There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Mark J. Reed
1b. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Krista Casada
1c. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Carl Banks
2a. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2b. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
From: Lars Mathiesen
2c. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
2d. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
From: Logan Kearsley
2e. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
Messages
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1a. [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:39 am ((PDT))
For school today my 4-year-old had to bring in a picture of something
starting with the letter O. Having learned that "O says [a]" ([a]
being the sound of CLOTH in our 'lect), he immediately thought of
"octopus". But that seems to be the standard O word in alphabet books
these days, so my wife thought that too many kids were liable to bring
one of those in. So we set about thinking of other things that start
with O.
I suggested "owl", but he sounded it out and informed me that "owl"
starts with [&] and therefore would be spelled with the letter "A"! I
had to agree that [&] is indeed the first component of our MOUTH
diphthong, but I pointed out that we have had discussions before about
how spelling doesn't always work the way you think it should. He
remained skeptical.
We compromised on "orange". He was still iffy - we're in the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] camp rather than, say, the [EMAIL PROTECTED] camp, and NORTH
is
not CLOTH, but it was closer than that crazy "owl" idea.
I did try to think of other words besides "octopus" that are spelled
with O and start with the CLOTH sound, but of course under the
pressure of trying to get ready to go to school, couldn't think of
any. Naturally, after I dropped him off I had ocelots and oxen
chasing ostriches and otters through my head...
Anyway, I'm proud of my boy's phonetic analysis, if not his spelling
ability. I'll make a linguist of him yet. :)
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (3)
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1b. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Krista Casada" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 7:11 am ((PDT))
In kindergarten I was deeply offended to find that my teacher considered the
vowel sound in "can" to be different from that in "pet"; they weren't for ME!
So I have the utmost sympathy for your son's skepticism.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thursday, September 18, 2008 8:39 am
Subject: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> For school today my 4-year-old had to bring in a picture of something
> starting with the letter O. Having learned that "O says [a]" ([a]
> being the sound of CLOTH in our 'lect), he immediately thought of
> "octopus". But that seems to be the standard O word in alphabet books
> these days, so my wife thought that too many kids were liable to bring
> one of those in. So we set about thinking of other things that start
> with O.
>
> I suggested "owl", but he sounded it out and informed me that "owl"
> starts with [&] and therefore would be spelled with the letter
> "A"! I
> had to agree that [&] is indeed the first component of our MOUTH
> diphthong, but I pointed out that we have had discussions before about
> how spelling doesn't always work the way you think it should. He
> remained skeptical.
>
> We compromised on "orange". He was still iffy - we're in the
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] camp rather than, say, the [EMAIL PROTECTED] camp, and
> NORTH is
> not CLOTH, but it was closer than that crazy "owl" idea.
>
> I did try to think of other words besides "octopus" that are spelled
> with O and start with the CLOTH sound, but of course under the
> pressure of trying to get ready to go to school, couldn't think of
> any. Naturally, after I dropped him off I had ocelots and oxen
> chasing ostriches and otters through my head...
>
> Anyway, I'm proud of my boy's phonetic analysis, if not his spelling
> ability. I'll make a linguist of him yet. :)
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
Messages in this topic (3)
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1c. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Carl Banks" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 9:12 pm ((PDT))
Krista Casada wrote:
> In kindergarten I was deeply offended to find that my teacher
> considered the vowel sound in "can" to be different from that
> in "pet"; they weren't for ME! So I have the utmost sympathy
> for your son's skepticism.
Those poor grade school teachers, getting textbooks that reflect the
dialect in New York City (or wherever) and having to answer questions
from all kinds of curious kids over what the difference between those
two sounds is. Then they lose their kids' respect when they try to
explain that there is a difference between [a] and [o], when all us kids
could see there isn't a lick of difference. To us it was just another
example of the stupid teachers' books (parse that either way) inventing
lies again, like "Mercury is the hottest planet", and "The continents
will drift apart by several hundred miles within 100 years".
Carl Banks
Messages in this topic (3)
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2a. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:55 am ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:21:23 +0000, Jake B wrote:
> I'd say case, personally.
I'd say so, too.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (7)
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2b. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
Posted by: "Lars Mathiesen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 12:17 pm ((PDT))
2008/9/18 Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Another lesser used case (dy/daj) is one that I haven't had a name for, but
> I'm thinking of "ablative". Typically, it's used for non-volitional agents,
> or the agent of a passive verb, which according to Wikipedia are possible
> uses of the ablative case in Latin, and I've also considered using this case
> to represent the "source" of an action (one translation of English "from" or
> "out of").
The Latin ablative is a merger of IE instrumental, locative and
ablative. It seems to me that your uses all fit the instrumental sense
of the Latin ablative, so that would be a more informative label.
> The last case (u/aj) is one that I've been calling "oblique", as it
> typically is not associated with a verb; its most typical use is as the
> object of a locative noun phrase.
>
> vë lak u livi zeg
> LOC.SG over OBL.SG lazy dog
> over the lazy dog
I'd be tempted to call it genetive, unless you already have one that
you use for possessors. (Etymologically, of course, 'genetive' has to
do with origin or source, not possession).
--
Lars
Messages in this topic (7)
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2c. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:13 pm ((PDT))
Lars Mathiesen wrote:
> 2008/9/18 Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>> Another lesser used case (dy/daj) is one that I haven't had a name for, but
>> I'm thinking of "ablative". Typically, it's used for non-volitional agents,
>> or the agent of a passive verb, which according to Wikipedia are possible
>> uses of the ablative case in Latin, and I've also considered using this case
>> to represent the "source" of an action (one translation of English "from" or
>> "out of").
>
> The Latin ablative is a merger of IE instrumental, locative and
> ablative. It seems to me that your uses all fit the instrumental sense
> of the Latin ablative, so that would be a more informative label.
Hmm... What I'd normally consider "instrumental" (by means of ...) is
translated with the preposition "vjaki". I note though, that wherever I
use "vjaki" it isn't followed by a case/number particle (unless "taj"
could be considered as such).
Other instances in the texts where I've used "prepositions" are also not
followed by a case/number particle, e.g.
së sera "with people"
myn metti fal "into tiny pieces"
za tadru mikvidu "of many wells"
kejla diizu "after a while"
za kavi riiva "from the black sky"
ba tadru numi "like many tears"
za zem xostelil "for six weeks"
So some of what I've been calling "cases" might just be prepositions.
The "vocative case" is a good example. I was thinking that prepositions
in Tirelat governed specific cases as they do in Minza, but the newly
created preposition "ki" is the only example I can find. The main
differences with the "case/number particles" are that they encode number
(which from these examples is absent in prepositions like "za"), and
that most of them relate to specific arguments of verbs.
The "locative case" (vë / vaj) apparently can also be attached to pretty
much any verb, so it's really more like a preposition.
vaj room saj ñaj kezyl vy -byna my fala -ri
LOC.PL mountain NOM.PL all plant 3p.NOM-lose ACC.SG sprout-EVENT
"on the mountains, all the plants failing to sprout"
>> The last case (u/aj) is one that I've been calling "oblique", as it
>> typically is not associated with a verb; its most typical use is as the
>> object of a locative noun phrase.
>>
>> vë lak u livi zeg
>> LOC.SG over OBL.SG lazy dog
>> over the lazy dog
>
> I'd be tempted to call it genetive, unless you already have one that
> you use for possessors. (Etymologically, of course, 'genetive' has to
> do with origin or source, not possession).
Possession is marked with a possessive prefix, e.g.
vë rugi u ki´rpa "next to the hedgehog" vs.
vë ki´rpa jerugi "at the hedgehog's side"
"Genitive" is about as good a name as any for the "u" case, though.
Messages in this topic (7)
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2d. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:48 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 11:13 PM, Herman Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[...]
> So some of what I've been calling "cases" might just be prepositions. The
> "vocative case" is a good example. I was thinking that prepositions in
> Tire³at governed specific cases as they do in Minza, but the newly created
> preposition "ki" is the only example I can find. The main differences with
> the "case/number particles" are that they encode number (which from these
> examples is absent in prepositions like "za"), and that most of them relate
> to specific arguments of verbs.
I've got something similar going on in Gogido. I started out with the
idea of theta-particles, which are sort of like case markers in that
they can attach to any noun and they tell how that noun functions as
an argument to the verb, and prepositions. But, since there are lots
of places where the semantics of verb-arguments vs. noun-modifiers
overlap, like locatives. One could separate things by having one class
of words (theta-particles) that can only be used for
verb-relationships (basically, adverbial prepositions), and another
class of words (prepositions) that can only be used for
noun-relationships (adjectival prepositions), but that seems inelegant
since Gogido doesn't distinguish adjectives and adverbs otherwise, and
it makes more sense to use just one word for the same relation whether
it's supposed to mark a verb argument or a noun modifier
My current analysis just says that everything is a preposition, and
pragmatics tells you that there are a few of them that simply don't
make any sense when applied the wrong way. But I do not like this
solution very much, because it leads to the "I ate the fruit on the
table" problem.
-l.
Messages in this topic (7)
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2e. Re: Noun cases in Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 18, 2008 9:22 pm ((PDT))
Logan Kearsley wrote:
> I've got something similar going on in Gogido. I started out with the
> idea of theta-particles, which are sort of like case markers in that
> they can attach to any noun and they tell how that noun functions as
> an argument to the verb, and prepositions. But, since there are lots
> of places where the semantics of verb-arguments vs. noun-modifiers
> overlap, like locatives. One could separate things by having one class
> of words (theta-particles) that can only be used for
> verb-relationships (basically, adverbial prepositions), and another
> class of words (prepositions) that can only be used for
> noun-relationships (adjectival prepositions), but that seems inelegant
> since Gogido doesn't distinguish adjectives and adverbs otherwise, and
> it makes more sense to use just one word for the same relation whether
> it's supposed to mark a verb argument or a noun modifier
The "adverbial-preposition" vs. "adjectival-preposition" could be a good
idea for Tirelat, though. I'll have to consider that. What I've been
calling "cases", with the exception of the "oblique / genitive", are all
adverbial. I do have instances of "za" (of, from) used both adverbially
and adjectivally, on the other hand; probably if I examined more texts I
might find other prepositions used adjectivally.
Messages in this topic (7)
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