There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: David J. Peterson
1b. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: Jim Henry
1c. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: Leigh Richards
1d. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: H. S. Teoh
1e. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: Doug Barr
1f. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: Philip Newton
2. Re: YAGPT: Carsten (was Re: Vertical script)
From: daniel prohaska
3. Re: Stress placement systems
From: Philip Newton
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:54 pm (PDT)
Leigh wrote:
<<
It is a status language of sorts and effectively a conlang itself, so
it isn't meant to be simple or naturalistic. It can change, but it
takes a concerted effort by the speakers because outside forces keep
it from changing otherwise.
>>
Ah, now this could be fun. ;) What I would recommend is thinking
about the other natural languages in the area, and the people that
created this language. It's one thing to be able to think from our
vantage point how a language could be unambiguous and complicated,
but quite another to think about how speakers of the natural
languages in the area you're thinking of would think to construct
an unambiguous language. For example, you could do something
like...
mata-s "I fell accidentally."
mata-x "I fell on purpose."
mata-z "I fell because of 3rd person argument."
mata-G "I fell because of 2nd person argument."
etc.
But maybe the people that created this language think of
unambiguity in different terms, e.g....
"When it comes to falling, there are but three possibilities:
one may fall on purpose; one may fall by accident; or one may
fall because one was looking at a priceless painting and did not
notice a third party that was nearby, waiting to trip them."
-Philosopher X, creator of language Y
This would produce an "unambiguous" set of three suffixes:
mata-n "I fell on purpose."
mata-N "I fell on accident."
mata-N\ "I fell because I was looking at a priceless painting and
did not notice someone nearby that was waiting to trip me."
Hee, hee, hee...
Some other "difficult to learn" ideas:
-Reuse the same morphology in different places. For example...
kela-n "I ate many years ago."
kela-N "I ate on purpose."
kela-N\ "I was told to eat by someone below my station."
(The complete paradigms for each of those three will look, of
course, radically different than the one above for /mata/.)
-Use varied word order to reflect anything. Some examples:
(1) For verbs of motion, the six word orders reflect whether
the motion is north, south, east, west, undirected, or circular.
(2) For verbs of experience, the six word orders reflect the
attitude of the speaker towards his parents.
(3) For transitive verbs, the six word orders reflect the intensity
of the action (these should not match up with (2) in any way).
-With respect to Suffixaufnahme, make everything agree with
everything (and there actually *is* a natural language that does
something like this):
"The man gave the woman a flower." =
Man-NOM.-DAT.-ACC. give-3sbj.-3d.obj.-3i.obj.-PAST
woman-DAT.-NOM.-ACC. flower-ACC.-NOM.-DAT.
-To have fun with varying word orders, make it so that the
absence of a case tag indicates that the noun is indefinite:
Ordinary = kolu-r mena-4 ita-N\ /man-DAT. woman-ACC. see-PAST./
"The man saw the woman."
Indefinite: kolu mena ita-N\ /man-INDEF. woman-INDEF. see-PAST./
"A man saw a woman (and the speaker respects and reveres his parents)."
or
"A woman saw a man (and the speaker despises his parents)."
-Two words: Systematic Suppletion:
/oski/ "bear"
Case: Sg./Dual/Plu.
NOM: oski/oskis/oskiz
ACC: oski:/oski:s/oski:z
DAT: oskij/oskijs/oskijz
GEN: oskji/oskjis/oskjiz
LOC: oskjij/oskjijs/oskjijz
ALL: oski:j/mistolo/oski:jz
ABL: oskji:/oskji:s/oskji:z
VOC: oskji:j/oskji:js/oskji:jz
/eski/ "monk"
Case: Sg./Dual/Plu.
NOM: eski/eskis/eskiz
ACC: eski:/eski:s/eski:z
DAT: eskij/eskijs/eskijz
GEN: eskji/eskjis/eskjiz
LOC: eskjij/eskjijs/eskjijz
ALL: eski:j/astondeli/eski:jz
ABL: eskji:/eskji:s/eskji:z
VOC: eskji:j/eskji:js/eskji:jz
The relevant paradigm slot is the allative dual.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
Oh, man, I have way too many ideas... I've always been entertained
by the idea of the most complicated language imaginable, and
have been coming up with ideas for years.
-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:37 pm (PDT)
On 9/19/06, David J. Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> (2) For verbs of experience, the six word orders reflect the
> attitude of the speaker towards his parents.
> Indefinite: kolu mena ita-N\ /man-INDEF. woman-INDEF. see-PAST./
> "A man saw a woman (and the speaker respects and reveres his parents)."
> or
> "A woman saw a man (and the speaker despises his parents)."
This seems a bit too low-bandwidth. Presumably
the attitude of speakers to their parents would
not change much in the course of a single
text or conversation, so after the first sentence
the word-order of all the other sentences conveys
no new information. Better if the word order
conveys the attitude of the speaker toward the
subject of the sentence, or the situation described
by the sentence. Maybe a dummy object
is thrown in to otherwise intransitive sentences
to further distinguish or disambiguate this attitude
when necessary:
SV = positive attitude
VS = negative attitude
SOV = affection
SVO = respect, admiration, worship
OSV = approval
VSO = annoyance
VOS = contempt
OVS = disapproval
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "Leigh Richards" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 2:41 pm (PDT)
Oh, I just remembered the posting limit. It's 5 in a day, I think? I
will combine a few posts here and respond to more tomorrow, then.
On 9/19/06, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Leigh Richards writes:
> >...
> > Design goals:
> >...
>
> I'd add gender to enable you to encode lexical distinctions in the
> gender agreement somewhere else in the sentence, when the nouns are
> homophonous. The same could be done with plurale tantum words what
> happend to sound exactly like the singular of another word and are
> made unambigous only be agreement effects.
Oh, I like this! I hadn't thought of that.
(snip a lot)
> Semantical correctness aside, the gender of 'Schwanz' or 'Norm'
> determines the meaning on 'Finne' here. Which I think is quite an
> obfuscation. If it was the norm in German, even more people would
> hate to learn it. :-)
Perfect :)
On 9/19/06, H. S. Teoh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 10:03:06AM -0400, Leigh Richards wrote:
> > Design goals:
> > 1. As unambiguous as possible, especially in full sentences; it's easy
> > to clarify any ambiguities.
>
> This is rather difficult to do and still be naturalistic (providing
> that's a goal, of course). You could make things such that sentences may
> sometimes be ambiguous, but there is always a way to completely
> disambiguate (e.g., by including optional specifiers that clarify the
> meaning, where such specifiers may sound verbose or burdensome when the
> audience already knows enough context to infer the right meaning.)
Yes, I'm sure there will be some of that. They will want to minimize
it, though.
(snip)
> As for small changes having large impact on the meaning, maybe introduce
> a lot of idioms and idiosyncrasies which requires a lot of cultural
> background to correctly infer the meaning of?
Hmm. That gives me an idea. It isn't a language likely to develop many
idioms, but it could very well have taken idioms from various
languages throughout the years and turned them to its own purposes. I
like that.
(snip)
> What are some of the ideas you have? It'll be fun to discuss them.
I'm still in the brainstorming phase, and my ideas have been pretty
general so far.
As far as phonology, there will be sounds unused and/or non-phonemic
in the normal languages, maybe some complex rules for sandhi, possibly
overlapping to an extent. I haven't thought it out, but there's
something about Aymara's vowel elision that wants me to work it in in
a non-intuitive way.
I think there will be word and affix order that is both free and
important in subtle ways to the meaning as a whole. On a word level,
wide use of compounds that don't make sense if you break them apart
into their constituents, and easily confused words where sound and
meaning are both similar. Mutations, since the normal languages are
mostly agglutinative. Noun classes, maybe, that aren't easy to guess
from the word or its meaning (Henrik's comments are perfect with
this). Subtle things like the exact form (or lack of) agreement
changing the meaning in various ways. In general, a lot of
idiosyncratic things.
There will probably be deliberate obfuscations too. They don't want
people to know what they're saying unless they already know the
language. Idioms translated literally from other languages will work
well here. Perhaps certain things that always depend on previous
context, and others that can never do so. On a similar note, the
writing system will be deliberately ambiguous, and take a lot of
context to even begin to understand.
I'll take elements from the normal languages and twist them too, but
that assumes I know what those elements are... and I don't, yet.
Quechua is my baseline when I'm thinking about this, though they
aren't derivative languages. Some meanings that are 'reversed' (like
you mentioned above in your Russian examples) from the way the normal
languages there do it would be good.
I go back and forth about adding tones, but I'm not sure that it would
occur to them to do that. I can get around that last if I really want
to, but it begins to strike me as adding in the kitchen sink at that
point.
I haven't thought as much about non-ambiguity.
> > Suggestions? Things to include? Things to avoid?
> [...]
>
> What about an unusual syntax/typology that is internally consistent but
> very strange relative to known natlang typologies? Such as...
>
> <shameless plug>
> ... the Tatari Faran case system, which has no concept of subject or
> object, but marks nouns with one of three cases according to semantic
> relationship with the verb:
> http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/fara/cases.html
> </shameless plug>
Shameless plugs are good :) That's cool. I'm not sure if they would
think of doing something too different. I'll have to think more about
their history as well. This language originates in a different place
than the normal ones though, so I have some leeway there.
> As for things to avoid... this depends on your tastes (and goals),
> really. I personally dislike languages where every syllable is assigned
> a meaning---using this method it's very easy to make an extremely
> difficult language (e.g., every syllable in a sentence completely
> changes the meaning of all subsequent syllables, so that, for example,
> 'zapukelsu' could mean 'I like the little dog' but 'zepukelsu' means
> 'There will be a thunderstorm tomorrow'). The problem with this is that
> a little background noise completely annuls any consistency in
> communication.
I'm not too concerned with the effects of background noise, but I
don't care for that either. Of course, it could just be that it
violates some internal desire for order and sensibility :)
Thanks!
Leigh
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 4:06 pm (PDT)
On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 05:32:04PM -0400, Leigh Richards wrote:
[...]
> On 9/19/06, H. S. Teoh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >As for small changes having large impact on the meaning, maybe
> >introduce a lot of idioms and idiosyncrasies which requires a lot of
> >cultural background to correctly infer the meaning of?
>
> Hmm. That gives me an idea. It isn't a language likely to develop many
> idioms, but it could very well have taken idioms from various
> languages throughout the years and turned them to its own purposes. I
> like that.
OK. But based on what you wrote, it seems that the speakers of your
language are out to deliberately obfuscate their speech (or at least
raise the barrier to learning as much as they can). I think the idioms
idea is still applicable: they can take advantage of experiences or
knowledge privy to the "in-crowd", even if they don't have a rich
cultural heritage as such---e.g., if they are being persecuted, there
may be stories or rumors passed between them, with a mutual
understanding on the "actual" significance of the events (as interpreted
by one of their own), such that instead of describing something
explicitly, they refer to said events in some way that seems meaningless
or even completely the opposite to the outsider.
You could even turn the names of such events into verbs or adjectives,
or something else (this is actually attested in natlangs). An outsider
would recognize the reference to the event, but have no idea what it
might denote when used in that way.
[...]
> >What are some of the ideas you have? It'll be fun to discuss them.
>
> I'm still in the brainstorming phase, and my ideas have been pretty
> general so far.
>
> As far as phonology, there will be sounds unused and/or non-phonemic
> in the normal languages, maybe some complex rules for sandhi, possibly
> overlapping to an extent. I haven't thought it out, but there's
> something about Aymara's vowel elision that wants me to work it in in
> a non-intuitive way.
Complex sandhi can significantly obfuscate a language to non-native
speakers. Even better if the result of the sandhi looks superficially
the same as another completely unrelated utterance. E.g., off the top of
my head, ze + bafa + vor -> zi bofa mor, but 'zi', 'bofa', and 'mor' are
themselves actual words with meanings completely unrelated to the first
phrase (when they are intended, the sandhi turns them into something
else, like 'ze mofa bor').
[...]
> There will probably be deliberate obfuscations too. They don't want
> people to know what they're saying unless they already know the
> language. Idioms translated literally from other languages will work
> well here. Perhaps certain things that always depend on previous
> context, and others that can never do so.
Context is a powerful tool for obfuscation, when used correctly. :-) The
use of idioms and such can be understood as the sharing of a large
amount of static context. Additional obfuscation can come about by also
taking advantage of dynamic context. Yet another example off the top of
my head: say there are two adjectives, mara and tyona, that mean exactly
the same thing, except that mara implies a congenial tone and tyona
implies a hostile tone, and this implication causes another word in
subsequent conversation, say huftan, to mean opposite things. Or, the
use of one or the other constrains the set of adjectives that can be
used in subsequent discourse, so that if I described something as
'mara', then I have to use 'huftan' later instead of 'para', which goes
with 'tyona'. If I used the wrong word, I'd still be understood, but
would immediately stick out like a sore thumb ("Aha! He swapped his
adjectives: foreigner!"). Think of it as cross-clausal harmony, if you
will.
> On a similar note, the writing system will be deliberately ambiguous,
> and take a lot of context to even begin to understand.
[...]
Maybe even use implied context to determine what a text means: say the
mapping from language to writing is not 1-to-1, so that, given a piece
of text, it can be read in several ways, and by itself you have no way
of determining which version was intended, unless you knew something
about the speakers that most foreigners don't know. A simple natlang
example is irony: without knowing that something was meant ironically,
it could be completely misinterpreted. Now make this an integral part of
your writing, and it becomes extremely difficult to interpret to
non-natives.
T
--
Latin's a dead language, as dead as can be; it killed off all the
Romans, and now it's killing me! -- Schoolboy
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "Doug Barr" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 5:21 pm (PDT)
Ooh, Quechua. Ooh Sumerian. Ooh ooh Kwakw'ala. :-)
The conlang that's wandering around my head is going to borrow very
heavily from Salish, I think - the same ungodly assortment of
consonants as Kwakw'ala has, although I'll probably limit consonant
clusters to two, just to be slightly merciful. Definitely going to
work in the Salish full-control/lack-of-control distinction in
transitives, though I'm not sure quite how as yet...
Salish also has noun incorporation - wonder if it's an areal feature?
I speak (a little) Halkomelem - mostly Downriver/Musqueam and a
little Cowichan/Island. Haven't dared Upriver as yet - the notion of
a Salish language with tone is just terrifying. :-D
Doug
Glóir nan cairdean as milse na mhil. The praise of friends is sweeter
than honey. (Gaelic proverb)
On Sep 19, 2006, at 8:56 AM, Patrick Littell wrote:
> Hi, Leigh.
>
> I speak a little Quechua, and the most difficult syntactic thing for
> me is probably placement of the evidential clitics -- the "migratory
> suffixes" that indicate whether you know the information by witness,
> hearsay, or conjecture. I know the basic rule, but there are
> apparently complications when the topic marker -qa is introduced.
>
> For a learner more advanced than I, I've gathered that a more
> difficult problem is that certain suffix combinations have
> idiosyncratic meanings that wouldn't be deduced from their parts.
> (I've found the morphology to be pretty regular, but I'm a beginner
> and won't have come in contact with the more advanced stuff.) This
> goes along with your goal "that guessing something new from what you
> already know will rarely work."
>
> ----------
>
> Other difficult stuff: Search the archives for Suffixaufnahme and
> Suffixhäufung, both of which could add significant complication to a
> very suffixing language of the Andean sort.
>
> I'm putting together a presentation in which one of the examples is
> Sumerian, so I can give an example of Suffixhäufung off the top of my
> head:
>
> é shesh lugal-ak-ak-a
> house brother king-of-of-in
> "In the house of the brother of the king."
>
> The genitive suffix -ak (really a clitic, in my analysis) is
> "postponed" until the final word of the phrase... and when you have
> nested genitives they will all "stack up" on the end.
>
> Also, Eldin and I, and some others, had a discussion awhile back about
> the Kwak'wala (Kwakiutl) and Heiltsuk, both Northern Wakashan
> languages, in which case and possession aren't marked on the word they
> modify, but on the *previous* word of the sentence, due again to
> clitic phenomena.
>
> While we're at it, you could put in some lexical suffixes from
> Wakashan, too. They're suffixes that add meanings that in other
> languages would be the domain of roots. So, in Nuuchahnulth (Nootka):
>
> hiy'aktliqs?i
> hilh -'aktli -aqs -?i
> be.there-being.at.the.rear-being.in.a.canoe-DEF
> "the stern"
>
> tl'utl'uqyimlh
> tl'uq -yimlh
> wide-being.at.the.shoulder
> "wide shoulder"
>
> These, incidentally, also show migratory behavior, showing up
> elsewhere than where you might expect them:
>
> ?iiw'aap?ish yacyut shuuwis
> ?iihw -'aap -?is yacyut shuuwis
> large -buying -IND.3 worn shoes
> "He bought big used shoes."
>
> Anyway, any combination of these phenomena would lead to some
> fantastically complicated grammar. You could also search here for
> noun incorporation, which we discuss fairly frequently; it's not
> characteristic of Andean languages but appears in many neighboring
> regions.
>
> Have fun,
>
> Pat
>
> On 9/19/06, Leigh Richards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Hi all, I'm Leigh. I've lurked for a while, but I haven't posted
>> before.
>> I've toyed with a few conlangs over the years, and now I'm
>> brainstorming on
>> a language for a conworld of mine.
>>
>> Design goals:
>> 1. As unambiguous as possible, especially in full sentences; it's
>> easy to
>> clarify any ambiguities.
>> 2. Hard to learn, and easy to say the wrong thing. Small and
>> subtle changes
>> have a large impact on the meaning, and it's unpredictable in that
>> guessing
>> something new from what you already know will rarely work.
>>
>> It is a status language of sorts and effectively a conlang
>> itself, so it
>> isn't meant to be simple or naturalistic. It can change, but it
>> takes a
>> concerted effort by the speakers because outside forces keep it from
>> changing otherwise.
>>
>> I don't know a lot about the normal languages of the area, but I
>> think
>> they'll be similar to the Andean languages.
>>
>> I have a few ideas, but my knowledge of linguistics is fairly
>> limited. So
>> I'd like your input.
>>
>> Suggestions? Things to include? Things to avoid?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Leigh
>>
>>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
1f. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 12:48 am (PDT)
On 9/19/06, Leigh Richards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 9/19/06, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 9/19/06, Leigh Richards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > Hi all, I'm Leigh.
> >
> > If I may ask - are you a female Leigh or a male Leigh? (and is it
> > pronounced "Lee"?)
>
> Female, and yes, though I have some clever friends who like to
> pronounce it like 'sleigh'. Why?
Because it seemed to me like a name that could be used for either
gender (like "Dana", for example) -- and I wanted to know the correct
pronoun to use to refer to you in the future --, and because the
pronunciation of English proper names is not always predictable.
> By the way, sorry for the HTML. I didn't realize gmail was set to do
> that (I think this fixed it? Let me know if it didn't).
This message was in plain text, yes. (When I replied to it, the reply
was HTML, but I think that's a known Gmail bug. I switched to plain
text before continuing.)
On 9/19/06, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The kind of thing I mean can be shown with prepositions taking
> different cases:
>
> mit den Jungen = with the boys
> ohne den Jungen = without the boy
>
> Note that 'den Jungen' is plural in the first phrase, but singular in
> the second. And unambiguously so, since 'mit' takes dative case and
> 'ohne' takes accusative case.
Oooh... clever. And the singular/plural meaning was "obvious" to me
("how could it be anything else?"), even though the word form is
identical... this must be one of the things that makes foreigners tear
their hair out.
> Another weird example playing with this:
>
> Der Finne entspricht der Norm.
> the.M.SG.NOM Finn conforms/corresponds the.F.DAT.SG norm
> 'The Finn conforms to the norm.'
>
> Der Finne entspricht der Schwanz.
> the.F.SG.DAT back_fin conforms/corresponds the.M.NOM.SG tail
> 'The tail corresponds to the back fin.'
Ah yes. Also unambiguous :)
The second sentence takes a little longer to parse because of the
non-default word order, but it's understandable -- since I know which
genders the words have, and hence how to interpret "der" in each case.
Fiendish.
> Semantical correctness aside, the gender of 'Schwanz' or 'Norm'
> determines the meaning on 'Finne' here.
Ah -- true. Homophones, distinguished by gender.
Maybe even have words which can be various genders? IIRC, "mar" (sea)
in Spanish can be either feminine or masculine, with the distinction
depending on how poetical you want to be and where you live IIRC.
On 9/19/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> li [Jim Henry] mi tulis la
>
> > On 9/19/06, Leigh Richards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > > 1. As unambiguous as possible, especially in full
> > sentences; it's easy to
> > > clarify any ambiguities.
> >
> > I would suggest studying some existing conlangs intended
> > to be unambiguous, such as Lojban.
>
> From what little I've learned of Lojban so far, it appears it can be as
> ambiguous or as precise as the speaker wants it to be. Maybe someone
> who knows more than I do can clarify this better.
I don't know that much more, either, but I'd say you're right.
What Lojban aims for is complete _syntactic_ unambiguity; that is, a
given sequence of words can be parsed in exactly one way. (No
sentences like "Time flies like an arrow", where any of the first
three words can be the verb.) It _doesn't_ necessarily give you
_semantic_ unambiguity, and you're still free to be semantically vague
or precise.
(Though as someone noted, "the price of infinite precision is infinite
verbosity".)
On 9/20/06, H. S. Teoh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 05:32:04PM -0400, Leigh Richards wrote:
> [...]
> > On 9/19/06, H. S. Teoh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >As for small changes having large impact on the meaning, maybe
> > >introduce a lot of idioms and idiosyncrasies which requires a lot of
> > >cultural background to correctly infer the meaning of?
> >
> > Hmm. That gives me an idea. It isn't a language likely to develop many
> > idioms, but it could very well have taken idioms from various
> > languages throughout the years and turned them to its own purposes. I
> > like that.
>
> OK. But based on what you wrote, it seems that the speakers of your
> language are out to deliberately obfuscate their speech (or at least
> raise the barrier to learning as much as they can). I think the idioms
> idea is still applicable: they can take advantage of experiences or
> knowledge privy to the "in-crowd", even if they don't have a rich
> cultural heritage as such---e.g., if they are being persecuted, there
> may be stories or rumors passed between them, with a mutual
> understanding on the "actual" significance of the events (as interpreted
> by one of their own), such that instead of describing something
> explicitly, they refer to said events in some way that seems meaningless
> or even completely the opposite to the outsider.
Also look up the concept of "kennings" (e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kennings ) where a phrase refers
to a concept not easily derivable from either word separately, as
"cannon fodder" for soldiers in modern English or "whale-way" for
"sea" in Old English.
This kind of substitution could even be recursive, apparently, as with
"slaughter dew worm dance" for "battle" ("slaughter dew worm dance" =>
"(slaughter dew) worm dance" => "(blood) worm dance" => "(blood worm)
dance" => "(sword) dance" => "(sword dance)" => "battle").
Again, a way of relying on shared knowledge of an "in-crowd".
Literary allusions can also be useful for this kind of thing (e.g.
"Midas touch", etc. etc.)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. Re: YAGPT: Carsten (was Re: Vertical script)
Posted by: "daniel prohaska" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Sep 19, 2006 3:35 pm (PDT)
Dear Mark,
<Carsten> is a northern German name and conforms more to Low Saxon phonology
than to Standard German phonology. Traditional Low Saxon does not shift the
clusters /st/ and /sp/ to [St] and [Sp]. The Low Saxon word for "stone" is
<steen> [stEIn] whereas Standard German <Stein> is [Staen].
Yours, Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Reed
"Sorry to belabor a point that has so little bearing on your actual
question. But if it was at one time Car-sten, what prevented the [s] from
becoming [S] in accordance with the usual initial-cluster phonology?"
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. Re: Stress placement systems
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 12:22 am (PDT)
On 9/19/06, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 2. It is clear that ancient Greek words had *pitch* accent. The pitch was:
> (a) *not* dependent upon syllable quantity, but *solely on vowel length*
I don't have my Greek grammars with me, but I seem to recall reading
something about syllables which were "long by nature" (physei makra,
IIRC) and syllables which were "long by position" (thesei makra), the
distinction being something along the lines of "has a long vowel" vs
"ends in two or more consonants", or something like that, which does
seem to indicate that syllable quantity played a part.
I don't remember the details, but I think it was something along the
lines of whether the accent was acute or circumflex?
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
