There are 6 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: OT: Funny Website about Latin
From: David McCann
1b. Re: OT: Funny Website about Latin
From: Lee
2a. Re: Interrogative Cases
From: maikxlx
3a. Re: Derivational productivity (longish) (was: Translation excercise:
From: BPJ
3b. Re: Derivational productivity (longish) (was: Translation excercise:
From: Lars Finsen
4a. Re: Elision (was: [CONLANG] Translation excercise: Unabsteigbarkeit
From: BPJ
Messages
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1a. Re: OT: Funny Website about Latin
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 6, 2010 8:35 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 20:37 -0400, Vincent Pistelli wrote:
> http://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/classics/latin/learnlat.htm
> The funniest thing is that it is a .edu website.
It's odd. The Latin course is signed by J. B. Calvert, but the domain
mysite.du.edu/~etuttle belongs to Prof. Elizabeth Tuttle of Denver
University, an engineer, and it has been dormant since 2001. Is the
ingenious Mr Calvert a hacker as well as a "linguist"?
Messages in this topic (8)
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1b. Re: OT: Funny Website about Latin
Posted by: "Lee" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 6, 2010 9:16 am ((PDT))
--- On Fri, 8/6/10, David McCann <[email protected]> wrote:
From: David McCann <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: OT: Funny Website about Latin
To: [email protected]
Date: Friday, August 6, 2010, 10:31 AM
On Thu, 2010-08-05 at 20:37 -0400, Vincent Pistelli wrote:
> http://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/classics/latin/learnlat.htm
> The funniest thing is that it is a .edu website.
It's odd. The Latin course is signed by J. B. Calvert, but the domain
mysite.du.edu/~etuttle belongs to Prof. Elizabeth Tuttle of Denver
University, an engineer, and it has been dormant since 2001. Is the
ingenious Mr Calvert a hacker as well as a "linguist"?
- - - -
I don't think he's a hacker.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Return to Classics Index link.
This brings you to another Tuttle page. Scroll to the bottom of the page and
click the Return to Home Page link. Now you will find yourself on a Calvert
page.
Maybe there is/was a quota on the amount of server space each faculty was
allowed, Dr. Calvert needed more and Dr. Tuttle had more than enough to spare
and shared hers.
Lee
Messages in this topic (8)
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2a. Re: Interrogative Cases
Posted by: "maikxlx" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 6, 2010 10:44 pm ((PDT))
Hello,
Since case does represent a grammatical role in relation to the verb or
another noun phrase, an "interrogative case", if such a thing could
exist, would arguably mean "which grammatical role?". Lojban has something
like this in it's "fi'a" particle.
For example:
do = "you"
do dunda = "you give"
do dunda le rozgu = "you give the rose"
dunda le rozgu do = "[something/someone] gives the rose to-you"
= "the rose is given to you"
_fi'a_ do dunda le rozgu = "_which-role_ you give the rose"
= "do you give the rose or are you given the rose?"
It's weird, but there if you need it. I doubt many other natlangs or
conlangs have anything like it.
-Mike
On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 3:46 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hallo!
>
>
> On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:00:34 +1000, Ben Scerri wrote:
>
> What would I call said case?
>>
>
> It's not a case, I think. I don't know what to call it other than
> just "interrogative particle", but not "case". A case expresses
> the grammatical role of a noun phrase in relation to the verb or
> another noun phrase. That has nothing to do with interrogativity.
>
> Also, it has not really become clear to me what you are going to
> mark with what, and whether different forms are used. Please be
> more precise.
>
> --
> ...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
> http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
>
Messages in this topic (14)
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3a. Re: Derivational productivity (longish) (was: Translation excercise:
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 7, 2010 2:27 am ((PDT))
2010-08-04 19:10, Jim Henry skrev:
> Well, some languages have more productive derivational affixes than
> others, and it may be that among languages with roughly equally
> productive derivational morphologies, some are spoken by cultures that
> encourage individual speakers to coin new words, others by cultures
> that discourage this practice.
>
Greek and Latin are pertinent examples here: in
Greek both compounding and derivation were very
productive while in Latin compounding was
essentially improductive[^1] and derivation was
very limited, in its means if not in its
applications (i.e. there weren't many affixes
available, but those they had were rather freely
used). Instead they used noun + adjective and noun
+ genitive phrases. This was even in spite of the
fact that the two languages and the two cultures
were so similar, and the cultures became even more
similar due to the prestige of Hellenistic
culture. As it happens there was even a clear
difference between written Latin and spoken/Vulgar
Latin: derivation was significantly more
productive or at least more varied (using a larger
inventory of affixes) in the latter, and even
compounding seems to have been more productive, or
at least became so after inflexional endings were
lost. (Perhaps due to Germanic L2 speakers?)
Interestingly late Latin made up for its
neologistic deficiency by extensive borrowing from
Greek, including forming new Graecisms not (yet)
found in Greek. As is well known something similar
happens with neo-anglicisms (Svengelska,
Franglais) in modern languages, and happened with
neo-Sinicisms in medieval Korea, Japan and
Vietnam. I'm sure the Persians coined neo-arabisms
and Turks and Indic Muslims coined neo-persianisms too.
Classical Sanskrit for sure mostly is one big
neologism coined by middle IndoAryan and Dravidian
speakers, full of multi-tiered compounds. (It
became virtually polysynthetic in an effort to
avoid agreement endings and finite verbs; a
tendency which perhaps was partly due to Dravidian
influence.)
When I was young I found it strange that Latin
compounding became improductive and even that it
didn't again become productive under Greek
influence. In a way I still do, since it seems
that the grammar (in the widest sense) of one
language can be influenced by that of another;
for example it seems that backformation of nouns
from verbs and adjectives by removing suffixes
and using the root/stem as a noun has become
productive in Swedish under English influence. In
English the process probably arose 'organically'
due to the fact that most basic vocabulary words
of all three classes are suffixless and
backformation thus is a zero-derivation process,
unlike Swedish where backformation always[^2]
involves stripping a stem though it would seem
that the pattern has become more productive in
Swedish than it is in English, or is it just that
formations like _skriv_ instead of
_skrivning/skriveri_ <- _skriva_ and _tänk_
instead of _tänkande_ <- _tänka_ are more
noticeable to this linguistically aware Swedish
L1 speaker than similar zero-derived forms in
English are to the same person as an L2
reader/writer? What about German, Dutch,
Norwegian and other related languages -- or
indeed more remotely related and/or unrelated
languages? Has backformation become more
productive in them too in recent decades? Perhaps
it's more a symptom of the hastiness of our times
than English influence? (Don't get me wrong: I
quite like backformations! :-)
[^1]: According to TB's spellchecker I just made
up the word _improductive_ -- it wants this
perfectly clear (neo?)latinism replaced by
_unproductive_! :-)
[^2]: or normally; perhaps zero-derivation of
nouns from suffixless adjectives does occur,
although it would rather seem to me that instead
the suffix _-het_ '-ness' has become over-
productive even where there are perfectly
cromulent nouns which are underived or derived by
other -- often no longer productive -- means. Or
perhaps I spend too much time with (pre)teens and
L2 speakers, seeing that my family is largely made
up of such...
/BP 8^)>
--
bpj n...@m 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 (15)
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3b. Re: Derivational productivity (longish) (was: Translation excercise:
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 7, 2010 2:56 am ((PDT))
Den 7. aug. 2010 kl. 11.24 skreiv BPJ:
> for example it seems that backformation of nouns
> from verbs and adjectives by removing suffixes
> and using the root/stem as a noun has become
> productive in Swedish under English influence. In
> English the process probably arose 'organically'
> due to the fact that most basic vocabulary words
> of all three classes are suffixless and
> backformation thus is a zero-derivation process,
> unlike Swedish where backformation always[^2]
> involves stripping a stem though it would seem
> that the pattern has become more productive in
> Swedish than it is in English, or is it just that
> formations like _skriv_ instead of
> _skrivning/skriveri_ <- _skriva_ and _tänk_
> instead of _tänkande_ <- _tänka_ are more
> noticeable to this linguistically aware Swedish
> L1 speaker than similar zero-derived forms in
> English are to the same person as an L2
> reader/writer? What about German, Dutch,
> Norwegian and other related languages -- or
> indeed more remotely related and/or unrelated
> languages? Has backformation become more
> productive in them too in recent decades? Perhaps
> it's more a symptom of the hastiness of our times
> than English influence?
I don't know. At least in Norwegian, the noun 'skriv' is quite old,
and we have derivations like 'rundskriv'. Other similar nouns like
'kjør', 'vent' are newer, at least new enough to be candidates for
English influence.
LEF
Messages in this topic (15)
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4a. Re: Elision (was: [CONLANG] Translation excercise: Unabsteigbarkeit
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 7, 2010 4:08 am ((PDT))
2010-08-05 21:26, Toms Deimonds Barvidis skrev:
> ''intuilnaj'dha'' (the ' stands for an elided repeated vowel,
> as the word should've been ''-tuilajadha'')
Why does the elision happen? I guess one or more
of the following:
1) Because there are two/three identical
vowels in a row?
2) Because [aj] was a virtual diphthong and the
following vowel was also /a/?
3) Because the word had very many syllables?
4) Because there were (too) many unstressed
syllables (if the stress was on the first or
second syllable)?
5) The virtual/secondary diphthong /aj/ arose thru
the influence of the presence of the diphthong
/ui/ in the preceding syllable.
I guess one of the two first, given that you said
"elided repeated vowel".
Assuming that the diphthong /ai/ exists in
the language, would /ajð/ differ phonetically
from /aið/?
BTW I guess that you use doubled single apostrophe
with some special significance? What would that
be? I'm asking out of sheer curiosity. When
writing LaTeX I almost consistently mistype '' for
" because an English opening double quote is `` in
LaTeX, and need to do a s/''/"/g from time to
time. I've even considered a markup where ``foo''
and "foo" differ semantically and ``foo" would be
an error. That would seem cleaner and more
consistent to me.
/BP 8^)>
--
bpj n...@m 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 (15)
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