There are 13 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. OT: Re: Bye!!
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Oligosynthesis
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Oligosynthesis
From: 轡虫 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Exocentric Derivation in Gweydr
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Oligosynthesis
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Oligosynthesis
From: Aaron Morse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: CHAT half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/ (was: Graeca sine
flexione (was: Greek plosives))
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: CHAT half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/ (was: Graeca sine
flexione (was: Greek plosives))
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 13:38:19 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: OT: Re: Bye!!
* Paul Bennett said on 2006-02-03 01:50:38 +0100
> On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:19:58 -0500, 轡虫 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >It might do for some of the posters here to remember that some of us
> >are just learning, not used to lists like this, or both. It can be
> >easy to forget and assume that everyone is on the same page as you
> >are, so to speak.
>
> Amen. That's very true, and while it ought to be obvious, the problem is
> somewhat self-fulfilling, or self-predicting, or something.
>
> I have other thoughts, and a large digression on my personal style, but
> they're clearly not appropriate right now.
Enter the "canned rant". If there is something that keeps coming back,
it is worth sweating out the ultimate rebuttal/nail-in-coffin for, then
to be pasted when the problem comes back. I'm still working on the "Why
ontology-wankers are such utter loons"-rant so I leave the "it's not
malice but stupidity"-rant and "reading a manual won't kill you"-rant
and "change the damn subject line already"-rant and "the map is not the
friggin terrain"-rant and its twin "don't get lost in the
terminology-jungle"-rant[1] to you excellent lot.
t., whose writing of da Master-thesis is left with a completely ruined
grasp of the English language. No suave repetition of words allowed to
build cadence for rhetoric gains in da Holy Writ! *gah* How many
synonyms are there for "describe" anyway? (Don't answer that.)
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:46:10 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
On 2/3/06, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Orthography - skip the aspirations and unify the stresses, and here you are
> > ;)
>
> Which happens to be exactly what Modern Greek has done :)
Are we talking about just replacing the three stress marks
with one (say, acute), or actually unifying the stress
rule so stress marks need not be written because
the stress is always predictable? I think the latter
would be a better plan for a fauxlang like this,
though the rule need not be as simple as the always-penult
rule of Esperanto.
> > The *real* problem is - what shall we do with the Genitive???
>
> Well, taking the lead from Romance, replace it with preposition +
> flexion-less form. I propose "apo" (from, away from).
>
> So "the teacher's book" would become "to biblio apo to daskalo".
Or ek/eks? Or maybe some uses of the plain genitive are
replaced by one preposition, some by another.
We need to think about what prepositions will replace
various uses of the plain dative as well. "eis" could work
for some of them.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 15:22:07 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
On 2/3/06, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > The *real* problem is - what shall we do with the Genitive???
> >
> > Well, taking the lead from Romance, replace it with preposition +
> > flexion-less form. I propose "apo" (from, away from).
> >
> > So "the teacher's book" would become "to biblio apo to daskalo".
>
> Or ek/eks?
Or that. Another preposition that got dropped in modern Greek, btw :)
> We need to think about what prepositions will replace
> various uses of the plain dative as well. "eis" could work
> for some of them.
...and again, this is the way modern Greek has gone. It's completely
lost the dative case except in fossilised phrases, replacing it with
"se" + accusative. And as far as I know, MG "se" is a descendant of AG
"eis".
Well, it's not always "se" + accusative -- it's sometimes the
genitive. Nearly always, for personal pronouns (e.g. "mou edose ena
vivlio" «he gave (to) me a book»), and occasionally for nouns as well,
e.g. "dos to vivlio tis Marias" «give Maria the book», sounding
exactly the same as «give Maria's book».
This may be a feature of the Balkan sprachbund; apparently, some other
languages there also use genitive for dative. (However, this is
colloquial-only/regional-only in Greek, as far as I know, at least for
nouns: only pronouns regularly take the genitive form to indicate
dative, though "se" + accusative is also available, e.g. for
emphasis.)
It's amusing how many "let's simplify things by doing X" suggestions
end up being things that the Greeks ended up actually doing :)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 11:08:15 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Oligosynthesis
On 2/3/06, 轡虫 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm about to sketch out the basic morphology of a language that I'm
> working on for a friend who writes fantasy stories, and I thought it
> would be the perfect opportunity to play with oligosynthesis.
>
> I don't really know where to start as far as researching to get a good
> idea of what would make good roots and affixes, though. Does anyone
> have any suggestions?
You might look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage
It seems to be a theory listing a set of basic concepts in terms
of which all other concepts should be definable.
Toki Pona is an oligo-isolating language; you might look at
its list of words and the way it uses phrases (or compounds,
depending on one's analysis) to express more complex ideas.
For derivation possibilities, see Gary Shannon's list of
derivation functions:
http://fiziwig.com/functions.txt
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 09:51:34 -0600
From: 轡虫 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Oligosynthesis
I'm about to sketch out the basic morphology of a language that I'm
working on for a friend who writes fantasy stories, and I thought it
would be the perfect opportunity to play with oligosynthesis.
I don't really know where to start as far as researching to get a good
idea of what would make good roots and affixes, though. Does anyone
have any suggestions?
--
kutsuwamushi
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Message: 6
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 08:19:55 -0800
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Exocentric Derivation in Gweydr
Andreas wrote:
<<
The closest real-world analogue for this I can think of is the
variation by
more-or-less empty suffixes sometimes seen in biological
nomenclature. Frex, in
1933-'34 Roewer named a bunch of solpugid genera as follows:
Solpugarda
Solpugassa
Solpugeira
etc.
>>
Neat! A lot of these endings look like either Finnish or Latin case/
adjectival endings. Actually, a book on language in the sciences
(how it's used) would be utterly fascinating. I think it's been
mentioned
onlist before how Chemistry's been the birthplace of many a
suffix (e.g., -ide, -ate, -on?, -ode?).
What would be interesting is if other scientists familiar with each of
these genera went on to name other things using these suffixes in
a way that they felt was similar. I.e., the differences between the
plants labeled as Solpug-arda and Solpug-assa would constitute the
differences between the suffixes -arda and -assa for naming other
plants--or, in other words, if it was done systematically, but that
systematicity arose spontaneously out of use, rather than the guy
inventing the suffixes and saying, "-arda means x; -assa means y",
etc.
Thanks for sharing, Andreas!
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 16:43:19 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Oligosynthesis
staving kutsuwamushi:
>I'm about to sketch out the basic morphology of a language that I'm
>working on for a friend who writes fantasy stories, and I thought it
>would be the perfect opportunity to play with oligosynthesis.
>
>I don't really know where to start as far as researching to get a good
>idea of what would make good roots and affixes, though. Does anyone
>have any suggestions?
If I were doing an oligosynthetic language, I'd have all my basic roots be
in one part of speech, most probably verbs. I'd then use a system of noun
classes to derive nouns from the verbs, and carry on in that manner.
Pete
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 09:07:48 -0800
From: Aaron Morse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Oligosynthesis
You should check out socialese, at
http://www.kutjara.com/wiki/index.php?title=Socialese
Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: staving kutsuwamushi:
>I'm about to sketch out the basic morphology of a language that I'm
>working on for a friend who writes fantasy stories, and I thought it
>would be the perfect opportunity to play with oligosynthesis.
>
>I don't really know where to start as far as researching to get a good
>idea of what would make good roots and affixes, though. Does anyone
>have any suggestions?
If I were doing an oligosynthetic language, I'd have all my basic roots be
in one part of speech, most probably verbs. I'd then use a system of noun
classes to derive nouns from the verbs, and carry on in that manner.
Pete
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 17:22:57 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
Isaac Penzev wrote:
> R A Brown grapsa:
>
>
>>Hanuman Zhang wrote:
>>
>>>on 2/2/06 8:52 PM, R A Brown at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>taliesin the storyteller wrote:
>>>>[snip]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Graeca sine flexione, now that's a language that needs to be made!
>>>>>Any takers?
>
>
> Ah, how lovely! May I play in this sandbox too?
I assume it's open to everyone.
>>>EEK! Eh?, Graeca sine flexione sounds bit too much like Glosa, the
>>>auxlang...
>>
>> :-D
>>
>>That was my first reaction also!
>
>
> Non-euroclonic auxlangs may be fun too, if people do not occupy with
> proselytizing, but treat them as artlangs...
They could be, but I don't think GSF is really non-euroclonic, but it
would not be of the overdone Romano-germanic type ;)
>
>>>then again Glosa's roots are about 1/3 Latin.
>>
>>Yes, there is quite a bit of Latin derived stuff there as well. Also it
>>doesn't always treat Greek derivations with respect; for example _onyma_
>>(gen. onymatos) becomes the almost unrecognizable _nima_ with arbitrary
>>loss of initial vowel.
>
>
> Now, that's sad... Then I think GSF should be more consistent.
I agree on both points.
> ==============
[snip]
>
>>Obviously if there are no flexions, we have no grammatical gender
>>agreement,
>
>
> What about number then, if there are no flexions?
Indeed, 'sine flexione' means without any flexion. I believe, however,
Peano did allow a plural -s if plurality was not clear from context.
Glosa uses a preposited particle 'plu' (obviously from Latin).
IMO Plurality should be left to context as in Chinese. If it necessary
to make it clear then words like 'oligo' (few) or 'poly' (many) can be
employed.
[snip]
>
>>However, I can see some possible problems over agreeing on an
>>orthography & phonology ;)
>
>
> Phonology? Why? Can't it be Byzantine, if people can read e.g. the NT texts,
> using it?
That's OK if people have no objections to:
- including sounds such as [T], [D] and [G];
- having several different ways of spelling the same sound, in
particular having half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/;
- allowing the same letter to have different pronunciations according to
context (e.g. upsilon which may be /i/ or /f/ or /v/ or simply combine
with |o| to give /u/.
> Orthography - skip the aspirations and unify the stresses, and here you are
> ;)
Sounds like modern Greek.
But what I meant was, using the Greek or Roman alphabet. Greek has been
written in the latter alphabet, particularly on Crete. It makes for a
more regular spelling than the modern & Byzantine orthography.
On the other hand, if a more Erasmian pronunciation were adopted, the
Greek alphabet would give a more regular orthography ;)
> The *real* problem is - what shall we do with the Genitive???
I do not see the problem.
> Don't take all the said above too seriously,
> it's only a game :)))))))
Quite so.
=================================
Philip Newton wrote:
[snip]
>>The *real* problem is - what shall we do with the Genitive???
>
>
> Well, taking the lead from Romance, replace it with preposition +
> flexion-less form. I propose "apo" (from, away from).
>
> So "the teacher's book" would become "to biblio apo to daskalo".
Exactly - no problem :)
==================================
Jim Henry wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>On 2/3/06, Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
>>>Orthography - skip the aspirations and unify the stresses, and here
you are ;)
>>
>>Which happens to be exactly what Modern Greek has done :)
>
>
> Are we talking about just replacing the three stress marks
> with one (say, acute), or actually unifying the stress
> rule so stress marks need not be written because
> the stress is always predictable?
Yes, I was not clear what Isaac meant, and rather fancied he meant the
latter.
>I think the latter
> would be a better plan for a fauxlang like this,
> though the rule need not be as simple as the always-penult
> rule of Esperanto.
I hope not! In fact at least one of the ancient dialects did regularize
the accent so that it was predictable and need not be written - tho in
facts texts always put them one. That dialect was Lesbian. But the rule
was determined, exactly as for ancient Greek verbs in Attic & Koine
Greek, according to the length of the vowel in the final syllable. But
to introduce the Lesbian accent would mean using an Erasmian
pronunciation ;)
Indeed, for ancient Greek we simply do not know the accentuation rules
for any dialects except Epic, Attic & Lesbian. Koine & Byzantine Greek
simply inherited the Attic system (which was much the same as Epic).
This does not, however, prevent editors printing texts of other dialects
with the accent marks - they simply assume the Attic system.
>
>>>The *real* problem is - what shall we do with the Genitive???
>>
>>Well, taking the lead from Romance, replace it with preposition +
>>flexion-less form. I propose "apo" (from, away from).
>>
>>So "the teacher's book" would become "to biblio apo to daskalo".
>
>
> Or ek/eks?
ek/eks means "out of", not just "from" - and in the modern language its
'kse'. Which, of course, raises another problem - do we take the ancient
or modern forms where they differ?
>Or maybe some uses of the plain genitive are
> replaced by one preposition, some by another.
Indeed, they must be.
> We need to think about what prepositions will replace
> various uses of the plain dative as well. "eis" could work
> for some of them.
Too late!! The Greeks have already done this themselves several
centuries ago ;)
There is no dative in modern Greek and, yes, they have employed "es/eis"
for some its uses, except that in the modern language the preposition
has become 'se'.
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 18:33:37 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
Quoting R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Isaac Penzev wrote:
> > R A Brown grapsa:
> >
> >
> >>Hanuman Zhang wrote:
> >>
> >>>on 2/2/06 8:52 PM, R A Brown at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> >>>>[snip]
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>Graeca sine flexione, now that's a language that needs to be made!
> >>>>>Any takers?
> >
> >
> > Ah, how lovely! May I play in this sandbox too?
>
> I assume it's open to everyone.
>
> >>>EEK! Eh?, Graeca sine flexione sounds bit too much like Glosa, the
> >>>auxlang...
> >>
> >> :-D
> >>
> >>That was my first reaction also!
> >
> >
> > Non-euroclonic auxlangs may be fun too, if people do not occupy with
> > proselytizing, but treat them as artlangs...
>
> They could be, but I don't think GSF is really non-euroclonic, but it
> would not be of the overdone Romano-germanic type ;)
Isn't there a Slavic-derived auxlang too? Called Slovio or some such?
For a truly original euroclone IAL, I suggest celtico-baltic. ;)
Andreas
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 18:36:35 +0100
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/ (was: Graeca sine
flexione (was: Greek plosives))
R A Brown skrev:
> - having several different ways of spelling the same sound, in
> particular having half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/;
I was under the impression that at least some of these still
indicated /y/ in Byzantine times. There are even some
modern dialects where /y/ > /u/ rather than /y/ > /i/.
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
"Maybe" is a strange word. When mum or dad says it
it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
means "no"!
(Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 18:50:17 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/ (was: Graeca sine
flexione (was: Greek plosives))
Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> R A Brown skrev:
>
> > - having several different ways of spelling the same sound, in
> > particular having half a dozen or so ways of spelling /i/;
>
> I was under the impression that at least some of these still
> indicated /y/ in Byzantine times. There are even some
> modern dialects where /y/ > /u/ rather than /y/ > /i/.
The Byzantine period spans about a millennium - surely some changes went on
under this period?
Andreas
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 18:58:46 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT Graeca sine flexione (was: Greek plosives)
On 2/3/06, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ek/eks means "out of", not just "from" - and in the modern language its
> 'kse'.
And is a bound morpheme, AFAIK -- it only appears as a prefix, not as
a separate word.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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