There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
From: Herman Miller
1b. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
From: Eugene Oh
1c. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
From: Carsten Becker
1d. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
From: Carsten Becker
2a. Re: Project: Contact!
From: Sally Caves
2b. Re: Project: Contact!
From: Eugene Oh
2c. Re: Project: Contact!
From: Gary Shannon
2d. Re: Project: Contact!
From: Eric Christopherson
3a. Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Eric Christopherson
3b. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Patrick Littell
3c. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Tristan Alexander McLeay
3d. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Henrik Theiling
3e. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Alex Fink
3f. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Roger Mills
3g. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
From: Paul Bennett
4a. TECH: French Web Translation Help
From: David J. Peterson
4b. Re: TECH: French Web Translation Help
From: Philip Newton
4c. Re: TECH: French Web Translation Help
From: Mark J. Reed
5a. Re: Whatever Updated
From: Henrik Theiling
5b. Re: Whatever Updated
From: Alex Fink
5c. Re: Whatever Updated
From: Jeffrey Jones
5d. Re: Whatever Updated
From: Jeffrey Jones
6a. Humans doing translation the machine-way
From: Eugene Oh
6b. Re: Humans doing translation the machine-way
From: Roger Mills
7. Neimalu in English
From: Pieterson
Messages
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1a. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 7:36 pm (PDT)
David J. Peterson wrote:
> I still have these documents. Gejdr was the largest, but all of
> these had one thing in common: they were terrible. Some time
> after Zidaan I created Kamakawi, which was what I considered
> my first real language (it still had a lot of problems, but they're
> very slowly being ironed out). Everything I created after Kamakawi
> counts as a real language; everything before...not so much.
>
> Because my languages were expanding in number, and not in
> girth, I decided one day not to start anymore languages, and
> just to work on the languages I'd already started. The loophole
> here is that if I totally rework a language I've already started,
> it doesn't count as a new language...
Sometimes it's hard to know what to count as a language and what not to
count. I had a lot of sketchlangs in the years after I started on
Olaetian, and most of those weren't very good. Somehow I lucked out with
Olaetian, which ended up getting a lot more use than the others. But I
think it's like an artist learning how to draw -- I learned things from
the experience of doing these sketches that helped me with future
language ideas.
Some of these sketches were developed enough to actually use for writing
brief paragraphs. I'd usually write something about the language or the
world where the language is spoken, like this early Keluathi example:
Keluat de Kërishka-Kelëthai Oziria Gisathi azëlinsa kelëtha. Än de
këlevado naeë idileë käro Kelidëthë dileëin. Än de kovitho beridaë
idethë ash kothilë ahiraëin.
"Keluat is a planet near the edge of the Elliptical Galaxy of
Krýschë-Kéleta. It is inhabited by many intelligent beings called
Kelidëthë. It is covered by strange blue-green and orange-red liquids."
But the vocabulary and grammar of most of these early languages was
pretty limited. Still, the idea of using the language to write about the
world (even something as pointless as the world being covered in strange
multicolored liquids) is something that might be nice to get back in the
habit of doing.
Messages in this topic (11)
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1b. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:18 pm (PDT)
It is actually quite instructive also to read what you used to write
in the past about your own conworld, and realise 1) how much you still
looked at things from a human-on-Earth perspective, and 2) how your
language differed from your design goal (e.g. an SOV language but
which still betrayed characteristics of SVO).
Eugene
On 7/22/06, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> David J. Peterson wrote:
>
> > I still have these documents. Gejdr was the largest, but all of
> > these had one thing in common: they were terrible. Some time
> > after Zidaan I created Kamakawi, which was what I considered
> > my first real language (it still had a lot of problems, but they're
> > very slowly being ironed out). Everything I created after Kamakawi
> > counts as a real language; everything before...not so much.
> >
> > Because my languages were expanding in number, and not in
> > girth, I decided one day not to start anymore languages, and
> > just to work on the languages I'd already started. The loophole
> > here is that if I totally rework a language I've already started,
> > it doesn't count as a new language...
>
> Sometimes it's hard to know what to count as a language and what not to
> count. I had a lot of sketchlangs in the years after I started on
> Olaetian, and most of those weren't very good. Somehow I lucked out with
> Olaetian, which ended up getting a lot more use than the others. But I
> think it's like an artist learning how to draw -- I learned things from
> the experience of doing these sketches that helped me with future
> language ideas.
>
> Some of these sketches were developed enough to actually use for writing
> brief paragraphs. I'd usually write something about the language or the
> world where the language is spoken, like this early Keluathi example:
>
> Keluat de Kërishka-Kelëthai Oziria Gisathi azëlinsa kelëtha. Än de
> këlevado naeë idileë käro Kelidëthë dileëin. Än de kovitho beridaë
> idethë ash kothilë ahiraëin.
>
> "Keluat is a planet near the edge of the Elliptical Galaxy of
> Krýschë-Kéleta. It is inhabited by many intelligent beings called
> Kelidëthë. It is covered by strange blue-green and orange-red liquids."
>
> But the vocabulary and grammar of most of these early languages was
> pretty limited. Still, the idea of using the language to write about the
> world (even something as pointless as the world being covered in strange
> multicolored liquids) is something that might be nice to get back in the
> habit of doing.
>
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 9:26 am (PDT)
Hi,
I referred to this article: http://www.freewebs.com/curlyjimsam/issue2.pdf.
Google doesn't bring up any results when searching for it. The article I
wrote for our little journal is seperately viewable at
http://tinyurl.com/fqmrr as well.
Carsten
Messages in this topic (11)
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1d. Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 9:27 am (PDT)
Hi,
I have no little tale to tell like Mark Reed (Kudos, 't
was great!), but -- for me it was the case that language
has always played an important role in my family somehow
-- my mother studied English and French for translation at
university. My father has not studied languages, but can
nevertheless speak English and French very well and today
still likes to use Denglish or proper English from time to
time, just for fun. Sentences like "Pass me the salt,
please" are not unusual to be heard at lunch, instead of
"Gib mir mal das Salz", which you'd rather expect.
So it came to pass that my parents spoke in either English
or French when they talked about something little Carsten
shouldn't know. Of course this made me jealous and I
didn't like my parents to sometimes talk in a language I
could not understand in my presence ... little Carsten was
already intersted in learning to read in kindergarten, so
that he could already read (but not always understand)
easy things written in German before school. From what I
heard from others, being able to read in one's last
kindergarten year is not that unusual, but nevertheless I
have always been better in German than in Maths. I have
already mentioned this before, but for some reason I asked
my parents from time to time where some strange word I
didn't know (e.g. an everyday loan word) came from and
what its meaning was. The answer I always got was "So get
yourself an etymologic dictionary!" -- that was when I was
six or so.
Years passed and little Carsten reached his 16th birthday
and wasn't so little a boy anymore. Although I've always
hated learning grammar rules by heart, especially the ones
of my native language German, I have always done well in
English. I had recently finished reading LoTR, due the
availability/demand of the books at the library sometimes
in German, somtimes in English, and I was kind of
fascinated by the love of detail ol' Tolkien put into his
work. I wanted to know more about that weird Elvish
language(s <-- which I only realized later!) that wasn't
always translated in the book. While doing a search for
Tolkienean stuff on the internet, I eventually stumbled
over the "Ardalambion" page and read it with interest.
>From there I eventually also found Mark Rosenfelder's
language construction kit and gave it a try, just for fun.
And thus was born the Nameless Language. And later
Daléian. And later Ayeri. And Tarsyanian. And Ukele.
Like David Peterson already said, his first language was
more or less a clone of English. Since I'm a native
speaker of German, mine was more or less a clone of German
of course. The only text I have in it is the Babel Text,
and I was soon bored by the language. I still don't
recognize it as a properly done conlang anyway. However,
the next thing I did was coming up with Daléian. Since its
grammar was written in just two months, you can already
guess that I haven't come very far with this either. No
Babel Text this time. This language I also discarded
because it was too much like the two next best languages I
meanwhile knew -- English and French, though for
exoticness, I rather leaned towards the latter of these,
since English seemed too boring. Just as boring were the
three vowels /a/, /e/, /i/. So I started Ayeri finally.
That was in 2003. The history of Ayeri can be read in the
current issue of the Conlanger.com Journal (Google for it,
or search conlanger.com/cbb, I don't know the address of
the PDF file). However, I could not let go of Ayeri
anymore for some reason, although I was bored by it from
time to time. It was also the first conlang which I
considered proper and which has been changing from time to
time. I don't know anymore what I changed, but it was not
too much that changed, only one little detail at a time.
The problem is that I am too lazy to change big parts of
the grammar because I have already translated some texts.
It would be too cumbersome to go back and change them all
again ... So Ayeri as it is today has not changed very
much during the last year.
I also mentioned Tarsyanian and Ukele above, both of which
were side projects of mine but are still sketchy. I have
started to write a grammar for them, but I have not yet
come past introducing the main idea of the grammar (Tsy
has an active alignment and Uke has both a nom/acc and
abs/erg system depending on an underlying system of
"agent-likeliness" which is realized in Bantu-like noun
classes). Ayeri however is meanwhile able to handle rather
difficult constructions, though still not without
headache, but it's more elaborate than any of my previous
tries. What it still lacks, and this will be a future goal
of course, are different registers of speech, synonyms,
style, poetry, and little irregularities in the grammar,
the lack of which I'm most worried about. The lexicon
already has got some irregularities built in, though.
Cheers,
Carsten
--
"Miranayam kepauarà naranoaris." (Kalvin nay Hobbes)
Tingraena, Tyemuyang 12, 2315 ya 26:16:21 pd
Messages in this topic (11)
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2a. Re: Project: Contact!
Posted by: "Sally Caves" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:17 pm (PDT)
So, a kind of conlang "pidgin," eh?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Shannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 6:28 PM
Subject: Project: Contact!
> Here's a fun game:
>
> Two people who each have their own distinct conlang
> get together and devise a contact language using
> elements of both conlangs, such that native speakers
> of the two conlangs can communicate with each other in
> a basic way.
>
Messages in this topic (6)
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2b. Re: Project: Contact!
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:01 pm (PDT)
I wonder if anyone ever went to Greece, didn't know Greek except the
alphabet and tried to pass English words off as Greek like this:
åíãëéóç ùïñäò éí èå ãñååê áëöáâåô.
If they did I sure wonder what the people they spoke (or wrote, more
likely) to thought of them.
2006/7/22, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> OT: When I took Latin back in high school, circa 1960,
> I thought it would be fun to make an English/Latin
> pidgin. The backstory was a large band of English
> speaking time travelers who find themselves trapped in
> the Roman empire, and who adopt a lot of Latin
> vocabulary, but with English grammar. (Or alternately,
> they apply Latin grammar to English vocabulary.) I
> always thought that would be fun, but I've never done
> anything with the idea. (It would probably just end up
> being Lingua Sistemfrater anyway.)
>
Messages in this topic (6)
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2c. Re: Project: Contact!
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:39 pm (PDT)
--- Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So, a kind of conlang "pidgin," eh?
>
Exactly!
OT: When I took Latin back in high school, circa 1960,
I thought it would be fun to make an English/Latin
pidgin. The backstory was a large band of English
speaking time travelers who find themselves trapped in
the Roman empire, and who adopt a lot of Latin
vocabulary, but with English grammar. (Or alternately,
they apply Latin grammar to English vocabulary.) I
always thought that would be fun, but I've never done
anything with the idea. (It would probably just end up
being Lingua Sistemfrater anyway.)
--gary
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gary Shannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, July 21, 2006 6:28 PM
> Subject: Project: Contact!
>
>
> > Here's a fun game:
> >
> > Two people who each have their own distinct
> conlang
> > get together and devise a contact language using
> > elements of both conlangs, such that native
> speakers
> > of the two conlangs can communicate with each
> other in
> > a basic way.
> >
>
Messages in this topic (6)
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2d. Re: Project: Contact!
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:54 pm (PDT)
On Jul 21, 2006, at 5:28 PM, Gary Shannon wrote:
> Here's a fun game:
>
> Two people who each have their own distinct conlang
> get together and devise a contact language using
> elements of both conlangs, such that native speakers
> of the two conlangs can communicate with each other in
> a basic way.
I was just thinking about doing this. My first conlang was called
Zaraitian. I feel it to be pretty amateurish now and would like to
some day remake it in a more realistic way. It would have to be a
creole, though - the story of the country it belongs to is that it
was once two kingdoms (which arose from the colonies of two or three
separate foreign powers), and that when they united (or probably in
the centuries leading up to the union) their languages merged.
The problems are that I haven't yet created the languages for the two
independent kingdoms, and I really don't know anything about the
generalities of pidgins and creoles, to know how to combine them
realistically. (Another dilemma is that those two languages are, in
the backstory of that world, distantly related, having come from one
language termed Proto-Humanic... so if I want to be really strict
about making the conlangs conform to the story, I need to construct
Proto-Humanic first, then derive distant descendants, and THEN
pidginize/creolize them. Sounds like fun, but also a lot of work.)
Messages in this topic (6)
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3a. Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 10:38 pm (PDT)
Hi, list! I've been away for a long time, but I've been pulled back
in to the list and conlanging in general lately. For those of you
who don't know, my main conlangs are Lainesco, which was a Romance
language inspired by Spanish and Portuguese, and Dhakrathat, an a
priori language that I've started over mostly from scratch several
times. I'm now one of several people working on a descendant of an
already-created protolanguage.
With that out of the way, I want to ask if anyone knows what kinds of
things a) retroflex consonants and b) glottal stop can develop into
-- i.e. what they actually HAVE developed into in real-world
languages, or more-or-less reasonable hypothetical outcomes. I've
seen the question of where retroflex sounds *come from* treated here,
but not what becomes of them.
Right now, I've tentatively made them develop into something roughly
palatal - either fully palatal or palatalized alveolar or alveolar + /
j/. This doesn't feel very realistic to me, though. I suppose they
could easily become alveolar, but that doesn't satisfy me since I
don't want them to merge with the existing alveolars.
As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine
with other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern
Nahuatl at least it comes out as /h/. I have an intuition that it
might become /N/, but that might be a stretch.
Messages in this topic (7)
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3b. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Patrick Littell" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:27 pm (PDT)
The glottal stop can affect tone, if you want to introduce tone. It
can lead to either high or low, by different historical processes --
I'll try to find some examples within a single language family if you
want me to look it up. I believe it will affect tone on the previous
vowel, but I don't know the specifics. (For example, did it need to
be in the syllable coda to affect tone, or could it have been in the
following syllable's onset? I don't know.)
Laryngealization of the vowel is another possibility. I'm pretty sure
the laryngealization contrast in the Totonacan languages is derived
from an earlier alternation between V and V? (with the latter becoming
laryngealized V). I could look this up as well, if needed.
Laryngealization or something like it can be a reasonable source for
low tone later on, if you want it. Straight from glottal stop to tone
would most likely give you high, but if glottal stop goes to
laryngealization, you'll get low instead.
-- Pat
On 7/22/06, Eric Christopherson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi, list! I've been away for a long time, but I've been pulled back
> in to the list and conlanging in general lately. For those of you
> who don't know, my main conlangs are Lainesco, which was a Romance
> language inspired by Spanish and Portuguese, and Dhakrathat, an a
> priori language that I've started over mostly from scratch several
> times. I'm now one of several people working on a descendant of an
> already-created protolanguage.
>
> With that out of the way, I want to ask if anyone knows what kinds of
> things a) retroflex consonants and b) glottal stop can develop into
> -- i.e. what they actually HAVE developed into in real-world
> languages, or more-or-less reasonable hypothetical outcomes. I've
> seen the question of where retroflex sounds *come from* treated here,
> but not what becomes of them.
>
> Right now, I've tentatively made them develop into something roughly
> palatal - either fully palatal or palatalized alveolar or alveolar + /
> j/. This doesn't feel very realistic to me, though. I suppose they
> could easily become alveolar, but that doesn't satisfy me since I
> don't want them to merge with the existing alveolars.
>
> As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine
> with other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern
> Nahuatl at least it comes out as /h/. I have an intuition that it
> might become /N/, but that might be a stretch.
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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3c. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Tristan Alexander McLeay" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:28 pm (PDT)
On 21/07/06, Eric Christopherson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> With that out of the way, I want to ask if anyone knows what kinds of
> things a) retroflex consonants and b) glottal stop can develop into
> -- i.e. what they actually HAVE developed into in real-world
> languages, or more-or-less reasonable hypothetical outcomes. I've
> seen the question of where retroflex sounds *come from* treated here,
> but not what becomes of them.
>
> Right now, I've tentatively made them develop into something roughly
> palatal - either fully palatal or palatalized alveolar or alveolar + /
> j/. This doesn't feel very realistic to me, though. I suppose they
> could easily become alveolar, but that doesn't satisfy me since I
> don't want them to merge with the existing alveolars.
You *could* just leave them as is, then :) Making them into
palato-alveolars (af)fricatives i.e. [tS dZ S Z] seems pretty
plausible to me tho; they sound alike to my ears.
> As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine
> with other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern
> Nahuatl at least it comes out as /h/. I have an intuition that it
> might become /N/, but that might be a stretch.
I have read a hypothesis that the preaspirated stops in some North
Germanic dialects & languages (e.g. Icelandic, some western(?)
Norwegian) originate from preglottalised stops (much like the way in
English, syllable-final unvoiced stops tend to be glottalised i.e.
"stop" /stOp/ [stO?p]/[stOp_?]), so that reinforces the possibility of
becoming /h/.
--
Tristan
Messages in this topic (7)
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3d. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:02 am (PDT)
Hi!
Eric Christopherson writes:
> Hi, list! I've been away for a long time, but I've been pulled back
> in to the list and conlanging in general lately. ...
Welcome back! :-)
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (7)
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3e. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:42 am (PDT)
On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:31:31 -0500, Eric Christopherson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
[...]
>Right now, I've tentatively made [retroflexes] develop into something roughly
>palatal - either fully palatal or palatalized alveolar or alveolar + /
>j/. This doesn't feel very realistic to me, though. I suppose they
>could easily become alveolar, but that doesn't satisfy me since I
>don't want them to merge with the existing alveolars.
Retroflexes becoming palatals seems possible to me. As a possible natlang
example, at least according to Wikipedia, the [J\] in the Natsilingmiutut
variety of Inuktitut developed from a retroflex, apparently [z`]. Except,
really, the article's not exceedingly clear on which direction the
development went, and I may have it backward: see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_language_phonology_and_phonetics .
>As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine
>with other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern
>Nahuatl at least it comes out as /h/. I have an intuition that it
>might become /N/, but that might be a stretch.
Well, there is the phenomenon of rhinoglottophilia, which Wikipedia vaguely
defines as "the connection between glottal and nasal articulations". I
think it's been cited as responsible for changes such as vowels becoming
nasalized in the vicinity of glottals. OTOH [?] > [N] itself seems
unlikely; [? h] are pretty much the end of the line for sound change, and
don't become much of anything except for zero (and maybe each other), I think.
Alex
Messages in this topic (7)
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3f. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 11:54 am (PDT)
Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote:
> On 21/07/06, Eric Christopherson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(For unknown reasons, I never received the original msg., read it in the
archive).
>
> > With that out of the way, I want to ask if anyone knows what kinds of
> > things a) retroflex consonants and b) glottal stop can develop into
> > -- i.e. what they actually HAVE developed into in real-world
> > languages, or more-or-less reasonable hypothetical outcomes. > >
> > Right now, I've tentatively made them develop into something roughly
> > palatal - either fully palatal or palatalized alveolar or alveolar + /
> > j/. This doesn't feel very realistic to me, though. I suppose they
> > could easily become alveolar, but that doesn't satisfy me since I
> > don't want them to merge with the existing alveolars.
Yes, that seems the easy way out....
>
> You *could* just leave them as is, then :) Making them into
> palato-alveolars (af)fricatives i.e. [tS dZ S Z] seems pretty
> plausible to me tho; they sound alike to my ears.
Or retroflexed affricates, [t`s`, d`z`] (do I have those right?)--
Vietnamese IIRC has a contrast of the former (written "tr") with alv.palatal
[tS] (written "ch") (as does my conlang Gwr).
alv/dental/retr./tap/trill/approx. "r" can go in many directions--
retroflexed s`, z`, S, Z, y, l, n, d, etc. etc.
The reconstructed retro. *d. of Proto-Austronesian generally > r (or later
l), more rarely y (can also > dZ), versus the alv. or dental *d which
usually remains a stop (but can also > r).
>
> > As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine
> > with other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern
> > Nahuatl at least it comes out as /h/.
As it does in Malay and Javanese and their close relatives (but it is
reconstructed as an uvular stop *q, which survives in Formosan langs.)
I have an intuition that it
> > might become /N/, but that might be a stretch.
Agree.
>
> I have read a hypothesis that the preaspirated stops in some North
> Germanic dialects & languages (e.g. Icelandic, some western(?)
> Norwegian) originate from preglottalised stops (much like the way in
> English, syllable-final unvoiced stops tend to be glottalised i.e.
> "stop" /stOp/ [stO?p]/[stOp_?]), so that reinforces the possibility of
> becoming /h/.
Sounds like a very probable development. Clusters of ?+stop might also be
phonologized as geminate~"long" consonants (esp. if voiceless); if voiced,
they might > implosives. ?+C could also metathesize and become an ejective.
In addition to the tonal changes that [?] might cause (mentioned by Patrick
Littell), it might also lead to a short:long V contrast-- -V? > short V, -V
> long. It might also lead to lowered or centralized high vowels.
Messages in this topic (7)
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3g. Re: Sound changes - whither retroflex sounds and glottal stop?
Posted by: "Paul Bennett" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 2:41 pm (PDT)
On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 01:31:31 -0400, Eric Christopherson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Right now, I've tentatively made [retroflexes] develop into something
> roughly palatal - either fully palatal or palatalized alveolar or
> alveolar + /j/. This doesn't feel very realistic to me, though. I
> suppose they could easily become alveolar, but that doesn't satisfy me
> since I don't want them to merge with the existing alveolars.
Have you thought about a chain shift, i.e. moving the alveolars out of the
way first...
/t/ -> /tS/
/t/ -> /t_j/
/t/ -> /t_m/
/t/ -> /t_d/
...and then /t`/ -> /t/
Plausibly, you could fricativize the alveolars, instead. Maybe...
/t`/ -> /t/ -> /s/ -> /h/ (or /S/)
Another alternative is anti-Scandinaviation: /t`/ -> /r\t/
> As for glottal stop, I know it can drop out completely, and combine with
> other consonants to form glottalized ones, and I think in modern Nahuatl
> at least it comes out as /h/. I have an intuition that it might become
> /N/, but that might be a stretch.
The change /?/ -> /N/ I think is documented in Nenets (or a related
natlang?)
Paul
Messages in this topic (7)
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4a. TECH: French Web Translation Help
Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 1:32 am (PDT)
My website is hosted by Free.fr, which means that all the pages
I access are actually in French. This is fine, as I can pretty much
figure out, but there are certain technical that I don't know how
to translate, and which, if confronted with the translation, I might
actually not know in English, being unfamiliar with web lingo.
I was wondering if someone on the list who either knew French
or could figure it out and knew what the translation meant could
help me out:
-Ko: Appears to be an abbreviation, and appears to be something
not favorable... My guess was this is the term used when someone
is on one of your pages and has clicked off of it onto a totally
different url. Correct?
-Fichier: Unique hits?
-Hits: Obviously I know what the English translation of this is,
but what exactly is a hit? Just when someone clicks on a site?
-Visite: Okay, this is a visit, but is there a difference between a
visit and a hit--and a fichier?
-Page d'entree/page de sortie: Are these the pages that people
who start looking at the site start with, and those who finish
looking at the site finish with?
Also, what might a "livre d'or" be? Gold book?
Feel free to reply offlist. :)
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
Messages in this topic (3)
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4b. Re: TECH: French Web Translation Help
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 9:47 am (PDT)
On 7/22/06, David J. Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> -Ko: Appears to be an abbreviation, and appears to be something
> not favorable... My guess was this is the term used when someone
> is on one of your pages and has clicked off of it onto a totally
> different url. Correct?
Probably "kilooctet(s)". That is, units of 1000 (or 1024) eight-bit
units. Nowadays practically synonymous with "kilobytes" (bytes with
more or fewer than 8 bits being used by vanishingly few systems, at
least in my experience), though people writing network protocols
sometimes use the term "octets" even in English.
> -Fichier: Unique hits?
Standard computer-French for "file".
I believe it's also standard French for "file"-the-non-computer-term;
that is, a file of documents on someone/something or other.
> -Hits: Obviously I know what the English translation of this is,
> but what exactly is a hit? Just when someone clicks on a site?
>
> -Visite: Okay, this is a visit, but is there a difference between a
> visit and a hit--and a fichier?
You'll have to ask your webstats software, as definitions differ even
in English.
However, I'll guess that the difference is that "hits" is page
accesses, while "visits" is *series* of page accesses.
For example, if I start at your main page, then click on a link on
that page, then on another link on the resulting page, it'd be three
hits but one visit.
(NB: counting hits is easy; grouping hits into visits is hard in
general due to how HTTP works -- software has to use heuristics. Don't
trust any web statistics you didn't forge yourself.)
> -Page d'entree/page de sortie: Are these the pages that people
> who start looking at the site start with, and those who finish
> looking at the site finish with?
That's how I'd interpret it.
> Also, what might a "livre d'or" be? Gold book?
Literally, yes! Idiomatically, I believe it's what's usually called a
"guest book" in English.
In real life, a book where visitors leave remarks in; in web lingo, a
page where visitors do the same.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (3)
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4c. Re: TECH: French Web Translation Help
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:10 am (PDT)
In English, there are some standard distinctions drawn between "hits",
"page views", and "(unique) visitors". Perhaps the "visit" is
related to the latter term?
A page view is an access of a single web page. A single page view may
comprise many "hits" - if the page has images, or references an
external stylesheet, or an external JavaScript code library, or
anything else that's not stored within the body of the HTML itself,
each reference to each of those things is a "hit" (though not all
necessarily to the same web server).
A "(unique) visitor" is a single person browsing your site. If they
hit "refresh"/"reload" 500 times on your page, that's 500 page views,
and maybe 10,000 hits, but still only one visit(or).
Messages in this topic (3)
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________________________________________________________________________
5a. Re: Whatever Updated
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:21 am (PDT)
Hi!
Jeffrey Jones writes:
>...
> http://qiihoskeh.livejournal.com/71719.html
>
> I'm especially interested in hearing from those who found the original
> version confusing.
That includes me, right?
Errrm, I still don't understand it. When you describe -3I, -3D
etc. in the third section, I'm lost. What are those? What does 'A3
takes' mean in this example (I understand that it is morphologically
extended by an affix, but why?). I also don't understand the 3rd
person actants. Unfortunately, I could not find hints in the
examples, either, because although they are morphologically broken
down, the explanation why the corresponding affixes are used is
missing.
It would be very helpful to have an example for every new tag you
introduce, starting from the section 'Trivalent Words'. Please have a
sentence for -3I there, explain it, then have one for -3D, explain it,
etc. The information is too dense for me to follow.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: Whatever Updated
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:40 pm (PDT)
On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 19:04:20 -0400, Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Hi,
>for those who are following this, I've created an alternate explanation of
>the actant morphology at
>
>http://qiihoskeh.livejournal.com/71719.html
>
>I'm especially interested in hearing from those who found the original
>version confusing.
Some assorted thoughts:
Is there any VOS-internal reason to postulate "lexical verbs" and "lexical
adjectives" (maybe I missed it on one of your other pages)? Does this just
mean 'words whose English translations are verbs', respectively 'adjectives'?
The "Argument Structure Classes" table is nice and clear and succinct. It
seems to belong earlier in the description, though, before "Actant Affixes".
I notice that -Rfx /-ri/ is the only actant marker which can't lose its high
vowel. Is this intentional?
It's quite sensible that 3I- and 3A- prefixes are null in the indicative and
2S- and 2P- are null in the imperative. I wonder whether it would make more
sense, though, to still call them 3[IA]- and 2[SP]-, instead of 3. and 2.,
even when their realization is null. That way you could say, for instance,
that the third singular animate and inanimate subjects are always marked by
3I- and 3A-, when they're not marked by 3H-, and that they're just realized
as zero in certain contexts.
Your new explanation seems to have lost any mention of when to actually use
3H- and -3D, except to say that they're not used on a main verb.
But maybe I can work out what 3H- does. Re the "phrasal usage" section,
when you nullify an argument, is the nullified argument the one that's taken
as the referent of the "syntactic noun/adjective" as a whole? I infer this
from your examples, especially (3) (8) (9) (10) where this seems to explain
the things you've translated as relative clauses (in (3) a cleft). So it
appears that in this situation, when you want A1 to appear as an argument
phrase and not be nullified (i.e. be the referent), 3H- is called for. Is
this right?
And when you say about -3A and -3I
If both appear, the one whose argument is nullified is the one whose
gender is required by the situation
--- that's because there will be animacy agreement on whatever predicate
this is an argument of, so that one can tell what the referent of this
"syntactic noun/adjective" is supposed to be, yes?
Still in the dark on -3D, in part 'cause there are no examples of complement
clauses or adverbial clauses.
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
5c. Re: Whatever Updated
Posted by: "Jeffrey Jones" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 1:22 pm (PDT)
On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 12:11:40 +0200, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Hi!
>
>Jeffrey Jones writes:
>>...
>> http://qiihoskeh.livejournal.com/71719.html
>>
>> I'm especially interested in hearing from those who found the original
>> version confusing.
>
>That includes me, right?
>
>Errrm, I still don't understand it. When you describe -3I, -3D
>etc. in the third section, I'm lost. What are those? What does 'A3
>takes' mean in this example (I understand that it is morphologically
>extended by an affix, but why?). I also don't understand the 3rd
>person actants. Unfortunately, I could not find hints in the
>examples, either, because although they are morphologically broken
>down, the explanation why the corresponding affixes are used is
>missing.
>
>It would be very helpful to have an example for every new tag you
>introduce, starting from the section 'Trivalent Words'. Please have a
>sentence for -3I there, explain it, then have one for -3D, explain it,
>etc. The information is too dense for me to follow.
>
>**Henrik
>=========================================================================
Thanks for the detailed comment! This tells me what I need to know. I've
made some changes, but it's going to take a lot of work to finish redoing
the examples with commentary, and move them around.
Jeff
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
5d. Re: Whatever Updated
Posted by: "Jeffrey Jones" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 2:09 pm (PDT)
On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 15:35:26 -0400, Alex Fink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 19:04:20 -0400, Jeffrey Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>for those who are following this, I've created an alternate explanation of
>>the actant morphology at
>>
>>http://qiihoskeh.livejournal.com/71719.html
>>
>>I'm especially interested in hearing from those who found the original
>>version confusing.
>
>Some assorted thoughts:
>
>Is there any VOS-internal reason to postulate "lexical verbs" and "lexical
>adjectives" (maybe I missed it on one of your other pages)? Does this just
>mean 'words whose English translations are verbs', respectively 'adjectives'?
>
>The "Argument Structure Classes" table is nice and clear and succinct. It
>seems to belong earlier in the description, though, before "Actant Affixes".
>
>I notice that -Rfx /-ri/ is the only actant marker which can't lose its high
>vowel. Is this intentional?
>
>It's quite sensible that 3I- and 3A- prefixes are null in the indicative and
>2S- and 2P- are null in the imperative. I wonder whether it would make more
>sense, though, to still call them 3[IA]- and 2[SP]-, instead of 3. and 2.,
>even when their realization is null. That way you could say, for instance,
>that the third singular animate and inanimate subjects are always marked by
>3I- and 3A-, when they're not marked by 3H-, and that they're just realized
>as zero in certain contexts.
>
>Your new explanation seems to have lost any mention of when to actually use
>3H- and -3D, except to say that they're not used on a main verb.
>
>But maybe I can work out what 3H- does. Re the "phrasal usage" section,
>when you nullify an argument, is the nullified argument the one that's taken
>as the referent of the "syntactic noun/adjective" as a whole? I infer this
>from your examples, especially (3) (8) (9) (10) where this seems to explain
>the things you've translated as relative clauses (in (3) a cleft). So it
>appears that in this situation, when you want A1 to appear as an argument
>phrase and not be nullified (i.e. be the referent), 3H- is called for. Is
>this right?
>And when you say about -3A and -3I
> If both appear, the one whose argument is nullified is the one whose
> gender is required by the situation
>--- that's because there will be animacy agreement on whatever predicate
>this is an argument of, so that one can tell what the referent of this
>"syntactic noun/adjective" is supposed to be, yes?
>
>Still in the dark on -3D, in part 'cause there are no examples of complement
>clauses or adverbial clauses.
>
>Alex
>=========================================================================
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Humans doing translation the machine-way
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:44 am (PDT)
If this thread deserves a special tag, forgive me because I really had
no idea under what if at all it ought to be classified.
A little background to this post:
I was browsing through past mails I'd received from the list, and
chanced again upon the thread regarding machine translation (where I'd
posted a reference to an article in The Economist, if it makes the
memory clearer). It got me thinking-- if machines, armed only with a
distraction-free hyper-sped processor could manage to translate text
based only on statistical analysis and matching, how well would humans
perform in the same task?
What piqued my interest further was the coincidence that I was working
on translations for my conlang, Arithide (sample texts of which can be
found at http://wiki.frath.net/Modern_Arithide and which happens to be
pronounced like Aristide, the ex-Haitian president). How well might a
human interlinear the romanised Arithide text given the original
beside it?
Which brings me to:
If anyone is game, how about trying to interlinear some of the sample
texts that I've posted on the FrathWiki page? They range from short
(Pater Noster) to very long (an Economist leader on Russia), and
happily I haven't brought myself out of reluctance to provide
interlinears.
And to:
How about posting interlinear-less side-by-side translations of
certain texts in your own conlangs too, for the rest of the list to
try out?
Cheerio!
Eugene
Messages in this topic (2)
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6b. Re: Humans doing translation the machine-way
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:44 am (PDT)
Eugene Oh wrote:
> It got me thinking-- if machines, armed only with a
> distraction-free hyper-sped processor could manage to translate text
> based only on statistical analysis and matching, how well would humans
> perform in the same task?
> (snips)
> How about posting interlinear-less side-by-side translations of
> certain texts in your own conlangs too, for the rest of the list to
> try out?
An amusing idea :-))) (The instructions for assembling a computer desk came
in Engl. and Polish, which was fun.) I wonder if it would work as a relay?
(The Romlang portions are a not-dissimilar idea)
There is one in Kash-- http://cinduworld.tripod.com/texts.htm --that some
will remember. Quite straightforward, I think, but no fair peeking in the
grammar or dictionary, or the glossary of new words at the bottom...
Messages in this topic (2)
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________________________________________________________________________
7. Neimalu in English
Posted by: "Pieterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Jul 22, 2006 2:33 pm (PDT)
(I posted this earlier today, but the message seems to have disappeared.)
I've translated a large part of my website to English, available here:
http://pieterson.atspace.com/
Pieterson
Messages in this topic (1)
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