There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Jaĩbi update and request for comments
From: Christopher Bates
2. New home for my conlangs.
From: deinx nxtxr
3a. Re: Average life of a conlang
From: R A Brown
3b. Re: Average life of a conlang
From: Lars Finsen
3c. Re: Average life of a conlang
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3d. Re: Average life of a conlang
From: R A Brown
3e. Re: Average life of a conlang
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
4a. Re: Jaĩbi update and request for comments
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
4b. Re: Jaĩbi update and request for comment s
From: Christopher Bates
5a. Re: Language Sketch: Gogido
From: Eldin Raigmore
6a. Re: YAEPT after all: English diphthongs
From: Tristan McLeay
7. Re: Jaĩbi update and request for comment s
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Jaĩbi update and request for comments
Posted by: "Christopher Bates" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:04 am ((PDT))
Hi all,
It's been a while since I posted the first part of my Jaĩbi
grammar here, so I thought I would give an update (and ask for
comments). As usual, I have included at the end of each chapter details
of natural language examples of similar phenomena, both to justify to
myself that Jaĩbi is broadly realistic and for general interest. The
full grammar now runs to over 70 pages and includes draft chapters on:
1. Phonology - http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/conlang/jaibi/phonology-chapter.pdf
2. Constituent Order -
http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/conlang/jaibi/constit-order-chapter.pdf
3. Nouns and Nominal Morphology -
http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/conlang/jaibi/noun-chapter.pdf
4. Personal Pronouns -
http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/conlang/jaibi/pronoun-chapter.pdf
5. The Structure of the Noun Phrase -
http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/conlang/jaibi/np-chapter.pdf
6. Verbs and Verbal Morphology -
http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/conlang/jaibi/verb-chapter.pdf
The full grammar (so far) containing all of the above can be found here:
http://www.chrisdb.me.uk/conlang/jaibi/grammar.pdf
Any comments would be appreciated, about either the way information is
presented or about the language itself.
Next on the list:
- tidying up what I have and standardising some formatting and
terminology in glosses of examples
- a chapter on the basic structure of the VP
Chris.
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2. New home for my conlangs.
Posted by: "deinx nxtxr" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:10 am ((PDT))
Still a lot of work left, but I am now publishing my conlangs here.
http://conlang.dana.nutter.net/
Though SASXSEK now has its own site.
http://www.sasxsek.org
------------------------------------------
<deinx nxtxr>[Dana Nutter]
LI SASXSEK LATIS. (http://www.sasxsek.org)
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Average life of a conlang
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 2:07 am ((PDT))
Herman Miller wrote:
> Jim Henry wrote:
>> Recently there's been a thread on the ZBB about the average life of a
>> conlang; that is, the average amount of time a conlang is under
>> continuing development by its creator, from initial creation to
>> abandonment of the conlang or death of the conlanger, not counting
>> auxlangs that continue to be developed by a speaker community after
>> the death or loss of interest of the creator.
>
> I don't have accurate figures for most of my languages, but the average
> would be misleading
Exactly my own feelings. I'm not sure indeed how I would arrive at any
meaningful figure.
> as it would include a vast number of sketchy langs
> with a lifetime of less than a year. I guess you could call them
> mouselangs.
Quite so. My first conlang IIRC appeared when I was about 10; it was
heavily influenced by tables of French grammar I found in old text books
belonging to my mother, with a vocabulary based on Old English and other
etymologies I gleaned from dictionaries. I think the language had a life
span of about a year.
Then I discovered Esperanto in old book in my grandparents' attic - and
that give rise to a veritable host of would-be auxlang - often two or
three a year - from about the age of 11 till my late teens. How many of
them were there? How long did each 'live'? I simply have no way now of
telling.
Also during that period at least one artlang was produced: a language
much influenced by Turkish & Hungarian inter_alia spoken somewhere on
Venus! How long was its life? A couple of years maybe. Were there any
other artlangs that I've forgotten (some of the later auxlangs were far
removed from the Esperantine model and had more of the flavor of
artlangs, I think).
> My first conlang, Olaetian, was under development for around
> 15 years, from the late 1970's to the mid 1990's.
None of my early conlangs had anything like that lifespan! But what
about the Briefscript Project? It began about 1958 and is still not
finished! Do I say that the language which in its early years on the
Conlang & Auxlang lists was known as 'briefscript' and later as BrSc,
which then split into two 'dialects' BrScA and BrScB and has now come
back into a single evolving form known as Piashi - do I say this
language is 50 years old & still growing? But what about the long years
between mid 1960s till the early 1990s when the language lay dormant?
Should these years be included or not? Are BrSc, BrScA, BrScB and Piashi
really all the same language or are they different, tho related, languages?
> I've been developing
> Tirelat since 1999, but since I started developing Minza in late 2004
> until recently, Tirelat has been on hold for most of that time.
The more recent langs are easier: an as yet unnamed experimental loglang
(Plan C??) began in 2007, and TAKE (το άνευ κλίσι Ελληνικό - Greek
without inflexions) began its life in 2007. Both are still ongoing (of
and on :)
But if you look in the Conlang archives you find somewhen in my earlier
years on Conlang I did start an artlang of sorts called Tursan. It's
probably dead now. But .....
> It's
> always possible that I could revive older languages from the mid-1980's
> which have been dormant all these years (but not likely).
Yep - who knows? Tursan might get revived one day (tho at the moment, I
think not). No chance of reviving any of my juvenalia - all the
documentation is long lost and probably deserves to be.
It's clear that I could not now arrive at anything near an average for
my conlangs, and even if I could, I agree with Herman that "the average
would be misleading."
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: Average life of a conlang
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 4:10 am ((PDT))
Jim Henry wrote:
> Recently there's been a thread on the ZBB about the average life of a
> conlang; that is, the average amount of time a conlang is under
> continuing development by its creator, from initial creation to
> abandonment of the conlang or death of the conlanger, not counting
> auxlangs that continue to be developed by a speaker community after
> the death or loss of interest of the creator.
I guess I would skew these statistics woefully, as I haven't really
abandoned any of my conlangs. I have been working on Urianian off and
on since around 1970, and on Ul-Munan, later known as Gaajan, later
known as Suraetua since the early 1970s. Mind you, in the early
decades I had several instances of throwing everything away and
starting from scratch. But the identities of the languages and their
uses have been the same.
In Sureatua I do have a handful of words left from that early phase,
but these will probably disappear if I find proper replacements for
them during my further research into NE Caucasian. In Urianian I have
of course all the names I invented, and the semantical and
morphological structures they impose upon the language.
LEF
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: Average life of a conlang
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:15 am ((PDT))
Hallo!
My longest-running conlang project so far is Old Albic, which
started seven years ago (or eight years, if one also counts its
predecessor Nur-ellen, but in 2001, I decided to start over from
scratch and sever the link to Sindarin of which Nur-ellen was
a descendant, and the nature of the language's speakers also
changed fundamentally). Germanech is indeed a few months older
(though not older than Nur-ellen, but I started it before I
decided to junk Nur-ellen), but has effectively been lying
abandoned for several years now, though I haven't given it up
yet and may pick it up again some day.
My first real conlangs (i.e., more than a list of fancy words)
I made 20-something years ago for a cheesy space opera framework
featuring starfaring Atlanteans, and lived for about a year or so,
before I decided that that universe was way too corny to follow
through, and abandoned it together with the languages. They were
modelled much after German and Latin, grammar-wise.
On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:38:22 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
> [...] But what
> about the Briefscript Project? It began about 1958 and is still not
> finished!
50 years, and still working on it?! That's indeed a long-running
project. I wasn't even aroud when you started it. See that you
finish it soon, otherwise it may be at your grandchildren to
complete it :)
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: Average life of a conlang
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:47 am ((PDT))
Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
[snip]
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:38:22 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
>
>> [...] But what
>> about the Briefscript Project? It began about 1958 and is still not
>> finished!
>
> 50 years, and still working on it?! That's indeed a long-running
> project. I wasn't even aroud when you started it. See that you
> finish it soon, otherwise it may be at your grandchildren to
> complete it :)
I think not. If I don't finish it, then either it will for ever remain
unfinished or else some conlanger will discover it after I've quit this
mortal coil and s/he will complete it.
Help? Could I then suffer the same fate as Jespersen? Memories of the
Novial-wars come back when competing camps (at least 4 IIRC) were
flaming each other, and at least one them claiming to know the mind of
Jespersen himself! (It was during this internecine flaming I decided it
was time to quit Auxland).
Nah - I had better get the thing finished soon :)
As it happens, I've had two or three emails sent me privately about
Piashi (the final incarnation of the Briefscript project). These have
prompted me to turn back to the project again - and I have been working
on it fairly seriously again in the past week.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: Average life of a conlang
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 1:15 pm ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:46:59 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo!
> >
> [snip]
> > On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:38:22 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
> >
> >> [...] But what
> >> about the Briefscript Project? It began about 1958 and is still not
> >> finished!
> >
> > 50 years, and still working on it?! That's indeed a long-running
> > project. I wasn't even aroud when you started it. See that you
> > finish it soon, otherwise it may be at your grandchildren to
> > complete it :)
>
> I think not. If I don't finish it, then either it will for ever remain
> unfinished or else some conlanger will discover it after I've quit this
> mortal coil and s/he will complete it.
Perhaps.
> Help? Could I then suffer the same fate as Jespersen? Memories of the
> Novial-wars come back when competing camps (at least 4 IIRC) were
> flaming each other, and at least one them claiming to know the mind of
> Jespersen himself! (It was during this internecine flaming I decided it
> was time to quit Auxland).
I sincerely hope that this sort of thing won't befoul you and
your language. Novial is not the only case of that. Look at
places like TolkLang or Elfling, and you see the same. Quibbles
about reconstructions of unattested Quenya and Sindarin words
all the time, with many scholars taking the position that such
reconstructions are overall illegitimate. Avoiding this alone
is a good motivation to develop a conlang to a fair degree of
completion before you pass away.
> Nah - I had better get the thing finished soon :)
>
> As it happens, I've had two or three emails sent me privately about
> Piashi (the final incarnation of the Briefscript project). These have
> prompted me to turn back to the project again - and I have been working
> on it fairly seriously again in the past week.
Good to hear that you make progress with it.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: Jaĩbi update and request for comments
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:31 am ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:04:39 +0100, Christopher Bates wrote:
> Hi all,
> It's been a while since I posted the first part of my Jaĩbi
> grammar here, so I thought I would give an update (and ask for
> comments). As usual, I have included at the end of each chapter details
> of natural language examples of similar phenomena, both to justify to
> myself that Jaĩbi is broadly realistic and for general interest. The
> full grammar now runs to over 70 pages and includes draft chapters on:
>
> [links to grammar snup]
>
> Any comments would be appreciated, about either the way information is
> presented or about the language itself.
Nice work, very detailed. The language has many "exotic" features
which make my own Old Albic look like an euroclone in comparison :)
I noticed that your morphosyntax is sensitive of degrees of volition,
though it works in a way not very similar to Old Albic.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: Jaĩbi update and request for comment s
Posted by: "Christopher Bates" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:17 am ((PDT))
> Nice work, very detailed.
Thanks, although I know there's a lot it doesn't cover. My goal is to
write a draft grammar that covers the major points, then go back and
revise / fill in the gaps as necessary after I've attempted to write
some texts of reasonable length in Jaĩbi. It's been a few months since I
started grammar writing though, so it may take me the rest of the year
to get to the stage where I feel comfortable attempting that.
> The language has many "exotic" features
> which make my own Old Albic look like an euroclone in comparison :)
>
Jaĩbi is actually more IE-like, I think, than the last conlanging
project I spent quite a bit of time on (Ngwaalq). But I guess it is a
bit out there in some ways, I have a habit of going for typologically
unusual features / combinations, as long as I think they are vaguely
plausible. I think the area where I tend to suck, though, is at fusional
morphology - maybe when I'm happy with Jaĩbi I will use it to create a
daughter language which has been run through enough changes to have a
more fusional profile, rather than isolating/agglutinating. If I
remember correctly, that was something I always used to like about Old
Albic - it had a nice balance when it came to plain agglutination vs
other morphological processes.
> I noticed that your morphosyntax is sensitive of degrees of volition,
> though it works in a way not very similar to Old Albic.
>
>
Yes, the voice system is very sensitive to volition, and the selection
of prepositions also depends on it. In terms of similarity to Old Albic,
there seems to be some similarity between the choice of prepositions in
Jaĩbi and the choice of case in Old Albic, but the verbal systems do
seem to differ more. There seem to be semantic differences (in Jaĩbi,
transitivity does not guarantee the use of a voice indicating volition,
whereas in Old Albic it seems that all transitive verbs are active), and
differences in morphological realisation (in Old Albic the distinction
seems to be primarily marked by choice of agreement marker, whereas in
Jaĩbi it is marked by choice of a fused voice/mood marker). I also note
that you have a separate middle voice, whereas in Jaĩbi the middle has
been integrated into a three term system, which essentially consists of:
Middle - controlled, actor 'version'
Active - controlled, non-actor 'version'
Passive - uncontrolled
Presumably the middle marker is compatible with both active and stative
verbs in Old Albic?
I find it interesting that Old Albic also has an animacy distinction,
although it seems to be grammaticalised (ie a grammatical gender system
rather than a purely semantic classification). Jaĩbi has semantic
classification in various areas based on animacy, and I view the
sensitivity to volition partly as an extension of the semantic
classification elsewhere into animate vs inanimate. Animacy of referents
has an effect on selection of possessive markers, demonstratives,
prepositions, and a number of other morphemes.
So there are some interesting similarities with Old Albic, but also
differences. They are both languages which are sensitive to control and
animacy in the areas of verbal morphology and nominal role marking, but
the exact distinctions made are not the same.
Chris.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Re: Language Sketch: Gogido
Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:38 am ((PDT))
On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:59:38 -0400, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Logan Kearsley
>><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[snip]
>> There's no grammatical number, gender, or case, and tense is optional
>> (marked with tense/aspect particles).
>What about valency, evidentiality and mood? I seem to recall from
>a summary someone (Tom Chappell?) posted a while ago of a
>cross-linguistic study of verb inflection and derivation that valency
>is marked on verbs in more language than any other category,
>and mood is marked in more languages than tense or aspect.
>Can't remember where evidentiality/validationality stand in
>the ranking.
>[snip]
You should probably read all of
Item #129431 (19 Dec 2005 12:04) - Re: Transitivity marking on verbs.
< http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?
A2=ind0512C&L=CONLANG&P=R5985&D=1&H=0&O=T&T=1 >
I'm not going to quote the whole thing, though I think almost all of it is
relevant to this question.
But here's the _most_ relevant part:
[quote]
According to Thomas E. Payne's "Describing Morphology", and also to Joan L.
Bybee's "Morphology: A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form"
(Typological Studies in Language #9; John Benjamins Publishing Company,
P241.B9 1985), "valence" is the commonest morphology on verbs. 84% of
languages in Bybee's 50-language, one-language-per-"phylum" sample had
valence derivation, and 6% had valence inflection. (Consult her book for
the difference between derivation and inflection, as she used those terms
in her book.)
She considered valence, voice, aspect (not including "perfect"*
or "retrospective"), tense (including "perfect"* or "retrospective"), mood
(including evidentials), number agreement with any one or more argument(s),
person agreement with any one or more argument(s), and gender agreement
with any one or more argument(s). (Bybee used a somewhat restricted
definition of "mood", yet it was still the semantically-broadest of all of
these categories. Consult her book for the definition of "mood" she used
in it.)
*(BTW I would have included "perfect" as a mood, rather than a tense; but
at any rate Bybee agrees with me that it is not an aspect.)
In order by fraction of sampled languages which marked them either by
inflection or derivation, either an affix or a stem-change, the categories
were;
90% valence
74% aspect
68% mood
66% number
56% voice (tied with person)
56% person (tied with voice)
50% tense
28% person of a second participant (e.g. object)
16% gender
In order by fraction of sampled languages which marked them by inflection,
the categories were;
68% mood
56% person
54% number
52% aspect
48% tense
28% person of a second participant (e.g. object)
26% voice
16% gender
6% valence
This next table doesn't come from Bybee; I got these values by subtracting
the values in the table above. In order by fraction of sampled languages
which marked them by derivation only (not by inflection), the categories
were;
84% valence
30% voice
22% aspect
12% number
2% tense
0% mood
0% person
0% person of a second participant (e.g. object)
0% gender
Bybee says the most frequent type of valence morpheme was causatives.
If you are going to mark valence on _every_ verb, then, in your conlang,
valence will be an _inflectional_, rather than a _derivational_, category,
as far as Bybee's use of those terms would go. (The biggest difference
between "derivation" and "inflection" is that an "inflectional" feature is
obligatory and productive -- there is a way to mark every value of that
feature on any new word in the open class (verbs, in this case) --
while "derivation" is optional and not completely productive -- not every
word in the class (in this case, verbs) has to be marked for the feature,
and some values of the feature cannot be marked on some words in the
class.) As you can see from above, Bybee found that, while valence-marking
is "nearly universal", _inflection_ for valence is rather rare.
[/quote]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also relevant:
Item #128737 (21 Nov 2005 13:16) - Re: Test for middle voice?
< http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?
A2=ind0511C&L=CONLANG&P=R8159&D=1&H=0&O=T&T=1 >
says:
[quote]
Thomas E. Payne in "Describing Morphosyntax"(1997) says Joan Bybee
in "Morphology"(1985) says that valence-adjusting and voice are the most
common morphology marked on verbs. 84% of languages have derivations
marking valency or voice, and another 6% have inflections marking valency or
voice, so 90% of languages mark their verbs with valency or voice somehow.
Aspect is second at 74%, and mood, mode, and modality is third at 68%. (I
have not had a chance to read Bybee's work yet, so I do not know whether
she includes retrospective ("perfect") and prospective as aspects, which is
traditional, or as moods or modes or modalities, which I believe is correct;
nor
whether she includes evidentials and miratives and mediatives among the
moods and modes and modalities. That could reverse the order of Aspect and
Mood, or maybe not.) Tense is only seventh, at 50%. However AMT (usually
written TAM) is usually inflectional rather than derivational, while voice and
valency are usually derivational rather than inflectional, so TAM dominate
inflection of verbs, even though voice and valency dominate morphology of
verbs overall.
[/quote]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two more posts which might be not-too-tangentially relevant (or, at least,
interesting);
Item #129130 (6 Dec 2005 22:17) - Re: isolating is equivalent to inflected
< http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?
A2=ind0512A&L=CONLANG&P=R10151&D=1&H=0&O=T&T=1 >
says:
[quote]
In "my" book (the one my public library borrowed from some other
library) these examples are on page 55. They are in subsection 1.2 in
Section 1, "The Basic-Derived Relation", of Chapter 3, "The
Organization of Paradigms", in Part I, "Morphology and Morpho-
Phonemics".
She says these examples come from "Bybee and Brewer 1980", which would
be Lingua 52.271-312, "Explanation in Morphophonemics: Changes in
Provencal and Spanish Preterite Forms".
*From Joan L. Bybee's "Morphology", (which is referred to by Thomas E.
Payne's "Describing Morphosyntax")
(Typological Studies in Language 9
Joan L. Bybee (SUNY at Buffalo)
Morphology
A Study of the Relation Between Meaning and Form
John Benjamins Publishing Company
P241.B9 1985 (Dewey number 415)
ISSN 0167-7373 v.9
ISBN 0-915027-38-0)
[/quote]
Item #129158 (7 Dec 2005 20:00) - Re: What's a good isolating language to
look at
< http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?
A2=ind0512A&L=CONLANG&P=R12019&D=1&H=0&O=T&T=1 >
says:
[quote]
Joan L. Bybee answered the question Jo�o Ricardo de Mendon�a asks of
Ray A. Brown "No" in her "Morphology" book (1985). (Incidentally,
she's at the University of New Mexico now; and she is the same author
as the Joan B. Hooper who published from around 1972 (or before) to
around 1981 (or after), tho' she apparently started using Joan L.
Bybee (again?) in 1980 or before.)
Bybee quotes Sapir as having also decided that there weren't any
purely isolating, nor purely polysynthetic, nor purely agglutinating,
nor purely fusing languages, IIRC; and quotes counts collected by
Thorndike supporting such a conclusion.
Bybee makes her own point, that, the derivational morphology of a
language is likely to be more towards the fusing (as opposed to the
agglutinating) end than the inflectional morphology of the same
language. (Of course, she also makes the point -- and I know she was
not the first author I read to make it -- that, in any given
language, the dividing line between "derivation" and "inflection"
is "fuzzy".) She backs it up with several examples; Slavic aspectual
affixes that have more semantic content than just aspect; patient-
number-agreement affixes in various (mostly ergative) languages that
have more semantic content than just grammatical number of patients;
etc.
[/quote]
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Re: YAEPT after all: English diphthongs
Posted by: "Tristan McLeay" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 11:27 am ((PDT))
On 27/08/08 02:44:34, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 11:47 AM, Peter Collier
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > But to return to the question in point, the monophthong >
> diphthong
> change is down to the GVS, pure and simple, no?
>
> Yes, that's what I thought. But Tristan's reply . . . of course,
> he's
> not reading this anymore at this point . . . listed PRICE as one of
> the vowels that was traditionally diphthong. At least, in "EMnE",
> whatever that means.
Apparently my attempt to go nomail failed to work so I've skimmed this
thread at least. Not thoroughly reading it as internet time is limited,
but ... EMnE = Early Modern English, i.e. after the Great Vowel Shift.
So ME (i.e. Middle English) i: -> EMnE @i -> MnE ai or Ai (amongst
others).
Now though I really do mean to go nomail. Hopefully I get it right this
time.
--
Tristan.
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. Re: Jaĩbi update and request for comment s
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Aug 28, 2008 2:14 pm ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:17:15 +0100, Christopher Bates wrote:
> [...] If I
> remember correctly, that was something I always used to like about Old
> Albic - it had a nice balance when it came to plain agglutination vs
> other morphological processes.
Thank you!
> > I noticed that your morphosyntax is sensitive of degrees of volition,
> > though it works in a way not very similar to Old Albic.
> >
> >
> Yes, the voice system is very sensitive to volition, and the selection
> of prepositions also depends on it. In terms of similarity to Old Albic,
> there seems to be some similarity between the choice of prepositions in
> Jaĩbi and the choice of case in Old Albic, but the verbal systems do
> seem to differ more.
Indeed.
> There seem to be semantic differences (in Jaĩbi,
> transitivity does not guarantee the use of a voice indicating volition,
> whereas in Old Albic it seems that all transitive verbs are active),
Yes, in Old Albic all transitive verbs are active.
> and
> differences in morphological realisation (in Old Albic the distinction
> seems to be primarily marked by choice of agreement marker, whereas in
> Jaĩbi it is marked by choice of a fused voice/mood marker). I also note
> that you have a separate middle voice, whereas in Jaĩbi the middle has
> been integrated into a three term system, which essentially consists of:
>
> Middle - controlled, actor 'version'
> Active - controlled, non-actor 'version'
> Passive - uncontrolled
>
> Presumably the middle marker is compatible with both active and stative
> verbs in Old Albic?
No, only with active verbs.
> I find it interesting that Old Albic also has an animacy distinction,
> although it seems to be grammaticalised (ie a grammatical gender system
> rather than a purely semantic classification).
The majority of nouns in Old Albic are in the class expected
from their semantics, with a small number of semantically
inanimate nouns in the animate class. Such irregularities
- often motivated by mythology - seem to be typical of
animate/inanimate systems in natlangs, BTW.
> Jaĩbi has semantic
> classification in various areas based on animacy, and I view the
> sensitivity to volition partly as an extension of the semantic
> classification elsewhere into animate vs inanimate. Animacy of referents
> has an effect on selection of possessive markers, demonstratives,
> prepositions, and a number of other morphemes.
>
> So there are some interesting similarities with Old Albic, but also
> differences. They are both languages which are sensitive to control and
> animacy in the areas of verbal morphology and nominal role marking, but
> the exact distinctions made are not the same.
Yes.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (1)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
