There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Oh great joy!
From: BPJ
2. Goodies for free
From: BPJ
3.1. Re: OT crackpots (was: Grammatical gender)
From: BPJ
4.1. Re: embodiment in language
From: Douglas Koller
5. Is there a CONLANG term for this?
From: Gary Shannon
6a. Re: New York Times article on conlangs in Hollywood
From: Sai
7a. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
7b. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
7c. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
From: Roger Mills
Messages
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1a. Re: Oh great joy!
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 5:02 am ((PST))
On 2011-12-17 02:49, Michael Everson wrote:
> On 16 Dec 2011, at 19:41, BPJ wrote:
>
>> Alas my computer doesn't have an apple on it, but a penguin (figuratively
>> speaking)
>
> And you don't know anyone else with a computer?
O sure, even one or two Mac owners who owe me a favor,
but I was impatient! It turned out OOo was up to the
task. It apparently did things automatically and
happily exported to UTF-8 csv. I just had to uncheck
some box so that it converted any U+0022 in the fields'
contents to curly quotes and the csv didn't appear
broken to Text::CSV_XS.
Actually the whole exercise *was* unnecessary since the
ASCII transcription of Sohlob can be correctly
converted to the Latin-1 transcription with ordinary
search&replace as long as tj --> c and sj --> ç are
done before dj --> j, and q --> ŋ in the Kijeb (or as
the old file had it KEJEB) column would of course be no
problem either. After all the conversion (with q --> ñ
rather than q --> ŋ) was done that way seven years ago,
that being the probable reason the xls file existed in
the first place. In short I was playing too smart, but
I'll need to be able to parse the thing as exported to
csv later in order to run the sound change applier
(once I've updated Kijeb entries as needed). The sound
changes have changed a good deal too in seven years! :-)
BTW the OOo help system apparently doesn't even have an
entry for "encoding" -- or at least for any of the
usual Swedish translations. So much for their trust in
users' savvy and intelligence!
/bpj
Messages in this topic (8)
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2. Goodies for free
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 7:46 am ((PST))
Anybody done this search?
<http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=%28grammar%20OR%20phonology%29>
Lots of good stuff, even though there's a big share
of duplicates. When there are duplicates check out the
download count, but don't trust it blindly. Make sure to
always follow the "all files HTTP" link in the left
sidebar to make sure you really get the file on site.
Alas "morphology" is no good search -- you get a lot
of anatomy and botany...
/bpj
Messages in this topic (1)
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3.1. Re: OT crackpots (was: Grammatical gender)
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 11:54 am ((PST))
On 2011-12-16 20:09, Adam Walker wrote:
> No, I remember the post you were responding to in that post. In fact, I
> think I may also have replied with a post to that post, so I don't know how
> I missed your post. Maybe it got misposted courtesy of Ya-hurl mail. Of
> course now (for the last week or so) Gmail is giving me even more trouble
> that Yahoo.
BTW have a look at this lovely 16th century summation of
Norse geo-/hydro-graphical knowledge:
<http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/manus/678/dan/10+verso/>
(Note how the the polar ice cap is called Jótunheimar! :-)
and compare it to the modern map
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vinland-travel.jpg>
Admittedly Björn Jónsson may have had access to in his
time more recent knowledge of the geography of Labrador
and Newfoundland.
I suspect Vínland was in fact further south, at least
around the inner side of the Gulf of St Lawrence if not
further still, if there really grew wild grapes there.
"Promotorium Vinlandiae" may just as well or rather
have been Cape Breton Island, if it at all was a Norse
concept and not something Björn had learnt from
contemporary maps or sailors. After all Basque
fishermen were all around the North Atlantic in those
days, and there was a Basque-Icelandic pidgin
(_skurdufjardarfranska_ :-) as well as a
Basque-Algonquinian one.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque-Icelandic_pidgin>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Canada#Basque_pidgin>
BTW the Wikipedia page "Iroquois" says:
> [Some lingists and anthropologists] think "Iroquois"
> was derived from a Basque expression, hilokoa,
> meaning the "killer people". Because there is no "L"
> sound in the Algonquian languages of the Gulf of
> Saint Lawrence region, the Algonquian tribes used the
> name Hirokoa for the Haudenosaunee. They applied this
> to the pidgin language which they used with the
> Basque.
N.B. _h_ is silent in most modern varieties of Basque!
In my ATL (which may still be called "Lucus") there is
of course a Norse-Algonquian creole, the contemporary
main language of Vínland, which I may develop one day
if Paul Bennet doesn't mind. Must remember to put some
Basque influence into it! My library fortunately has a
Montagnais grammar (Swedish libraries aren't exactly
stuffed with Americanist literature!) and there full
view access to a competent description of Cree
morphology available at Google books
<http://books.google.se/books?id=9tkGz3lQb6UC>
/bpj
>
> Adam
>
> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Adam Walker<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I may have accidentally been no-mail in September. :-/
>>
>> Adam
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 12:53 PM, BPJ<[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2011-12-14 14:15, Adam Walker wrote:
>>>
>>>> Blast from the past! I haven t seen you post about that atl in ages! Adam
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually I posted a bit on conculture as recently as September
>>>
>>> <http://groups.yahoo.com/**group/conculture/message/37059<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conculture/message/37059>
>>> **>
>>>
>>> and it's probably also where Rhodrese belongs, but unfortunately
>>> I've not had much time for play the last two years or so due
>>> to RL issues, and what I've had has gone into other things
>>> since I have my doubts about that ATL: basically I threw my
>>> whole pantry of favorite what-ifs into the same stew, which
>>> may or may not be a good thing.
>>>
>>> /bpj
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 12/14/11, BPJ<[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2011-12-13 23:16, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 13 December 2011 21:24, Jörg
>>>>>> Rhiemeier<joerg_rhiemeier@web.**de<[email protected]>>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I once got an e-mail asking me about the "Gospel of Joseph of
>>>>>>> Arimathea", from someone who hadn't realized that that "gospel"
>>>>>>> was fictional. I told him that that gospel never existed, and
>>>>>>> he was content with my answer.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Not once but *twice* I have received an e-mail about my alter-ego
>>>>>> Tsela
>>>>>> Jemufan Atlinan C.G., asking about more information and presenting
>>>>>> various
>>>>>> theories about his origin and his language (Moten). Both really
>>>>>> thought he
>>>>>> was real! (the second one linked him to the UFO sightings in Belgium
>>>>>> during
>>>>>> the eighties, which is funny, since I placed his discovery point in
>>>>>> Belgium
>>>>>> exactly for that reason :) ) Given that I've always been clearly about
>>>>>> his
>>>>>> fictionality, I've never really known how to answer...
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I've had someone who knows me IRL believe that I take
>>>>> my althistory where the Arabs conquered Middle America
>>>>> in the eight century and there arose a Norse-Amerindian
>>>>> state around the St. Lawrence River in the 11th century
>>>>> seriously, and roundly lambasting me for it, saying
>>>>> that the sagas' mentioning of _Hvítramannaland_ and
>>>>> continued westward expeditions from Greenland aren't
>>>>> evidence of any such things, and that later history
>>>>> would have been vastly different had this been the
>>>>> case. I just informed her that it was a deliberate
>>>>> fiction based on those saga accounts, and that later
>>>>> history indeed was vastly different in that fiction. I
>>>>> also informed her on what althistory is, and that I'd
>>>>> actually cheated by having two PODs, and she was
>>>>> satisfied. I didn't mention that the whole thing was
>>>>> partly the result of a desire to create a setting where
>>>>> Quechua might be written with Arabic script!
>>>>>
>>>>> /bpj
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>
>
Messages in this topic (112)
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4.1. Re: embodiment in language
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 1:05 pm ((PST))
> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:26:15 -0800
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: embodiment in language
> To: [email protected]
> > On 12 Dec 2011, at 22:42, Dale McCreery wrote:
> >> for example compare the English word Grace, with Cree
> >> kisitootaakewin - roughly - doing-kindness-to-people-edness,
> > I've never defined "grace" like that. I've always seen it as deliberate
> > inaction; remaining calm and emotionally detached beyond a level of
> > general benevolence; the way you walk and hold yourself, a quiet and
> > stillness. Perhaps a resolve to do right. I guess the term varies in
> > meaning between people.
Indeed, though I certainly concur with Sam's definition. This is related to
"reserve" for me; "grace" is doing "reserve" well :) Related, methinks, too, to
無為 (wúwéi, wu2wei2).
> The context I took that word from was the Cree translation of "the grace
> of God be with you always" so the translator assumed that in this context,
> "grace" should actually be something that had some earthly benefit,
> otherwise why wish it on someone? I think the connection we draw in
> english between this sort of grace and the concept of graceful says a lot
> about how we see goodness and other related concepts as well.
<caveats-a-gogo> As I understand "God's grace", and I *don't* have a dog in
this fight so I hope this doesn't spark a flamewar, it's more than just God's
being a nice guy, beaming benevolence and doing-kindness-to-people-edness. *As
I understand the term as I've heard it used*, since we are all, in this
perspective as I understand it, born with the stain of original sin, none of us
deserves God's grace, but some of us get it anyway. Hence, "there but for the
grace of God go I" -- I happen to have it in this instance, that poor schmuck
doesn't, and *seemingly*, on this terrestrial plane of existence within the
limitations of mortal human comprehension, there is not necessarily a logical
rationale behind it, which is why it seems that bad things happen to good
people and vice versa. </caveats-a-gogo> Whether the Cree vocabulary and
Weltanschauung can wrap themselves around that, I don't know. Géarthnuns, as
yet, has no such term.
As for that being to the concept of "graceful", even there, I consider "dancing
gracefully" and "bowing out of something gracefully" are not exactly the same
(though both 'good') things, and different still from what God exercises. Wow,
that's a *lot* of semantic space!
> >> So - to phrase this as a question, on a continuum between favouring a
> >> metaphysical acontextual world view and an embodied existential one,
> >> where
> >> do your languages find themselves?
> > *Remarkable* coincidence here. Thinking about it, both my conlangs are
> > instilled with my own moral values (this being the first moment I've
> > actually realised this, so thanks!), the two most important being
> > steadfastness and (my definition of) grace. So both Nỳspèke and
> > Caccigga both are characterised by a sort of physical non-involvement.
I have just the one conlang, but it, too, values this kind of grace. So we
shall definitely need a term for it, since I don't think the lexicon has one
yet. A word which *is* in there, is "jvaunats", or "tact" and it's one, among
others, of the biggy concepts.
> > I always tend to produce a swathe of specific root body terms (such as
> > "the back of your knee") but with a even larger quantity of emotional and
> > character descriptors (like the Myers-Briggs personality types: yes,
> > they're a bit stupid, but hey). I tend to build lexicons rather blindly,
> > so "doers" are always removed from the action they do and where the
> > relationship (emotional, physical, temporal or social) is more important
> > than the actual objects. I always tend to make the verbal grammar much
> > more intricate than the nominal.
> > I guess it's not absolute, there is a physicality, but it's certainly not
> > as strong as Cree.
As I'm more of a big picture kinda guy, I guess Géarthnuns would certainly lean
more to the abstract and the metaphysical (I don't know how acontextual it is).
> I like how you talk about the language having your own values! I've been
> looking at the concepts of objectivity in research, and it seems that when
> people try to "cut straight to the facts" what they are really doing is
> interpreting the data within their own contextual framework of values,
> just not recognizing it as such.
How could one avoid otherwise? As a mode of expression, Géarthnuns is, I think,
an SAE-ish lang with a strong overlay of Oriental (most often calqued) vocab
and concepts because it's plunked in the middle of the Far East (hmm, sound
like anyone we know?). To that extent, as a reflection of myself, my conlanging
can be seen as rather masturbatory. Nothing wrong with a good, self-indulgent
linguistic wank, mind you, but perhaps why in the past it has been called a
"vice" and why it was "secret". At any rate, I don't see Géarthnuns flourishing
in the sultry climes of Mediterranean lands -- a Géarthçins would rather
self-immolate than say something to the effect of "vaffancul'" :)
Kou
Messages in this topic (112)
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5. Is there a CONLANG term for this?
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 6:28 pm ((PST))
We have a number of different terms for contact languages such as
"pidgin", "creole", "jargon", etc.
But what about a language with these properties:
1) Constructed rather than spontaneous.
2) Created by blending both grammar AND lexicon of two related languages.
3) With a full and complex grammar rather than the simplified grammar
of a pidgin.
4) With the goal of being mutually intelligible to both of the source languages.
In other words, a carefully engineered re-unification of the two
source languages. Imagine, for example, re-unifying Spanish and
Italian, or Dutch and German. And by that I don't mean a generic
Germanic conlang, or a generic Romance conlang, but a very specific
targeting of two natlangs to be the source of every piece of grammar
and lexicon that is used.
What would be a good term for such a midway language? A morph? A
bridge language? A blend-lang? A linguistic halfway house?
Then imagine using the result as one of the source languages to create
a second generation blend. For example, having blended Dutch and
German into one hybrid, and English and Frisian into another,
different hybrid, blend those two hybrids with each other. You could
go right back up the IE family tree, not trying to recreate the
ancestral languages, but trying to create NEW unifications of the
MODERN languages. By going all the way up the tree to the root you
could eventually create a NEW proto-Indo-European. Not a
reconstruction of the original ancient PIE, mind you, but a MODERN
balanced blend of all modern IE languages. What fun!
The key is to not try to over-reach. Trying to blend Serbian with
Irish Gaelic in one step would be just silly. It would take probably 6
or 8 levels of blending before you even go to the blended
Balto-Slavic, and that's still along ways from Irish Gaelic. And just
to keep it simple, maybe the blending should only happen between
living languages so that Latin and Sanskrit don't qualify. Only their
modern descendants are used.
But of course, that's a much more ambitious project than merely
blending two languages. It is, however, a good candidate for
"distributed processing". If one team were to be working on the
Central Indic branch while another was working on the Western Romance
branch, then eventually they could pool their results into the grand
reunification. Hehe. Now there's a conlang project of truly monumental
proportions.
Has anyone tried a conlang of this sort? It just sounds fascinating to
me. I wonder what "Modern PIE" would sound and look like.
--gary
Messages in this topic (1)
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6a. Re: New York Times article on conlangs in Hollywood
Posted by: "Sai" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 7:23 pm ((PST))
See also languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3628
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 11:57, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/arts/television/in-game-of-thrones-a-language-to-make-the-world-feel-real.html?_r=1&hp
>
> All about David and "Game of Thrones". It's interesting to see our
> quaint little obsession getting public exposure.
>
> --gary
Messages in this topic (3)
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7a. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 8:50 pm ((PST))
On 16 December 2011 21:26, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Some first thoughts: I had trouble following the examples at first due
> to not having read the other blog posts (at least not recently). Let's
> see; there are 36 constructions: 3 auxiliary tenses, 2 auxiliaries, 2 non-
> finite forms, and 3 cases, right? I'm partial to having tables summarize
> things, in this case, the interpretation of the 36 things, or maybe just a
> 12-entry table, omitting tense. It might make the connection between
> interpretation* and case clearer, if possible.
You're definitely right, so I did something I rarely do: I updated an
already published post. I added a 12-entry table at the end of the
description of the various periphrastic conjugations. Go take a look at it
and see if it might make things easier to understand. As far as I can see,
it does shed some light on the modalities, but the rest seems rather random
(hint: it's not *completely* random :) ).
> No ANADEW or ACADEW
> so far.
>
>
I'm glad to hear that! :)
> * I'm not sure what the appropriate word is here.
>
>
I just call it "meaning assignment".
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (8)
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7b. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sat Dec 17, 2011 8:55 pm ((PST))
On 17 December 2011 02:17, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm working my way through the post. you were right when you said it was
> long. Is there anyway to print it?
I'm not aware of any Blogger gadget specifically about printing, but I'll
look at the issue. Otherwise, you can look at how your browser handles
printing the article. All good browsers have a "Print Preview option", and
you usually have some options to massage the printing a bit to make it more
palatable.
> I process long texts like this much
> better in printed form than on screen.
I understand: I'm often like that as well.
> for some reason I find reading
> easier on a printed page and the information sticks better. Whether or no
> there is a convinent print option, I will keep working on this post because
> it is interesting. Moten is weird. I like wierd.
>
>
Thanks! The weirdest part of all: when I created Moten, I had no idea I was
making something that weird :P . But I guess wanting to use infixes on a
language loosely influenced by Basque should have tipped me off :P .
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (8)
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7c. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sun Dec 18, 2011 1:19 am ((PST))
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <[email protected]>
On 17 December 2011 02:17, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm working my way through the post. you were right when you said it was
> long. Is there anyway to print it?
I'm not aware of any Blogger gadget specifically about printing, but I'll
look at the issue. Otherwise, you can look at how your browser handles
printing the article. All good browsers have a "Print Preview option", and
you usually have some options to massage the printing a bit to make it more
palatable.
-------------------------------------------
I tested (but didn''t actually print)-- simply select all the text, hit Ctrl-P,
and the Print command box comes up. I think it tells you how many pages it will
be....... That works for me with other things (like NYT or WaPo articles) (I
use Firefox)..
Messages in this topic (8)
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