There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Nimrina phonology
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
1b. Re: Nimrina phonology
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
1c. Re: Nimrina phonology
From: Herman Miller
1d. Re: Nimrina phonology
From: Dirk Elzinga
2. OT: How to open almost any lock in seconds
From: Sai Emrys
3. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
From: Dirk Elzinga
4. Re: Comparison Þrjótrunn - Icelandic - Latin
From: Henrik Theiling
Messages
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1a. Re: Nimrina phonology
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2006 5:36 am (PDT)
Herman Miller skrev:
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>> Herman Miller skrev:
>>> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>>>> Nice. Do /K/ ~ /l/ also pattern as a voiceless-voiced pair?
>>>
>>> Currently, yes: ríva "yellow" + hlázi "tea" = rívalázi "green tea".
>>
>> Nice! Maybe /l7 has an [K\] allophone?
Gag! The slash is at SHIFT-7 on the Swedish keyboard,
hence I write |7| where I intend |/| sometimes, but you
seem not to have thought that I intended a close mid back
unrounded vowel! :-)
>
> I wóuld like to get [K\] involved somehow. Voiced stops have fricative
> allophones, as in /dmázi/ [Dma:z_ji] "blue-green". Possibly /nidlu/
> "violet" could be [n_jidK\u]. Or another possibility could be lengthened
> /l/ between vowels.
Maybe both /dl/ > [Dl] > [K\] *and* [l:] > [K\]. Again the
kind of thing that would happen in a natlang. BTW if you
have *G > zero, you can have the fricative allophone of /g/
also be zero. Cf. Welsh where *G > zero but /w/v/D/ are
preserved. Also modern Danish which in the course of the
last century merged its [G] allophone of /g/ with /j/ or
the [w] allophone of /v/ depending on the backness of the
preceding vowel, much like in Old English as I wrote of
yesterday.
>> So what kind of people speak Nimrína? I hope I haven't
>> influenced your thought in some unwanted direction by this
>> bit of trivia!
>
> I've been thinking about that over the last couple days, and I've come
> to the conclusion that the speakers belong to a secretive race of people
> with fox-tails, best known in Scandinavia, where they inspired the
> legends of the "huldre".
Oh, that! There is a very suggestive scene with the huldra in
the Swedish seventies comedy "The Apple War". Gustav Sandgren's
short story "Johannes och huldran", as read on the radio by
Max von Sydow, was an influential experience for me.
You should get everything covered if you google for
"skogsrå OR skogsfru OR huldra OR huldre OR huldrefolk OR huldufolk OR
huldufólk"
especially the Wikipedia article.(*) It should be noted that
the stories of the Norwegian stories of the huldre marrying
a mortal are always referred to a *troll* girl in Sweden.
The Icelandic huldufólk are essentially something else,
perhaps influenced by the Irish gentry, although the name
"the hidden one(s)" is the same, and the Norwegian huldrefolk
seems to be a mixture of the Icelandic and the Swedish concept.
In particular there seems to be males of the kindred in Norway,
which is never the case in Sweden, where huldran is more of
a female demon luring horny young men to perish in the woods.
On the whole the Norwegian huldre shows herself to be more
domesticable, having a cow rather than fox tail and all! :-)
It should be noted that there are variants of the hollow
back where the back looks like bark or is hairy, which are
perhaps easier to make biological sense of (bark = coarse
or gray skin). Especially a species which is naked in the
face and the front/under side of the torso but hairy otherwise
seems like a biological possibility.
What d you think of the idea that _huld(r)a_ is an attempt
to adapt a Nimrína word [hudK\a]? :-).
FYI all of _huldra/huldre/huldu/_ are derivable from the
past participle of the Old Norse verb _hylja_ 'conceal',
but it seems strange that the genitive plural _huldra_
should prevail as a base form in Swedish and Norwegian.
(*) Make sure you go to the *English* wikipedia article
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huldra>. The Swedish is a
stub and unlinked to the English, which is quite good.
There are some interesting pictures too, if you like
the idea of 'foxy' redheads in dewy Swedish summer meadows.
You can see why she remains a popular notion here! :-)
--
/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)
Messages in this topic (12)
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1b. Re: Nimrina phonology
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2006 10:16 am (PDT)
Herman Miller skrev:
> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>> So what kind of people speak Nimrína? I hope I haven't
>> influenced your thought in some unwanted direction by this
>> bit of trivia!
>
> I've been thinking about that over the last couple days, and I've come
> to the conclusion that the speakers belong to a secretive race of people
> with fox-tails, best known in Scandinavia, where they inspired the
> legends of the "huldre".
As may be found if one googles for "huldre" and its
synonyms there is a theory that the Hidden People
reflect a memory of a pre-Germanic population.
I just accidentally came across an article I downloaded
long ago which bears a bit on this and similar subjects:
Gil-White, F. J. 2001. Are ethnic groups biological 'species' to the
human brain?: Essentialism in our cognition of some social categories.
Current anthropology 42:515-554.
<http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~fjgil/Species.pdf>
Since the original download seems corrupt I
uploaded it to my own space at
<http://melroch.se/misc/Species.pdf>.
I hope the author doesn't mind.
--
/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)
Messages in this topic (12)
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1c. Re: Nimrina phonology
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:55 pm (PDT)
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>> I wóuld like to get [K\] involved somehow. Voiced stops have fricative
>> allophones, as in /dmázi/ [Dma:z_ji] "blue-green". Possibly /nidlu/
>> "violet" could be [n_jidK\u]. Or another possibility could be
>> lengthened /l/ between vowels.
>
> Maybe both /dl/ > [Dl] > [K\] *and* [l:] > [K\]. Again the
> kind of thing that would happen in a natlang. BTW if you
> have *G > zero, you can have the fricative allophone of /g/
> also be zero. Cf. Welsh where *G > zero but /w/v/D/ are
> preserved. Also modern Danish which in the course of the
> last century merged its [G] allophone of /g/ with /j/ or
> the [w] allophone of /v/ depending on the backness of the
> preceding vowel, much like in Old English as I wrote of
> yesterday.
I was thinking I already had /dl/ > [K\] in one of my languages, but I
can't find it, and there's no reason not to reuse it even if I do. What
I might be remembering is /tl/ > [K] in Zharranh. But certainly with [D]
as an allophone of /d/ in cases like /dm/, /dr/, the /dl/ > [Dl] > [K\:]
development would make sense. Phonemically, maybe the best way to
represent it is /l:/ (or /ll/).
> In particular there seems to be males of the kindred in Norway,
> which is never the case in Sweden, where huldran is more of
> a female demon luring horny young men to perish in the woods.
> On the whole the Norwegian huldre shows herself to be more
> domesticable, having a cow rather than fox tail and all! :-)
Considering the variety of human hair color, length, curliness and so
on, there are probably similar variations in tail features. Maybe the
cow-tailed huldre speak a distantly related language. The absence of
males in Swedish legend could simply be a result of the rarity of
encountering one in the first place.
> It should be noted that there are variants of the hollow
> back where the back looks like bark or is hairy, which are
> perhaps easier to make biological sense of (bark = coarse
> or gray skin). Especially a species which is naked in the
> face and the front/under side of the torso but hairy otherwise
> seems like a biological possibility.
Yes, how would they stand upright with a hollow back? I like the idea of
the rough or hairy back better. It could be both hairy and look like
bark, I guess -- a coloration pattern in the hair.
> What d you think of the idea that _huld(r)a_ is an attempt
> to adapt a Nimrína word [hudK\a]? :-).
>
> FYI all of _huldra/huldre/huldu/_ are derivable from the
> past participle of the Old Norse verb _hylja_ 'conceal',
> but it seems strange that the genitive plural _huldra_
> should prevail as a base form in Swedish and Norwegian.
I don't think that's a good idea if the Icelandic huldufólk are
something else entirely. I guess it's probably not likely that humans
know what the Nimrína speakers call themselves in any case.
Messages in this topic (12)
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1d. Re: Nimrina phonology
Posted by: "Dirk Elzinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:05 pm (PDT)
On 8/17/06, Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 8/17/06, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > The six vowel system is a very nice extension of the five standard
> > ones. I wonder whether it is frequent in conlangs (or natlangs), it
> > feels natural at least.
>
> The standard five + /1/ is pretty common in South America, possibly so
> far as to be an areal trait. I could look it up, but I'm pretty sure
> you'd find/have found it frequently within the Chibcha and Mapuche
> spheres of influence, at least.
It is also the inventory to be found in Western and Central Numic and
Tübatulabal. Southern Numic has preserved the Proto-Uto-Aztecan vowel
system of /i 1 u o a/. It's weird and asymetrical, and I love it.
> -- Pat
Dirk
Messages in this topic (12)
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2. OT: How to open almost any lock in seconds
Posted by: "Sai Emrys" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2006 1:01 pm (PDT)
Summarized on my blog here: http://saizai.livejournal.com/712792.html
Totally un-conlang related, but should be of interest to many of you
anyway - and there's no limit on how OT we can be.
- Sai
Messages in this topic (1)
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3. Re: Euphonic phonology (Was: 'Nor' in the World's Languages)
Posted by: "Dirk Elzinga" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:08 pm (PDT)
On 8/18/06, Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> From: "Henrik Theiling" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 1:30 AM
>
> > Dirk Elzinga writes:
> >>...
> >> I think that a strict segregation of morphology and
> >> phonology is
> >> probably a mistake in lg creation, whatever your
> >> analytical
> >> predilections are. For me, most of the interest in
> >> morphology is in
> >> its interaction with phonological forms. ...
>
> I think I haven't had success with that. In fact, I have
> discarded the idea of having ablauts in Ayeri again because
> I always forgot to make sensible rules, i.e. I devised
> random changes. Since in Ayeri ablaut officially occurs only
> in if-clauses to mark the "then" part (IIRC), it was easy to
> introduce the less ambiguous "bata ... kada ..."
> construction and to say that the ablaut stuff is only done
> in some dialects but is not obligatory. I chose to have
> ablaut in Ukele, too, but this time I chose more sensible
> patterns I think so that I will keep them.
Well, ablaut is only one of the devices I mentioned and the least
interesting one to me in a constructed language -- I'm more interested
in stem shape change (think of Semitic), reduplication and the like. I
just offered ablaut as an example of a non-trivial interaction of
phonology and morphology along with the others I mentioned.
> > Very true. I often failed when I tried to use a phonology
> > 'module'
> > for a conlang.
>
> Funny, though, since our L1 uses ablaut frequently.
See, here's my difficulty with ablaut -- this will mirror your own
comments. In all of the cases I'm aware of, ablaut is synchronically
arbitrary. There are examples where it makes sense historically, but
none that I know of where it is a principled synchronic alternation
(though I'd be happy to be corrected). That means that there just
isn't an explanation in terms of phonotactics, authentic units of
prosody, morpho-syntactic structure or the like; it just exists in its
odd little corner defying a tidy generalization. Not that that's a
problem; it certainly gives the Germanic languages part of their
distinctive flavor, which I, as a native speaker of English (and a
semi-fluent speaker of German and Dutch), quite enjoy. It's just a
very difficult thing to bring off convincingly in a constructed
language.
> >> > P.S. more details of Miapimoquitch will be welcome.
> >>
> >> I'm hoping to finish the morphology section of the
> >> grammar by the end
> >> of the month; I'll be sure to let the list know when it's
> >> done.
> >
> > Oh yes, please!
>
> Seconded. BTW, do I correctly interpret what you wrote and
> Miapimoquitch has pitch accent?
No, there is no pitch accent in Miapimoquitch. Out of curiosity, what
lead you to believe that Miapimoquitch had pitch accent? Is it my
non-IPA usage of acute and grave? If so, they are meant to mark
primary and secondary stress, respectively, and not pitch levels.
> Carsten
Dirk
Messages in this topic (51)
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4. Re: Comparison Þrjótrunn - Icelandic - Latin
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 19, 2006 4:33 pm (PDT)
Hi!
Edgard Bikelis writes:
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
>...
> > ... Þrjótrunn pages ...
> >
> > http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/s_01.html#03
> >
> > Comments?
> >...
>
> That is the first time I see this section of your site, and I've
> found it quite impressive! I am graduating in Latin, and reading it
> these pages while declining (?) mentally was really curious, seeing
> how you did the sound shifting and all. The layout is good too... rare
> to see a sans serif page that I like ; ).
Wow, thanks! :-) This reads like a reason to include an alternative
style sheet for serif mode. :-)
> I saw you have a Portuguese dictionary. If you need anything
> about its historical development, I may know, and if not, it is easy
> to me to find out.
Ok, I might have some questions, and will not hesitate to ask, then.
> About the phonology, I doubt I can speak anything in Þrjótrunn
> properly. These vowels and consonantal clusters are a little
> scary... sigh.
I don't find Icelandic clusters too scary myself -- Icelandic has
simplified clusters significantly during its history -- the regular
syncopes would have left it with much worse consonant clusters
otherwise. I had and still have some problems with the sounds
themselves. It is very unusual for me to switch between pre-, post-
and unaspirated stops, for example. And palatal stops, especially in
this configuration, are also not easy for me.
With this project, I practice almost daily now. :-)
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (8)
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