There are 10 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
From: Henrik Theiling
1b. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
From: Christian Thalmann
1c. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
From: Dirk Elzinga
1d. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
From: Kate
2a. Locative constructions in a:seka`eni (long)
From: James W.
2b. Re: Locative constructions in a:seka`eni (long)
From: Larry Sulky
3a. TECH: RSS for Conlang
From: Henrik Theiling
3b. Re: TECH: RSS for Conlang
From: Sai Emrys
3c. Re: TECH: RSS for Conlang
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4. Tatari Faran update
From: H. S. Teoh
Messages
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1a. Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 4:46 am (PDT)
Hi!
H. S. Teoh writes:
>...
> Speaking of which... I just discovered earlier today, to my chagrin,
> that langmaker.com has turned into a Wiki. What's up with the
> wikiphilia?? Whatever happened to the original site?
Jeffrey had no time updating it for more than half a year after ~June
2005 IIRC, and since he did not expect less business in the future, he
decided to turn the site into a Wiki. That seemed to be the only way
of saving it.
> (Having said that, however, I've actually indulged in beautifying the TF
> entry on the wiki, so I really have no cause for complaint. :-P)
I took the opportunity, too, but only for very minimal adjustments so
far, since I am not completely native to the Wiki markup language. I
would have had to search the documentation for too long to find out
how to rename a page (and all references to it, of course), because
the name of S17 had changed from Þrjótran to Þrjótrun and now to
Þrjótrunn (actually, all forms are still good: they are adjective case
forms, the first one f.sg.nom, the second m.sg.nom (formally n.sg.nom)
and the last one n.sg.nom).
Anyway, your description of Tatari Faran is a nice summary. The
considerations about euphony reminds me:
I hereby report that in S11, the conlang with only univalent 'verbs',
or put differently: with case endings being an open lexical class, and
the conlang that has no words yet but a large number of sandhi rules
and vowel harmonies, and even a Bison parser for the grammar, I might
discard the whole phonology I have so far, because any attempt of
creating words has resulted in the feeling that the words sound ugly.
I still hope to save it, but changes currently seem quite low.
Maybe I can use at least the vowel harmony in some other language, or
just freeze the project instead of cancelling it and start another
language with a similar grammar but a different phonology (it was the
grammar that is the most interesting part of this conlang).
Currently, I have a Nahuatl-like phonology experiment running that
looks promising. It is part of an oligosynthetic lexicon project
(which would even fit Nahuatl morphology quite well).
We'll see. I am constantly conlanging at the moment, and I have two
or three active projects, plus small side projects (the Toki Pona
script was one, and the musical conlang Nibuzigu another). :-)
Anyway, do others also have such a hard time finding personally
pleasing phonologies? I find it awefully difficult.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (12)
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1b. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
Posted by: "Christian Thalmann" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 7:57 am (PDT)
--- In [email protected], Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anyway, do others also have such a hard time finding personally
> pleasing phonologies? I find it awefully difficult.
Not at all, I absolutely love making phonologies. Disappointingly
(?), I usually end up with rather simple vowel systems, and no
hard-to-pronounce consonants. But maybe that's just the recipe
for pleasing phonologies? It seems to work for Quenya, IMHO the
hallmark of pleasing phonology.
-- Christian Thalmann
Messages in this topic (12)
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1c. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
Posted by: "Dirk Elzinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 12:09 pm (PDT)
On 8/8/06, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [snip]
>
> Anyway, do others also have such a hard time finding personally
> pleasing phonologies? I find it awefully difficult.
I too find it difficult. It's a fairly easy thing to collect a list of
sounds that are appealing in themselves, but to get them to work
together in a pleasing, or at least convincing fashion is the real
trick. I like the sound of the language I work with professionally
(the Goshute dialect of Shoshoni), but I didn't want Miapimoquitch to
be an acoustic copy of it (which it was, when it was still called
Tepa). I've been working hard to get the sound of Miapimoquitch right,
and I think I almost have it. I'm still not sure about stress and
intonation, though ...
Dirk
Messages in this topic (12)
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1d. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
Posted by: "Kate" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 12:12 pm (PDT)
On 8/8/06, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anyway, do others also have such a hard time finding personally
> pleasing phonologies? I find it awefully difficult.
>
> **Henrik
I do, although for me it's more about how the language looks than how
it actually sounds. Since I create most of my languages for stories,
how the language looks in transliteration is important to me. (And I'm
picky about the transliteration not being too inaccurate or ambiguous,
too.) I probably spend more time trying to balance what I consider
interesting and pleasing with what's sensible and pleasing in
transliteration.
What I wonder, is does anyone have the same problem when it comes to
morphology, syntax, etc? Sometimes I end up tossing a whole language
because I don't think it's elegant enough, enough though there are at
least ten different reasons that doing that is silly.
--
Katya
Messages in this topic (12)
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2a. Locative constructions in a:seka`eni (long)
Posted by: "James W." [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 8:06 am (PDT)
Hey all,
I'm currently working on the locative constructions in
a:seka`eni. I found a really interesting paper by Marcus
Kracht, "On the Semantics of Locatives (2000)" describing
them as consisting of a configuration and a mode (I only
made it to about p. 15 before getting lost :( )
http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/kracht00semantics.html
So, for a:seka`eni I have come up with eight basic
configurations: above, below, behind, in front of, beside,
near, on, in. Each of these configurations can appear in any
of six modes: stative, cofinal, coinitial, transitory,
approximative, recessive. The exception to this is in the
above and below configurations, which don't appear in the
recessive mode, because they seemed to me to be semantically
identical to each other in the approximative mode (see the
chart below for clarification).
Definition of the modes (from Kracht, p.2-3):
While there is no plausible bound on the number of
configurations that a language distinguishes, the number of
modes seems to be limited: there is evidence for the
stative, the cofinal, the coinitial, the transitory and the
approximative mode. [James W.: I saw another reference to a
recessive mode somewhere also, but can't remember where.]
The mode is _stative_ if the object remains in that
configuration during event time (e.g. Finnish Inessive
talossa, in the house); the mode is _cofinal_ if the object
moves into the configuration during event time (e.g. Finnish
Illative taloon, into the house); the mode is _coinitial_ if
the object moves from the configuration during event time
(e.g. Finnish Elative talosta, out of the house). The mode
is _transitory_ if the object moves in and again out of the
configuration (e.g. through the tunnel). Finally, the
_approximative_ mode describes a movement approaching a
configuration (e.g. towards the tunnel). [Recessive would
describe a movement away from a configuration, I think.]
It seems to me that the approximative and recessive (and
maybe transitory?) are kind of like a continuous aspect,
where the others are more like a perfective aspect. So there
is a difference in meaning between, say, a cofinal and an
approximative construction with the same configuration.
I've laid out all the possible combinations in the chart
below. What I need is for you to check my interpretation of
the config + mode combinations, especially for the
approximative and recesisve modes. Do they make sense? Are
there any natlangs with systems that work like this? I'm not
too concerned if there aren't, but hopefully the system is
plausible, because it is supposed to be humanly useable.
In the chart the configurations are in all caps (I'm not
yelling, it just helps the layout make sense :) ) followed
by the six modes and the definition of their combination.
ABOVE
stative: above
cofinal: up to
coinitial: down from
transitory: passing over
approximative: ascending
recessive: descending [unsused, seems the same as below +
approximative]
BELOW
stative: under/below
cofinal: to below
coinitial: from below
transitory: passsing below/burrowing
approximative: descending
recessive: ascending [unused, seems the same as above +
approximative]
BEHIND
stative: behind
cofinal: to behind
coinitial: from behind
transitory: passing in back of
approximative: fading into the background
recessive: coming out (of hiding)
IN FRONT OF
stative: in front of
cofinal: to the front
coinitial: from the front
transitory: passing in front of
approximative: coming to the forefront
recessive: leaving the front
BESIDE
stative: beside/next to (in a:seka`eni it implies that the
objects are touching)
cofinal: (attaching) to the side
coinitial: (detaching) from the side
transitory: brushing against
approximative: coming to the side
recessive: leaving the side
NEAR
stative: near, in the vicinity of
cofinal: to
coinitial: from
transitory: passing along side
approximative: towards
recessive: distancing, away from
ON
stative: on, at
cofinal: onto
coinitial: off of
transitory: across
approximative: arriving at
recessive: departing from
IN
stative: in, inside
cofinal: into
coinitial: out of
transitory: through
approximative: entering
recessive: exiting
There is one construction that I noticed I couldn't find in
the above combinations: around (encircling). So I have added
it as another configuration. However, I couldn't come up
with satisfactory modal shadings of it. So I challenge
everyone to see if you can come up with some :)
Morphological forms of these to come in a later post.
Thanks for looking, and sorry about the length.
--------
James W.
Messages in this topic (2)
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2b. Re: Locative constructions in a:seka`eni (long)
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 10:16 am (PDT)
Interesting and useful, James. Others will have intelligent things to
add but I have two tiny remarks: Why no "to the side of" or "to the
left/right", given that "above", "below", "in front of", and "in back
of" are all represented? And are temporals to be modeled as locatives
in this scheme? --larry
Messages in this topic (2)
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3a. TECH: RSS for Conlang
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 8:41 am (PDT)
Hi!
Cool, although quite undocumented, I just found out that the listserv
software provides an RSS feed for each of its lists. For Conlang, it
is here:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=conlang&v=2.0
I think I will customize this a bit and add the corresponding links,
references, etc. to the Conlang home page.
Enjoy!
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (3)
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3b. Re: TECH: RSS for Conlang
Posted by: "Sai Emrys" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 12:03 pm (PDT)
Speaking of which... do you have the "autopost the FAQ every month"
thing set up?
- Sai
Messages in this topic (3)
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3c. Re: TECH: RSS for Conlang
Posted by: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 12:18 pm (PDT)
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On Tuesday 08 August 2006 11:22, Henrik Theiling (Henrik Theiling
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>) wrote:
> Cool, although quite undocumented, I just found out that the listserv
> software provides an RSS feed for each of its lists. For Conlang, it
> is here:
>
> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?RSS&L=conlang&v=2.0
>
> I think I will customize this a bit and add the corresponding links,
> references, etc. to the Conlang home page.
is there a way to make it include the text of the posts in the feed?
- --
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Messages in this topic (3)
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4. Tatari Faran update
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Aug 8, 2006 12:20 pm (PDT)
Hi again, conlangy folks. Here's a little update from the Land of Fire.
1) Adverbs of manner
I've already told some listmembers about this little quirk of Tatari
Faran. In English, we have verbs like "to try", "to start", "to stop",
etc., which require an infinitive in order to complete their meaning. In
Tatari Faran, however, there are no such verbs. Instead, the concept of
trying, starting, stopping, etc., are expressed using "adverbs of
manner".
Examples:
tara' sei tapa ha misanan dei bata.
3ps CVY.F walk start village RCP.F COMPL
She begins to walk to the village.
(Lit., she walks startingly to the village.)
Notice that in the English translation, the main verb is "begins", but
in TF, the main verb is "tapa" (walk).
kiran na arap pera beira so ikat.
young.man RCP.M pick.up try stone CVY.N COMPL
The young man tries to pick up the stone.
(Lit., the young man picks up tryingly the stone.)
Of course, the English transliterations sound awkward 'cos English
doesn't use adverbs of manner to express these concepts. Compare the
following imperative statements:
tapa ha!
walk start
Start walking! (Notice the English uses a participle)
tapa bat!
walk stop
Stop walking!
tapa irei!
walk continue
Keep walking! (Or, continue to walk.)
Note that the main verb in TF is "walk", whereas in English, "walk"
is a participle (or an infinitive), and start/continue/stop is the main
verb.
Now, of course, this is all fine and dandy when you want to explicate
the action. What if you want to say, e.g., "stop!" in the sense of "stop
whatever it is you're doing"? The generic verb _kakai_, "to cause", or
"to do", is employed:
kakai bat!
cause stop
Stop it! Or, Stop what you're doing!
kakai irei!
cause continue
Keep going. (I.e., continue what you were doing.)
ObConlang: how do you express starting/stopping/continuing/trying in
your conlangs?
2) Tatari Faran tutorial: I've started a draft of a beginner's guide to
Tatari Faran here:
http://eusebeia.dyndns.org/~hsteoh/conlang/fara/tutorial.pdf
Comments/feedback appreciated. The latter parts of the tutorial is not
quite polished yet. What do you people think of the pace/style/material
covered?
My recent adventures into Russian have made me wonder about what's the
best way to present a language to a new learner. I first started
learning Russian by learning common conversational phrases, and later on
I bought a book, which launches into a full-fledged dialogue in chapter
1, and doesn't actually explain all the elements of the language used in
that conversation until much later. In the TF tutorial, I've taken a
different approach, which is to present material slowly, in chunks that
the reader can fully understand from the beginning.
What do y'all think is the best approach?
3) Lexicon size
After recently updating TF's lexicon size on langmaker.com, I think
startingly (ha!) about what exactly counts as a "word", esp. when it
comes to comparing lexicon sizes.
Tatari Faran's lexicon is supposedly at 993 entries, but before you gape
at the number, you should realize that almost every verb and adjective
comes with its own complement, and complements are meaningless without
their corresponding verbs/adjectives. These complements (of which there
are 200 currently) are counted separately in the lexicon, but they don't
significantly increase what can be expressed in the language as much as,
say, another 200 verbs would, in a conlang without complements.
Complements do add nuances to the language, but one could argue that
since they don't really have concrete referents they should count for
less than a verb or a noun.
Then there are 32 phrases (which add no new words) and 15 affixes (which
really aren't words in themselves), as well as 43 pseudo-entries (which
includes common TF proper names and irregular word forms which simply
point to the main entry of the word).
If we discount phrases, affixes, and pseudo-entries, there are really
only 903 "proper" entries in the TF lexicon. If we discount complements,
we have only 700+ entries.
How do y'all measure the size of your lexicons? Do you include proper
names or common phrases? Any unusual word types (like TF's complements)
that don't really add that much to what the language can express?
T
--
Life is too short to run proprietary software. -- Bdale Garbee
Messages in this topic (1)
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