There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Dana Nutter
1.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Herman Miller
2a. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Dana Nutter
2b. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Eugene Oh
2c. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Eugene Oh
2d. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
From: Dana Nutter
3.1. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
3.2. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: ROGER MILLS
3.3. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Alex Fink
3.4. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Henrik Theiling
4a. Re: Books at Lulu.com
From: ROGER MILLS
4b. Re: Books at Lulu.com
From: Eric Christopherson
4c. Re: Books at Lulu.com
From: Rick Harrison
5a. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
5b. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
5c. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
6a. Re: Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
From: Eldin Raigmore
6b. Re: Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
7.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Alex Fink
7.2. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Herman Miller
7.3. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Eugene Oh
8a. Re: Sibilants
From: Henrik Theiling
9.1. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Jim Henry
9.2. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: caeruleancentaur
9.3. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
Messages
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1.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Dana Nutter" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:50 am ((PDT))
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Henry
> > To me that would more along the lines of instrumental. S:S:
has
> > a short preposition "ju" to mark the instrumental.
>
> gzb derives the main instrumental postposition from a root
> noun {syj} meaning "using" (which also derives the verb "to
use");
> säb zjeda apparently doesn't have a lexicon entry for an
> instrumental prep. yet but it would be (will be, now) derived
> from "shpig", v. "to use".
There is a verb "juz" which is "to use", but the instrumental is
common enough that I gave it a short form though "juzu" would
work too.
> I've long had another instrumental postp. in gzb for using
> body parts and internal faculties (memory, imagination etc.)
> in contrast to external tools and materials. I've recently
> experimented
> with deriving another instrumental postp. for using materials
> that get used up during a task as opposed to tools that
> typically continue to be usable for future tasks, but I'm not
> settled on it yet. I doubt I'll make a postpositional
distinction
> between different uses of materials as in "paint a landscape
> with watercolors" vs. "wash the stove with Ajax"; the former
> would prob. be expressed with a modifier in {-na}, "made of",
> rather than an instrumental postposition of any kind.
The idea of something for materials that diminish or
disintegrate in the process is kind of interesting. Something
like "my car runs *on* gasoline" where "on" would be some
special word like "burning up".
Messages in this topic (51)
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1.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:27 pm ((PDT))
Mark J. Reed wrote:
> 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?
I should have been more specific about what I was trying to point out.
The question I was replying to was originally:
"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?"
The part about "body part words" was an example that Jim Henry quoted
from Payne's _Describing Morphosyntax_ answering this same question; I
wasn't intending to imply that any of my examples were also "body part
words".
Messages in this topic (51)
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2a. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Dana Nutter" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:03 am ((PDT))
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark J. Reed
> 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".
Sasxsek:
murun = run away (assuming there is actually an act of
"running")
mukin = go/move away (any motion away from something)
mu = (away) from [prep.]
run = to run
kin = to go/move
The opposite of "mu" is "fu" (to/toward) so "fukin" would be "to approach".
Messages in this topic (10)
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2b. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:04 am ((PDT))
That is quite true, on consideration. Then again, treadmills were definitely
not around, say, 200 A.D. ;) I suppose I would form "run in place" with
"run" and "move": pare- + hon- > paregonen.
Eugene
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 7:55 PM, caeruleancentaur <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 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 (10)
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2c. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:08 am ((PDT))
Intriguingly "fukin" happens to be Japanese for "vicinity", and "mukin"
takes a bit of a stretch, but could probably be analysed as "no closeness".
Eugene
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 12:03 AM, Dana Nutter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark J. Reed
>
> > 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".
>
> Sasxsek:
>
> murun = run away (assuming there is actually an act of
> "running")
> mukin = go/move away (any motion away from something)
>
> mu = (away) from [prep.]
> run = to run
> kin = to go/move
>
> The opposite of "mu" is "fu" (to/toward) so "fukin" would be "to approach".
>
Messages in this topic (10)
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2d. Re: USAGE: Esperanto for "run away"
Posted by: "Dana Nutter" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 10:12 am ((PDT))
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Eugene Oh
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Sasxsek:
> >
> > murun = run away (assuming there is
> actually an act of
> > "running")
> > mukin = go/move away (any motion away from
> something)
> >
> > mu = (away) from [prep.]
> > run = to run
> > kin = to go/move
> >
> > The opposite of "mu" is "fu" (to/toward) so "fukin" would
> be "to approach".
> Intriguingly "fukin" happens to be Japanese for "vicinity",
> and "mukin"
> takes a bit of a stretch, but could probably be analysed as
> "no closeness".
Just a coindicidence. "mu" and "fu" where created from some early
phonosemantic schema that I started with though I didn't quite stick with it as
much as I originally intended. "m-" having to do with origins, thus "mo" =
"I,me", "mu" = "from", "mi" = "previous", and "ma" = "because". By a similar
method I have "fo" = "you", "fu" = "toward", "fi" = "future", "fa" = "then
[conj.]".
Messages in this topic (10)
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3.1. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:03 am ((PDT))
In fact the pronunciation ['awa] for _agua_ is very widespread in
Spanish, and I'd expect [NG] to simplify to [N]. In fact humans seem
to find nasal + fricative clusters hard to pronounce and frequently
change them into vowel nasalization + fricative or nasal + stop +
fricative, *especially* in rapid speech (and rapid-speech phenomena
are tomorrow's sound changes!) The former strategy is common in
Swedish and the latter in English. In fact when I try to avoid
pronouncing [aNGa] as [a~Ga] it comes out as [aN\G\R\a]! IMO one
should not judge the naturalness of an artlang phonology by how well
its words and sentences fare when pronounced rapidly. That may be
subject to modification of course when the speakers of the language
are purposed to be non-human. It may of course be that your Elves find
some sound sequences which are hard to humans easy and vice versa! I
use the possible non-humanity of the Sohlosjan as an excuse for the
typologically odd vowel height harmony, although I know of at least
one human language which had vowel height harmony, namely Middle
Korean.
2008/8/16, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 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
>
--
/ BP
Messages in this topic (75)
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3.2. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:15 am ((PDT))
Andreas Johansson wrote:
>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].
>
I didn't see any problem with [NG] either; at least Spanish has a few words
with [Nx], "granja" e.g. which at least colloquialy is [Nx] not [nx]; and of
course "un [x...] (masc. noun).
Messages in this topic (75)
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3.3. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 11:04 am ((PDT))
On Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:03:48 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>In fact the pronunciation ['awa] for _agua_ is very widespread in
>Spanish,
But many Spanishes have [M\] for weak /g/ (where some others have [G]), and
[M\w] > [w] is if anything even a more natural change. I don't have the
impression there's anything especially disfavoured about [Gw], though I
can't think of a good example offhand.
>I use the possible non-humanity of the Sohlosjan as an excuse for the
>typologically odd vowel height harmony, although I know of at least
>one human language which had vowel height harmony, namely Middle
>Korean.
Did it? I thought there wasn't any consensus on what the harmonic phenomena
in Korean actually were, in origin.
Chukchi also has (dominant-regressive) vowel height harmony, though /e/ is a
member of both harmony classes, in two different pairings, adding a layer of
nonstraightforwardness.
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~spena/Chukchee/chapter2.html#vowelalt
Alex
Messages in this topic (75)
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3.4. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 5:38 pm ((PDT))
Hi!
Andreas Johansson writes:
>...
> So, what shall we call thee in Meghean? The "obvious" adaption would be
> _Shenric_ [hEnrik], but that's got the alveolar trill. ...
That'd be fine -- it *is* an /r/ after all, and I do adapt the
pronunciation to other language in that way.
The other options you give are, erm, interesting. :-)
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (75)
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4a. Re: Books at Lulu.com
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:35 am ((PDT))
Taliesin wrote:
>
>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
Oooh...Taino and Egyptian!! too bad it isn't up on the Web, where it
probably belongs... I'd like to see what he ways, but won't spend money for
the privilege..:-)))
>
>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.
>
The Holly Lisle book has been mentioned here ? or on Conculture, and
probably isn't worth the effort/money.
Messages in this topic (4)
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4b. Re: Books at Lulu.com
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:52 am ((PDT))
On Aug 16, 2008, at 11:35 AM, ROGER MILLS wrote:
> Taliesin wrote:
>>
>> 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
>
> Oooh...Taino and Egyptian!! too bad it isn't up on the Web, where
> it probably belongs... I'd like to see what he ways, but won't
> spend money for the privilege..:-)))
Here's an excerpt:
http://www.earthmatrix.com/linguistic/tainos_and_egyptian.pdf
>>
>> 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.
>>
> The Holly Lisle book has been mentioned here ? or on Conculture,
> and probably isn't worth the effort/money.
Messages in this topic (4)
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4c. Re: Books at Lulu.com
Posted by: "Rick Harrison" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:53 pm ((PDT))
If you're a collector you might want to own a copy of Basic Sileerian. I
reviewed it on my blog...
http://langbreeze.blogspot.com/2008/06/book-of-week-3.html
I made the following terse handwritten list of Lulu items that I intend to
buy "someday"... maybe it can help in your searches --
Tlingit
Divine Interjection
Vinyar Tengwar
The Vulcan Language
Messages in this topic (4)
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5a. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 9:48 am ((PDT))
In Swedish vowel length, stress and syllable coda weight are bound up
with each other in complicated ways. The only things everyone is
agreeing on seem to be that stress placement is distinctive and that
fully unstressed vowels can't be long. In particular it is
controversial whether vowel length is distinctive or a function of
stress and syllable structure. I'm nowadays tending to believe that
dialects and idiolects differ in this regard. For myself vowel length
is clearly automatic, and I have trouble coping with distinctive vowel
length in other languages. Thus my immediate thought was that Tirelat
vowel length is a function of distinctive stress, but that certain
coda types attract stress and/or cause length, and thus I'd write
[ma'ra:t] as _marát_, and in general mark irregular stress and/or
length with an acute. However the thought hit me that apparent long
vowels might be sequences of vowel + semivowel and/or vowel + /h/,
supposing a sequence [h] > [h\] > [:], or vowel + /h\/, /?\/ or /?/ if
there are (or were) such phonemes. Note that voiced laryngeal or
pharyngeal fricatives would be stress attractors according to the
rules you gave. Does the language have a /?/ phoneme already? It has
been suggested that French h aspiré and e muet are in fact a single
phonemes with the contextual and stylistic allophones [?], [EMAIL PROTECTED] and
zero!
2008/8/16, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 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.
>
--
/ BP
Messages in this topic (6)
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5b. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 3:12 pm ((PDT))
David J. Peterson wrote:
> 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]
I'll have to try that out the next time I run across an Impossible Gate
to the Sangari homeworld. My guess is that (2) and (3) will be heard as
"window", (4) and (5) as "basket". The question is what happens when the
clues of length and stress are conflicting, as in (1) and (6).
> 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:
The absence of CV:CV: seems to need an explanation, but it could be a
shortening of vowels in unstressed syllables. Many of the CV:CV in the
current language can be traced back to words that were CVCV in older
versions of Tirelat, so the inconsistent lengthening may be little more
than inconsistent documentation.
I agree that it appears to be length rather than stress that's
significant in the current language. But part of that is due to
lengthening vowels deliberately to get the stress patterns that I
wanted. Stress and vowel length were unmarked in the oldest versions of
the language, but I began to distinguish them in later revisions. For
example:
ba'kaazi "monitor lizard", originally bakazi
vs. 'sÉlagi "cod", originally solagi
li'naar "dragon", originally linar
vs. 'pivri "welcome", originally pivri
With the three-syllable words, 'CVCVCV is common; CV'CV:CV and CVCV'CV:
are less common, but also exist.
> [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.]
Some, but not all, of the originally short vowels were lengthened when I
started treating vowel length as phonemic. E.g., the vowels in "gira"
(island) remained short, but the vowel in the initial syllable of "sira"
(weasel) was lengthened. It could be, though, that I was trying to hear
a distinction where there was none to begin with.
I suspect there are elements of both stress accent and vowel length in
this distinction, and that one or the other may be more prominent in
different circumstances. I've been listening to my old sample of Tirelat
speech from Relay 6, which is pretty much similar to the current version
of the language except for the gender agreement. There do seem to be
distinctions in vowel length, but they seem to also be associated with
stress or intonation.
http://www.io.com/~hmiller/mp3/relay6-tirelat.mp3
http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/Tirelat/sixth-relay.html
Messages in this topic (6)
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5c. Re: Stress and vowel length in Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 3:34 pm ((PDT))
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> In Swedish vowel length, stress and syllable coda weight are bound up
> with each other in complicated ways. The only things everyone is
> agreeing on seem to be that stress placement is distinctive and that
> fully unstressed vowels can't be long. In particular it is
> controversial whether vowel length is distinctive or a function of
> stress and syllable structure. I'm nowadays tending to believe that
> dialects and idiolects differ in this regard. For myself vowel length
> is clearly automatic, and I have trouble coping with distinctive vowel
> length in other languages. Thus my immediate thought was that Tirelat
> vowel length is a function of distinctive stress, but that certain
> coda types attract stress and/or cause length, and thus I'd write
> [ma'ra:t] as _marát_, and in general mark irregular stress and/or
> length with an acute. However the thought hit me that apparent long
> vowels might be sequences of vowel + semivowel and/or vowel + /h/,
> supposing a sequence [h] > [h\] > [:], or vowel + /h\/, /?\/ or /?/ if
> there are (or were) such phonemes. Note that voiced laryngeal or
> pharyngeal fricatives would be stress attractors according to the
> rules you gave. Does the language have a /?/ phoneme already? It has
> been suggested that French h aspiré and e muet are in fact a single
> phonemes with the contextual and stylistic allophones [?], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> and
> zero!
Tirelat has two semivowels /w/ and /j/; earlier versions also had /H/,
and from time to time I've considered bringing it back along with the
voiceless approximants. Note that what I'm calling diphthongs /ai/, /oi/
etc. could be described as /aj/, /oj/, and the rule might simply be that
stress is attracted to syllables ending in a voiced consonant. If there
used to be another voiced approximant, e.g. /M\/, it may explain the
vowel length in unusual words like "pasiraa" (cucumber). If /ma'ra:t/
has a similar history, though, there ought to be words like *marait or
*maraut.
Messages in this topic (6)
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6a. Re: Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 10:47 am ((PDT))
On Sat, 16 Aug 2008 08:47:30 -0400, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>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
This won't answer your question because you wanted to know what the
empirical data are, and I don't have that yet.
This is just my impression.
The most common broad type of consonant-clusters (I guess) are homorganic
(same place-of-articulation) with different manners-of-articulation.
If you count affricates as clusters, then homorganic stop+fricative (/ts/) and
homorganic fricative+stop (/st/) are almost surely the most common.
Homorganic nasal+stop (/nd/, /mb/, /Ng/, /nt/, /mp/, /Nk/) are probably also
rather common.
The second most common broad type of consonant-clusters (I guess) are
probably those with the same manner-of-articulation but different places-of-
articulation. /bd/, /db/, /zv/, /vz/, /mn/, /nm/, etc. In English these tend
to
be at syllable-boundaries rather than in the onset or the coda of the same
syllable; maybe that's the case cross-linguistically as well, but I'd imagine
word-internal "sandhi"-like mutation might lead to allomorphy causing these to
crop up frequently even in other languages.
Finally, there is pre-aspiration, post-aspiration, pre-palatalization, post-
palatalization, pre-labialization, post-labialization, and "ejective". As you
know
these are rather common. TTBOMK, and therefore IMO, these are the most
common types of consonant-clusters that are not homorganic and have
different manners-of-articulation.
A smaller set would have the same P.o.A. and the same M.o.A. but different
voicing; /dt/, /td/, /sz/, /zs/, /gk/, /kg/, /bp/, /bp/, /DT/, /TD/, and so on.
I
would be surprised if these were more common than any of the above; but
surely they do happen -etically if not -emicallly.
Messages in this topic (4)
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6b. Re: Most common consonant cluster types cross-linguistically
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 4:25 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, 16 Aug 2008 13:47:02 -0400, Eldin Raigmore wrote:
>If you count affricates as clusters, then homorganic stop+fricative (/ts/) and
>homorganic fricative+stop (/st/) are almost surely the most common.
My impression is that these are not common at all except for the two samples
you just mentioned. I don't know any language that'd feature homorganic /fp/
or /xk/. Not that I'd know a large number of languages, but my knowledge is
mostely restricted to Indogermanic languages, and these are rich in
consonant clusters. On the other hand, affricates such as /ts/ or /tS/ may
be fairly common, but I've learned that affricates such as /pf/ or /kx/ are
quite "exotic".
In the clusters composed of a stop and a fricative, there might be a
preference for clusters that involve dental or alveolar sounds. That is to
say, my impression is that clusters such as /st/ /ft/ /xt/ /sp/ /sk/ /ts/
/ps/ /ks/ are more common than for instance /xk/ /fp/ /fk/ /pf/ /px/.
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (4)
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7.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 11:16 am ((PDT))
>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"
Hebrew did [w] > [j], though I don't know in what context. My memory dimly
suggests that Hebrew for 'rose' is something like /jered/, from a Semitic
prototype with *w- ('rose' with a shape like /ward/ was something of a
Wanderwort).
Alex
Messages in this topic (75)
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7.2. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:21 pm ((PDT))
Eugene Oh wrote:
> 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?
The current Tirelat pronunciation of <y> is [1], and I realize that
"Cymru" is pronounced ['[EMAIL PROTECTED], but Tirelat originally had a
distinction
between /1/ and /@/ that was lost in 2002 before being reintroduced in
2004. I probably ought to update some of those place names -- Wales
ought to be KÉmryvor in current Tirelat.
Minza has a sound between [1] and [}] for <y> -- it could be represented
as [1_O] or [}_c]. In both Tirelat and Minza, {l] represents a lateral
fricative, [K], and is used as a substitute for English /T/ in names.
Messages in this topic (75)
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7.3. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 10:39 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 2:16 AM, Alex Fink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hebrew did [w] > [j], though I don't know in what context. My memory dimly
> suggests that Hebrew for 'rose' is something like /jered/, from a Semitic
> prototype with *w- ('rose' with a shape like /ward/ was something of a
> Wanderwort).
>
Google's not good for searching for sound changes, I find. :\ Though thanks
for the example! Is any Hebrew-speaker around who can shed more light on
this? (:
On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 4:20 AM, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> The current Tirelat pronunciation of <y> is [1], and I realize that "Cymru"
> is pronounced ['[EMAIL PROTECTED], but Tirelat originally had a distinction
> between
> /1/ and /@/ that was lost in 2002 before being reintroduced in 2004. I
> probably ought to update some of those place names -- Wales ought to be
> KÉmryvor in current Tirelat.
>
> Minza has a sound between [1] and [}] for <y> -- it could be represented as
> [1_O] or [}_c]. In both Tirelat and Minza, {l] represents a lateral
> fricative, [K], and is used as a substitute for English /T/ in names.
Are Tirelat and Minza related, actually? /T/ is a tough sound to replace
indeed -- How do others do it, I wonder? Japanese does it by [s], Cockney by
[f], and many languages (including French) by [t].
Eugene
Messages in this topic (75)
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8a. Re: Sibilants
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 5:51 pm ((PDT))
Hi!
ROGER MILLS writes:
>...
> Not to start YAGPT... but it's been my imperfect understanding that
> [IS] for "ich" is typical of Berlin accent (or is it Vienna???)
Many regions with living local dialects have [S] for /C/ in High
German (probably because the dialect does not distinguish). I would
not know that it is used by L1 High German speakers, even considering
variants, though. (Although calling High German the second language
would strike many dialect speakers as odd, because it is more-or-less
immediately learnt, too.)
In Berlin, 'ich' would be 'ikke' /'Ik@/, I suppose. No /C/ there.
Dunno about the exact pronunciation of words that do have /C/.
I also do not know Vienna dialect good enough.
[S] for /C/ is used by many Western Palatinian and Saarlandian
speakers at the very least -- I'd expect a lot more dialects to make
High German come our like that, it is very common.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (9)
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9.1. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2008 8:33 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Or "made of X" or "resembling, savoring of
>>> X" (though there's also the more specific
>>> "-eca" for that), or "for the benefit of X"
>>> or "suitable for X" or "originating from
>>> X"... Issues like these were why I came up
>>> with the set of adjective-deriving suffixes
>>> I did for gzb.
I saw _The Clone Wars_ today -- no conlang content except
for a few lines of dialogue in Huttese, which barely counts
anyway, so enough of that -- no, the reason I revived this thread
is the problems that occurred to me when I wrote in my
journal this evening about seeing the movie: how to translate
the title into gzb? In particular, how to translate the adjectival or apposite
use of "clone" modifying "wars"? (I didn't have a word for "clone"
yet, and worried that I might need a new root word, but a few
moments' thought yielded {tâ-ci}, "sibling-copy".) I tried out
a few adjectival suffixes, but none seemed satisfactory;
{-za} "pertaining to" was too vague, and none of the others
made sense at all. Finally I rendered it with a postpositional
phrase:
{tâ-ci-cu syj-i sîðyr-´za-cu}
sibling-copy-system use-at fight-AUG-system
that is, a war (system of battles) wherein a clone army is used.
The upshot? An engelang like gzb that requires you to be very
specific about relationships like this is harder to use than
Esperanto, where the adjectival derivations are morphologically
uniform and semantically vague; though maybe easier than
a natlang like French or (to some extent) English where you have
to memorize the adjective that goes with each noun and
some nouns have no corresponding adjective.
--
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 (51)
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9.2. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "caeruleancentaur" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:08 am ((PDT))
> Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In particular, how to translate the adjectival or apposite
> use of "clone" modifying "wars"? (I didn't have a word for "clone"
> yet, and worried that I might need a new root word, but a few
> moments' thought yielded {tâ-ÄÄ}, "sibling-copy".) I tried out
> a few adjectival suffixes, but none seemed satisfactory;
> {-za} "pertaining to" was too vague, and none of the others
> made sense at all. Finally I rendered it with a postpositional
> phrase:
>
> {tâ-ÄÄ-cu syj-i sîðyr-źa-cu}
> sibling-copy-system use-at fight-AUG-system
>
> that is, a war (system of battles) wherein a clone army is used.
>
I also did not have a word for 'clone.' First, I had to create a
word for sibling! I went with som-dzôôn-m-us, i.e., same-parent-
having-person. Then I prefixed that to kwêraþus, creature. Result:
somdzóónmëkwêraþus. A bit longer than 'clone,' n'est-ce pas?
war = kôryos.
For the present, a simple 'genitive': somdzóónmëkweraþûm kôryos.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (51)
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9.3. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:49 am ((PDT))
caeruleancentaur skrev:
> First, I had to create a word for sibling! I
> went with som-dzôôn-m-us, i.e., same-parent-
> having-person.
Which got me thinking. Do most language, nat or
con, have a root-word for 'sibling' or not? The
English word comes from Old English _sibb_
'relative' and _-ling_ 'descendant' and Swedish
_syskon_ (with relatives in Norwegian and Danish)
comes from the stem of _sister_ and the root of
_kin_. German _geschwister_ 'siblings' is more or
less the same idea. Latin _germanus/germana_ is an
adjective meaning 'of (the same) seed', so at
least in IE languages of Europe compouns seem to
be the rule.
Perhaps _som-dzôôn-m-us_ becomes _stsôôm(u)s_
or )_zdzôôm(u)s_ colloquially!
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)
Messages in this topic (51)
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