There are 14 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Day of the Republic.
From: Lars Finsen
2a. Re: "In spite of"
From: Harold Ensle
2b. Re: "In spite of"
From: Eugene Oh
3.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Eldin Raigmore
3.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Alex Fink
3.3. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Jim Henry
3.4. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Eugene Oh
3.5. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: R A Brown
3.6. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Eugene Oh
4a. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Jim Henry
4b. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Eugene Oh
4c. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: ROGER MILLS
5.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Eugene Oh
6. USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Mark J. Reed
Messages
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1a. Re: Day of the Republic.
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:43 pm ((PDT))
Den 13. aug. 2008 kl. 22.30 skreiv Carsten Becker:
> ¹) When I made the calendar bit, I coined names for the months
> without any etymologies. Lately I have been thinking whether I
> shouldn't just enumerate the months. I'd be tempted to use names
> from the Ayeri pantheon, but I have not worked on something like
> that yet too. "Mesangan" however plainly means "Fourteenth".
Some peoples do just enumerate their months and/or weekdays, and I
think it's charmless. But it helps if you have charming number like
you seem to do I guess.
Anyhow I'm just back from a brief hospitalisation after my excesses
during my celebrations of Tun Rantem, the Day of the Republic. I
didn't have time to bring my laptop when I went there, but I was able
to browse the Urianian material Henqrik published (thanks to him)
from one of our relays using my phone, so I was able to spend some
time resolving a handful of problems/exploring new ideas regarding
Urianian morphology and phonology. Thus I have removed the TAN from
the header.
1. I am considering making the masc.&neut. gen.sg. of nouns with
roots of more than one syllable unmarked. Thus Day of the People will
be Tun Temja, while the Day of the Republic is Tun Rantem as above.
Stress in Urianian is initial as a general rule. Roots with more than
one syllable however will shift stress to penultimate in a word if an
ending containing more than one phoneme is attached, for example as
in "Cuvam ran'temat" - "I'm coming from the republic", while in
"Briam 'rantema" - "I love the republic", for example, the stress
remains on the 'ran' syllable. I think the language retains the
Urianian "feel" better this way. However, I don't think the m&n
gen.sg. ending fits so well in this pattern, and so I had the idea to
drop it. It can be done without too much confusion, I think. And some
areal influence from Celtic may be construed as an explanation.
2. I am changing the loc.pl. of f. m. & n. nouns respectively from
esi, usi, usi to ei, vi, vi. Thus, "I'm looking at the stars" will be
"Ajam tirvi", which has a much nicer Urianian ring to it than "Ajam
tirusi" in my opinion. The s is a vulnerable sound in Urianian. It's
already lost initially before consonant clusters and internally
before any consonant. Finally it turns into a t. So why not do
something to it intervocally as well, like in several other
languages. This also gives me the benefit of creating some
phonological clashes producing mutations that lead to a few nice,
quirky irregularities. Mainly the v will lose its voice after b, n
and m, and will turn the n into an m. Also, a final v or cluster in
the root will turn the v in the ending into a u. Thus, seb = top, but
sepfi = at the tops; tun = day, but tumfi = at the days; gem = bay,
but gemfi = at the bays; geln = rise, but gelnui = at the rises; giv
= homecoming, but givui = at the homecomings.
3. Actually my biggest delight was the decision to make final v's
voiceless. This finally gives me a source for the -if ending I have
seen in a small number of items from my list of names. It's a 3.
person singular past subjunctive. Thus for example the relatively
well-known surname Zirfif (the ending exclusively occurs in surnames)
means "he/she may have worked/fashioned" or "ought to have worked/
fashioned". Odd choice for a name, but perhaps his ancestor took it
out of remorse from having missed a day of work or failed a task or
something, what do I know?
4. Finally, also in order to achieve a better Urianian feel to it, I
have simplified some personal pronouns: 3p.dat.: formerly (e)mat, now
mat; all persons plural genitive, formerly esan, usan, isan, now all
san; 3rd person ablative, formerly imat and (e)mat, now both mat.
2p.abl. umit>mit; 3p.inst. (e)mut>mut. This gives me a few homophones
among them, but it won't give me any problems that the context can't
solve, I think. Besides, as I didn't have any homophones among the
personal pronouns before, it makes my language look more natural. And
the monosyllables fit better into the Urianian pattern. The only
disyllabic personal pronouns I have now are 1p.nom. numit and 1p.dat.
nemi. I can live with those. Though the former ought perhaps to be
nunt...
LEF
Messages in this topic (5)
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2a. Re: "In spite of"
Posted by: "Harold Ensle" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:56 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, 3 Aug 2008 18:08:50 -0400, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
.......
>How do y'all express this meaning, whether as as conjunction or
>adposition or case or whatever, in your conlang or in natlangs
>you know? I'm particularly interested in languages where it's derived
>from some more basic root rather than being an unanalyzable
>particle.
I am not sure it would make sense for a language to derive it from some root
as it is such a basic concept...and if a language did so, I would think it
would
be very idiomatic.
In Ankanian 'despite' is the opposite of 'because' and is composed of two
fundamental case markers: The exlusive marker on the genitive case.
The exclusive indicates that A and B are exclusive of each other and the
genitive indicates that A is being governed by B. (dative would indicate A
governs B; nominative would indicate no governing; instrumental would
indicate dependent or mutual governing)
-eyu because (genitive+inclusive); -ewi despite (genitive+exclusive)
Vesun se keyu. I said it because of him.
Vesun se kewi. I said it despite him.
Harold
Messages in this topic (15)
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2b. Re: "In spite of"
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:42 pm ((PDT))
Cl. Ar. has a noun "abtos", which is used for "despite" in this way:
noun.GEN abtorae (which is abtos.DAT)
I don't know what "abtos" could mean!
Eugene
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 3:52 AM, Harold Ensle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Aug 2008 18:08:50 -0400, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> .......
> >How do y'all express this meaning, whether as as conjunction or
> >adposition or case or whatever, in your conlang or in natlangs
> >you know? I'm particularly interested in languages where it's derived
> >from some more basic root rather than being an unanalyzable
> >particle.
>
> I am not sure it would make sense for a language to derive it from some
> root
> as it is such a basic concept...and if a language did so, I would think it
> would
> be very idiomatic.
>
> In Ankanian 'despite' is the opposite of 'because' and is composed of two
> fundamental case markers: The exlusive marker on the genitive case.
>
> The exclusive indicates that A and B are exclusive of each other and the
> genitive indicates that A is being governed by B. (dative would indicate A
> governs B; nominative would indicate no governing; instrumental would
> indicate dependent or mutual governing)
>
> -eyu because (genitive+inclusive); -ewi despite (genitive+exclusive)
>
> Vesun se keyu. I said it because of him.
> Vesun se kewi. I said it despite him.
>
> Harold
>
Messages in this topic (15)
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3.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:17 pm ((PDT))
Are there, in any natlangs, any synchronously-derived adpositions?
Any adpositions, that is, that transparently share a root with an extant word
of some other, large, open word-class, such as a noun, or verb, or adjective?
Or maybe an adverb?
Maybe the method by which the adposition is derived from the root is
inflection-like in that it is transparent and/or productive.
Are there any natlangs in which the class of adpositions is an open class?
(word-coinage or "rhematopoiesis" or "lexicogeny" of adpositions is still going
on, or borrowing of adpositions is still possible?) Are there any natlangs in
which adpositions are a large word-class?
If there are any such natlangs, what are they? And what adpositions are so
derived? And who says (i.e. give a reference if you can)? And what's their
evidence (or a link to their evidence) if you can say?
--------
Thanks.
Messages in this topic (44)
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3.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:32 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:17:26 -0400, Eldin Raigmore
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Are there any natlangs in which the class of adpositions is an open class?
>(word-coinage or "rhematopoiesis" or "lexicogeny" of adpositions is still going
>on, or borrowing of adpositions is still possible?) Are there any natlangs in
>which adpositions are a large word-class?
Language Log had a bit on this quite recently in English,
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=275 et seq.,
on the implications of the facts that the verb "head" takes prepositional
complements and the existence of people who find the new construction
"heading Dagenham" grammatical.
I also recall some posts from the classic series on the subject of "bush",
with similar thrust, that in addition provided some supporting arguments for
the CGEL analysis of these things as prepositions. (But I'm too lazy to
google for it at the mo and filter through all the irrelevant hits on "bush"
on the Log which are Dubya.)
Alex
Messages in this topic (44)
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3.3. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:33 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Eldin Raigmore
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Are there, in any natlangs, any synchronously-derived adpositions?
"[I]n English, the phrase 'on top of' is a complex preposition
consisting partly of the noun 'top'. For many languages
prepositions come from body-part nouns, e.g. 'back'
for 'behind', 'face' for 'in front', 'head' for 'up', and 'foot'
for 'down' (Casad 1982, Heine and Re 1984)....."
Thomas Payne, _Describing Morphosyntax_, p. 87
The cites are to an unpublished dissertation by
Eugene Casad, and to:
Heine, Bernd and Mechthild Reh. 1984. Grammaticalization
and Reanalysis in African Languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
French also forms phrasal postpositions like "au bout de";
I'll leave it to the native speakers on the list to say whether
those are, phonologically, compound words, or phrases
as they are represented in orthography. It seems to me
that Payne is right in saying that at least some phrases
like "on top of" in English are phonologically compound
words although represented as phrases in the orthography.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html
Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
I analyze the results and write the article
Messages in this topic (44)
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3.4. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:13 pm ((PDT))
Perhaps "nonetheless", "notwithstanding", "nevertheless" were ahead of their
time in descriptivity ;)
Eugene
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 8:33 AM, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Eldin Raigmore
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Are there, in any natlangs, any synchronously-derived adpositions?
>
> "[I]n English, the phrase 'on top of' is a complex preposition
> consisting partly of the noun 'top'. For many languages
> prepositions come from body-part nouns, e.g. 'back'
> for 'behind', 'face' for 'in front', 'head' for 'up', and 'foot'
> for 'down' (Casad 1982, Heine and Re 1984)....."
>
> Thomas Payne, _Describing Morphosyntax_, p. 87
>
> The cites are to an unpublished dissertation by
> Eugene Casad, and to:
>
> Heine, Bernd and Mechthild Reh. 1984. Grammaticalization
> and Reanalysis in African Languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
>
> French also forms phrasal postpositions like "au bout de";
> I'll leave it to the native speakers on the list to say whether
> those are, phonologically, compound words, or phrases
> as they are represented in orthography. It seems to me
> that Payne is right in saying that at least some phrases
> like "on top of" in English are phonologically compound
> words although represented as phrases in the orthography.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html<http://www.pobox.com/%7Ejimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html>
> Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
> I analyze the results and write the article
>
Messages in this topic (44)
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3.5. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:18 pm ((PDT))
Eugene Oh wrote:
> Perhaps "nonetheless", "notwithstanding", "nevertheless" were ahead of their
> time in descriptivity ;)
"nonetheless" looks to me suspiciously like a calque of Classical Latin
"nihilominus" which, I guess, puts it way ahead of its time :)
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (44)
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3.6. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 2:03 am ((PDT))
Is that so? Then it truly is well ahead of its time. Do the other two words
have such calquey origins?
Eugene
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 2:17 PM, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Eugene Oh wrote:
>
>> Perhaps "nonetheless", "notwithstanding", "nevertheless" were ahead of
>> their
>> time in descriptivity ;)
>>
>
> "nonetheless" looks to me suspiciously like a calque of Classical Latin
> "nihilominus" which, I guess, puts it way ahead of its time :)
>
> --
> Ray
> ==================================
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com
> ==================================
> Frustra fit per plura quod potest
> fieri per pauciora.
> [William of Ockham]
>
Messages in this topic (44)
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4a. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:43 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:10 AM, John Vertical
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've seen even [C] called a sibilant, but I can't really consider it such;
> it's
> basically [x_+] and [x] sure isn't sibilant in any sense. If there is a velar
> sibilant it's probably one of the realizations of the Swedish /x\/. (One of my
> first sketchlangs had this sound in voiced, voiceless and affricate forms...)
[C] to me neither sounds nor feels anything like [x]; I was surprised
when I learned that they're allophones in German. To me
[C] sounds a lot like [S] and a bit like [s`]
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html
Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
I analyze the results and write the article
Messages in this topic (6)
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4b. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:17 pm ((PDT))
Indeed, many German learners around me are unable to get <ich> pronounced
correctly, and end up sounding like they're saying "isch". Which
pronunciation they probably adopted to ease the transition between being
unable to pronounce the sound and doing it like the natives.
Eugene
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 8:43 AM, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:10 AM, John Vertical
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > I've seen even [C] called a sibilant, but I can't really consider it
> such; it's
> > basically [x_+] and [x] sure isn't sibilant in any sense. If there is a
> velar
> > sibilant it's probably one of the realizations of the Swedish /x\/. (One
> of my
> > first sketchlangs had this sound in voiced, voiceless and affricate
> forms...)
>
> [C] to me neither sounds nor feels anything like [x]; I was surprised
> when I learned that they're allophones in German. To me
> [C] sounds a lot like [S] and a bit like [s`]
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html<http://www.pobox.com/%7Ejimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html>
> Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
> I analyze the results and write the article
>
Messages in this topic (6)
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4c. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:43 am ((PDT))
Eugene Oh wrote:
>Indeed, many German learners around me are unable to get <ich> pronounced
>correctly, and end up sounding like they're saying "isch". Which
>pronunciation they probably adopted to ease the transition between being
>unable to pronounce the sound and doing it like the natives.
>
Not to start YAGPT... but it's been my imperfect understanding that [IS] for
"ich" is typical of Berlin accent (or is it Vienna???) (I have an old LP of
Lotte Lenya singing songs of Brecht/Weill, and I'm pretty sure she says
[IS], of course, it might be the quality of the recording........) Still,
it doesn't excuse learners' mishearings/mistakes :-))))
Messages in this topic (6)
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5.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2008 10:39 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 10:41 PM, caeruleancentaur <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> The Senjecans were the first loquent inhabitants of Earth. As Humans
> began to give names to their homes and to the physical features
> around them, Senjecas developed four ways to adapt these names in
> conformity to the sounds and pitches of the language. Place names
> are viewed as abstract nouns and, thus, end in -as. And the earliest
> known name of a place is used without change even though the name may
> change later.
Very coincidentally, place names in Cl. Arithide end in -as too! Because
that's the lexical class for places. Senjecan is less ambiguous in that it
simply takes the chronological order of the names' appearance, thoiugh Cl.
Ar. is more troublesome. E.g. Jamaica, who's to say whether "Jamaica" should
be the source (since it's ENglish-speaking) or "xaymaca" which begot Jamaica
that should have the honour.
> 1. -as is added to the stem of the place name after palatalizing the
> final consonant, e.g., ilîryas, i.e., Illyria, continues to be the
> name of Albania.
Albania is straightforward: <Albanias> [al'ba:njas], but the palatalisation
is due to the -ia ending than any regular process.
>
>
> 2. Sometimes the final consonant is not palatalized, e.g., ámerîkas.
Ditto, <Amerikas> [a'merikas]. I think all place names that originally end
in -a shall adopt the -as nominative ending of Cl. Ar., given the similarity
and unambiguity.
>
>
> 3. The word 'k"unyas,' country, is suffixed to the name of
> the "original" inhabitants, e.g., bélgëk"unyas, land of the Belgians.
>
I differ from you here: the word <myr> [myr] can only refer to a country in
the abstract sense, and not in compounds. Compounds will simply use the -as
ending. Belgium is <Belgias>.
>
> 4. Sometimes the name is a literal translation, e.g., lhénaperas,
> rich coast, i.e., Costa Rica.
>
Ditto.
>
> Geographic features have the -os ending of concrete nouns, e.g.,
> yhéldmôôros, i.e., the Greek Sea, or the Aegean Sea.
>
<As Aeginos> [as aj'gi:nos] in this case.
>
> The -os ending is changed to -as if the geographic feature becames a
> proper noun. Thus, mhészyengôes, western islands, would refer to
> any group of islands in the west. But, mhészyengâes means the
> British Isles.
>
Cl. Ar. has no such distinction betweent he general and the specific, and
culturally, there is an avoidance of purely descriptive names. The Areth
like poetry.
>
> Charlie
>
Messages in this topic (61)
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6. USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 10:27 am ((PDT))
Randomly tried to translate "I ran so far away" into E-o... and got as
far as "mi kuros tiel...". And ran into idiom trouble. Would
"malproksimen" make sense?
ObConlang: How would you translate "run far away"/"run (away) to a far
place" in your CL? I'm trying to capture the "run" sense literally,
not just the sense of "run away" = "flee".
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (1)
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