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There are 5 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Types of Possession
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Types of Possession
From: Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: A Self-segregating morphology (was: Guinea pigs invited)
From: Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Nindic Texts
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Nindic Texts
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 09:55:04 -0700
From: Jefferson Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Types of Possession
My thanks to everyone who responded. It was all very helpful.
I've decided to follow the pattern of the Glyphica Arcana's
ephemera and define four sorts of possession.
Physical possessives are used for physical composition (my hand),
blood relationships (my mother), physical control (my car which
I'm driving), origins (my book which I wrote), and so forth.
This possessive is defined by a physical link between controller
and subject.
Social possessives are used for interpersonal relationships (my
girlfriend), social obligations (my job), legalities (my house
which I own), partnerships (my dance partner, my sexual partner),
and the like. This possessive is defined by people's agreement.
Spiritual possessives are used for emotions (my love of . . .),
beliefs (my religion), undefinables (my soul), and other intangibles.
Rational possessives are more or a less a catch-all for items
which appear to be associated without falling into the previous
three categories. They include things like "my book which I'm
holding which came from the library," "my costume which I
rented," and so on.
Use of the different possessive is very culturally dependent.
For example, "my name" might be generally spiritual, social, or
rational, depending on how a particular culture views names and
naming.
Because the GA is intended to operate in strong fantasy milieus,
I don't consider alienable vs. inalienable distinctions
particularly relevant. Rather, defining such a distinction would
add complexity to magical inscriptions without adding clarity.
Comments would be appreciated.
--
Jefferson
http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/myths/
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 13:20:46 -0500
From: Thomas Hart Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Types of Possession
On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:46:53 -0500, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:19:11 -0500, Jefferson Wilson
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> The Glyphica Arcana has no inflection for possession. Instead,
>> possession is shown through subordinate phrases ("of . . ."). My
>> current problem is defining the types of possession used by the GA.
>> (Though I haven't checked the archives yet, I will be doing that soon.)
>>
>> Now, "hand of mine," "house of mine," and "wife of mine" are all going
>> to be different possessives. What should I call them and what other
>> forms of possession should I define?
>
>I'd go with the partitive, possessive and associative genetives,
>respectively.
>
>Question for the group: Where would you classify "the king of England"? It
>flits between possessive and associative in my mind.
>
>"Should" is a very broad term when it comes to the design of conlangs. You
>should define as many as make you happy. I don't know of a book that deals
>at great length with possession alone. You could check Payne[1] and
>Comrie[2] for the best treatments I know of.
>
>[1]Thomas E Payne, _Describing Morphosyntax_, Cambridge University Press
>[2]Bernard Comrie, _Language Universals And Linguistic Typology_,
>University of Chicago Press
Hi, Jeff, Paul, and others.
Here are three ideas I remember from T.E. Payne's "Describing Morphosyntax";
1) Many languages divide nouns into two types; possessible and non-
possessible. For instance, he gives an African language in which a spear
(or some such) is possessible, but the sky is not possessible.
2) Many languages divide nouns into two types; those on the one hand that,
inherently, must be possessed, and those on the other hand that need not,
inherently, be possessed. For instance, I think, in some language (Inuit,
maybe?), a hand must belong to someone, but a dog need not belong to anyone.
3) Many languages, as other posters have already observed, divide types of
possession into alienable (those that can be given away or sold or traded
or etc.) versus inalienable (those that cannot be given away nor sold nor
traded nor etc.) What is alienable and what is inalienable is culturally
conditioned. In our society, hands and spouses and jobs and languages
would be inalienable, because although you can amputate a hand and divorce
a spouse and quit a job, you cannot sell any of them; whereas, houses and
team-members and cars and boats and stories and poems and songs would all
be alienable, because you can sell or trade all of them.
There are societies in which spouses can be bought and sold, or traded;
hence, alienable possessions. There are societies in which trading or
buying-and-selling team-members would be thought of as chattel-slavery, and
hence against the law; hence, inalienable possessions. There are societies
where intellectual property cannot be given nor traded; hence it is
inalienable. There are societies in which a house, or a means of
transportation (perhaps a horse, or perhaps a boat), is so important
culturally, that it is regarded as an inalienable possession.
4) Many languages use a combination of two of the above three ideas. It is
logically possible, and I think there may exist some natlangs attesting,
all three at once -- I don't know, does anyone else?
"Our Language" would be either Unpossessible or Inalienably Possessed.
"My Hand" would be Inherently Possessed and Inalienably Possessed.
"My Umbrella" would be Possessible, Not Inherently Possessed, and Alienably
Possessed.
I think a transplantable organ, such as blood or skin or corneas or hearts
or kidneys or livers, would still count as inalienably possessed if neither
the donor nor the recipient could live without it. If the donor can live
without it, but his or her quality-of-life is much degraded without it, it
still might count as inalienable. In any case, most of these organs would
count as inherently possessed; they cannot last significantly long
unless "owned" by someone. Banked blood might be an exception. For most
things, there would be a language-specific choice which would be more-or-
less constrained (usually "more" constrained), but not completely
determined, by semantic, logical, pragmatic, and common-sense
considerations.
---
Tom H.C. in MI
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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 14:48:32 -0500
From: Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: A Self-segregating morphology (was: Guinea pigs invited)
On 12/16/05, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Vowels are irrelevant to the identity of the word, so
> when words are compounded the first vowel is changed
> to match the new word length: "galo" + "haki" =
> "golohaki"; "ki" + "kedaso" = "kokedaso", OR
> "kakadaso".
...
> With perhaps a few dozen "standard" vowel sequence
> patterns, possibly choosen based on intial consonant,
> the language could have a very melodic and varied
> cadence. For example, suppose that two-syllable words
> beginning in "k" use the pattern "au", four-syllable
> words beginning with "d" always used the pattern
> "oaiu" while four-syllable words beginning with "n"
> always used the pattern "aaui".
So long as we have separate consonant and vowel "tiers", why not
assign meaning to the various vowel melodies, to give us a "binyamin"
root-and-pattern system? That is, the choice of a particular vowel
melody would neither be fixed nor arbitrary, but determined by some
semantic feature of the word. The first one or two vowels would
indicate the word length, the remaining would indicate some sort of
meaning.
For nouns, say, it could be an innate semantic feature such as gender
or diminuation/augmentation, in which case the root would still be
learnable as a whole, although derivational sets (same consonants,
different vowels) would exist.
Or it could be a grammatical feature such as plurality, case, etc., in
which case the consonant and vowel tiers would need to be assembled
"on the fly", in a sense, as the sentence is constructed.
Now, if ease of acquisition and use is the game here, the first would
be the simplest choice; it would most likely be *easier* to acquire
than meaningless patterns. The vowel pattern for a given
"round"-gendered root would be reinforced by the same pattern in every
other round-gendered root.
And/Or:
It seems like compounding is the main morphological game here, rather
than affixation, so why not a system of binyamin indicating the
semantic relationship between the compounded roots? After all,
compounds will have a lot of unused vowel space. We can argue all we
want about the relative semantic transparency of compounding vs.
affixation, but certain there's room for further transparency...
consider the different semantic relationships between "vitamin pill",
"detox pill", "pain pill", "horse pill", etc. The vocalic melody
could take care of the difference between "X made of Y", "X that does
Y", "X for Y", etc. etc.
A fun puzzle to work on: make it recursive, so that you can compound a
root with another compound and not lose the additional semantic
information in the vowel melody of the second.
--
Patrick Littell
University of Pittsburgh
Fall 05 Office Hours: Friday, 1:00-2:00 by appointment
G17, Cathedral of Learning
CCBC
Voice Mail: ext 744
Fall 05 Office Hours: W 5:00-6:00, by appointment
Building 9, room 102
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Message: 4
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 23:54:48 -0800
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Nindic Texts
The following email is a commentary on three
versions of the same text written in three different
periods of Nindic. The commentary deals with apparent
anachronisms and other interesting points.
OLD NINDIC
A, e: pennyt i ecainid nerel,
e:nta myo:nat i nid ryeu nos nuchryn!
Ment E:uti o nochna i uaip le:nn ha yer
Luid nos da ne:chtyn ech cenyathan dhenuat i.
GLOSS, INTERLINEAR
A, e: pennyt i ecainid nerel,
oh be.subj.3s head-def my like water
e:nta myo:nat i nid ryeu nos nuchryn!
be.subj-3p eye-pl-def my like fountain of tear-pl
Ment e:uti o nochna i uaip le:nn ha yer
then be-cond-1s at weep-ger both day and night
luid nos da ne:chtyn ech cenyathan dhenuat
i.
for for-def the slay-pp-pl from un-luck-y people-def
my
"Oh, that my head were like water,
my eyes a fount of tears!
Then I would weep both day and night
for the slain ones of my hapless people."
EARLY MODERN NINDIC (With Some Weird Points)
A ydd ei pennad i nidd nerel
Eith mionad i nidd rie no nychrín.
Daleir, nychaw mi faeb edde llein bo dorn
Lluinos y neicheddín ech dened i, e ní ra iath .
A ydd ei pennad i nidd nerel
oh if be.subj.3s head-def my like water
Eith mionad i nidd rie no nychrín.
be-subj-3p eye-pl-def my like fountain of tear-pl
Daleir, nychaw mi faeb edde llein bo dorn
then, weep-fut.1s I both during day and night
Lluinos y neicheddín ech dened i, e ní ra
iath.
for-def the slay-pp-pl from people-def my, who not
have luck
Interesting Points:
1) ydd - Extremely Archaic, Old Nindic _hyd_ /hi:D/
This ought to have disappeared by the time this text
was written. However, it's probably an archaicising
attempt by the scribe.
2) Lost of many /v/ phonemes, represented in Old
Nindic as <u>
ex. ryeu > rie, dhenuat > dened.
This change happened in Late Middle Nindic.
3) nychaw - first attested here, in this Early Modern
Text. Replaces the Middle Nindic <nuchu> "I will weep"
4) dorn - This word is very strange in this context.
It is a Late Nindic form, usually from the phase of
the language called "Classical", the language of most
modern prose litterature. However, in an Early Modern
Text it seems out of place. Probably a slip up from a
Classical Scribe copying an older text.
5) y - the definite article is pronounce /i/, and
usually spelled <i>. The spelling <y> is a feature of
Early Modern and Middle/Old Nindic.
6) neicheddín - This past participle turned noun is
slightly strange. It has the vowel /e/ in the first
syllable, rather than /e:/ which is found in Middle
Nindic. However the consonant /D/ is a feature of
Modern Nindic. In Middle Nindic the form would be
pronounced /ne:xedi:n/, in Modern Nindic, one expects
/nexeDi:n/. To find /ne:xeDi:n/ represents a hybrid
form.
7) ní - the negative particle is rare in poetry,
since it is mostly a colloquial feature. It feels out
of place in this verse, where the negative verb <ena>
might have been expected.
MIDDLE NINDIC
ieter ei pennyt i nid nerel
einth mionat i nid rief no nuchyn
Da leir ydi edeiut o nochna faip leinn bo dawrn
lluii nos i neichetyn ech deneat i.
ieter ei pennyt i nid nerel
if be.subj.3s head-def my like water
einth mionat i nid rief no nuchyn
be.subj.3p eye.pl.def my like fountain of tear.pl
Da leir ydi ed-eiut o nochna faip leinn bo
dawrn
that time me who-be-cond-3s at weep-ger both day
and night
lluii nos i neichetyn ech deneat i.
for for the slay-pp-pl from people-def my
The only weird part of this version is:
1) <ieter> "if" replaces <ydd/yd/hyd>
2) <ydi ed-eiut>
<ydi> = yd + i, where <yd> is a pronoun carrier
particle that occurs in Old Nindic and is carried over
into Middle Nindic, occasionally.
<ed-> "who"
<eiut> = eiu "will be" + <t> representing the past
tense. This "future in the past" is a "conditional"
form. This does not survive in other verbs, and could
be a so called aberrant form.
- Elliott
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Message: 5
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 15:05:39 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Nindic Texts
Hallo!
Elliott Lash wrote:
> The following email is a commentary on three
> versions of the same text written in three different
> periods of Nindic. The commentary deals with apparent
> anachronisms and other interesting points.
>
> [stuff snup]
This is, once again, a beautifully crafted piece of work!
It is the sort of stuff I wish to do myself with Albic,
but that requires further work to be done on my languages.
Thank you for sharing it with us!
Greetings,
Jörg.
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