There are 23 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Andreas Johansson
1.2. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
1.3. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Andreas Johansson
2a. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
2b. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Lars Finsen
3a. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Jim Henry
3b. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: caeruleancentaur
3c. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Herman Miller
3d. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Eugene Oh
3e. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: caeruleancentaur
4.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Lars Finsen
4.2. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Herman Miller
4.3. Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: caeruleancentaur
4.4. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Eugene Oh
5.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Herman Miller
5.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Mark J. Reed
6a. Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
6b. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
From: Eugene Oh
6c. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
From: David J. Peterson
7a. Books at Lulu.com
From: taliesin the storyteller
7b. Re: Books at Lulu.com
From: Jim Henry
8a. Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
From: Jim Henry
8b. Re: Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
Messages
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1.1. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:00 am ((PDT))
Quoting Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Hi!
>
> Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
> >...
> > I know. That's why you're officially _Heqig Tayalaeng_
> > [hi\Rig_0 tajal&N/ and not _Hendrig_ in Sohlob! :-)
>
> Hehe. :-)
So, what shall we call thee in Meghean? The "obvious" adaption would be
_Shenric_ [hEnrik], but that's got the alveolar trill. An uvular approximant or
fricative would perhaps most sensibly be adapted as /G/ ... except that
regularly becomes /Z/ before /i/. I guess you would not much like _Sheñghic_
[hEnZik]! A Meghean scribe attempting to indicate the foreign sound sequence
would probably write _Sheñghoic_, inviting the spelling pronunciations [hENGwik]
and [hENGojk].
--
Andreas Johansson
Messages in this topic (68)
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1.2. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:18 am ((PDT))
Would [Gw] really be possible? One would expect it to simplify to [w]
pretty much automatically, at least for human speakers. The [NG]
sequence looks pretty alien too! In Sohlob the nasal gets omitted in
order to avoid an illegit sound sequence. BTW Henrik, would you prefer
Tayalaeng or Tayaelaeng to render Theilling? To be sure both spellings
would be pronounced [t&:l&N] in Heleb, which has both height and
palatal vowel harmony.
2008/8/15, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Quoting Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
>> >...
>> > I know. That's why you're officially _Heqig Tayalaeng_
>> > [hi\Rig_0 tajal&N/ and not _Hendrig_ in Sohlob! :-)
>>
>> Hehe. :-)
>
> So, what shall we call thee in Meghean? The "obvious" adaption would be
> _Shenric_ [hEnrik], but that's got the alveolar trill. An uvular approximant
> or
> fricative would perhaps most sensibly be adapted as /G/ ... except that
> regularly becomes /Z/ before /i/. I guess you would not much like _Sheñghic_
> [hEnZik]! A Meghean scribe attempting to indicate the foreign sound sequence
> would probably write _Sheñghoic_, inviting the spelling pronunciations
> [hENGwik]
> and [hENGojk].
>
>
> --
> Andreas Johansson
>
--
/ BP
Messages in this topic (68)
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1.3. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 4:57 am ((PDT))
Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Would [Gw] really be possible? One would expect it to simplify to [w]
> pretty much automatically, at least for human speakers. The [NG]
> sequence looks pretty alien too!
I don't seem to have any trouble pronouncing either cluster, and I don't see why
you'd expect otherwise. [Gw] occurs in Spanish words like _agua_, and [NG]
doesn't intuitively strike me as odder than, say, [nz].
--
Andreas Johansson
Messages in this topic (68)
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2a. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:52 am ((PDT))
ROGER MILLS skrev:
> 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 :-))))
>
I suspect that the Low German dialect which formed the
substrate of the "High" German Berlin dialect lacked [C].
Messages in this topic (8)
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2b. Re: Sibilants (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 1:45 pm ((PDT))
Den 13. aug. 2008 kl. 16.10 skreiv John Vertical:
>
> I find [s\] easier to pronounce than [S],
Is s\ a retroflex s? Like SAMPA s`?
If so, I guess that's the sound Norwegians are writing _sj_ or _rs_
and many other ways. Then we don't have the S.
But what's the difference between them exactly?
> 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...)
>
> And while I'm on the topic, are there postalveolar *non*-sibilants?
> An alveolar [T_-] seems to be possible, but not anything further
> back until we get to dorsal consonants. That's odd.
I guess _+ means forward and _- means back, or what?
But if so, isn't T_- = s?
LEF
Messages in this topic (8)
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3a. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 11:58 am ((PDT))
On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 1:26 PM, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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?
For "run away" in general you would use the adverbial particle
"for" = "away", either as a stand-alone particle or as a prefix.
Mi kuris for.
or
Mi forkuris.
For "*so* far", you were on the right track, I think:
Mi kuris for, tre malproksimen. / ...tiel malproksimen.
> 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".
In gzb:
re rr ƴâ-^jwy-zô.
there from-far go-fast-V.ACT
{re} is a place-pronoun. {r-r} means "far from obj. of postp.,
receding from it".
{ƴâ} is a general-purpose motion verb for motion under one's
own power with (potentially) continuous change of course, in
contrast to {bly}, ballistic motion, or various hyponyms of {ƴâ}
for motion in particular manners. It tends to mean "walk/jog/run" by
default since there are hyponyms for other manners of motion.
There's no explicit subject, so out of context it would mean
"I run/ran far from there"; in a particular context the subject
would be whoever/whatever was the subject of the last sentence.
--
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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3b. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "caeruleancentaur" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:40 pm ((PDT))
> "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 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".
Senjecas has a non-derivative adjective 'âpis' = away, absent. An
intensifier 'kel-' is prefixed to mean 'far,' 'kelápis,' far away.
The derivative adverbs are 'ápu' and 'kelápu.'
There are derivative postpositions 'ápa' and 'kelápa,' (far) away
from.
There is also a derivative interjection 'apô,' begone, clear off,
clear out! jherôes apô! = hands off! (Interjections receive the high
pitch on the ultimate.)
To run = tsêrsa. Thus, 'to run (far) away' would be '(kel)ápu
tsêrsa.' This verb denotes running as opposed to walking, hopping,
etc.
If I wanted to stress flight, I would use the verb 'vûga,' to flee.
But: nus nôkwam éna kélu e-vûga, she fled far into the night.
Thanks for the exercise.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (6)
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3c. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:24 pm ((PDT))
Mark J. Reed wrote:
> 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".
"Away from" is a preposition in Minza: "dega". So it requires an object;
you could say "away from there" (dega sila).
Kasivu dega sila talgi sili kam.
kasivu (ran) dega sila (away from there)
talgi (distant) sili (to such an extent) kam (I).
or
Talgi sili kasivu dega sila kam.
Sili kasivu talgi dega sila kam.
etc.
It might be enough to say "I so ran away from there" (kasivu sili dega
sila). (Ordinarily "run" wouldn't be the main verb in Minza; you'd say
something like "running, I departed", but in this case it sounds like
the "running" part is significant enough to be the main verb.)
Messages in this topic (6)
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3d. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:34 am ((PDT))
Cl. Ar. does not translate all instances of "away", particularly in cases
like this which are pretty obvious that if you run, it has to be away from
something. "Away" is translated as mage "far-ly" (from mager "far"),
however, if it is. (Which in this sentence makes it a little redundant.)
(dou) om-mage paret
(I.TOP) so-far.ADV run.PERFV
om- is a clitic, reduced from oplur "in this way/manner" and prefixed for
emphasis.
Tangentially, does this count as an instance of prefixing under CALS'
criteria? For other purposes CL. Ar. is rather more suffixing.
Eugene
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 1:26 AM, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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 (6)
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3e. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "caeruleancentaur" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 5:05 am ((PDT))
> Eugene Oh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Cl. Ar. does not translate all instances of "away", particularly in
> cases like this which are pretty obvious that if you run, it has to
> be away from something.
It is possible to run in place. :-)
Charlie
Messages in this topic (6)
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4.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:35 pm ((PDT))
Den 13. aug. 2008 kl. 16.41 skreiv caeruleancentaur:
>
>
> 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.
As Illyria and the Roman province of Illyricum in ancient times
correspond roughly to the former Yugoslavia, but comprised only less
than half of the current Albania, with the rest being inside
Macedonia, I am wondering if they are perhaps a little inaccurate in
this.
LEF
Messages in this topic (68)
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4.2. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:47 pm ((PDT))
Eugene Oh wrote:
> Albania is straightforward: <Albanias> [al'ba:njas], but the palatalisation
> is due to the -ia ending than any regular process.
Albania is ta-Albániða in Minza. By the time I got around to naming
places in Minza, I started looking at what they were called in other
languages, in cases where their native names differ from English (French
Albanie, German Albanien, Spanish Albania, etc.) Wikipedia makes this a
lot easier now than it would have been when I was originally working on
Tirelat.
I don't have a Tirelat word for Albania, but considering that Wales is
Kymrivor, it's possible I might have gone with a transliteration of
"Shqipëria" (ScipÉrivor?). On the other hand, Georgia is Gruzyvor
(likely related to Russian ÐÑÑзиÑ), not anything related to "Sakartvelo".
>> 4. Sometimes the name is a literal translation, e.g., lhénaperas,
>> rich coast, i.e., Costa Rica.
>>
>
> Ditto.
Tirelat keeps the original pronunciation without translating meaningful
parts of names, e.g., Norl-Dakouta (North Dakota), Puerto-Riiko (Puerto
Rico), with the exception of suffixes like -land (DoyÄÉvor =
Deutschland) or -stan (Pakyvor = Pakistan). Minza translates some of
these, e.g. ta-Xempsør ta-Paki (New Hampshire), but keeps suffixes like
-land (ta-Døytslant = Germany).
Messages in this topic (68)
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4.3. Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "caeruleancentaur" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:02 pm ((PDT))
> Lars Finsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Den 13. aug. 2008 kl. 16.41 skreiv caeruleancentaur:
> >
> >
> > 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.
>
> As Illyria and the Roman province of Illyricum in ancient times
> correspond roughly to the former Yugoslavia, but comprised only
less
> than half of the current Albania, with the rest being inside
> Macedonia, I am wondering if they are perhaps a little inaccurate
in
> this.
I am not able to do original research, so am dependent upon online
sources for my information. The following is a quote from the
Wikipedia article on Albania which I probably used in deciding
upon 'ilîryas' as the Senjecan word for Albania.
"The territory of Albania in antiquity was inhabited by the Illyrians,
who, like other Balkan peoples, were subdivided into tribes and
clans. The kingdom of Illyria grew from the general area of modern-
day Northern Albania and eventually controlled much of the eastern
Adriatic coastline."
It would be too much to hope for that every contemporary political
entity occupied precisely the same territory as predecessor states.
:-)
Charlie
Messages in this topic (68)
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4.4. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:26 am ((PDT))
How is <y> pronounced in Tirelat/Minza, [I]? [M]? Wales in Cl. Ar. would
definitely derive from the English name. Welas ['we:las], although initial
w's are not present before front vowels in the language. I got around this
by making the u-initial diphthongs double for them. One of the sound changes
that gave rise to Cl. Ar. which I dreamt up unilaterally and haven't yet
found an ANADEW example is this one which removed [w] before [e] and [i],
which palatalised/fronted it to [j].
E.g. *wela- > /jelani/ "blue"
Also, I spy a barred-l in the name for North Dakota. Is that meant to be the
dark l?
Eugene
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Eugene Oh wrote:
>
> Albania is straightforward: <Albanias> [al'ba:njas], but the
>> palatalisation
>> is due to the -ia ending than any regular process.
>>
>
> Albania is ta-Albániða in Minza. By the time I got around to naming places
> in Minza, I started looking at what they were called in other languages, in
> cases where their native names differ from English (French Albanie, German
> Albanien, Spanish Albania, etc.) Wikipedia makes this a lot easier now than
> it would have been when I was originally working on Tirelat.
>
> I don't have a Tirelat word for Albania, but considering that Wales is
> Kymrivor, it's possible I might have gone with a transliteration of
> "Shqipëria" (ScipÉrivor?). On the other hand, Georgia is Gruzyvor (likely
> related to Russian ÐÑÑзиÑ), not anything related to "Sakartvelo".
>
> 4. Sometimes the name is a literal translation, e.g., lhénaperas,
>>> rich coast, i.e., Costa Rica.
>>>
>>>
>> Ditto.
>>
>
> Tirelat keeps the original pronunciation without translating meaningful
> parts of names, e.g., Norl-Dakouta (North Dakota), Puerto-Riiko (Puerto
> Rico), with the exception of suffixes like -land (DoyÄÉvor = Deutschland) or
> -stan (Pakyvor = Pakistan). Minza translates some of these, e.g. ta-Xempsør
> ta-Paki (New Hampshire), but keeps suffixes like -land (ta-Døytslant =
> Germany).
>
Messages in this topic (68)
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5.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 6:53 pm ((PDT))
Jim Henry 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)....."
For that matter, "behind" itself ("hind" meaning "rear"), "before"
(still occasionally used in the meaning "in front of"), and "beside"
(from "side"). Also, "atop" meaning "on top of".
Messages in this topic (46)
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5.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 5:03 am ((PDT))
But whence "fore"? It obviously is a morpheme meaning "front", as in
"forward" ("toward the fore"), "before", fore- ("forearm"), which is
still semiproductive in the meaning "pre-", but as a word on its own
it really has currency only in the nautical sense of "front (of a
ship)". I assume it originally meant "front" more generally. Was it
ever a body part word?
On 8/15/08, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Jim Henry 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)....."
>
> For that matter, "behind" itself ("hind" meaning "rear"), "before"
> (still occasionally used in the meaning "in front of"), and "beside"
> (from "side"). Also, "atop" meaning "on top of".
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (46)
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6a. Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2008 8:46 pm ((PDT))
I figured out a way to get the stress on the last syllable of "Beijing"
in Tirelat: give the word 3 syllables.
Beiziñ /be.i.'dziÅ/
Not entirely unprecedented; I have "Zaiirvor" /za.'i:r.vOr/ "Democratic
Republic of the Congo" for instance. But two vowels coming together like
that is distinctly uncommon in Tirelat.
In any case, I've been going back and examining stress and vowel length
in Tirelat, one of the things that never had much of a satisfactory
resolution. Currently, vowel length is represented in the writing
system, although it's hard to find actual phonemic contrasts in the
native vocabulary. One of the most likely examples, _marat_ "window" vs.
_maraat_ "basket", could alternatively be treated as a distinction in
stress: _márat_ vs. _marát_. There are lots of words with a single long
vowel (_ugoolku_ "chameleon", _mutaa_ "no one", _suuru_ "door"), which
is always stressed, but no words with more than one long vowel (e.g.,
*laalii, *oomii).
Besides long vowels, diphthongs and closed syllables ending in a voiced
consonant also attract stress. E.g. si'kai "here", mi'zoi "finally",
ga'zar "deer", sa'nov "transitive verb". All of these could be grouped
as "heavy" syllables. So are there any non-compound, native Tirelat
words with more than one heavy syllable? Very few: _ñurmul_ "thunder"
and _zaglam_ "vulture" are well established, but _ñurmul_ is clearly an
onomatopoeia. There are also words like _terima_ "musical keyboard",
_pereki_ "simultaneous", _neladak_ "agama lizard", and _vurupa_
"tomato", without any heavy syllables, which are stressed on the first
syllable.
So: with few exceptions, at most one syllable in a Tirelat word is
heavy, and in the few cases where a word contains more than one heavy
syllable, the stress falls on the first one. I still haven't found any
clear cases of vowel length being distinctive.
Messages in this topic (3)
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6b. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:36 am ((PDT))
Well, why not just leave it to be, as one of the greatest linguistic
mysteries and arguments for Tirelat-speakers? ;) Languages are fun because
they provide such a treasure trove of ends to pick and unpick.
Eugene
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I figured out a way to get the stress on the last syllable of "Beijing" in
> Tirelat: give the word 3 syllables.
>
> Beiziñ /be.i.'dziÅ/
>
> Not entirely unprecedented; I have "Zaiirvor" /za.'i:r.vOr/ "Democratic
> Republic of the Congo" for instance. But two vowels coming together like
> that is distinctly uncommon in Tirelat.
>
> In any case, I've been going back and examining stress and vowel length in
> Tirelat, one of the things that never had much of a satisfactory resolution.
> Currently, vowel length is represented in the writing system, although it's
> hard to find actual phonemic contrasts in the native vocabulary. One of the
> most likely examples, _marat_ "window" vs. _maraat_ "basket", could
> alternatively be treated as a distinction in stress: _márat_ vs. _marát_.
> There are lots of words with a single long vowel (_ugoolku_ "chameleon",
> _mutaa_ "no one", _suuru_ "door"), which is always stressed, but no words
> with more than one long vowel (e.g., *laalii, *oomii).
>
> Besides long vowels, diphthongs and closed syllables ending in a voiced
> consonant also attract stress. E.g. si'kai "here", mi'zoi "finally", ga'zar
> "deer", sa'nov "transitive verb". All of these could be grouped as "heavy"
> syllables. So are there any non-compound, native Tirelat words with more
> than one heavy syllable? Very few: _ñurmul_ "thunder" and _zaglam_ "vulture"
> are well established, but _ñurmul_ is clearly an onomatopoeia. There are
> also words like _terima_ "musical keyboard", _pereki_ "simultaneous",
> _neladak_ "agama lizard", and _vurupa_ "tomato", without any heavy
> syllables, which are stressed on the first syllable.
>
> So: with few exceptions, at most one syllable in a Tirelat word is heavy,
> and in the few cases where a word contains more than one heavy syllable, the
> stress falls on the first one. I still haven't found any clear cases of
> vowel length being distinctive.
>
Messages in this topic (3)
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6c. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 3:05 am ((PDT))
Herman Miller:
<<
I still haven't found any clear cases of vowel length being distinctive.
>>
Oh, you can figure it out. The hard part will be getting a set of live
native speakers of Tirelat. Once that's done, though, you'll be able
to cook something up.
HM:
<<
One of the most likely examples, _marat_ "window" vs. _maraat_
"basket", could alternatively be treated as a distinction in stress:
_márat_ vs. _marát_.
>>
So here's what you do. Run an experiment that compares all
of these:
1.) [ma:.'rat]
2.) ['ma:.rat]
3.) ['ma.rat]
4.) [ma.'rat]
5.) [ma.'ra:t]
6.) ['ma.ra:t]
You'll need a bunch of others, but essentially, you'll be looking
for what word speakers think they're hearing. Hopefully, (3)
will unambiguously be "window", and (5) will unambiguously
be "basket". After that, though, the question will be what do
speakers do with (6), for example? Is the stress more important
or the vowel length? If speakers consistently say (6) is "window",
you'll know that stress > vowel length; if they say "basket", then
vowel length > stress. If it you don't get a statistically significant
result, hey, at least you got the funding for the experiment!
My honest guess is that it's vowel length. You don't necessarily
need minimal pairs to determine this. Take some of your sample
CV(:)CV(:) words:
-/mutaa/ "no one"
-/nuka/ "to return"
-/riiva/ "sky"
I don't have stress on these, but unless you have a CVCV words
contrasting in stress, then it seems like what you have here is a
language with long and short vowels, and stress that gets attracted
to heavy things. Think about the speakers, for example. It doesn't
matter if you don't have /muuta/ = "x" and /muta/ = "y". You
have *plenty* of examples of the following:
CVCV
CV:CV
CVCV:
Knowing that, a speaker must remember to pay attention to the
length of the vowel. Even if CV:CV and CVCV: will always
have different stress patterns, CV:CV and CVCV will not. So
even though there aren't many minimal pairs, a speaker must
assume this is an accident. If they put too much faith in stress,
they'll be missing a lot of the information--especially in situations
where stress is neutralized.
Another way to think about it is this: if length started being
added to stressed short vowels, the long vowels would either
disappear, or become entirely predictable. That's this guy's
opinion, anyways. :)
[Note: There is another option. Perhaps in time x-1, there were
no long vowels at all in Tirelat. Words of the CVCV: shape,
then, would be languages where stress was originally on the
final syllable, and the vowel was lengthened as a result. In order
for this to work, though, several anomalies would have to be
explained. First, it wouldn't make sense for there to be CVCV
forms *and* CV:CV forms, unless there were some sort of
consonant loss in all CV:CV forms. Further, if all vowels before
word-final consonants were lengthened, that would be one
thing. But while we have /linaar/ and /kavaal/, we also have
/laghal/. Taken altogether, I think the explanation would become
far more complex than if Tirelat simply possessed long vowels
phonologically.]
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.free.fr/
Messages in this topic (3)
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________________________________________________________________________
7a. Books at Lulu.com
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 4:54 am ((PDT))
I'm thinking of ordering "Invented Languages"
(<http://www.lulu.com/content/2496244>), but the freight (in Europe at
least) costs more than the book itself, so I'm looking for other
Lulu-stuff to add. What good stuff are there?
I've been looking for conlangs, natlangs and books on linguistics
mostly, but the search-system Lulu uses basically sucks: it seems to
depend a lot on authors tagging their own books, so how hard it is to
find a book depends on how prescient the author was.
t.
Messages in this topic (2)
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7b. Re: Books at Lulu.com
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 5:53 am ((PDT))
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 7:54 AM, taliesin the storyteller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm thinking of ordering "Invented Languages"
> (<http://www.lulu.com/content/2496244>), but the freight (in Europe at
> least) costs more than the book itself, so I'm looking for other
> Lulu-stuff to add. What good stuff are there?
This search,
http://www.google.com/search?q=language+site%3Alulu.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
turns up these among other, less relevant hits
http://www.lulu.com/content/1154871
http://www.lulu.com/content/1191912
http://www.lulu.com/content/1481306
http://www.lulu.com/content/443700
The last is the only conlang-related one I've found so far;
it looks pretty basic, though, more elementary than
Mark Rosenfelder's Language Creation Kit.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (2)
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8a. Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 5:47 am ((PDT))
Is there any comparative data available on what are the most
common kinds of consonant cluster across different languages?
E.g., my impression is that nasal + nasal and plosive + plosive
onset clusters as in Greek (mnemo, ptera, etc) are rarer than
clusters that mix different manners of articulation, like fricative + plosive
or plosive + fricative; but how much has this been quantified?
A Google search for "most common consonant clusters" didn't
turn up anything precisely relevant. The closest fit
was this CONLANG message from 2002 by Christophe Grandsire,
http://archives.conlang.info/vhu/wilso/phinthofian.html
helpful, but not as quantitative as I'd like.
--
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 (2)
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8b. Re: Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:34 am ((PDT))
Impressionistically medial nasal + obstruent clusters would seem to be
the most common kind of cluster since if a language has consonant
clusters at all these seem to be always present. Next come liquid +
obstruent/nasal and/or fricative + stop/nasal and then stop/fricative
+ liquid and/or obstruent + semivowel. Next in order come the
triconsonantal clusters that so to speak are combinations of the
biconsonantal types already mentioned: nasal-stop-liquid/semivowel and
fricative-stop-liquid/semivowel. In an engelang (IAL, interlingua)
designed to be easy to pronounce I'd include biconsonantal clusters in
an order of preference coinciding with the order of mention above, but
triconsonantal clusters only sparingly if at all. Note that a
semivowel-vowel or vowel-semivowel sequence may be hard to distinguish
in speaking and hearing from a disyllabic vowel-vowel sequence,
especially when the semivowel is preceded by a consonant.
As for making an artlang realistic it is not so much the types of
clusters that matters, but their frequency across the vocabulary that
matters. I feel that Kidjeb has too many heavy clusters
(triconsonantals and fricative-obstruent) to be really realistic, but
OTOH I like the sound of them!
2008/8/16, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Is there any comparative data available on what are the most
> common kinds of consonant cluster across different languages?
> E.g., my impression is that nasal + nasal and plosive + plosive
> onset clusters as in Greek (mnemo, ptera, etc) are rarer than
> clusters that mix different manners of articulation, like fricative +
> plosive
> or plosive + fricative; but how much has this been quantified?
> A Google search for "most common consonant clusters" didn't
> turn up anything precisely relevant. The closest fit
> was this CONLANG message from 2002 by Christophe Grandsire,
>
> http://archives.conlang.info/vhu/wilso/phinthofian.html
>
> helpful, but not as quantitative as I'd like.
>
> --
> 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
>
--
/ BP
Messages in this topic (2)
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