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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: And Rosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
From: Dirk Elzinga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. [OT] English [dZ]
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Vowel Harmony
From: Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. persian questions
From: Mau Rauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: persian questions
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: cthulhu fhtagn
From: "David G. Durand" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: persian questions
From: Fabian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: persian questions
From: Mau Rauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
From: And Rosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Theory: Undechticaetiative?
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: Theory: Undechticaetiative?
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: [OT] English [dZ]
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 18:09:22 +0000
From: And Rosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
Henrik Theiling, On 09/12/2005 15:46:
>>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.
>
> 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').
& Ray asks:
>> '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.
The answer to Henrik & Ray is that there is both synizesis &
coalescence: the i/u loses its syllabicity (= synizesis) and coalesces
-- as a secondary articulation -- with the preceding consonant.
Without coalescence, one would have simply [mj], [mw], and not the
palatalized & labialized articulations. Hence my suggestion of the
terms 'coalescent synizesis' or 'synizetic coalescence'.
I think my suggestions are the most accurate/apposite for the
phenomenon, but Charlie will have gathered that they would need
a clarificatory gloss, given that Ray reports that _synizesis_
is not in Crystal's dictionary of phonetics.
--And.
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:13:22 -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, John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > 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. 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?
As I read Greenberg's paper, it seems clear to me that in calculating
the synthesis index he counts only the _morphs_. I don't recall if he
counts zero morphs, but the catgories you describe aren't zero morphs.
A zero morph in the American Structuralist tradition is the
unpredictable absence of overt marking for some category. An example
of a genuine zero morph occurs in the plural for English words like
'deer' and 'fish'. In English, the plural is usually marked; in these
words, unexpectedly, there is no marking. Since the passive, for
example, is not marked morphologically (it's a syntactic construction
involving the past participle and the auxiliary 'be'), the absence of
passive marking cannot be taken to be a zero morph. Even if you took
the morph marking the past participle as marking for the passive, its
absence in the active does not count as a zero since it is predictably
absent.
Dirk
--
Gmail Warning: Watch the reply-to!
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 14:53:29 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [OT] English [dZ]
How did the letter |J| come to represent [dZ] in English, while
continuing to represent [j] in the other Germanic languages? Was it
because of French influence? I assume there was a period when |J|
represented [Z] in English, between representing [j] and [dZ]... do we
know when the change(s) happened?
Thanks.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 20:10:14 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
And Rosta wrote:
> Henrik Theiling, On 09/12/2005 15:46:
>
[snip]
> & Ray asks:
>
>>> '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.
>
>
> The answer to Henrik & Ray is that there is both synizesis &
> coalescence: the i/u loses its syllabicity (= synizesis) and coalesces
> -- as a secondary articulation -- with the preceding consonant. Without
> coalescence, one would have simply [mj], [mw], and not the
> palatalized & labialized articulations. Hence my suggestion of the terms
> 'coalescent synizesis' or 'synizetic coalescence'.
Yep - you're absolutely right. Difficult to think straight with a bunged
up sinuses. I had misread the change of [mj] --> [m_j] and [mw] --> [m_w]
In fact, I wonder if Charlie's feature can really be called 'synizesis'
in the proper sense of the word, as the two vowels are not actually run
together. The original [i] and [u] do not even survive as semivowels!
I know the feature is triggered by having a high vowel before another
(low?) vowel, but the first vowel simply does not combine with the
second, as it surely should do in the case of synizesis.
For similar reasons, Mark's "approximantification" is not accurate
either, since there is no approximant. There is merely the labialization
or palatalization of the [m] (and presumably of any other consonant in
that position).
It seems to me that in fact there is _only_ coalescence: [mi] --> [m_j]
and [mu] --> [m_w].
I guess, because the coalescence is triggered by two vowels coming
together, it could be term 'synizetic coalescence' (but not IMO
coalescent synizesis).
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:41:07 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
On 12/9/05, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> For similar reasons, Mark's "approximantification" is not accurate
> either, since there is no approximant. There is merely the labialization
> or palatalization of the [m] (and presumably of any other consonant in
> that position).
True. I read it the same way you did - as [mi] -> [mj], rather than
[mi] -> [m_j].
(Underscore? What underscore?) And I don't even have the
bunged-up-sinuses excuse.
> It seems to me that in fact there is _only_ coalescence: [mi] --> [m_j]
> and [mu] --> [m_w].
>
> I guess, because the coalescence is triggered by two vowels coming
> together, it could be term 'synizetic coalescence' (but not IMO
> coalescent synizesis).
I'll buy that.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:47:41 -0500
From: Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Vowel Harmony
On Mon, 5 Dec 2005 19:58:36 -0000, caotope <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>--- In [email protected], Tom Chappell wrote:
> [snip]
>> On pp. 291-295, section 10.9 "Nasal Vocoid Articulation", Laver says
>> there are two degrees of nasality of vocoids in the Applecross
>> dialect of Scottish Gaelic. But his best evidence is in Palantla
>> Chinantec an Otomanguean Mesoamerican language -- he quotes a
>> reference whith a minimal triplet, ?e 'leach', ?e~ 'count', ?e~~
>> 'chase', all identical in tone. He also mentions Breton and Bengali
>> as well.
>
>Do you know what're the articulatory phonetics in play at here? Is it
>just about the degree of lowering of the velum or something more devious?
Laver says:
"... there is evidence from combined acoustic and cineradiographic research
that slight and heavy nasality is correlated with velic adjustments
producing different cross-sectional areas of the velopharyngeal opening
into the nasal cavity. Bjork (1961) showed that slight nasality correlated
with a cross-sectional area of about 60 square millimeters, compared with
areas of some 250 square millimeters for heavy nasality."
Bjork (1961) is L. Bjork, (note that should be o-umlaut), 'Velopharyngeal
function in connected speech. Studies using tomography and cineradiography
synchronized with speech spectrography.' Acta Radiologica (Stockholm),
supplement no. 202.
---
Tom H.C. in MI
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 20:58:28 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
Mark J. Reed wrote:
> How did the letter |J| come to represent [dZ] in English, while
> continuing to represent [j] in the other Germanic languages? Was it
> because of French influence?
Precisely - after 1066, Norman French spelling conventions replaced the
Old English ones.
I assume there was a period when |J|
> represented [Z] in English,
No. In Old French |j| was pronounced /dZ/, and |ch| was pronounced /tS/.
For that matter 'soft c' was still /ts/, but as English did not possess
the affricate /ts/, that had no impact.
> between representing [j] and [dZ]... do we
> know when the change(s) happened?
It's French which changed. In France the earlier affricates were leveled
to simple fricatives sometime in the middle of 13th century
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:07:42 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
On 12/9/05, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > How did the letter |J| come to represent [dZ] in English, while
> > continuing to represent [j] in the other Germanic languages? Was it
> > because of French influence?
>
> Precisely - after 1066, Norman French spelling conventions replaced the
> Old English ones.
Was it just a spelling convention change? I thought that words which
previously had |j| began to be pronounced with |dZ|; they can't all be
reanalyzed spelling-pronunciations, can they?
> No. In Old French |j| was pronounced /dZ/, and |ch| was pronounced /tS/.
> [...] In France the
> earlier affricates were leveled to simple fricatives sometime in the middle
> of the13th
> century.
Huh. Wouldn't have guessed that - I can see /j/ -> /Z/ -> /dZ/, but
/j/ -> /dZ/ -> /Z/ is not exactly a monotonic-feeling sequence.
As far as I can tell, 1066 is about 500 years before the consistent
use of |I| and |J| to distinguish the vocalic and consonantal sounds,
so I'm assuming there was a significant period when both French and
English (to whatever extent it was written at all) had words spelled
with an |I| that was pronounced [dZ]. True?
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:08:40 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
On 12/9/05, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Was it just a spelling convention change? I thought that words which
> previously had |j| began to be pronounced with |dZ|; they can't all be
> reanalyzed spelling-pronunciations, can they?
Ack. Wrong brackets. I mean [j] or /j/ and [dZ] or /dZ/, not |...|.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:39:49 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
Mark Reed wrote:
> On 12/9/05, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > For similar reasons, Mark's "approximantification" is not accurate
> > either, since there is no approximant. There is merely the labialization
> > or palatalization of the [m] (and presumably of any other consonant in
> > that position).
>
> True. I read it the same way you did - as [mi] -> [mj], rather than
> [mi] -> [m_j].
> (Underscore? What underscore?) And I don't even have the
> bunged-up-sinuses excuse.
Me too:-(( But actually, is there any great difference between [mj] and
[m_j]? I can see that palatalization, in a language like Russian, is indeed
a feature of the consonant; also I can see that there's a difference between
(non-labial) [Cj] vs. [C_j]. But in Charlie's example it's a case of (1) the
C+i+V..- sequence reducing to C+j+V.. (bearing in mind that there are
morpheme boundaries), which then (2) just happens to be realized on the
surface as [C_jV..]-- I feel that information is being lost by shifting the
present-tense morpheme //i// to a [+pal.] feature of the consonant (Russian
palatalization is creates no morphemic change AFAIK). _Phonemically_ the
example word must be /m+i+a.../, and I'd bet that speakers could vary
between [CjV..] ~[C_jV...]. Presumably in case of /m+i+C.../ the phonetic
outcome must be [miC...], not [m_j(V?)C...].
Altogether it doesn't strike me as any more phenomenal than fast-speech
Spanish "mi amigo" > {mja'miGo] or "su amigo" > [swa'miGo].
And altogether, I think And's term fits best here.
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:53:43 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lenition or Elision or What?
--- In [email protected], R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>It seems to me that in fact there is _only_ coalescence: [mi] -->
>[m_j] and [mu] --> [m_w].
>I guess, because the coalescence is triggered by two vowels coming
>together, it could be term 'synizetic coalescence' (but not IMO
>coalescent synizesis).
I love you guys! Thanks a lot for hashing this out for me. I had
not known these terms (although I did know dieresis). And I love
this list. I'm here several times a day (work permitting) to find
out what there is new to learn.
I think I'll go with a simple "coalescence." I needed the term for
my Senjecan grammar so I could explain the phenomenon to the reader.
FWIW here are the definitions from AHD:
syneresis: The drawing together into one syllable of two consecutive
vowels ordinarily pronounced separately.
synizesis: The contraction of two syllables into one by joining in
pronunciation two adjacent vowels. Compare syneresis. (Interesting
Greek etymology: to sit down together!)
At first I couldn't see the difference! But now I think I do. The
definition of synizesis mentions pronunciation specifically, so I
would imagine that there is a coalescence of pronunciation, but not
of spelling. If that is the case, I would think that the
Senjecan /mi/ --> /mï/ would be synizesis. This doesn't show well
on the list. In "real" spelling the "m" has a cedilla which is the
sign of palatalization.
Again, many thanks.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:32:50 -0800
From: Mau Rauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: persian questions
hello :)
i'm back from a long nomail dream with some kind of
question about Persian/Farsi (unfortunately there is
quite a few material on the web about this language).
what does these words:
ikrâh
che
nadânad mean?
ngoxolo.
-- Mau
Yú ta Mau, yibalie taqe yamissi, qi u mbetagu tawiy inq.
Én a magányosan sétáló macska vagyok, akinek minden hely egyforma.
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Message: 13
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 02:40:18 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: persian questions
Hi!
Mau Rauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> hello :)
Hi and welcome back! Nice to read you! :-)
I hope you're going to be here for some time.
> i'm back from a long nomail dream with some kind of question about
> Persian/Farsi (unfortunately there is quite a few material on the
> web about this language).
We had an interesting discussion about a song a while ago where the
whole list took two or three days to recognise it was in Farsi. So,
close linguistically and so unknow, obviously!
> what does these words:
> ikrâh
> che
> nadânad mean?
?
So unknown, obviously...
'ikra' is 'kaviar' in Russian, but this will not help much, right?
**Henrik
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Message: 14
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 14:03:29 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 16:07 -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On 12/9/05, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > > How did the letter |J| come to represent [dZ] in English, while
> > > continuing to represent [j] in the other Germanic languages? Was it
> > > because of French influence?
> >
> > Precisely - after 1066, Norman French spelling conventions replaced the
> > Old English ones.
>
> Was it just a spelling convention change? I thought that words which
> previously had |j| began to be pronounced with |dZ|; they can't all be
> reanalyzed spelling-pronunciations, can they?
There's a couple of issues here...
In the history of French there was a sound change which turned [j] into
[dZ]. Many words were borrowed into English while the French value was
[dZ]. This change also affected the French and English (and no doubt
others) pronunciation of Latin, so that Latin words with orthographic
<j> were pronounced with /dZ/. In most other Germanic languages, <j> was
used with the classical Latin value of /j/, so Latin words with
orthographic <j> were pronounced with /j/. So the English word
"jurisdiction" has a /dZ/, but the German equivalent (if there is one)
would have /j/. One could say these are "reanalyzed
spelling-pronunciations", if you wanted ... but the change didn't happen
in English, but in a non-native Latin. The only time you really have
spelling-pronunciations in English, I'd think, is when you have modern,
un-re-spelt borrowings from langs like German or Dutch, as in "ouija
board".
English inherited many /j/ from Germanic and Indo-European. These are
typically spelt <y> in English and have cognates in other Germanic langs
with <j>. Hence, En. <year> /jI@/, De. <Jahr> /ja:r/; En. <yea> /j&i/,
De. <ja> /ja:/, En. <young> /jaN/, De. <Jung> /jUN/. (During Old
English, these sounds were spelt with "g" and a following front vowel
thus OE <geong> /juN/, by analogy with the below.) I think most of most
other Germanic langs' /j/ come from this source, though I'd expect
Frisian to have some palatalisation too, breaking I think might've
caused some in the North Germanic langs etc. etc...
In the history of English, during a pre-English stage, the phoneme in
Old English called /g/ most often had the realisation [G]. (As I
understand it, during OE /g/ was only [G] around liquids.) Around front
vowels, it was palatalised in Old English; this sound eventually merged
with inherited /j/. I can't think of an cognates OTTOMH here.
In the pre-Old English stage when /g/ most often had the realisation
[G], the geminate /gg/ was pronounced [gg]. This also had a palatal
form, [ddZ]. In Old English, [gg] and [ddZ] were spelt <cg>. You can see
this in words like "ridge" or "bridge", which in OE were _hrycg_ and
_brycg_. I don't know what the German forms (or any other Germanic lang)
would be, but they'd probably have a /g/. In MnE, because these are all
word/syllable final (no geminates word initial in pre-Old English),
these are generally spelt with <dge> or the like, not <j>.
I think that's basically complete as a summary of the origin of
English /j/ and /dZ/.
> > No. In Old French |j| was pronounced /dZ/, and |ch| was pronounced /tS/.
> > [...] In France the
> > earlier affricates were leveled to simple fricatives sometime in the middle
> > of the13th
> > century.
>
> Huh. Wouldn't have guessed that - I can see /j/ -> /Z/ -> /dZ/, but
> /j/ -> /dZ/ -> /Z/ is not exactly a monotonic-feeling sequence.
I presume there was a palatal stop in between, and probably also a
palatal fricative... Changes don't happen in just one direction.
Languages don't change, people change languages, and people are only
really likely to have knowledge of the difference between their speech
and their parents, and perhaps grandparents i.e. no more than two
generations. Until some time in the twentieth century, speakers of
Australian English tended to use progressively closer realisations of
[&]. Since the 1960s, and especially during the 1990s and 2000s, the
direction of change has reversed...
> As far as I can tell, 1066 is about 500 years before the consistent
> use of |I| and |J| to distinguish the vocalic and consonantal sounds,
> so I'm assuming there was a significant period when both French and
> English (to whatever extent it was written at all) had words spelled
> with an |I| that was pronounced [dZ]. True?
Yes. OTOH, /j/ was spelt in Middle English variously with <y>, yogh, and
I think <i>, yogh being a descendant of the OE scribe's way of drawing a
g.
--
Tristan
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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 23:13:43 -0500
From: "David G. Durand" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: cthulhu fhtagn
Most of the "posthumous tales" are in fact inferior tales penned by
August Derleth and peddled as if they contained much of Lovecraft's
work. Not all were bad (though some were wretched). As other's have
noted, taking a two-line idea from Lovecraft's commonplace book does
not a collaboration make.
-- David
On 12/8/05, Aaron Grahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
--
-- David
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Message: 16
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 02:10:23 -0500
From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>A zero morph in the American Structuralist tradition is the
>unpredictable absence of overt marking for some category. An example
>of a genuine zero morph occurs in the plural for English words like
>'deer' and 'fish'. In English, the plural is usually marked; in these
>words, unexpectedly, there is no marking. Since the passive, for
>example, is not marked morphologically (it's a syntactic construction
>involving the past participle and the auxiliary 'be'), the absence of
>passive marking cannot be taken to be a zero morph. Even if you took
>the morph marking the past participle as marking for the passive, its
>absence in the active does not count as a zero since it is predictably
>absent.
>=========================================================================
Thanks for the information, but I'm not sure it helps me. I want to do a
synthesis and/or agglutinativity/fusionality index determination for Ithkuil
but don't know whether to count all the default categories. Ithkuil nouns
mandatorily inflect for nine morphological categories and verbs mandatorily
inflect for 17 categories. However, in any given instance, the majority of
these mandatory categories have their "default" values which are usually
unmarked in Ithkuil. I'm just trying to figure out if I should count them,
because, if so, then at an automatic minimum of ten morphemes per noun and
eighteen morphemes per verb (9 and 17 mandatory catagories respectively plus
the associated stem itself), you can be sure the synthesis index for Ithkuil
will be sky high.
--John Quijada
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Message: 17
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 16:23:12 +0900
From: Fabian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: persian questions
Mau Rauser wrote:
> hello :)
>
> i'm back from a long nomail dream with some kind of
> question about Persian/Farsi (unfortunately there is
> quite a few material on the web about this language).
>
> what does these words:
> ikrâh
> che
> nadânad mean?
ikrah is ugly in Arabic, can't help with the others.
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Message: 18
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 23:47:30 -0800
From: Mau Rauser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: persian questions
well, I have actually decipered the other words, thus
I just need ikrâh.
then i'm going to continue my pilgrim way though the
web for the meaning of the farsi sentence I have
become :)
meyissi.
-- Mau
Yú ta Mau, yibalie taqe yamissi, qi u mbetagu tawiy inq.
Én a magányosan sétáló macska vagyok, akinek minden hely egyforma.
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Message: 19
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 10:59:35 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
Quoting Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> English inherited many /j/ from Germanic and Indo-European. These are
> typically spelt <y> in English and have cognates in other Germanic langs
> with <j>. Hence, En. <year> /jI@/, De. <Jahr> /ja:r/; En. <yea> /j&i/,
> De. <ja> /ja:/, En. <young> /jaN/, De. <Jung> /jUN/. (During Old
> English, these sounds were spelt with "g" and a following front vowel
> thus OE <geong> /juN/, by analogy with the below.) I think most of most
> other Germanic langs' /j/ come from this source, though I'd expect
> Frisian to have some palatalisation too, breaking I think might've
> caused some in the North Germanic langs etc. etc...
North Germanic lost alot of inherited /j/'s - the Swedish cognates of "year" and
"young" are _år_ [o:r\] and _ung_ [8N] - and acquired tons from breaking - eg
Swedish _hjärta_ "heart", _mjuk_ "soft" (cognate with "meek", IIRC).
Oftentimes, the /j/ has since merged with another consonant, eg _tjära_
['s\&:r\a] "tar".
> In the history of English, during a pre-English stage, the phoneme in
> Old English called /g/ most often had the realisation [G]. (As I
> understand it, during OE /g/ was only [G] around liquids.) Around front
> vowels, it was palatalised in Old English; this sound eventually merged
> with inherited /j/. I can't think of an cognates OTTOMH here.
>
> In the pre-Old English stage when /g/ most often had the realisation
> [G], the geminate /gg/ was pronounced [gg]. This also had a palatal
> form, [ddZ]. In Old English, [gg] and [ddZ] were spelt <cg>. You can see
> this in words like "ridge" or "bridge", which in OE were _hrycg_ and
> _brycg_. I don't know what the German forms (or any other Germanic lang)
> would be, but they'd probably have a /g/.
If I'm right that "ridge" and "bridge" are cognate with Sw. _rygg_ and _brygga_,
they indeed have /g/ (or /g:/, if that's your prefered analysis).
> In MnE, because these are all
> word/syllable final (no geminates word initial in pre-Old English),
> these are generally spelt with <dge> or the like, not <j>.
>
> I think that's basically complete as a summary of the origin of
> English /j/ and /dZ/.
>
> > > No. In Old French |j| was pronounced /dZ/, and |ch| was pronounced /tS/.
> [...] In France the
> > > earlier affricates were leveled to simple fricatives sometime in the
> middle of the13th
> > > century.
> >
> > Huh. Wouldn't have guessed that - I can see /j/ -> /Z/ -> /dZ/, but
> > /j/ -> /dZ/ -> /Z/ is not exactly a monotonic-feeling sequence.
>
> I presume there was a palatal stop in between, and probably also a
> palatal fricative...
Still makes more sense than Spanish, which went something like
[j]->[dZ]->[Z]->[S]->[x] (->[h] in many dialects).
Andreas
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Message: 20
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 11:42:04 +0000
From: And Rosta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Agglutinativity Index (was: Re: What's a good isolating language
to look at)
John Quijada, On 10/12/2005 07:10:
> Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>
>>A zero morph in the American Structuralist tradition is the
>>unpredictable absence of overt marking for some category. An example
>>of a genuine zero morph occurs in the plural for English words like
>>'deer' and 'fish'. In English, the plural is usually marked; in these
>>words, unexpectedly, there is no marking. Since the passive, for
>>example, is not marked morphologically (it's a syntactic construction
>>involving the past participle and the auxiliary 'be'), the absence of
>>passive marking cannot be taken to be a zero morph. Even if you took
>>the morph marking the past participle as marking for the passive, its
>>absence in the active does not count as a zero since it is predictably
>>absent.
>>=========================================================================
>
> Thanks for the information, but I'm not sure it helps me. I want to do a
> synthesis and/or agglutinativity/fusionality index determination for Ithkuil
> but don't know whether to count all the default categories. Ithkuil nouns
> mandatorily inflect for nine morphological categories and verbs mandatorily
> inflect for 17 categories. However, in any given instance, the majority of
> these mandatory categories have their "default" values which are usually
> unmarked in Ithkuil. I'm just trying to figure out if I should count them,
> because, if so, then at an automatic minimum of ten morphemes per noun and
> eighteen morphemes per verb (9 and 17 mandatory catagories respectively plus
> the associated stem itself), you can be sure the synthesis index for Ithkuil
> will be sky high.
The index of fusion is, I think, the average number of meanings or
morphosyntactic features encoded per morpheme (qua minimal unit of meaningful
phonological form).
The other index (which I'd thought was the index of synthesis, but which
haste forbids me from checking) is the average number of morphemes per
phonological word.
A simple approach, e.g. for Ithkuil, would be to take the average number of
morphemes per word (-- by the above definition, there are no zero morphs)
and the average number of meanings/morphosyntactic features per word. This
would also allow you to calculate the average number of meanings per
morpheme.
--And.
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Message: 21
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 13:10:14 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Theory: Undechticaetiative?
Since we've been speaking of dechticaetiativity lately, I was wondering if
there's a name for the opposite. Is there?
Andreas
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Message: 22
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 12:24:15 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
--- In [email protected], Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In the pre-Old English stage when /g/ most often had the realisation
>[G], the geminate /gg/ was pronounced [gg]. This also had a palatal
>form, [ddZ]. In Old English, [gg] and [ddZ] were spelt <cg>. You can
>see this in words like "ridge" or "bridge", which in OE were _hrycg_
>and _brycg_. I don't know what the German forms (or any other
>Germanic lang) would be, but they'd probably have a /g/. In MnE,
>because these are all word/syllable final (no geminates word initial
>in pre-Old English), these are generally spelt with <dge> or the
>like, not <j>.
In German, "bridge" is "Brücke," and "ridge" is "Rücken."
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 23
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 14:56:37 +0200
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>Quoting Tristan McLeay:
> > In the history of English, during a pre-English stage, the phoneme in
> > Old English called /g/ most often had the realisation [G]. (As I
> > understand it, during OE /g/ was only [G] around liquids.) Around front
> > vowels, it was palatalised in Old English; this sound eventually merged
> > with inherited /j/. I can't think of an cognates OTTOMH here.
Say, how does this fit together with the MnE soft g as in "ginger" etc? A
2nd wave of palatalization perhaps?
> > > Wouldn't have guessed that - I can see /j/ -> /Z/ -> /dZ/, but
> > > /j/ -> /dZ/ -> /Z/ is not exactly a monotonic-feeling sequence.
> >
> > I presume there was a palatal stop in between, and probably also a
> > palatal fricative...
>
>Still makes more sense than Spanish, which went something like
>[j]->[dZ]->[Z]->[S]->[x] (->[h] in many dialects).
>
> Andreas
Whoa. Didn't know Spanish <j> went thru [dZ] too; I lived under the
impression it was simply something like [j]>[C]>[x].
John Vertical
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Message: 24
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 09:03:11 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Theory: Undechticaetiative?
On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 07:10:14 -0500, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Since we've been speaking of dechticaetiativity lately, I was wondering
> if there's a name for the opposite. Is there?
The name for systems that treat O and DO the same, and IO differently is
"dative". Confusing, but no more than using "ergative" as both a case name
and a language type name.
Paul
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Message: 25
Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:54:05 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] English [dZ]
On Sat, 2005-12-10 at 14:56 +0200, John Vertical wrote:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >
> >Quoting Tristan McLeay:
>
> > > In the history of English, during a pre-English stage, the phoneme in
> > > Old English called /g/ most often had the realisation [G]. (As I
> > > understand it, during OE /g/ was only [G] around liquids.) Around front
> > > vowels, it was palatalised in Old English; this sound eventually merged
> > > with inherited /j/. I can't think of an cognates OTTOMH here.
>
> Say, how does this fit together with the MnE soft g as in "ginger" etc? A
> 2nd wave of palatalization perhaps?
Borrowings from French. By the form of French that supplied us with
borrowings, k > ts (borrowed as /s/) and g > dZ in palatalising
environments. So "ginger" has always had /dZ/ in English (well actually
it comes partly from OE _gingifer_ and partly from Fr. _gingivre_
dictionary.com informs me... I expect the OE would've been pronounced
[EMAIL PROTECTED] so perhaps that particular case isn't completely true ...
but for other words of the sort you're talking about...). The
orthography's not always a reliable guide; the word "jelly" comes via
French from La. _gelare_ (cf. "gelatin", "congeal").
And yes, that also makes me have to speak of another source of /dZ/ that
I forgot of: In addition to palatalised /gg/ becoming [ddZ],
palatalised /g/ following /n/ became [dZ], thus "singe" from OE _sengan_
[sendZan], and my guess at the OE pronunciation of _gingifer_.
Some other cases of /dZ/ crop up from earlier /dz/. I think this change
sometimes happened upon borrowing into English, and other times happened
during Old French or before. In fact, I think "ginger" is one such word
ultimately deriving from a Greek word beginning in z- which I think was
at one stage pronounced [dz]. Ray probably knows?
And the last source of /dZ/ that I can think of now that I forgot to
mention before is that in "graduate" or some pronunciations (like mine)
of "dune", "during" etc. Related to two sources of /j/ I forgot to
mention in words like "cute", and words like "pew".
And of course miscellaneous borrowings.
So perhaps a more complete more summary summary:
/j/: Inherited (year). From OE palatalised /g/ (yard). In "long
u" (cute). In reflex of /ew/ (new).
/dZ/: Borrowed from Fr. /dZ/ which came from La. /j/ (gin),
palatalised /g/ (gelatin). From OE palatalised /gg/ (bridge) and /g/
in /ng/ (singe). From foreign [dz]. From earlier /dj/ (graduate).
> > > > Wouldn't have guessed that - I can see /j/ -> /Z/ -> /dZ/, but
> > > > /j/ -> /dZ/ -> /Z/ is not exactly a monotonic-feeling sequence.
> > >
> > > I presume there was a palatal stop in between, and probably also a
> > > palatal fricative...
> >
> >Still makes more sense than Spanish, which went something like
> >[j]->[dZ]->[Z]->[S]->[x] (->[h] in many dialects).
And given the Spanish's affinity for [h], I would expect that some
dialects either have deleted it or will shortly...
>
> Whoa. Didn't know Spanish <j> went thru [dZ] too; I lived under the
> impression it was simply something like [j]>[C]>[x].
Languages aren't meant to be simple. They're meant to sneak up on you
from behind when you've let your guard down. It makes life much more
interesting, when you're a language.
--
Tristan
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