There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. I'm back
From: Isaac Penzev
1b. Re: I'm back
From: Larry Sulky
1c. Re: I'm back
From: Henrik Theiling
1d. Re: I'm back
From: Isaac Penzev
2a. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz
2b. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
From: Jim Henry
2c. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz
3. Re: Syntactic differences within parts of speech
From: Patrick Littell
4a. Ettiquette question
From: Eric Christopherson
4b. Re: Ettiquette question
From: Sai Emrys
4c. Re: Ettiquette question
From: Henrik Theiling
4d. Re: Ettiquette question
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. I'm back
Posted by: "Isaac Penzev" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 5:18 am (PDT)
I'm back, if somebody cares.
I've had too little time for conlanging, but still keep my interest in this
hobby alive.
Occasionally I pay my attention to P55 (still nameless) project: the work in
progress may be seen at http://isaacp.narod.ru/55.htm (badly needs
updating).
Enjoying your fellowship,
-- Yitzik
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: I'm back
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 5:55 am (PDT)
Welcome back, Yitzik. You're a most welcome presence on the list. --larry
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: I'm back
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:35 am (PDT)
Hi!
Isaac Penzev <writes:
> I'm back, if somebody cares.
Welcome back! :-)
> I've had too little time for conlanging, but still keep my interest
> in this hobby alive. Occasionally I pay my attention to P55 (still
> nameless) project: the work in progress may be seen at
> http://isaacp.narod.ru/55.htm (badly needs updating).
Could you give some remarks about its design goals?
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: I'm back
Posted by: "Isaac Penzev" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:04 pm (PDT)
Henrik Theiling girs'epset':
| Isaac Penzev <writes:
|
| > I've had too little time for conlanging, but still keep my interest
| > in this hobby alive. Occasionally I pay my attention to P55 (still
| > nameless) project: the work in progress may be seen at
| > http://isaacp.narod.ru/55.htm (badly needs updating).
FYI: The site was updated on Aug 28 11:19pm GMT+2. Now it contains about
half of my paper notes.
| Could you give some remarks about its design goals?
Its goal is to create a personal artlang that would
(1) please my phonoesthetics (no cellar doors!);
(2) resemble certain natlang groups that I find attractive both in phonology
and morphosyntax, such as Turkic, Tungusic, Chukchee-Kamchatkan, Algonkian,
Permian etc.
I'm still in search for an ideal that could become my main conlang used in
translation exercises, relays etc. This time I'm close to this goal as never
before.
| **Henrik
-- Yitzik
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
Posted by: "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 5:33 am (PDT)
Hi, Gary, Larry and mo',
Let's begin at the beginning:
"The Kalusa experiment ( http://kalusa.fiziwig.com/index.php ) was an
attempt to
> build a conlang collaboratively by allowing anyone to contribute any
random
> words and sentences, and to have other participants vote on the
suitability of
> those contributions."
These were pretty much the parameters for Kalusa, weren't they?
It seems a tad unrealistic to now turn about and complain that this
"open-ended" experiment didn't turn out the way we would have
liked it to!
Allow me to draw a parallel. For most of my working life, I have
been designing and constructing software systems. Although
implementations change with new technical resources, some basics
of systems design were established in the early days of general
systems theory, and these basic principles reflect some immutable
needs. One of the common models for systems development uses
the notion of "the systems life-cycle". An entire system's life is
regarded as comprising several distinct phases, each conducted
more or less formally or effectively. Those phases are:
1. Analysis
2. Design
3. Development
4. Testing
5. Implementation
6. Review
Effective systems spend most of their life being used, in the
Implementation phase. For that to happen, it is essential that
the Analysis phase first discloses the needs that system must
meet; the Design phase next invents ways to meet those needs;
the Development phase creates the means to implement those
ways; and the Testing phase ensures that the developed system
meets the original needs. Finally, after the system has been in
use for a while, it is reviewed to determine whether the needs
have changed and whether the system still meets the needs.
The foundation-stone of the whole system is correct analysis.
Failure to discover a need means that the system designed and
implemented can only ever meet that need by chance - by sheer
good luck.
Against this background, it seems to me that perhaps the
essential cause of your dissatisfaction with the outcomes of
the Kalusa experiment is an incomplete analysis of your
requirements. However, the good news is that we can learn
from this experience and incorporate new design goals for
Kalusa Mark 2.
Also, when I last looked at Kalusa - admittedly some months
back - it struck me as phenomenally successful in meeting its
stated goals. Minor dissatisfaction with one aspect of the
achievement should be seen in perspective, and ways designed
to avoid a repetition.
Possibly the most effective way to rescue Kalusa from its
unfortunate detour would be - if possible - to backtrack it
several weeks (I hope you've had regular backups?); put new
constraints in place to reduce the chance of repeating the
undesirable behaviour; and resume running, monitoring the
results at least once a week for suitability.
I don't know the actual means by which Kalusa lost its way-
Was it hijacked? Weren't enough people paying attention?
Were a few users very active, with new words and structures
they proposed by disproportionately used and approved by
themselves? An examination of the way it went wrong may
suggest suitable corrective measures; for example:
1. Should I be allowed to vote on my own proposal?
2. Should any new word be accepted into the corpus with
fewer than 5 votes?
It'd be a pity to see the enthusiasm and effort that's gone
into Kalusa completely wasted due to avoidable design faults.
Unfortunately, Gary, the actual history of Kalusa reflects
the importance of your ideas 1) cultural context and 2) basic
needs; by showing that those "needing" to establish "Seussian"
sounds can have their way if not actively and vigorously
countered. I agree those notions are important, but the
hardest to establish objectively may be the "basic needs".
It's therefore in this area that most work needs to be done
(Analysis) BEFORE ever the Design and Implementation are
attempted.
BTW, I note that your examples of basic needs, while well-
suited to, say, an IE people at any time in the last five millennia,
would be completely inappropriate to any Australian culture at
any time in the last 40 millennia (excepting the last two
centuries in both cases). That doesn't matter, however; what
does matter is that the experiment begins with very clear
notions of the needs the language must meet.
Also BTW, the sound of many Austronesian languages may
strike you, as many other non-native learners, as rather
"babyish", simply because they make extensive use of
reduplication to derive words from more basic ones. But if you
don't want the language to use those means or create those
sounds, you need to define this as a need up front, and accept
no design as adequate that will permit them.
I don't actually like your idea 3) canonised vocabulary, since
it could easily play into the hands of would-be hijackers. All
they'd need to do would be take the Basic English vocab, for
example, and generate a set of unwieldy and ugly gibberish
words for them (using, eg, the magnificent "wordgen"), get
them voted on several times. Providing they were quick enough,
this would effectively sabotage any chance of success in the
resulting collaboration.
No, Larry, having to create an interlinear would put off many
contributors with suitably simple and practical ideas for new
vocabulary and constructions. I don't think that would help.
But requiring people proposing a new word to explicitly define
it doesn't seem too onerous. Most words, particularly nouns,
will correspond one-t-one to existing words in some natlang;
a new kind of construction needs to be exemplified (and possibly
counter-exemplified) in order to delimit its range of application.
As you wrote: "there should be enough information that folks
can see what is meant by each morpheme and each word."
We need to think of ways to enforce this; eg, a sentence
containing a new noun must have a compulsory pair of fields to
give an English equivalent for the noun in the context of this
sentence; any sentence using a noun should have a similar pair of
fields by which the user can indicate an extension of the noun's
meaning in this context; any new construction should require at
least three example sentences, perhaps including a negative
instance if applicable. Proposed sentences could be flagged with
a list of warnings of potential rule violations eg "this construction
has no negative example" for the information of voters.
Having said (all!) this, I invite you to open up discussion on the
needs of your ideal collaborative language, beginning by posting
all those needs of which you are already fairly certain.
Now I'm off to have a geek (a gander, a captain cook, a look) at
Kalusa, to see how closely it approximates any natlang of my
experience to date.
Best wishes for happy experimenting!
Yahya
---
On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> The Kalusa experiment ( http://kalusa.fiziwig.com/index.php ) was an
attempt to
> build a conlang collaboratively by allowing anyone to contribute any
random
> words and sentences, and to have other participants vote on the
suitability of
> those contributions.
>
> Being entirely open-ended meant that people could contribute whatever
words and
> sentences they wanted to. Unlike a real pidgin or contact language, or
language
> developed within a community of people sharing work and social activities,
> there was no pressing need to develop the means to say certain "necessary"
> things like "I need two pounds of rice and a cabbage." or "Help me unload
this
> crate of nails." or "Come quickly! The goat has fallen into the well."
>
> As a consequence, a great number of "frivolous" sentences and frankly
> ridiculous words have been contributed. How often will we need the word
for
> "hyperinfracaniphilia", or "epistemic"?
>
> Not being a spoken language, apparently little attention is being paid to
the
> sound of the language, and words and sentences that are either unpleasant
> tongue twisters, or frankly childish sing-song constructions have found
their
> way into the language. How many reduplicated words does any one language
need?
> Sentences that begin to sound like "Hong Kong King Kong sing song ping
pong
> ding dong." are not the kind of things one would hear in a real spoken
> language, and yet such grotesque words are proliferating: "Zotasota
feniseni
> rofkosofko onasona irusiru ishisishi zokusoku fezosezo." making the
language
> begin to sound like something created by Dr. Seuss while on mind-altering
drugs.
>
> A side effect of flooding the vocabulary with such words is that the web
page
> that shows the most recent contributions is so saturated with these
"goofy" and
> useless words that many of the participants and contributors become
discouraged
> and leave the project because the "real" sentences have been buried under
a
> deep pile of ickysicky kakasaka dudupudu, which if not actualy destructive
to
> the language, is certainly not productive of a usable language.
>
> Comments from users include ones like this: "Ack! I go away for three
weeks,
> and return to find Kalusa defeated! Oh well. It had a good run.
...[addressing
> certain contributors]... Looks like you've successfully driven everyone
off,
> including me."
>
> While there is a lot good stuff in Kalusa, and I fully intend to continue
to
> keep the website going, I can't help but think that what I've learned from
> Kalusa could be applied to a much better collaborative conlang project, so
I
> have to ask what was learned from the project, and how can these problems
be
> prevented in any future collaborative language project? Here are some of
my
> ideas to help keep the project more focused.
>
> 1) Language and culture probably evolved together, and the cultural
context
> would be important to the development of the language. Therefore it would
be
> helpful to provide at least a basic cultural context for the language.
>
> 2) The earliest utterances of the language should deal with the most basic
> daily needs of the people who speak the language, and not with
"existentialism"
> and "hyperinfracaniphilia". Therefore, rather than allowing contributors
to add
> random (and often "goofy") sentences and words, a large collection of
simple
> sentences dealing with the daily concerns of the people would be provided
in
> English; sentences such as "It is time to plant the corn." and "Father has
gone
> to the marketplace.". Contributors would suggest translations for the
sentences
> in this corpus of daily life, and all of the different suggested
translations
> would be presented together on the web page where they could be voted on.
Once
> a clear winner emerged the sentences with lower vote rankings would be
deleted
> and only one "correct" way to translate that sentence would be retained.
Minor
> variations in emphasis or shades of meaning might be retained, but
translations
> that departed radically from the highest ranking translation would be
discarded.
>
> 3) Languages do change and evolve, but they also exhibit a great deal of
> stability in their most basic vocabulary. Basic vocabulary would be
stabilized
> as soon as a word emerged as clearly the most popular translation, and
these
> "standard" words would be added to a cannonical dictionary. Translations
that
> radically violated this cannonical basic vocabulary would be dropped,
since,
> for example, once the word "kaya" had been well established for "water" it
is
> unlikely that the word "gumisumi" would suddenly take its place. Anyone
who
> suddenly began translating "water" as "gumisumi" would clearly be
considered as
> being in a state of sin, and those translations would be expunged from the
corpus.
>
> What other suggestions does anyone have for creating an improved
collaborative
> conlang project?
>
> ------------------------------
> Larry Sulky replied:
>
> Gary, as always your posting is incisive and thoughtful. I think your
> ideas for an improved go-round are spot on. One additional
> consideration might be this: more clarity as to which morpheme in
> Kalusa2 corresponds to which morpheme in English. I'm not saying you
> should require folks to submit an interlinear (I'm kind of thinking
> it, but I'm not saying it), but there should be enough information
> that folks can see what is meant by each morpheme and each word.
> Besides, that would be a necessary condition in order to establish
> that, for example, "kaya" is the word for 'water' and thereby be able
> to canonise it.
>
> ------------------------------
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Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 1:34 pm (PDT)
On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, Gary Shannon wrote:
> Being entirely open-ended meant that people could contribute whatever
words and
> sentences they wanted to. Unlike a real pidgin or contact language, or
language
> developed within a community of people sharing work and social activities,
> there was no pressing need to develop the means to say certain "necessary"
> things like "I need two pounds of rice and a cabbage." or "Help me unload
this
> crate of nails." or "Come quickly! The goat has fallen into the well."
Maybe we should try to turn this weakness into a strength, by
growing a language whose basic corpus of sentences would
express things of concern to computer geeks obsessed with
linguistics? And strongly suggest that comment postings should be
partly or wholly in the conlang whenever possible?
> As a consequence, a great number of "frivolous" sentences and frankly
> ridiculous words have been contributed. How often will we need the word
for
> "hyperinfracaniphilia", or "epistemic"?
Not very often. I agree that in growing a conlang one should
generally work on basics that will be used frequently before
esoterica that will be used rarely; but in a project like this
I would prefer to have it enforced as a social norm than
as a software constraint. I.e., set out this principle in the
"charter" for the new language-growing community, and
let people's votes on words and sentences be the enforcement
mechanism.
> Not being a spoken language, apparently little attention is being paid to
the
> sound of the language, and words and sentences that are either unpleasant
> tongue twisters, or frankly childish sing-song constructions have found
There was some discussion of phonology and phonotactics starting
early on, and at least up until mid-July the consensus phonology
was being pretty effectively enforced by the voting mechanisms.
I haven't kept up with all the new developments in the last month or so.
Maybe it would make sense, with the next Kalusa-like language
project, to have some discussion about phonology up front before
even creating the seed corpus? Or suggest in the charter that
the phonology will be stabilized after the first one or two weeks
based on the phonemes and phoneme clusters found in the
higher-ranking sentences at that time, and introduction of
new phonemes or new kinds of diphthongs & consonant clusters
will be discouraged after that baselining period?
> 1) Language and culture probably evolved together, and the cultural
context
> would be important to the development of the language. Therefore it would
be
> helpful to provide at least a basic cultural context for the language.
This is a good idea.
> and "hyperinfracaniphilia". Therefore, rather than allowing contributors
to add
> random (and often "goofy") sentences and words, a large collection of
simple
> sentences dealing with the daily concerns of the people would be provided
in
> English; sentences such as "It is time to plant the corn." and "Father has
gone
> to the marketplace.". Contributors would suggest translations for the
sentences
It seems like a good idea to have both mechanisms - allow people to
add more translations for existing sentences, and allow people to
add new sentences. The first Kalusa project had that, but for a long
while the "standard sentences" translations weren't well integrated
into the main corpus, and I think that discouraged some people
from working in that area. A sentence should have the same rating
no matter where it appears; there shouldn't be two copies of the
same sentence whose rating can vary based on where in the
system people have voted on them.
>Once
> a clear winner emerged the sentences with lower vote rankings would be
deleted
> and only one "correct" way to translate that sentence would be retained.
Minor
> variations in emphasis or shades of meaning might be retained, but
translations
> that departed radically from the highest ranking translation would be
discarded.
Rather, it seems good to keep all the translations that get a preponderance
of favorable votes, even if some of them are very different from each other
(not mere "minor variations in emphasis").
> 3) Languages do change and evolve, but they also exhibit a great deal of
> stability in their most basic vocabulary. Basic vocabulary would be
stabilized
> as soon as a word emerged as clearly the most popular translation, and
these
> "standard" words would be added to a cannonical dictionary. Translations
that
> radically violated this cannonical basic vocabulary would be dropped,
since,
> for example, once the word "kaya" had been well established for "water" it
is
> unlikely that the word "gumisumi" would suddenly take its place. Anyone
who
> suddenly began translating "water" as "gumisumi" would clearly be
considered as
> being in a state of sin, and those translations would be expunged from the
corpus.
Again, I think this is something that need not be enforced by software
or administrative action as long as the user community is large enough
for the voting system to be effective in enforcing the community's ideas
about how the language should grow and develop. And if the community
has shrunk down to just two or three people, I'm not sure there's any
point in using the Kalusa software - with so small a group a closed mailing
list might be a more effective way to collaborate on a conlang.
Larry Sulky wrote:
>One additional
> consideration might be this: more clarity as to which morpheme in
> Kalusa2 corresponds to which morpheme in English. I'm not saying you
> should require folks to submit an interlinear (I'm kind of thinking
> it, but I'm not saying it), but there should be enough information
> that folks can see what is meant by each morpheme and each word.
This would make sense if we're growing a highly synthetic conlang,
but would be unwieldy overhead for a near-isolating language like
Kalusa.
Yahya wrote:
>Against this background, it seems to me that perhaps the
>essential cause of your dissatisfaction with the outcomes of
>the Kalusa experiment is an incomplete analysis of your
>requirements. However, the good news is that we can learn
>from this experience and incorporate new design goals for
>Kalusa Mark 2.
It seems more apt to consider Kalusa as an experimental
system. We didn't really know what the requirements were
until well after we started using it.
>I don't know the actual means by which Kalusa lost its way-
>Was it hijacked? Weren't enough people paying attention?
>Were a few users very active, with new words and structures
>they proposed by disproportionately used and approved by
>themselves?
At first there were a fairly large number of users. Over the course
of two months or so the number of users dropped to about three
or four, as far as I can tell, -- one of them posting under a large
number of sock-puppet aliases -- and then it seems to have
dropped to only one. I was active on Kalusa pretty near continuously
from its beginning until late July, when I had to take some time off
for the ELNA convention. When I returned I made some effort to
catch up with Kalusa, but was discouraged when I realized that
apparently only one other user was left, he of the many aliases.
Possibly it would help next time to show user ID and IP address
for every sentence and every comment, and to require users
to log in to post sentences. I don't think this would eliminate the
sock puppet problem, but it might help. Maybe, too, there should
be a way to ban users who consistently violate the community's
norms, as in Wikipedia.
>We need to think of ways to enforce this; eg, a sentence
>containing a new noun must have a compulsory pair of fields to
>give an English equivalent for the noun in the context of this
>sentence; any sentence using a noun should have a similar pair of
This seems a bit unweildy as something to enforce in software.
As a cultural norm among the users of the Kalusa system,
it makes sense to encourage this practice, but rigidly enforcing
it in software could drive away potential newcomers.
I guess my overall theory about Kalusa is that it worked well
as long as the number of users was large enough. When some
people lost interest or were obliged to leave for a while by work
or family affairs, the community shrank enough that one or two people's
antisocial behavior wasn't effectively counteracted by the votes
and comments of others, and this seems to have driven away most or all
of the the few other remaining users. I don't think there's a sure
way to avoid that happening again, but having more specific
goals and community norms expressed up front in a charter
might help, as would requiring registration and login. On the other
hand the latter policy would keep away casual anonymous contributors,
who are sometimes damaging but probably more often somewhat helpful,
and might become registered users later on if they can dip their
toe in the water a bit first, so to speak. Maybe anonymous
contributions are moderated and not visible until approved by
an admin?
Another issue may be that a project like Kalusa is inherently
more interesting (to most conlangers) in its earliest stages, when
it's most in flux. As it grows and stabilizes, more people will
lose interest and it's less attractive for new people to get involved.
(This may be the same psychological phenomenon
that leads many conlangers to start and abandon large
numbers of sketchlangs.) Another factor is that a project
like this can be hard to catch up on again if you've been
away for a week or more, and it becomes more difficult
for new people to get up to speed as the language gets
more complex.
This is a vicious cycle because the more people drop out, the less
interesting the project becomes for the remaining people.
Maybe regular progress reports / recruiting drives on
CONLANG-L, ZBB and so forth would help offset this a bit.
A companion wiki with a sketch of the consensus grammar
(and notes about still-unresolved issues) would help
newcomers get up to speed. The language need not
have its own dedicated wiki; there are plenty of conlang
wikis out there where we could create a set of pages
about the project, its charter & goals, the grammar
so far, etc.
--
Jim Henry - back after a month or so NOMAIL
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
Posted by: "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:15 pm (PDT)
Hi Gary,
Some thoughts on tools and techniques to consider using for
a collaborative conlang environment on the web; rough notes
only, on which I will expand if you want:
- give each user a scratchpad or sandbox, à la wiki, in which
they can try out ideas before proposing them for incorporation
in the conlang.
- give users some tools, to use in their scratch areas, for
example: wordgen, genetic algorithms.
- consider wikifying the entire project. Users could establish
branches of the corpus on separate wiki pages or subwikis.
- replace voting by actual usage in new sentences. In other
words, let users provide as many alternatives as they like for
the same word or construction; but also provide a way for
users to ignore certain words or constructions. That might
consist simply of letting each user's "votes" become instead
a set of filters on the entire corpus.
Regards,
Yahya
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz
> Sent: Monday 28 August 2006 22:13 pm
> To: Constructed Languages List
> Subject: RE: Kalusa conlang in review - is it working?
>
> Hi, Gary, Larry and mo',
>
> Let's begin at the beginning:
> "The Kalusa experiment ( http://kalusa.fiziwig.com/index.php ) was an
attempt to
> > build a conlang collaboratively by allowing anyone to contribute any
random
> > words and sentences, and to have other participants vote on the
suitability of
> > those contributions."
>
> These were pretty much the parameters for Kalusa, weren't they?
> It seems a tad unrealistic to now turn about and complain that this
> "open-ended" experiment didn't turn out the way we would have
> liked it to!
[SNIP]
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Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. Re: Syntactic differences within parts of speech
Posted by: "Patrick Littell" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 11:11 am (PDT)
On 8/22/06, Amanda Babcock Furrow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've been intrigued lately (the past six months?) by discussions on the
> list which expose variations in the syntax of words considered to be of
> the same part of speech. For example, the interesting discussion of
> the syntax of "ago", or discussions of the syntactics of gerunds versus
> participles in English (such as that gerunds are commonly thought to be
> operating as nouns, but in fact retain some aspects of verbs with respect
> to their arguments, etc.)
>
> Sorry for any vagueness or impenetrability above; I'm not getting enough
> sleep.
>
> At any rate, I want to be able to apply this level of detail to a conlang,
> maybe even to the extent of devising a grammar with more parts of speech
> (and I mean open classes - creating a small closed class is easy) than we
> are used to. But I need ideas.
[snip]
[NATLANG] Within the Totonacan family, there is a split between
ordinary nouns and those denoting body parts (and, by metaphorical
extension, any part of a whole). The body parts are not a subclass of
nouns -- they are a separate part of speech. (They are not, in fact,
words; they're best analysed as prefixes.) Body parts can incorporate
into verbs, nouns cannot; nouns can stand alone in a sentence, but
body parts must undergo nominalization in order to do this, etc.
-------------
It's not uncommon to find a language that has split their nominals
into several classes based upon possession -- into, for example,
obligatorily and non-obligatorily possessed nouns. Or into three
groups:
1. Obligatorily possessed (hand, mother)
2. Possessable (cow, building)
3. Obligatorily non-possessed (yellow, George)
(As a note, this is not the same as inalienable vs alienable
possession, which is about a *relationship* between possessor and
possessum, and not a division of possible possessums into classes.)
Now, in most languages this is not a case of different *parts of
speech* for each class... but it *could* be. Proper names, for
example, may in some language be treated sufficiently differently from
common nouns (in, say, availability to affixation or compounding) that
we might want to analyze them as their own P.O.S.
--------------
As a side note, Totonaca also has "statives" as a separate part of
speech from verbs; I believe that at least one other post has already
brought up this distinction.
Another fun thing to think about: what parts of speech emerge when
your various P.O.S.s undergo compounding? In Totonaca, if you if
incorporate a body part into a stative, you basically get a locative!
So "head" plus "stand" gives you a locative meaning
"standing-on-the-head/roof/peak-of X".
-- Pat
Messages in this topic (11)
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4a. Ettiquette question
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 5:57 pm (PDT)
For quite a while I've been compiling a list of questions that I
wanted to ask when I got back into conlanging communities. I would
really like to ask them on this list and on the ZBB*, so I get a wide
range of responses. However, I'm unsure of the ettiquette of asking
a question here and then asking the same one on ZBB; I'd assume many
on this list are also on ZBB, and some might get annoyed seeing the
same questions. Some people might even take slight offense if they
answered a question in one forum just to see the same poster asking
it in another. Also, quoting things from one forum in discussion on
another could become tricky. Any tips, anyone? Should I just not
worry about it, and ask away?
* Are there any other really popular conlanging forums?
Messages in this topic (4)
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4b. Re: Ettiquette question
Posted by: "Sai Emrys" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:10 pm (PDT)
I don't see any ethical problem with it; it's not all that spammy. I
wouldn't expect double responses though.
Only other active forum I know of is mine - http://conlangs.livejournal.com
- Sai
Messages in this topic (4)
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4c. Re: Ettiquette question
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:12 pm (PDT)
Hi!
Eric Christopherson writes:
> For quite a while I've been compiling a list of questions that I
> wanted to ask when I got back into conlanging communities. I would
> really like to ask them on this list and on the ZBB*, so I get a
> wide range of responses. ...
I would not object at all, since there are also many people (including
me), who read only one source and who are quite interested in the
questions and discussions.
However, I'd probably not post a long list in one mail, but post
several short and related lists with delays in between and time for
discussion, because small chunks are always easier to handle. Some
questions might be ignored in an ongoing discussion about some other
topic.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (4)
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4d. Re: Ettiquette question
Posted by: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 28, 2006 6:19 pm (PDT)
li [Eric Christopherson] mi tulis la
> * Are there any other really popular conlanging forums?
It doesn't seem to be as popular as it used to be (as with Usenet in
general) but try news:alt.language.artificial. Personally I prefer
Usenet to Yahoo and/or any of these e-mail based systems because it's
much easier to manage my groups and filter through the material to find
the threads I'm interested in.
Messages in this topic (4)
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