There are 6 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Another resource for filling out your lexicon
From: Herman Miller
2a. List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
From: Eric Christopherson
2b. Re: List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
From: Henrik Theiling
2c. Re: List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
From: Eric Christopherson
3. Re: Weekly Vocab #5.3 (original)
From: Henrik Theiling
4. Re: Laturslav (was: Hello! - introduction)
From: Henrik Theiling
Messages
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1. Re: Another resource for filling out your lexicon
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 17, 2006 4:06 pm (PDT)
Alex Fink wrote:
> I was stumbling around SIL's webpage recently when I came upon this:
> http://www.sil.org/computing/ddp/DDP_downloads_tb.htm
> It's part of the DDP, a suite of tools and resources for developing
> dictionaries for minority languages, so there's probably other good stuff
> there too. But the list of semantic domains available at that particular
> page is what got my attention: it's a big comprehensive taxonomically
> organized picture of semantic space, with a list of questions for eliciting
> words in each semantic domain. The whole thing has 1793 nodes in the
> taxonomy and 41889 English lexemes as examples.
Thanks for the link; that could be useful.
> Building your lexicon systematically according to some sort of taxonomy
> strikes me as a good idea, in that it makes explicit the various divisions
> of semantic space that your lang's lexemes are creating, especially if
> you're intending to have these divisions be coherently different to the way
> familiar languages do it. But I've never done this myself, except in a few
> small domains, like colors. Has anyone?
>
> Alex
The majority of the Minza vocabulary is arranged in categories. Some of
the categories also have subcategories; the overall category of "space"
for instance has subcategories of "directions", "dimensions",
"measurement", "shapes". Many of the verbs fall into the "actions"
category, which has subcategories of "planning", "causation",
"creation", "motion", "transfer", "using", and "alteration". The
category of "musical instruments" (itself under "music", which is under
"arts") has a number of main categories such as "aerophones" and
"idiophones", and some of these are further subdivided into smaller
groups such as "double reeds".
It's tempting to use scientific classification for animals and plants,
but I've been wondering if there's a better way for words of a language.
It might be nice to divide "plants" into "trees", "bushes", "small
flowering plants", and so on. But where do you go from there? You could
divide trees into conifers and the rest, classify them by the bark
texture or leaf shape, and so on. But I don't know much about trees; I
hear a word like "elm" and know that it's some kind of tree, but if you
show me a bunch of pictures of trees and ask me to point out the elm,
I'd have to guess. So I fall back on the scientific classification, even
though that puts trees into a bunch of different groups and mixes them
up with smaller plants.
A while back I took the Minza category list and adapted it for the
Lindiga vocabulary; since an earlier version of Lindiga was the initial
vocabulary source for Minza, this approach worked well, and I've since
put more development into the Lindiga category list that hasn't been
reflected in the Minza vocabulary. Nimrina is also using a category
system based on the Minza vocabulary list, although I don't yet have
many actual Nimrina words. Other languages such as Yasaro have their own
category lists. I think probably Tirelat or Ludireo were among the
earliest of my languages to use any kind of classification system for
vocabulary. I didn't do that back in the pencil and paper days.
Messages in this topic (2)
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2a. List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:24 pm (PDT)
Could someone point out to me a list of subject line tags (you know,
like THEORY, CHAT, etc.)? I can't seem to find it.
Also, I joined the Yahoo Conlang group hoping the list was posted
there somewhere, and noticed that it resides in a part of Yahoo
called "Yahoo Tech Groups." Never noticed that before. Kind of odd,
since this isn't really a tech-related list.
Also, I noticed that the "description" of the Yahoo group is
truncated. I guess there must be a length limitation; perhaps
someone could edit it down so it fits.
Messages in this topic (3)
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2b. Re: List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 17, 2006 7:46 pm (PDT)
Hi!
Eric Christopherson 'writes:
> Could someone point out to me a list of subject line tags (you know,
> like THEORY, CHAT, etc.)? I can't seem to find it.
http://wiki.frath.net/Conlang-L_FAQ
This FAQ will probably shortly (yes!) be installed as a monthly post
to this list.
> Also, I joined the Yahoo Conlang group ...
AAAH!
> ... hoping the list was posted there somewhere, and noticed that it
> resides in a part of Yahoo called "Yahoo Tech Groups." Never
> noticed that before. Kind of odd, since this isn't really a
> tech-related list.
>
> Also, I noticed that the "description" of the Yahoo group is
> truncated. I guess there must be a length limitation; perhaps
> someone could edit it down so it fits.
Unfortunately, no-one can edit the Yahoo group settings anymore since
no-one is list admin there anymore and no-one at Yahoo will ever
respond to any queries. The Yahoo mirroring only causes problems and
constant problems. And confusion.
Please make sure to join the group at Brown.edu (see above link) and
to quit it at Yahoo and completely forget that it exists at Yahoo, as
I am close to shutting down the link to Yahoo if too many more
problems with Yahoo arise... (Angry protesting welcome. :-))
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (3)
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2c. Re: List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 17, 2006 9:30 pm (PDT)
On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:23 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Eric Christopherson 'writes:
>> Could someone point out to me a list of subject line tags (you know,
>> like THEORY, CHAT, etc.)? I can't seem to find it.
>
> http://wiki.frath.net/Conlang-L_FAQ
Thanks!
>
> This FAQ will probably shortly (yes!) be installed as a monthly post
> to this list.
>
>> Also, I joined the Yahoo Conlang group ...
>
> AAAH!
I know ;)
>
>> ... hoping the list was posted there somewhere, and noticed that it
>> resides in a part of Yahoo called "Yahoo Tech Groups." Never
>> noticed that before. Kind of odd, since this isn't really a
>> tech-related list.
>>
>> Also, I noticed that the "description" of the Yahoo group is
>> truncated. I guess there must be a length limitation; perhaps
>> someone could edit it down so it fits.
>
> Unfortunately, no-one can edit the Yahoo group settings anymore since
> no-one is list admin there anymore and no-one at Yahoo will ever
> respond to any queries. The Yahoo mirroring only causes problems and
> constant problems. And confusion.
Oh, yes; I seem to vaguely remember that now. So is there software
on brown.edu that automagically posts messages to the Yahoo group? I
would think that software would need a Yahoo login. The login is not
a group administrator one, though?
Also, out of curiosity, why does it still post mirrored messages to
the Yahoo group if it is deprecated? It might make it more obvious
that it's abandoned if we just don't post to it. (Oh, I see you
mention doing that below.)
>
> Please make sure to join the group at Brown.edu (see above link) and
> to quit it at Yahoo and completely forget that it exists at Yahoo, as
> I am close to shutting down the link to Yahoo if too many more
> problems with Yahoo arise... (Angry protesting welcome. :-))
>
> **Henrik
Messages in this topic (3)
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3. Re: Weekly Vocab #5.3 (original)
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 17, 2006 7:21 pm (PDT)
Hi!
Tim May writes:
> Carsten Becker wrote at 2006-09-16 10:49:41 (-0400)
>...
> > On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 11:51:28 -0000, caeruleancentaur
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > >This bread is mouldy, I urgently need to buy a new one (sic).
> >
> > What's wrong with that? I meant a new loaf of bread. I guess one
> > cannot say it like that in English?
>
> You have to say either "this loaf is mouldy, I need to buy a new one"
> or "this bread is mouldy, I need to buy some more". (English mass
> nouns differ in the extent to which they can be used as count nouns
> meaning a portion or serving, so for other things, particularly
> drinks, the structure you have there might be possible. But you'd
> never call a loaf of bread "a bread", so it doesn't work.)
>...
Ah!
I think the profane source of confusion is that 'bread' is a strict
mass noun in English, while it isn't in German. I also did not known.
Interesting.
Funny this type of difference exists in such closely related
languages, while it looks like a typical difference with, say,
Chinese.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (3)
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4. Re: Laturslav (was: Hello! - introduction)
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 17, 2006 7:33 pm (PDT)
Hi!
Santiago MatÃas Feldman writes:
>...
> Well, the idea is that these people spoke a Turkic language before
> being conquered by the Romans and that then they started speaking
> Latin with a heavy influence of the aboriginal "substratum" (is that
> the word in English?).
>...
Hehe. :-) I let my people also speak with a heavy accent to be able to
apply the sound changes of North Germanic to Latin without much
modification.
> And, unlike what happened in the other Romance langs, Laturslav
> speakers retained the agglutinative character of the aboriginal
> language while incorporating a lot of vocabulary and some minor
> grammatical traits from Latin.
I let original Germanic grammar not influence Latin grammar to such a
great extent, but some things do spill over, e.g. the whole syntax
(ok, that *is* quite some influence...).
>...
> Another important feature of Laturslav is the vowel harmony.
>...
Ah! And there are umlaut phenomena in my conlang.
> What do you mean by "design goals"?
I mean, usually in a conlang don't you have some kind of 'great
idea'(tm) which you have in mind? Or a vision what it should look
like? What is this?
And even if you just let it evolve in any direction that seems
sensible, then what does 'seem' sensible?
>... Thank you for your interest, and I'll be watching for your
>conlangs on the list. By the way, if you have a webpage to have a
>taste of your Romlang, let me know. ...
I'm making progress only very slowly. The basic grammar is more or
less finished, I think, but what I need are vocab and texts. If you
are interested, you can take a look at the website here:
http://www.kunstsprachen.de/s17/
Also, maybe you want to use your conlang in a Relay game? We are
currently (quite slowly) preparing for another translation relay were
you might want to participate. It would be fun to see an
agglutinative romlang.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (9)
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