There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Old Albic minor update
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2. Re: Syntactic differences within parts of speech
From: Javier BF
3a. Non-Russian Cyrillics (was: I'm back)
From: Isaac Penzev
3b. Re: Non-Russian Cyrillics (was: I'm back)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
4a. Re: Project 55 (was: I'm back)
From: Isaac Penzev
4b. Re: Project 55 (was: I'm back)
From: Henrik Theiling
5a. OT: Seriously OT request
From: Adam Walker
5b. Re: OT: Seriously OT request
From: Herman Miller
5c. Re: OT: Seriously OT request
From: Adam Walker
Messages
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1. Re: Old Albic minor update
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 4:28 am (PDT)
Hallo!
On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 20:46:01 -0500, Herman Miller wrote:
> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo!
> >
> > I have made a few minor changes (two new cases, modified pronouns) to the
> > grammar of Old Albic:
> >
> > http://wiki.frath.net/Old_Albic
> >
> > I am planning a major overhaul at a later date, so comment on it
> > (readablity,
> > what is better moved to a separate article, etc.) is appreciated.
> >
> > ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
>
> What you've got looks pretty good and well organized. Maybe a bit on the
> long side for a wiki article, but you could easily split it up into
> separate articles for each section if it starts getting too long.
I am indeed considering splitting it up. There are a few other changes
in my "pipeline", such as more and better examples (some of the examples
in the current version contain vocabulary that is up to revision); when
I find the time to do them, I'll split the page.
> Interesting how the inanimate nouns have a smaller number of cases. Is
> there a natlang precedent for that? (I know that neuter nouns in some
> languages have ambiguous forms, but that's not quite the same thing.)
I don't surely know of any natlang precedent, but it occured to me that
some cases really don't make much sense with inanimate nouns. What I
know and gets closest to this is the avoidance of neuter transitive
subjects in several of the older Indo-European languages. The common
nominative-accusative form of IE neuters has been termes an "absolutive",
with the corresponding ergative simply missing. I also dimly remember
reading somewhere that in some Caucasian languages, inanimate nouns
have no ergative.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (3)
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2. Re: Syntactic differences within parts of speech
Posted by: "Javier BF" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 5:03 am (PDT)
On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:36:56 -0500, Eric Christopherson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>On Aug 29, 2006, at 6:07 PM, Javier BF wrote:
>
>> In Japanese there are:
>>
>> - 'normal' verbs or "do^shi", which come in three closely related
>> conjugations (1: the -u ones like "kak-u" 'to write' and "kaer-u" 'to
>> return', 2: the -ru ones like "tabe-ru" 'to eat' and "mi-ru" 'to
>> look', and
>> 3: the irregular "suru" 'to do' and "kuru" 'to come')
>>
>> - "i"-adjectives or "keiyo^shi" (like "aoi" '[to be] blue/green' and
>> "atarashii" '[to be] new'), very much like verbs but with their very
>> different conjugation
>>
>> - "na"-adjectives or "keiyo^do^shi" (e.g. "shizuka na", ), not really
>> verbal, since they are used with the verb "desu" 'to be' (unlike the
>> "i"-adjectives which function fully as verbs in their own)
>
>Isn't it that you can use "desu" to form polite forms of -i
>adjectives, but you can't use the non-polite copula "da", the way you
>can with -na adjectives?
Yes, you can say "aoi desu" for politeness, but that is actually an
auxiliary use of "desu" (similar to using "be" with another verb to form the
passive in English), that literally translates as something like "[it] is
[that it] is blue". The fact that "desu" is here merely an auxiliary is more
easily seen in the past form, "aokatta desu", which literally means "[it] is
[that it] was blue", clearly analyzable as a grammaticalized subordinated
construction in which the sentence in the past tense "aokatta" ([it] was
blue) is subordinated to the present tense "desu" ([it] is), merely so as to
make the assertion less direct and thus more polite.
Japanese has a tendency to use convoluted constructions for politeness, in
which verbs 'pile up' successively in subordination (adding levels of
indirectness to the statement), frequently ending in some form of "desu"
used as an auxiliary. For example, the negative polite form of "desu"
itself, "de-wa nai", literally means "as for being, [it] is not" (with the
lexical 'be' in the gerund: "de", and the auxiliary 'be' in the negative:
"nai"; alternatively you can say "de-wa arimasen", using the formal negative
form of "aru", to exist, as the auxiliary). The formal negative past form of
"aoi" is even more convoluted: "aoku nakatta desu", literally meaning "[it]
is [that] being blue was not" (all that just to mean "it wasn't blue").
The point is that so-called "i"-adjectives are truly stative verbs in
themselves, meaning "to be ...". They do not need "desu" to predicate, and
have a full-fledged conjugation with tenses and all: "aoi" (it is blue),
"aokatta" (it was blue), "aoku nai" (it is not blue, lit. being blue is
not), "aoku nakatta" (it wasn't blue, lit. being blue was not), etc. Their
use in attributive position (as in "aoi sora", blue sky), in which they
directly precede a noun without any change or addition (and which makes them
look as if they were functioning the same as English adjectives) is in fact
sentence subordination that parallels the subordination procedure of the
other kind of verbs (in which the mere fact that the verb doesn't end the
sentence, as it would have to for a simple sentence, but is followed by the
element it modifies, is what turns it into a subordinate).
For example, "Tanaka-san-wa asagohan-wo tabeta" (Mr. Tanaka had breakfast)
--> "Watashi-wa asagohan-wo tabeta Tanaka-san-wo miru" (I see Mr. Tanaka,
who had breakfast). As you can see, in order to subordinate you just place
the verb before the element it modifies, not needing any particle or change.
This structure applies equally to "i"-adjectives: "Sora-wa aoi" (The sky is
blue) --> "Watashi-wa aoi sora-wo miru" (I see the blue sky), coincidentally
resulting in what outwardly appears to be a parallel construction to English
attributive adjectives (adjective followed by noun), but that actually is a
subordinated sentence. The literal translation would be "I see the sky that
is blue", rather than "I see the blue sky"; cf. the past: "Sora-wa aokatta"
(The sky was blue) --> "Watashi-wa aokatta sora-wo miru" (I see the sky that
was blue / I see the formerly-blue sky).
Messages in this topic (14)
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3a. Non-Russian Cyrillics (was: I'm back)
Posted by: "Isaac Penzev" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 1:36 pm (PDT)
Benct Philip Jonsson girs'epset':
| FWIW I was sketching on a Neo-Tokharian, which would have
| Cyrillic as its main or only script. It would need to
| distinguish /ji/ from /i/ and /jM/ from /M/, and I thought
| to use Р/i/ Р/ji/ Ъ /M/ Ь /jM/ (while Ы would seem out of
| place for /M/ where Ð was /i/) but I was told those
| assignments would seem weird to a Russophone.
Indeed they are. Cyrillic alphabet has its own story and tradition of
adaptation to non-Russian langs, but in general it is less flexible to
non-standard appication of graphemes than Latin, IMHO.
It permits some variation of reading values when they are similar/close in
pronunciation, like Р[w], Р[γ], Р[ɬ] in Chukchee, or Рstanding for
both
[k] and [q] in Nogay, but ascribing smth like Щ for [θ] would be indeed
weird.
North Caucasian orthographies, otoh, extensively use digraphs and trigraphs,
where the role of modifying element is played by Ъ, Ь and Ó ("palochka" in
the Unicode, "Roman digit one" in the Soviet tradition). Where ÐºÑ may mean
[q], Ñ
Ñ - [h], ÑÓ - [t'] etc.
| Well well
| there are always the possibility of using Ó¤ Ó¸ for the
| preceding /j/.
Surely there are, though in practice those characters mean:
Ó¤ - non-palatalizing /i/ in Udmurt;
Ó¸ - palatalizing /M/ in Mari [info needs verification].
| Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
-- Yitzik
Messages in this topic (2)
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3b. Re: Non-Russian Cyrillics (was: I'm back)
Posted by: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 5:38 pm (PDT)
li [Isaac Penzev] mi tulis
> ...
> | distinguish /ji/ from /i/ and /jM/ from /M/, and I thought
> | to use Р/i/ Р/ji/ Ъ /M/ Ь /jM/ (while Ы would seem out of
> | place for /M/ where Ð was /i/) but I was told those
> | assignments would seem weird to a Russophone.
>
> Indeed they are. Cyrillic alphabet has its own story and tradition of
> adaptation to non-Russian langs, but in general it is less flexible to
> non-standard appication of graphemes than Latin, IMHO.
>...
> | Well well
> | there are always the possibility of using Ó¤ Ó¸ for the
> | preceding /j/.
>
> Surely there are, though in practice those characters mean:
> Ó¤ - non-palatalizing /i/ in Udmurt;
> Ó¸ - palatalizing /M/ in Mari [info needs verification].
How about <Ó¤> /i/ as distinct from <Ð> /ji/ ? And maybe <Ó°> for /ɯ/? Or
maybe use the soft sign <Ь> for /j/? Then there's the use of <Ð> for /j/ as
in Serbian.
If you don't mind venturing a bit from existing encodings, maybe you could come
up with some new characters that are based on existing Cyrillic letters.
Messages in this topic (2)
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4a. Re: Project 55 (was: I'm back)
Posted by: "Isaac Penzev" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 1:37 pm (PDT)
Eric Christopherson girs'epset':
| Do you actually know some Chukchee? I know almost nothing about it,
| but for a while I've been fascinated by its numerals (found at http://
| zompist.com/asia.htm#chukchi ) -- two, three, and four seem to all be
| ngVrVq, which leads me to wonder what the synchronic and diachronic
| relations between the forms are. Do you know?
All my info about Chukchee comes from the Internet:
- a rather extensive source (in English)
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~spena/Chukchee/CHUKCHEE_HOMEPAGE.html
- some materials in Russian:
http://www.philology.ru/linguistics4/volodin-97.htm
http://www.philology.ru/linguistics4/volodin-skorik-97.htm
-- Yitzik
Messages in this topic (4)
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4b. Re: Project 55 (was: I'm back)
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:21 pm (PDT)
Hi!
Isaac Penzev writes:
>...
> All my info about Chukchee comes from the Internet:
> - a rather extensive source (in English)
> http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~spena/Chukchee/CHUKCHEE_HOMEPAGE.html
> - some materials in Russian:
> http://www.philology.ru/linguistics4/volodin-97.htm
> http://www.philology.ru/linguistics4/volodin-skorik-97.htm
>...
Ha, the noun declension system (which is what I looked at first) is
most interesting, and the case usage is, too. Thanks for sharing the
links.
I assume that sociative I is for equal partners while sociative II is
for sub-part or attached pieces, right?
The orientative and designative are also interesting cases.
Still reading...
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (4)
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5a. OT: Seriously OT request
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 3:53 pm (PDT)
I know this is off topic, but I thought someone here
might be able to help me. I'm looking for two
documents that circulate regularly around offices and
on the internet. One is the spellchecker poem. You
know the one wherein every word is spelled correctly,
yet more than half of them are the wrong words. This
is one of those things frequently found on cubicle
walls.
The second one I'm looking for is one I've gotten in
emails several times over the years. It consists of
two paprgraphs identical except for the punctuation.
If memory serves the first iteration tells the tale of
a couple falling madly in love -- the second the tale
of a couple ready to kill each other. No words change
or move, only punctuation shifts and swaps.
If you have seen either of these documents and could
forward me a copy I would be grateful. My students on
the other hand . . .
Adam
9 Debostu averuns judidu ul regu, vaderuns in al via, ed iñi! erad vidandu sis
al steja fi averuns spichudu in il ojindi, gata ad vinid ed pedizud subra jundi
fuid al credura.
10 Vidindu al steja, niregoderuns rexundimindi.
Machu 2:9-10
Messages in this topic (12)
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5b. Re: OT: Seriously OT request
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 4:39 pm (PDT)
Adam Walker wrote:
> The second one I'm looking for is one I've gotten in
> emails several times over the years. It consists of
> two paprgraphs identical except for the punctuation.
> If memory serves the first iteration tells the tale of
> a couple falling madly in love -- the second the tale
> of a couple ready to kill each other. No words change
> or move, only punctuation shifts and swaps.
I think I know the one you're talking about. All I could remember is the
four words "all about you are" ... but that was enough to Google it.
http://www.factmonster.com/cig/grammar-style/punctuation-matters.html
(There may be other variations, but that's the first one I noticed.)
Messages in this topic (12)
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5c. Re: OT: Seriously OT request
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Aug 30, 2006 5:16 pm (PDT)
> I think I know the one you're talking about. All I
> could remember is the
> four words "all about you are" ... but that was
> enough to Google it.
>
>
http://www.factmonster.com/cig/grammar-style/punctuation-matters.html
>
> (There may be other variations, but that's the first
> one I noticed.)
>
Yahoooo! That's the one! I knew someone here would
know what I was talking about! You guys are the
greatest!
Adam the efervescent English teacher
9 Debostu averuns judidu ul regu, vaderuns in al via, ed iñi! erad vidandu sis
al steja fi averuns spichudu in il ojindi, gata ad vinid ed pedizud subra jundi
fuid al credura.
10 Vidindu al steja, niregoderuns rexundimindi.
Machu 2:9-10
Messages in this topic (12)
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