There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: implied verbs
From: Roger Mills
2a. Re: Transcription exercise
From: Paul Roser
2b. Re: Transcription exercise
From: Herman Miller
3. Re: Massive plagiarism accusation
From: And Rosta
4. Re: Laturslav (was: Hello! - introduction)
From: Santiago Matías Feldman
5. [Conlangs-Conf] 2nd LCC: reminder re location
From: Sai Emrys
6a. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: Chris Peters
6b. Re: Difficult language ideas
From: Sai Emrys
Messages
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1. Re: implied verbs
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 4:16 pm (PDT)
Sorry about that second post.............
Messages in this topic (1)
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2a. Re: Transcription exercise
Posted by: "Paul Roser" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 4:17 pm (PDT)
On Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:46:18 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Paul Roser skrev:
>> 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,
>
>Yes it does; all the Sohlob dialects except Linjeb, which
>is descended from Kijeb but different enough not to be called
>a dialect of Sohlob, do.
>
>> and if so, does it distinguish velar(ized) <HLL> from palatal <HL> ?
>
>It should, shouldn't it? I must confess it just didn't occur
>to me that there could also be lateral fricatives at different
>PsOA, simply because IPA doesn't provide symbols for any, but
>upon introspection I find that I'm perfectly able to pronounce
>all of [x_l C_l s\_l s`_l K_G] (or however they may be transcribed)
>distinctly from [K], and I also find that my xenolectic pronun-
>ciation of Icelandic _hljóð_ has [C_l], but the snag is that I
>hardly *hear* any difference between them -- the same goes for
>voiceless nasals at different PsOA, BTW.
The number of languages that distinguish two voiceless lateral fricatives is
quite small - off the top of my head, Bura, Cocopa, Northern Diegueno
distinguish dental/alveolar and palatalized/palatal versions, Toda and
A-hmao distinguish dental/alveolar and retroflex versions, and one of the
Central Highland languages of Papua (Wahgi or Nii IIRC) has voiceless
lateral fricative allophones of its *three* laterals - dental, alveolar,
velar, but I think they only contrast word-finally.
Herman Miller's Virelli is one of the few conlangs I've seen with a
distinction between /hl, l/ and /hL, L/ (where L is the palatal lateral - HM
uses a cedilla or something under the palatal phones).
I think that the distinction is more audible when there is a very clear
front/palatal vs back/velar distinction between the two.
>But actually I'm beginning to have doubts about the
>palatal(ized)/palatal lateral distinction. Perhaps
>palatality in liquids should vary harmonically along with
>palatality in vowels? (Even so I could have *[r_j] > /j/!)
>OTOH if so shouldn't nasal palatality also vary harmonic-
>ally, with /J/ in front harmony words corresponding to both
>/n/ and /N/ of back harmony words; perhaps also front [j]
>and [H] against back [G] and [w]. The closest analog from a
>natlang that I know of is the variation between front /k g/
>and back /X R/ of classigal Mongolian, but the idea as such
>seems naturalistically plausible. There would be no phonemic
>distinction between palatal and non-palatal lingual
>sonorants, but there might still be a distinction in
>spelling, since Heleb spelling is supposed to be a
>rather clumsy adaptation of Classical Sohlob spelling
>-- CS having phonemic /J j/ against /n N G/ since it
>has no front harmony, but only height harmony.
The closest thing I can think of the spreading of pharyngealization in some
Caucasian languages - a pharyngealized uvular or vowel spreads
pharyngealization to the rest of the word, though I don't know if anything
blocks it. So I guess that's not the same as harmony of consonants triggered
by front/back vowels...
>> 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.
>
>Does Scungric have vowel harmony?
Not in it's current incarnation. Right now it has 6 vowels at present - /i,
E, i\, a, u, O/ and probably two tones (most likely H & L with Rising and
Falling contours on multi-syllabic words).
There may be a sort of consonantal harmony, since the coronals and dorsals
have fronted/palatalized and backed/uvularized/pharyngealized series, while
labials are neutral - though the harmony may be limited to clusters of
adjacent coronal & dorsal segments (eg -t^jk- vs -t`q-).
--Bfowol
Messages in this topic (47)
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2b. Re: Transcription exercise
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 8:10 pm (PDT)
Paul Roser wrote:
> The number of languages that distinguish two voiceless lateral fricatives is
> quite small - off the top of my head, Bura, Cocopa, Northern Diegueno
> distinguish dental/alveolar and palatalized/palatal versions, Toda and
> A-hmao distinguish dental/alveolar and retroflex versions, and one of the
> Central Highland languages of Papua (Wahgi or Nii IIRC) has voiceless
> lateral fricative allophones of its *three* laterals - dental, alveolar,
> velar, but I think they only contrast word-finally.
>
> Herman Miller's Virelli is one of the few conlangs I've seen with a
> distinction between /hl, l/ and /hL, L/ (where L is the palatal lateral - HM
> uses a cedilla or something under the palatal phones).
It shóuld technically be a comma below, but I use the precomposed l
character for convenience. Using l̦ (with a comma-below diacritic) might
not show up in some browsers and email programs.
> I think that the distinction is more audible when there is a very clear
> front/palatal vs back/velar distinction between the two.
Or if there are additional clues to the point of articulation, such as
palatal off-glides. Lindiga distinguishes between alveolar and retroflex
lateral fricatives. I think this might be an easier distinction to hear
than alveolar vs. palatal, but it's also helped by the allophonic
variation of the vowels in the vicinity of retroflex consonants.
Messages in this topic (47)
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3. Re: Massive plagiarism accusation
Posted by: "And Rosta" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 5:15 pm (PDT)
The plagiarist is only fourteen years old. Fourteen year-olds must be forgiven
things far more egregious than the naive plagiarism of conscripts. And it not
nice for grown-ups to be snide to children. So give her a break, everybody.
--And. (Aged 39.)
Sai Emrys, On 20/09/2006 09:32:
> I'm just conveying the message to this community FYI; don't shoot please!
>
> See ZBB at links below (and lots of others if you want to look around,
> but these two will cover the topic quite well).
>
> - Sai
>
> http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?t=18415
> http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?t=18066
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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4. Re: Laturslav (was: Hello! - introduction)
Posted by: "Santiago Matías Feldman" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 7:24 pm (PDT)
(Santiago Feldman):
> > What do you mean by "design goals"?
(Henrik Theiling):
> 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?
(Santiago Feldman):
OK, now I understand. I need time to get used to
conlanging-related vocabulary... ;)
Yes, of course. My design goals for Laturslav are:
-a very logical language (with approximately the same
degree of logicalness as that of Turkish)
-very analytical (agglutinative lgs tend to be so)
-very regular (there's only one irregular verb -to be)
(well, perhaps those three characteristics can be
merged into one)
(Henrik Theiling):
> And even if you just let it evolve in any direction
> that seems
> sensible, then what does 'seem' sensible?
(Santiago Feldman):
Well, sensible for me is a language that can express
ideas in a very clear manner, making use of as few
syntactic/grammatical devices as possible (I exclude
morphological here).
(Henrik Theiling):
> 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/
(Santiago Feldman):
I've had a look at it and it seems that you have a
very good knowledge of Latin. That helps a lot in
devising a Romlang. My knowledge of Latin is scarce
and most of the data regarding vocabulary and syntax I
infer from Romance languages (mainly Spanish and
Italian).
I have one question about your conlang:
Have you "made up" some traits out of the blue,
without justifying them, or have you thought
everything clearly so that every aspect of the lg is
derived from an identifiable source?
(Henrik Theiling):
> 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.
(Santiago Feldman):
It would be a pleasure to participate!!
Count on me for that :)
Santiago
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Todo lo que querías saber, y lo que ni imaginabas,
está en Yahoo! Respuestas (Beta).
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http://www.yahoo.com.ar/respuestas
Messages in this topic (10)
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5. [Conlangs-Conf] 2nd LCC: reminder re location
Posted by: "Sai Emrys" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 8:40 pm (PDT)
Hello all.
It's late September, and we need to figure out where the next LCC will
be held within a month or two.
If you think you or an institution or group near you could host,
please get on 'em *now* and pitch it - and let me know how it turns
out.
Thanks,
Sai
Messages in this topic (1)
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6a. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "Chris Peters" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 9:32 pm (PDT)
>From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Regarding this, and idioms, I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned
>that Star Trek episode. I can't remember the famous phrase, but
>it's something like "Darmok and Jelad at Tanagra", and that's
>supposed to mean something. As far as I can tell, the language
>that this alien culture has *can* be translated by the Universal
>Translator, but the aliens choose to use mainly proper names, so
>what gets translated has no meaning. (Of course, the UT should
>be able to get something out of this, but we can ignore that for
>now...)
>
There is, of course, the other obvious question about a language of this
type: how do they tell the stories in the first place if they have no
actual storytelling language to build the metaphors *from*? In a "Darmok"
language, how would the starship engineer tell her lackey to "tighten that
third bolt from the left"? But that's a different discussion.
But to my point: I've been interested for a while in the possibility that
this paradigm could apply to a human culture. Judeo-Christian culture also
has a large number of stories to draw from. For example, I could say
something like, "Noah, when the rains came!". And depending on context,
that could be taken to communicate the concept of staying the course when
nobody else understands you ... on up to, "take shelter, quick! Hurricane's
a-comin'!"
Another interesting side-speculation: would different languages in a
"Darmok" culture represent different religions by extension? Here in the
real world, the Noah's Ark story is shared by Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam (different "dialects", one could say), but would be totally
meaningless to Buddhists and Hindus. Could such a culture develop religious
cults?
Thoughts, anyone?
:Chris
Messages in this topic (24)
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6b. Re: Difficult language ideas
Posted by: "Sai Emrys" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 20, 2006 11:00 pm (PDT)
One question:
What exactly do you mean by "ambiguous"?
It's a bloody hard problem depending on how you define it, especially
if you consider that it is inherently impossible to eliminate
ambiguity from a symbolic language.
- Sai
Messages in this topic (24)
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