There are 4 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Name That Glyph Round Two « Pseudoglyphs
From: A. Mendes
2.1. Re: Grammatical gender
From: R A Brown
3a. Re: No present tense?
From: Larry Sulky
4.1. OT crackpots (was: Grammatical gender)
From: R A Brown
Messages
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1a. Re: Name That Glyph Round Two « Pseudoglyphs
Posted by: "A. Mendes" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 13, 2011 2:27 am ((PST))
Thanks Galen you lifesaver
On Dec 13, 2011 5:06 PM, "Galen Buttitta" <
[email protected]> wrote:
> The link as given produces an error. The link should read thus:
> http://pseudoglyphs.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/name-that-glyph-round-two/
>
> End of line.
>
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:18 PM, Brian <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > C3 - to clean (broom)
> > D4 - to wish, desire, want (wishbone)
> > H2 - to taste (tongue sticking out)
> > J4 - to be, exist (that's just what I thought of)
> > ------Original Message------
> > From: A. Mendes
> > Sender: Conlang
> > To: Conlang
> > ReplyTo: Conlang
> > Subject: Name That Glyph Round Two « Pseudoglyphs
> > Sent: Dec 12, 2011 19:58
> >
> > http://pseudoglyphs.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/name-that-glyph-round-two/
> >
> > Greetings All,
> >
> > The results from last week are in and the new glyph list is up. Thank you
> > to everyone who contributed; your participation was dearly appriciated.
> >
> > Please submit your suggestions for round two.
> >
> > Cheer,
> >
> > Andrew
> >
>
>
>
> --
> S A T O R
> A R E P O
> T E N E T
> O P E R A
> R O T A S
>
Messages in this topic (4)
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2.1. Re: Grammatical gender
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 13, 2011 3:45 am ((PST))
On 12/12/2011 21:31, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Monday 12 December 2011 16:34:31 R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> [...................]. Yes, I think personification is
>> too simplistic an explanation for the gender systems
>> found in IE, Semitic and IIRC other Afro-Asiatic
>> languages. I don't know what the current thinking is
>> on this. I'm sure some of our Nostratic brethren have
>> theories :)
>
> What I have heard is that Early PIE had only two
> genders, one of which ("common") included all animate
> nouns and some inanimates, while the other ("neuter") was
> all inanimate, and this is the state of affairs seen in
> Hittite. Obviously, that is basically an
> animate/inanimate system in which some inanimate nouns
> were moved to the former animate class for reasons that
> are not too well understood (metaphoric animacy? formal
> similarity to animates?).
Something stirs at the back of my memory. In all the IE
langs I know, masculines & neuters have the same flexional
endings, except in the nominative & accusative cases. The
neuters retain the same form for both cases, whereas
masculines always differentiate.
I seem to recall reading somewhere a theory that this was a
hangover from a pre-PIE period when verbs were ergative as,
e.g. in Basque. The both 'inanimates' (i.e. neuters) and
'animates' (i.e. common gender) had an absolute case, but
only 'animates' could have an ergative case, i.e. the
nominative of the PIE masculines was a survival of the
pre-PIE ergative. When the language shifted to a nom-acc
verb system, the inanimate absolute served as both
nominative & accusative.
> In Late PIE, the feminine gender was branched off from
> the common which thus became the masculine. This started
> with designations of female beings, but as one of the
> most productive feminine suffixes was *-h2, just about
> everything else that ended in *h2 was also moved to this
> gender.
Yes, both you and BPJ have stirred some other long dormant
memory cells; I recall now that it is held that the
'feminine' gender is thought to be a development of later
stages of PIE.
> But the problem has not been solved satisfactorily yet.
> The messy residue is too large.
>
> As for Afro-Asiatic, no idea. I don't know what the
> Nostraticists have to say on this matter, they probably
> don't have any useful idea either. (Bomhard doesn't
> treat grammatical gender in his 2008 book.)
The double gender system of these languages remind me more
of a yin-yang type of dualism.
[snip]
>>
>> But i get enough private emails from crackpots about
>> Pelasgians, so maybe I should be more careful where I
>> lead threads.
>
> Ah, Pelasgians. Will we ever know which language they
> spoke?
See:
http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Eteocretan/Pelasgians.html
:)
> The less is known about a matter, the more crackpots
> write about it ;)
Of course - like the Phaistos Disk :-D
> Like the endless rows of volumes about Atlantis,
Groan. :(
> alien visitors (both in the past and the present), and
> other such topics.
Yep - Alien visitors seem to have taken the place of pixies,
elves, fairies etc of earlier generations.
> There is of course nothing wrong with making up a
> Pelasgian conlang,
Just as A. J. van Windekens (Le pélasgique, Louvain,1952) did ..
> but don't try to sell it as the truth!
..sadly van Windekens did just that - a lost pre-Greek IE
language.
[snip]
[snip]
>>
>> I don't think she was looking at the psychological and
>> social status of the baby - but at something quite
>> physical!
>
> Either the presence or absence of that body part with so
> many names, or the colour of the baby's clothing - but I
> guess the former.
From the context, it was perfectly clear. She was inspecting
the baby's infantile genitalia equipment to ascertain its
"gender."
[snip]
>>
>> They got Latinized as _fÄminÄ«nus, masculÄ«nus, neuter_
>> respectively, and the rest is history ...
>
> What are the Sanskrit names? BPJ perhaps knows ...
It would be interesting to know. The Sanskrit grammarians
were generally a little more linguistically percipient than
the ancient Greek ones.
=======================================================
On 13/12/2011 07:31, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
[snip]
> .................................................. The
> Northern Sun is feminine because it's a creator, while
> the Southern Sun is masculine because it's a destroyer.
>
> As I wrote, it's probably nonsense,
I think so.
> but it's a nice way to remember how it works :P .
Mnemonics are a whole different ball game ;)
I think Greek á¼¥Î»Î¹Î¿Ï (hÄlois), Latin _sÅl_, Welsh _haul_ etc
are, I think, 'masculine' simply because:
(a) the PIE original belonged to the animate class;
(b) it did not have final sound which shoved it into the
emerging 'feminine' subdivision of 'animate.'
The German 'Sonne', Dutch 'zon' and English 'sun' has a
different derivation.
The Germanic word for 'moon' (Mond, maan, mån etc) is
cognate with ancient Greek μείÏ, [gen.] μηνÏÏ (meÃs, mÄnós
- stem: men-/ mÄn-) and Latin _mensis_ = "month". As both
the Latin and Greek words are masculine, then it is hardly
surprising that the Germanic are also masculine.
>
>> I've often thought that it was a bit backwards for
>> astrologers and other pseudo-science types to go on
>> about the generative qualities of the earth making the
>> planet a kind of mother goddess, while making the sun
>> some kind male sky god. But what is more generative
>> than a star? They not only give warmth (within a
>> certain range) to their own planets, but also sweep out
>> all kinds of nasty radiation from space and provide,
>> upon their death, all kinds of nice heavy elements that
>> will form the nuclei of future planets surrounding
>> distant and yet unborn stars.
>>
> Very true. But I doubt the Ancients Greeks and Romans
> knew that! :)
Lol! Indeed not :-D
While the ancients did indeed appreciate the life giving
power of the sun, they clearly were in no position whatever
to know that stars " sweep out all kinds of nasty radiation
from space and provide, upon their death" and so on.
IMO whether ancients, in languages with grammatical gender,
personified the sun as male or female depended upon
*grammatical* gender of the noun - not on any knowledge of
astrology/ astronomy or any other (pseudo-)science.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB]
Messages in this topic (56)
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3a. Re: No present tense?
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 13, 2011 4:55 am ((PST))
In my langs I have marked habitual aspect. So whereas in English the
habitual is unmarked and the present progressive is marked, in mine it's
the other way around. And I use the present progressive for (is this the
right term?) statives, so "I love sushi" is expressed as "I am loving
sushi"... which uses the unmarked form of the verb.
On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 4:07 AM, Peter Cyrus <[email protected]> wrote:
> Which TAM would you use for "I speak Catalan", or "When(ever) I'm in
> Barcelona, I speak Catalan"?
>
> On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 3:36 AM, Larry Sulky <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > I've come to the same conclusion, Gary. So in my current two projects,
> the
> > default is present progressive, and a simple marker changes the aspect to
> > present perfect, which suffices for most uses of the preterit (as in
> spoken
> > French and many other languages). ----L
> >
> > On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 9:12 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > I've been playing around with an unnamed grammar sketch off and on for
> > > several months, and I was looking at the verb tense/mood/aspect tables
> > and
> > > I have them nicely organized the way I want, but it occurred to me
> that I
> > > don't think I need the simple present. If something you're trying to
> tell
> > > me about is still happening right now then it's progressive. (I'm
> > running.)
> > > If it's not progressive then it has either already happened (I just
> > dropped
> > > my toast.) or is just about to happen (I'm going to sneeze.) But it's
> not
> > > happening right now.
> > >
> > > Yes, I could contrive to hit my thumb with a hammer just as I was
> saying
> > "I
> > > hit my thumb with a hammer." But that would be pretty artificial, and
> > when,
> > > exactly, do I hit my thumb, as I speak the word "hit" or as I speak the
> > > word "thumb"? So if you did want to construct such an artificial
> > > circumstance you'd just have to use either the immediate past (I just
> hit
> > > my thumb.), the immediate future (I'm about to hit my thumb.) or the
> > > progressive present (I'm hitting my thumb.)
> > >
> > > It seems that in English it's hardly ever used except to intimate
> > habitual
> > > or characteristic actions: Birds sing. Dogs bark. I jog. He smokes.
> > >
> > > Realistically, can you think of any situation where a true
> instantaneous
> > > present tense would be of any use at all? What do you think? (Which, of
> > > course, really means what are you thinking, or what will you be
> thinking,
> > > or what have you thought, or anything but the instantaneous "what think
> > > you?")
> > >
> > > --gary
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > *Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I
> > can hear her breathing. -- Arundhati Roy*
> >
>
--
*Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I
can hear her breathing. -- Arundhati Roy*
Messages in this topic (5)
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4.1. OT crackpots (was: Grammatical gender)
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 13, 2011 5:34 am ((PST))
On 12/12/2011 21:31, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Monday 12 December 2011 16:34:31 R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>>
>> But i get enough private emails from crackpots about
>> Pelasgians, so maybe I should be more careful where I
>> lead threads.
>
> Ah, Pelasgians. Will we ever know which language they
> spoke?
>
> The less is known about a matter, the more crackpots
> write about it ;)
Currently, I'm receiving emails from yet another "Pelasgian
is Albanian" crackpot, who maintains that "the
Pelasgian/Albanian language constitutes the eldest written
language among the European one" [sic].
There's me, poor misguided bloke, thinking that Albanian is
an IE language, derived from PIE.
On a related web-site I discover that "the idea of a
sophisticated, flourishing society existing in Greece more
than two millennia ago was a complete fiction created by a
team of some two dozen historians, anthropologists, and
classicists who worked nonstop between 1971 and 1974 to
forge 'Greek' documents and artifacts."
Really? Why was I told some 20 years or so _earlier_ that a
sophisticated, flourishing society existing in Greece more
than two millennia ago? I guess at school and university I
read documents and saw pictures of artifacts some 10 to 20
years before they were produced!! Wow!
But never mind awkward things like facts if you've got a
crackpot theory.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB]
Messages in this topic (56)
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