collapse of two heterosyllabic vowels into a
> homosyllabic sequence of vowel + glide or glide + vowel.
Gosh, that takes me back nearly 50 years till the time I was a young
classicist in the 6th Form :-)
Yep - I had forgotten the term, but I've checked it out in my Greek
grammar. I note that Crystal does not list the term in his "A Dictionary
of Linguistics and Phonetics".
>Also 'synaeresis'.
Phonetically, synizesis and synaeresis and the same thing - and they
certainly describe the feature Charlie gives. The difference is in the
_written_ form. If the collapse or coalescence of the two vowels is
marked in writing it is _synaeresis_ (which I guess our LeftPondian
cousins spell _syneresis_); if the coalescence is not shown in writing
then it is called _synizesis_ - so strictly whether Charlie refers to
this as syn(a)eresis or synizesis will depend on how Senjecan is written.
Tho it must be said that in modern terminology, synizesis is often used
to denote the spoken phenomenon, no matter how it is written. I quote
Sidney Allen (Vox Graeca):
"In modern terminology 'synizesis' is often used in the sense of a
reduction of the first vowel of a sequence to a semivowel (as e/g. [u]
--> [w] in colloquial English _How do I look?_ --> trisyllabic
[haudwailuk]"
> Samprasarana' is alternation between glide and syllabic
> forms of a vocoid.
Not Greek this time - I assume it's Sanskrit. Yet another term not
listed by Crystal in his 'dictionary'. But in any case this does not
apply to the feature Charlie's Senjecan.
> 'Coalescence' is when a sequence of two segments
> fuses into a single segment. So the Senjecan phenomenon might be called
> 'coalescent synizesis' or 'synizetic coalescence'.
Um - excuse me if I seem a bit thick (I have a bit of a cold), but does
both synizesis and synaeresis imply coalescence by their very
definition. There seems to be a bit of redundancy here.
==================================
caeruleancentaur 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?
Yep - synizesis (or syn(a)eresis), see above.
>It doesn't seem to me to be either lenition (as David Crystal defines
iit)
In fact in Crystal's rather vague definition "A term used in phonology
to refer to a weakening in the overall strength of a sound...." it would
seem to cover your feature. But, quite rightly, he goes on to talk about
consonants. The term is most frequently used as an alternative term for
the 'soft mutation' of the insular Celtic langs, and of conlangs such as
Sindarin & Brithenig. It would certainly be misleading IMO to use it to
denote synizesis.
>or elision.
Indeed, not - otherwise the [i] or the [u] would disappear completely.
--
Ray
==================================
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==================================
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 10:36:26 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
On 12/9/05, And Rosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> 'Synizesis' is the collapse of two heterosyllabic vowels into a
> homosyllabic sequence of vowel + glide or glide + vowel. Also
> 'synaeresis'.
Good words!
I still like the transparency of "approximantification", though. :)
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:46:49 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
Hi!
R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> And Rosta wrote:
> > caeruleancentaur, On 08/12/2005 17:46:
> >
> >> 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.
> > 'Synizesis' is the collapse of two heterosyllabic vowels into a
> > homosyllabic sequence of vowel + glide or glide + vowel.
>
> Gosh, that takes me back nearly 50 years till the time I was a young
> classicist in the 6th Form :-)
>
> Yep - I had forgotten the term, but I've checked it out in my Greek
> grammar. I note that Crystal does not list the term in his "A Dictionary
> of Linguistics and Phonetics".
Hmm, but that's not exactly it. It is not [mjat_da] but [m_jat_da].
It's not a glide, it's become palatalisation (or velarisation for
/u/), so not /i/+/a/ have combined into [ja], but /m/+/i/ into [m_j]
in this case.
What about 'yer-mutation' or 'yerization' :-)))? It happened in
Slavic, no (hence 'yer')? [u] > [_w] and [i] > [_j] under certain
constraints (cf. 'yer-y' ond 'yer-u').
**Henrik
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