There are 20 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
From: Philip Newton
2a. Re: Werewolf
From: BP Jonsson
2b. Re: Werewolf
From: Chris Bates
2c. Re: Werewolf
From: Lars Finsen
2d. Re: Werewolf
From: R A Brown
2e. CHAT: Dom (was: Werewolf)
From: R A Brown
3. Re: Weekly Vocab #5.3 (original)
From: Lars Finsen
4a. Re: 1st lesson in Gaajan (wsd: Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1))
From: Lars Finsen
4b. Re: 1st lesson in Gaajan (wsd: Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1))
From: taliesin the storyteller
5a. Dominus (Was: Re: Werewolf)
From: caeruleancentaur
5b. Re: Dominus (Was: Re: Werewolf)
From: Paul Bennett
5c. Re: Dominus (Was: Re: Werewolf)
From: R A Brown
6. Re: Transcription exercise
From: Paul Roser
7. Re: Taxonomic Vocabulary
From: And Rosta
8. Re: Transcription exercise (was: Re: Vertical script)
From: caeruleancentaur
9. Re: Conflicts in loanword adaptation
From: JR
10. International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
11a. Stress placement systems
From: Eric Christopherson
11b. Re: Stress placement systems
From: Sanghyeon Seo
12. Re: YAGPT: Carsten (was Re: Vertical script)
From: Carsten Becker
Messages
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1. Re: List of subject line tags; Yahoo group oddities
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:13 am (PDT)
On 9/18/06, Eric Christopherson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 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 imagine Yahoo!Groups is simply a subscriber to the mailing
list and receives email in the same way you and I do -- only that it's
not a person that then displays the mail on their screen but a
computer program that adds the message to an archive.
> Also, out of curiosity, why does it still post mirrored messages to
> the Yahoo group if it is deprecated?
I imagine because the special Yahoo!Groups "bot" email address is
still subscribed to the list.
> On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:23 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> > I am close to shutting down the link to Yahoo if too many more
> > problems with Yahoo arise... (Angry protesting welcome. :-))
No protests from me...
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (4)
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2a. Re: Werewolf
Posted by: "BP Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:58 am (PDT)
So the question is
2006/9/16, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> All the modern Romancelangs have formed some sort of compound, whether
> of 'man' + 'wolf' as in Spanish _hombre lobo_ (Thinks: that is a counter
> example, isn't it?) or Portuguese _lobisomem_. Or an special epithet
> added to wolf to make it clear that it's one of those 'humanoid wolves',
> like French 'loup-garou' or Italian 'lupo mannaro'.
>
> > But if it is used in Vulgar Latin,
>
> It wasn't - you're compound is likely, given the scenario of your language.
Might LUPONE be a possible formation? I guess one might get
_lobóu_ from LUPU HOMO in R3, but how realistic would *that* be?
An alternative possibility is _lobom_, provided that
HOMINE would become _huom_ (where _h_ is merely a diacritic to
show that |uo| was /wo/ and not /vo/ in medieval orthography! :-),
assuming HOMINE > *omne > *omme > /uom/, provided that
M'N > mm *is* a realistic change for a Romance language
-- I want it to be but I'm not so sure! What's the track by which
HOMINE became _homme_ but HOMO became _on_ in French?
And what's the story behind DOMINU > _Dom_ as an ecclesiatical
appellative (if that is the right word?) I'm not even sure in what
language DOMINU > _Dom_ might have happened! AFAIK the
regular outcome is _don_ in both Spanish and Italian, with
_doña/donna_ < DOMINA. Is _Dom_ archaic French?
In case someone wonders, plain LUPU becomes _lop_, later spelled
_lob_, in both periods pronounced /lop/, and since it's R3 i guess
I'll have to give the plurals too:
lobóu : lebéy
lop/lob : lep/leb
huom : huem /H2m/ (later spelled _hueum_, since postconsonantal
/H2/ was monophthongized to /2/, which continued to be spelled _ue_).
--
/BP
Messages in this topic (49)
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2b. Re: Werewolf
Posted by: "Chris Bates" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 7:32 am (PDT)
> Yep - even the versions I gave with 'wolf' first support the point
> that 'wolf' is the head of the phrase and the 'man/human' word is the
> attribute. It does seem that people regarded these creatures as
> essentially wolves trapped for the most part in humanoid form, rather
> than humans who occasionally got transmogrified into wolves.
That seems odd to me. If I had to invent an English compound word for
the concept (that is, if the borrowed word "werewolf" didn't exist) I
would choose wolf-man, not man-wolf... and I would say that man is the
head in that compound (following the general rule in English that the
head of a compound comes last). That is, if I introduced "wolf-man" into
some hypothetical discourse, I could refer to its referent as "the man",
but not "the wolf" (unless I'd explicitly mentioned that my wolf man had
changed shape sometime between the first and second reference).
Indeed, werewolf works the same way for me. Refering back to "the
werewolf" by use of "the man" seems right, whereas "the wolf" does not
without explicit mention or strong contextual indication of the fact
that the werewolf is, in fact, in the shape of a wolf.
I would argue that in English, semantically at least, a werewolf is
seen as a man who turns into a wolf, and not as a wolf who turns into a man.
Messages in this topic (49)
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2c. Re: Werewolf
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 7:42 am (PDT)
Den 18. sep. 2006 kl. 16.07 skrev Chris Bates:
> I would argue that in English, semantically at least, a werewolf is
> seen as a man who turns into a wolf, and not as a wolf who turns
> into a man.
Perhaps he reveals his true nature when he turns into a wolf(?)
LEF
Messages in this topic (49)
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2d. Re: Werewolf
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 11:02 am (PDT)
Chris Bates wrote:
>> Yep - even the versions I gave with 'wolf' first support the point
>> that 'wolf' is the head of the phrase and the 'man/human' word is the
>> attribute. It does seem that people regarded these creatures as
>> essentially wolves trapped for the most part in humanoid form, rather
>> than humans who occasionally got transmogrified into wolves.
>
[snip]
> I would argue that in English, semantically at least, a werewolf is seen
> as a man who turns into a wolf, and not as a wolf who turns into a man.
That's because you're loving in the 21st century. Clearly to our Saxon
forebears it was a 'man-wolf'. I was trying to make sense out of
compounds formed many centuries ago when people took such creatures more
seriously.
But without a detailed research it is surely not possible to say how
peoples a millennium ago and two millennia ago regarded such creatures.
==================================
> Den 18. sep. 2006 kl. 16.07 skrev Chris Bates:
>
>> I would argue that in English, semantically at least, a werewolf is seen as
>> a man who turns into a wolf, and not as a wolf who turns into a man.
>
>
> Perhaps he reveals his true nature when he turns into a wolf(?)
Quite so. If one believes in such creatures, this would seem to me a
perfectly natural way to think.
===================================
> 2006/9/16, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
[snip]
>> > But if it is used in Vulgar Latin,
>>
>> It wasn't - you're compound is likely, given the scenario of your language.
>
>
> Might LUPONE be a possible formation?
?Vulgar Latin *lupone would presumably mean "wolflet', methinks.
> I guess one might get
> _lobóu_ from LUPU HOMO in R3, but how realistic would *that* be?
One could imagine *luphomo (gen. *luphominis) - where |ph| = [p_h] -
being formed as a calque of the Greek 'lykanthropos'. This would have
given a Vulgar Latin *lupOmne
[snip]
> assuming HOMINE > *omne > *omme > /uom/, provided that
> M'N > mm *is* a realistic change for a Romance language
It happened in Old French, i.e. (h)omme = 'man'
> -- I want it to be but I'm not so sure! What's the track by which
> HOMINE became _homme_ but HOMO became _on_ in French?
The nom. (h)Omo --> /Om/ --> /0~/. The later was spelled _(h)om_ in Old
French. But the sound /O~/ could equally well be spelled *(h)on, and
when it became dissociated from _(h)omme_ and took on a new role as a
pronoun, the simple spelling _on_ was adopted. *There never was a change
/m/ --> /n/*
> And what's the story behind DOMINU > _Dom_ as an ecclesiatical
> appellative (if that is the right word?)
Used AFAIK principally by the Benedictine order.
> I'm not even sure in what language DOMINU > _Dom_ might have happened!
Portuguese.
AFAIK the
> regular outcome is _don_ in both Spanish and Italian, with
> _doña/donna_ < DOMINA. Is _Dom_ archaic French?
Nope - it's Portuguese, see above. Why the Benedictines should have
adopted this form when other took the Spanish/Italian 'Don' I know not.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB}
Messages in this topic (49)
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2e. CHAT: Dom (was: Werewolf)
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:28 pm (PDT)
R A Brown wrote:
BPJ asked:
>> And what's the story behind DOMINU > _Dom_ as an ecclesiatical
>> appellative (if that is the right word?)
>
> Used AFAIK principally by the Benedictine order.
I've checked - it's also used by the Cistercian order. It is not a
general "ecclesiastical appellative." In Italy (but not elsewhere)
clerics, I understand, normally have 'Don' before their name.
>> I'm not even sure in what language DOMINU > _Dom_ might have happened!
>
> Portuguese.
>
> AFAIK the
>
>> regular outcome is _don_ in both Spanish and Italian, with
>> _doña/donna_ < DOMINA. Is _Dom_ archaic French?
>
> Nope - it's Portuguese, see above. Why the Benedictines should have
> adopted this form when other took the Spanish/Italian 'Don' I know not.
Other orders did *not* take Spanish/Italian 'Don'. On reflection, I
think that the Benedictine & Cistercian 'Dom' is only coincidentally the
same as Portuguese 'dom'. I think it is almost certainly a medieval
contraction of the Medieval Latin 'Domnus' (Sir, Mr). I do not think it
has anything to do with Vulgar Latin and the vernacular development of
Romancelangs therefrom.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB}
Messages in this topic (49)
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3. Re: Weekly Vocab #5.3 (original)
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 7:12 am (PDT)
Den 15. sep. 2006 kl. 06.01 skrev Henrik Theiling:
> It is the first time this is posted.
Thanks, I'll try this one, too.
>> 1. apples
Urianian: epli
Gaajan: arau
It's funny that ara also means 'no, not', as if apples were the
forbidden fruit. But I have an unrelated word for apple tree, kala,
so I am thinking of giving the apple an alternative name, kalaku,
with a relational suffix, and plural kalakuwe.
>> 2. bread
U: glíf (the aigu marks a long vowel)
G: hugu (loaf: oki)
>> 3. bus/train/... ticket
U: buspillet, tokpillet (all loan words)
G: N/A (Gaajan is a bronze age language in my conworld)
>> 4. butter
U: silub
G: usji (or 'ushi' in the usual English convention)
>> 5. cheese
U: dégul
G: sulana
>> 6. cream
U: bimi
G: lasa
>> 7. ink
U: zurud (also blek is borrowed)
G: N/A
>> 8. jam/marmelade
U: gambi/marmladi
G: jima (sweets in general)/N.A.
>> 9. milk
U: kulek
G: rana (or esma)
>> 10. noodles/pasta
U: nudli/pasta
G: N.A.
>> 11. salad
U: salat
G: N.A.
>> 12. sausage (of which you put slices on your bread)
U: ketut (sausage in general)
G: N.A. (but it is tempting to construct herkal 'gut meat' -
otherwise sikua is dried meat)
>> 13. soap
U: maz
G: N.A. (but simo is 'grease')
>> 14. stamps
U: zindilmini or zindilmi
G: N.A.
>> 15. toilet paper
U: larsilpapir
G: N.A. (but juwe is 'leaf')
>> Some sentences:
>>
>> 1. I like to eat an apple at the end of my lunch break.
U: Mi sem egan epla dabu ma leclilsia.
(Lit.: Me it pleases eating apple end-loc my lunchbreak-gen.) Here we
could use the instrumental dabi as well, meaning during the end
instead of at the end. Leclils is a compound of the loan-word lenc
(lunch), and lils, 'break, rest, pause'. I am presuming that it will
lose the n in the compounding (and that this will not change the
vowel). Urianian does not have either the [S] nor the [tS] phonemes,
so I am further presuming that they will replace it with the
voiceless fricative we were discussing here the other day (the one
the Norwegians are allegedly losing), for which I don't know the
phonetic symbol, but which the Urianians write as a c.
G: Ari at karaku sanen gaistalananin ij atla.
Enjoy I-do-to-it apple end(san)-at-time(-en) mid-day-meal(gaist)-rest
(alana)-my(ni)-of(-n) eat I-do-to-it(at)-that(-la).
I am using karaku instead of ara here, otherwise the sentence would
(alternatively) read: I like to avoid eating at the end of my lunch
break. Not fatally harmful perhaps, but a little awkward. However
such little ambiguities do exist in a lot of natural languages. (My
conlangs are make-believe natlangs, I'm not trying to create a
perfect language or anything of the sort.)
Phew, I think I must do the rest later. Must work some. But I've got
many new words now, so thanks.
LEF
.....home pages www.ortygia.no.....
Messages in this topic (3)
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4a. Re: 1st lesson in Gaajan (wsd: Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1))
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 11:05 am (PDT)
taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> *quoting me
>> Can you recommend a file format that's more transportable than rtf? I
>> thought there weren't any.
>
> Plain text, validating html (preferably xhtml 1), your own xml-format,
> pdf (not from images but from text, with newer acroread you can easily
> copy the text from the pdf to plaintext), postscript, open formats
> like
> the ones used by OpenOffice. For absolute control of layout, use pdfs.
Well, plain text is too plain. There isn't much layout, but there is
some. For pdf I must buy a program that I don't think I need. At
least I didn't think so until now. Do I? I thought rtf was pretty
open. At least Mac and Windows users can share them. Who else cannot?
TextEdit on my Mac offers to save in rtf, html, Word and Word XML
formats, in that order. Are any of these usable? I am not deeply
familiar with these concepts. Until very recently I have exclusively
used WYSIWYG programs in editing my home pages. (And I guess it shows.)
LEF
.....home pages www.ortygia.no.....
Messages in this topic (38)
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4b. Re: 1st lesson in Gaajan (wsd: Re: Weekly Vocab #1.1.3 (repost #1))
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:12 am (PDT)
* Lars Finsen said on 2006-09-18 19:48:05 +0200
> taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> > * Lars Finsen
> > > Can you recommend a file format that's more transportable than rtf?
> >
> > Plain text, validating html (preferably xhtml 1), your own
> > xml-format, pdf, postscript, open formats like the ones used by
> > OpenOffice.
>
> Well, plain text is too plain. There isn't much layout, but there is
> some. For pdf I must buy a program that I don't think I need.
LaTeX is free and makes pdfs (well, pdflatex does). I wrote my Masters
thesis in LaTeX. Openoffice can, provided you have Java (which is free),
also save directly to pdf. Openoffice is free. If you have OSX they
should be easy enough to get hold of.
> I thought rtf was pretty open.
It's a text-version of an MSWord-document and won't always open between
versions of Word. But since it is a text-format it is easy to get a hold
of the plaintext by stripping all formatting.
> At least Mac and Windows users can share them. Who else cannot?
Unless Openoffice or special filters are used, Unix/Linux-users like
myself cannot.
> TextEdit on my Mac offers to save in rtf, html, Word and Word XML
> formats, in that order. Are any of these usable?
The first two are much better than the last two. If you use Word's html
I recommend you also get a hold of the little program tidy, which turns
bad html like Word makes into good html that you can display online with
pride. Heck, get tidy anyway, it'll clean up the html so it takes less
space and breaks fewer browsers regardless of source of the html.
http://tidy.sourceforge.net/#binaries
Both for OSX and classic.
> I am not deeply familiar with these concepts. Until very recently I
> have exclusively used WYSIWYG programs in editing my home pages. (And
> I guess it shows.)
I write my pages directly as xhtml. That is, I write them as broken html
then run tidy on them which fills in the missing stuff for me. But for a
real pro look, pdf can't be beat.
t.
Messages in this topic (38)
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5a. Dominus (Was: Re: Werewolf)
Posted by: "caeruleancentaur" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:07 pm (PDT)
>>BP Jonsson:
>>I'm not even sure in what language DOMINU _Dom_ might have
>>happened!
>R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Portuguese.
Romanian has "domnul" for "mister" & "doama" for "Mrs."
"domnisoara" is "miss." The "s" should have a cedilla & is
pronounced /S/. The final "a" carries a breve & is pronounced /6/.
It would not surprise me to learn that "domnisoara" was cognate
to "demoiselle." Rumanian has other l > r words.
durere, ache < Latin dolor.
singur, alone < singulus.
mar, apple < malus.
par, hair < pelis
etc.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/senjecas
Messages in this topic (3)
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5b. Re: Dominus (Was: Re: Werewolf)
Posted by: "Paul Bennett" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 12:33 pm (PDT)
-----Original Message-----
>From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Sep 18, 2006 2:42 PM
>
>It would not surprise me to learn that "domnisoara" was cognate
>to "demoiselle." Rumanian has other l > r words.
>
>durere, ache < Latin dolor.
>singur, alone < singulus.
>mar, apple < malus.
>par, hair < pelis
>etc.
There are lots of apparently nonsensical[*] sound changes and alternations all
over PIE, don't forget. Off the top of my head, I can think of m/n, l/r, l/d,
r/d, r/s, r/n, l/n, sk^/sk, Vr/rV -- some of these happen in either direction.
[*]By which I mean more or less regular, but not easily understood without
resorting to the "if /ni/ can become /a/" defense, which verges on the
Chewbaccan.
Paul
Messages in this topic (3)
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5c. Re: Dominus (Was: Re: Werewolf)
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:39 am (PDT)
Paul Bennett wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>
>>From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Sent: Sep 18, 2006 2:42 PM
>>
>>It would not surprise me to learn that "domnisoara" was cognate
>>to "demoiselle." Rumanian has other l > r words.
Yep - but cognate only in so far as both are, I think, derived from
diminutives of Latin _domna_ (forms without medial -i- were occasionally
found even in the Classical period).
VL /E/ does not become become /oa/ in Romanian, nor did intervocalic
/ll/ become /r/, only intervocalic /l/. The ending -oara suggests to me
a form derived from the familiar Latin diminutive ending -ula. I would
tentatively suggest *domniciula, but did medial -ci- before a vowel
become |s| /S/ in Romanian??
French _demoiselle_ is from a Latin *domnicella. French also has the
masculine equivalent _damoiseau_ <-- *domnicellu(m); it now has a
pejorative meaning of "fop, dandy".
In Old French both words were applied to people of noble birth, the
masculine being applied to young men of noble birth & the feminine to
any lady, whether married or not, of noble birth. The modern uses are
later developments.
>>durere, ache < Latin dolor.
>>singur, alone < singulus.
>>mar, apple < malus.
>>par, hair < pelis
>>etc.
>
> There are lots of apparently nonsensical[*] sound changes and alternations
> all over PIE,
I do not see anything nonsensical about medial [r] becoming [l]. It is
AFAIK not an uncommon change, nor is it confined to IE langs.
[snip]
> [*]By which I mean more or less regular, but not easily understood without
> resorting to the "if /ni/ can become /a/" defense, which verges on the
> Chewbaccan.
But the point is that the change from archaic Chinese /ni/ to the modern
Yangchow dialect /A/ was effected by a series of *regular* (not more or
less, but precisely regular) sound changes. As Y.R. Chao pointed out
(and I quote) "all the steps being reflected in other parallel changes,
geographical as well as historical."
The point is that one cannot arbitrarily rule out a change of one set of
sounds into another, without knowing the diachronic development of
sounds in the related languages; I see nothing Chewbaccan in this. Thus,
one cannot arbitrarily rule out the possibility that Latin -icella
became -isoara in Romanian; one has to know how sounds developed from VL
to modern Romanian.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB}
Messages in this topic (3)
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6. Re: Transcription exercise
Posted by: "Paul Roser" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 1:37 pm (PDT)
On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 12:31:44 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>So let's see what Sohlob makes of these. Pronunciation is
>rather easily calculated from the romanization
>See <http://wiki.frath.net/Sohlob_romanization>.
>The Heleb dialect would be able to distinguish front
>rounded vowels as as well as velar _ll_ from palatal
>_l_. The given forms are Classical Sohlob unless
>otherwise indicated.
Does Heleb also have voiceless lateral fricatives, and if so, does it
distinguish velar(ized) <HLL> from palatal <HL> ?
One of the characteristics of Scungric phonology is that there are
(minimally) two coronal series, one laminal/palatalized, the other apical
(redundantly either velarized, uvularized, or pharyngealized),
distinguishing stops, nasals, sibilants, lateral approximants and lateral
fricatives for both, with the addition of trills in the apical series.
-Bfowol
Messages in this topic (44)
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7. Re: Taxonomic Vocabulary
Posted by: "And Rosta" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:46 pm (PDT)
Henrik Theiling, On 04/09/2006 23:31:
> And Rosta writes:
>> ...
>> You describe the standard problems with taxonomic vocabularies, but
>> I am of the minority opinion that these problems can be well
>> circumvented if approached the right way. Suppose you have 60
>> syllables. Other things being equal, this gives you a taxonomic tree
>> where each node supports 60 branches. Then you need to slot your
>> concepts into this taxonomy, following the principle that a concept
>> can be assigned to a form of n syllables only when all forms of n-1
>> syllables have been assigned concepts. That solves the
>> deep-and-sparse problem. But it does mean that you can't work from
>> standard language-independent quasi-scientific taxonomies.
>> ...
>
> The problem I still see here is when to decide that your n-level tree
> is 'full' and you need another level. In principle, the 'standard'
> approach to create taxonomic vocab does not produce any empty paths
> *in principle*, but only in practice. I.e., you could go down any
> path in your taxonomic tree and get some meaning, only it is probably
> quite unlikely that all longer words are really used so most paths of
> length n are probably not to be translated when a dictionary for, say,
> English would be written.
>
> I think in short I want to say: I don't yet understand the difference
> of your technique.
The depth-and-sparseness would arise, I take it, mainly from extending one
section of the taxonomy and not others, so tht, say, the taxonomy for actions
is broad and shallow, while that for animals is deep.
You, Henrik, seem to be describing something different: a taxonomic vocabulary
concocted according to my recipe, but in which there is no correlation between
frequency (of usage) and word-length/taxonomic specificity. This is remediable
by settling on a taxonomy that reflects frequency of usage in the first place.
--And.
Messages in this topic (9)
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8. Re: Transcription exercise (was: Re: Vertical script)
Posted by: "caeruleancentaur" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:19 pm (PDT)
>Remi Villatel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>During this offlist conversation, I also "built" the transcriptions
>of the names of all the capital cities of E.U. that I propose now
as >a test of phonotactics in your conlangs.
The Senjecans were around long before humans began to name their
settlements. Therefore, the Senjecan name of a city is that of the
oldest settlement in that place.
If the meaning of the name is known, that is translated directly.
E.g., Copenhagen means merchants' harbor, translated directly
as "peercâfnas." The original name may have been that of a Roman
settlement, e.g., London = Londinium = londînïas. Or there may have
been an earlier name of the place before the present name was
chosen, e.g., Rome = germâlas. If these are not known, then the
name is rendered in the form used by the inhabitants. Finally, the
name is adapted to Senjecan phonetics and put in the -as class of
abstract nouns.
List of the E.U. capitals:
Amsterdam = ámstelufðîÿas
Athens = aþênas
Berlin =berlînas
Bratislava = vrátislâva
Brussels = vruxsêlas
Bucharest = búcurêstas
Budapest = acüîncas
Copenhagen = merchants' harbor = peercâfnas
Dublin = deep pond = tsáleÿêrlas
Helsinki = helsing rapids = hélsinriÿâðrëdzos
Luxemburg = lúcsemðûnas
Lisbon = safe harbor = nescâfnas
Ljubljana = áluvïânas
London = londînïas
Madrid = maþrîcas
Nicosia = leúcorîÿas
Paris = lutêtïas
Prague = prâÿas
Riga = rîgas
Rome = germâlas
Skopje = scûpas
Sofia = serdîcas
Stockholm = scíírufqêdmëlas
Talinn = revâlas
Valetta = valêtas
Vienna = víndobônas
Vilnius = vîlnïas
Warsaw = vrôðnas
Zagreb = andáutônïas
To complete the list here are the names of the non-E.U. capitals of
Europe:
Andorra la Vella = sénandôras
Kiev = cïêvas
Minsk = menêscas
Moscow =môscëvas
Podgorica = dïoxlïas
San Marino = sánmarïnas
Sarajevo = sulphur spring = süéflaµdôntas
Vaduz = fadûtsas
Chisniyev = new spring = júúnaµdôntas
Reykjavik = bay of smokes = smúxmoorpêlas
Monaco = mónoîcas
Tbilisi = warm place = pólëstîîvas
Baku = baðcûbas
Yerevan = érebûnïas
Tirana = þerânas
Douglas = dûqlas
Belgrade = síngidûnas
Translating these names led to some fascinating research. Thanks!
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/senjecas
Messages in this topic (44)
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9. Re: Conflicts in loanword adaptation
Posted by: "JR" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:10 pm (PDT)
Thanks Teoh and John for the advice. It is jarring to my ears, but I guess I
will keep the initial vowel and move the stress to the beginning. I have
another problem now though - the word in Eloshtan wouldn't actually be
'galili' as I wrote before, because there is vowel harmony, and either the
front vowels or the back vowel will have to change. I went googling for
examples of this in natlangs and found only a list of four words borrowed
into Tuvan that had undergone vowel changes. But the choice of which vowels
to change there is either random or else more complex than one can determine
from so little data. Front to back and back to front are both attested, and
it doesn't follow the stressed value in the source language or in Tuvan. Any
thoughts on this??
--
Josh Roth
http://fuscian.freespaces.com/
"Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,
Once English, now a vile orangutanguage."
-Ogden Nash
on 9/15/06 4:01 AM, H. S. Teoh at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 15, 2006 at 03:10:03AM +0300, JR wrote:
>> I want to have one conlang, Eloshtan, borrow the word 'galïli' from
>> another conlang, Kar Marinam. The stress on that word in K.M. is on
>> the second syllable, but in Eloshtan, the stress is always on the
>> first syllable. So, I have two choices: either borrow the word as
>> 'galili' with a different stress; or drop the first vowel, and have
>> 'glili', with the stress still on the 'li'. Does anyone know what
>> natlangs do in this sort of situation? What's more important,
>> retaining the stress, or retaining all the original sounds? Does it
>> depend on the language in question, the whims of the speakers, other
>> factors?
>
> It depends on the language (and possibly the speakers). Stress is
> usually one of the first things to go, as well as declension.
>
> For example, the name of the historical king Darius is correctly
> accented on the /i/, not on the /a/ as most people pronounce it. But
> going around saying [d@'[EMAIL PROTECTED] sounds awfully pretentious unless
> you're
> speaking to like-clued people.
>
> Similarly, the correct plural of 'octopus' is 'octopodes' (Greek), but
> just about nobody speaks that way. The fact is that once a word is
> borrowed into a language, it becomes subject to native rules, no longer
> to rules in the original language.
>
> Witness also 'alcohol', 'algebra', and 'algorithm', where the article of
> the source language has become part of the loanword, and the stress is
> placed as if these were native words.
>
>
>> Actually, I am aware that some natlangs would go a different route and
>> adopt the word as is, with the foreign stress pattern, but I don't
>> think E. is ready for this.
> [...]
>
> If it doesn't contort the native lang too much, that works. But
> sometimes the target language is just so incompatibly different that you
> just have to butcher the word to make it fit.
>
> For example, Japanese loans from English have a lot of epithentic vowels
> inserted to remove consonant clusters hard for natives to pronounce, and
> have consonants suitably modified to work with Japanese phonology.
> Natives still consider the words foreign borrowings (which fact
> apparently adds a "coolness" factor to a word).
>
> Mandarin is especially notorious for totally butchering names by trying
> to shoehorn Western names into the trisyllabic scheme. The general
> procedure is to take the first two syllables from a Western first name
> (and dropping the rest), the first syllable from the last name, mold
> them appropriately to fit Mandarin phonology, and then assigning to
> characters meaningful related (sometimes only barely or not at all) to
> the original name. Needless to say, the placement of stress in the
> original is completely irrelevant: the tones in the result are freely
> varied in order to find the most "meaningful" combination of characters.
>
> On the other end of the spectrum, some English loanwords in Russian
> actually break native pronunciation rules (such as unstressed о being
> pronounced [o] instead of [?] because the source language has it as
> such), and spelling conventions (such as Ñ in places where it would
> never occur in a native word, in order to retain a semblance of the
> original pronunciation of the loanword).
>
>
> T
And on 9/15/06 12:09 PM, John Vertical at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Finnish also has initial stress & I don't think there's a single loanword
> which would have dropped the 1st vowel if the 2nd was stressed. Obviously
> our prohibition of initial clusters helps a lot with that, but even initial
> unstressed shwas get assigned stress, usually cuppled with
> de-neutralization. Example: "agility" has been borrowed from English in the
> meaning of the dog sport, and gets pronounced ['&gi"liti] or ['&ki"liti].
> Loanwords with non-initial stress do not exist either, but there are
> sociolects (urban pre/teenagers chiefly) where phonemic stress has developed
> due to influence of English & other IE langs.
>
> So with simple non-phonemic stress placement, I'd expect the stress not to
> be even noticed. More complex kinds of non-phonemic stress (eg. syllable
> weight conditioned) could be more likely to trigger phonological reshaping,
> but I'd still expect the "phoneme-shape" of the word to matter more.
> Borrowed stress patterns probably don't happen in single words, but maybe if
> the influence were heavy & there would be plenty of such words...
>
> John Vertical
Messages in this topic (4)
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10. International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day
Posted by: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 5:35 pm (PDT)
Pirate language tomorrow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day
------------------
Dana Nutter
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Messages in this topic (1)
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11a. Stress placement systems
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 10:15 pm (PDT)
I've been wondering a lot about stress lately.
1. What different "systems" there are for stress placement? I know
there are languages where the stress is determined by lexical or
morphological factors, and there are also languages where it is
determined by the position and lengths of syllables in a word, e.g.
in Latin it's the antepenultimate, if the penultimate is light;
otherwise the penultimate; and in Finnish, it's always initial. I
suppose there are some where the accent is always on the second
syllable, etc. So I'd like to know of the different types of systems
that exist.
2a. How does secondary stress work, cross-linguistically? I think
in all of the cases of languages having secondary stress I know of,
secondary stress placement is determined by first finding the primary
stress and then moving a certain number of syllables before and after
it. What other systems are there for secondary stress placement?
2b. Would it be reasonable to have primary stress a certain distance
from the end of a word, and primary stress a certain distance from
the beginning, or vice versa?
2c. Do any languages have a stress accent besides primary and
secondary?
3. What sort of gradual changes do languages go through in moving
from one stress placement system to another?
(I'm not sure if these questions warrant a USAGE: or THEORY: tag, or
neither, but I've decided to just go with neither since it seems like
something of general usefulness for conlangers. Let me know if I
should have tagged this :) )
Messages in this topic (2)
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11b. Re: Stress placement systems
Posted by: "Sanghyeon Seo" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Sep 18, 2006 11:02 pm (PDT)
2006/9/19, Eric Christopherson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I've been wondering a lot about stress lately.
>
> 1. What different "systems" there are for stress placement? I know
> there are languages where the stress is determined by lexical or
> morphological factors, and there are also languages where it is
> determined by the position and lengths of syllables in a word, e.g.
> in Latin it's the antepenultimate, if the penultimate is light;
> otherwise the penultimate; and in Finnish, it's always initial. I
> suppose there are some where the accent is always on the second
> syllable, etc. So I'd like to know of the different types of systems
> that exist.
You can't do much better than this!
http://www.cf.ac.uk/psych/ssd/index.html
It introduces a systematic way to describe stress systems. In this
system, Latin is 23/3R, Finnish is 1L. Simple, isn't it?
Piraha is described as 123/123/123/123/1R where syllable weights are
KVV > GVV > VV > KV > GV and K=-voice, G=+voice.
Seo Sanghyeon
Messages in this topic (2)
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12. Re: YAGPT: Carsten (was Re: Vertical script)
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:27 am (PDT)
On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 12:14:44 -0400, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Inconsistent you are being, Carsten:
I'm sorry :-S
>CB> Whoops. Yes, I was misguided by hyphenation rules: Cars-ten.
>
>From that "Yes", I infer that you agree with Phillip that the syllable
>division lies before the [stn=].
>CB> It's true that <st> becomes [St] in syllable onsets, but it's not
>the case here.
>
>Why is that not the case here? You just said (above) that you agreed
>with Phillip that it *is* the case here. So now I'm confused. Where
>do the syllables in your name break?
Orthographically, it'd now be Cars-ten, which is one possiblity, but Car-
sten would also be acceptible, that's the problem. Which one of both I
prefer I don't know myself. The only orthographically valid way to
hyphenate "Carsten" is Cars-ten NOW, but it USED to be Car-sten.
C.
Messages in this topic (7)
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