There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
From: J. Snow
1b. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
From: Amanda Babcock Furrow
2.1. Re: Genealogical classification of conlangs (was: Euroclones)
From: Henrik Theiling
3a. Re: Modern Language and the Apocolypse
From: Cosman246
4.1. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
From: Gary Shannon
4.2. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
From: Logan Kearsley
4.3. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
From: Gary Shannon
4.4. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
From: Douglas Koller
4.5. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
From: Logan Kearsley
4.6. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
From: Adam Walker
5a. Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
5b. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: David Peterson
5c. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Wm Annis
5d. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
5e. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Logan Kearsley
5f. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
5g. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Padraic Brown
5h. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Alex Fink
5i. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
5j. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Padraic Brown
5k. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
6a. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
From: neo gu
7a. Verbal Numerals
From: Logan Kearsley
7b. Re: Verbal Numerals
From: Philip Newton
8. Blast From the Past was: Excerpts from imaginary books
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
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1a. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
Posted by: "J. Snow" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 5:55 am ((PST))
26 years? O.o That's some serious commitment! I've been working on my first
(and admittedly, only) conlang Sironu for 1 1/2 years, with approx. 150 words,
and I've only recently entered the magical realm of gerunds and adverbs. Keep
it up!
Maybe someday I'll teach my future kids Sironu...
On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:28:37 -0800, Padraic Brown
<[email protected]> wrote:
>--- On Tue, 12/27/11, Koppa Dasao <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> What? 26 years and only less than 1300 words?
>
>They're very well crafted, mind!
>
>> I've been developing Delang for two years and got about
>> 1300 words.
>
>Although I've been working on Kerno for about twelve (and its source
>language for perhaps four or five before that); and Talarian for about
>as long, I think there are about as many words officially listed in the
>lexicon. I'll have to count them and see! But out of those twelve years,
>only about one or two were really spent developing the language; the
>subsequent years were spent mostly on refinements and fiddling about.
>
>Padraic
>
>> Koppa Dasao
>> ___
>> Norway isn't the solution, but the appendix that's cut
>> out!
>>
>>
>>
>> 2011/12/27 Amanda Babcock Furrow <[email protected]>:
>> > On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 03:07:57PM +0000, Sam Stutter
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> I know it's a couple of weeks back, but when I
>> wrote out my card exchange
>> >> letter I think I've managed to refine my
>> translation method. I used to
>> >> work sentence by sentence / clause by clause.
>> >
>> > When I write in merechi these days, I come up with a
>> general outline in my
>> > head in English (the precise words of which I don't
>> pay attention to), and
>> > then start collecting merechi words that are related
>> to what I'm trying to
>> > express, and build something out of them without any
>> one-to-one word matching.
>> > I still need to coin lots of words since my lexicon is
>> far smaller than 26
>> > years of development would seem to indicate.
>> Â Actually, less than 50 words
>> > a year on average! Â Never thought of it that way
>> before.
>> >
>> > tylakÄ�hlpÄ'fö,
>> > Amanda
>>
Messages in this topic (12)
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1b. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
Posted by: "Amanda Babcock Furrow" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:17 am ((PST))
On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 08:55:11AM -0500, J. Snow wrote:
> 26 years? O.o That's some serious commitment!
It's hardly commitment when I work so little on it :) It's my first conlang,
and it's just there. It's not like it's going to go away or be "finished" or
anything.
Well, between 1990 and 1998 it was in mothballs and zero words were added, but
in 1998 I took it back up. The only other year with zero entries is 2001 -
but
I think that may be the year that my few efforts were erased in a PDA
recharging
failure. (And there was a lost grammatical innovation erased at the same time
the
details of which I never remembered! I almost certainly reinvented it later,
but I don't know which one it was...)
> I've been working on my first
> (and admittedly, only) conlang Sironu for 1 1/2 years, with approx. 150
> words,
Ah, then that's twice the vocabulary productivity I've had overall :)
I had 528 lexical items added between 1984 and 1990, so over 100 per year in
the beginning (most were undated so I can't break that down more specifically).
In 1998 and 1999 the hiatus broke slowly with 6 and 3 additions, respectively.
2000 was typical with 47 new entries. 2001 was a wash, and since then the most
new lexicon entries in a year was 184 (2007) and the least is 19 for this year
(new baby, no relays participated in), followed by 30 for 2005.
I only make words when I need them for something. Ok, in 2007 I did more than
that, opened a few new areas like names of smells and filled out the animals...
but usually only to build a translation.
tylakèhlpë'fö,
Amanda
Messages in this topic (12)
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2.1. Re: Genealogical classification of conlangs (was: Euroclones)
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:03 am ((PST))
Hello Conlang List!
I hereby declare this thread closed for now, until the atmosphere has cooled
down.
Trying to solve the communication issues between some members of the list, I
have started to contact several people that were directly involved. If you
think you have an opinion yourself about why some people got angry in this
thread and you want to share your view with me, please don't hesitate to
contact me OFFLIST.
I wish you a peaceful end of the year!
**Henrik (Benevolent Dictator of Conlang-L)
Messages in this topic (163)
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3a. Re: Modern Language and the Apocolypse
Posted by: "Cosman246" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:20 am ((PST))
>And doesn't every society have "political blocks"? Compared to
>Europe (Greece more than included), or the Middle East or China, or even
the U.S.
>to a point, I would think a handful of southeastern American states is
doing fairly well.
Exactly, and those blocks are important.
Messages in this topic (16)
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4.1. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:27 am ((PST))
It occurred to me that even if your language does not have articles,
if you are writing a textbook for English speakers you must still
address the issue of articles in order to explain to the English
speaker that the language does not have articles, and how the
functions normally performed by articles in English (definiteness,
for example) are handled by your language.
So the textbook template still needs a section on articles, just as it
needs other sections that are somewhat "English-centric" in order to
address the differences between English and the target language.
--gary
Messages in this topic (39)
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4.2. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 1:46 pm ((PST))
On 27 December 2011 12:27, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> It occurred to me that even if your language does not have articles,
> if you are writing a textbook for English speakers you must still
> address the issue of articles in order to explain to the English
> speaker that the language does not have articles, and how the
> functions normally performed by articles in English (definiteness,
> for example) are handled by your language.
>
> So the textbook template still needs a section on articles, just as it
> needs other sections that are somewhat "English-centric" in order to
> address the differences between English and the target language.
I suspect there are ways to address the issue without having a section
specifically on the use or lack thereof of articles. Sections that
address the different semantic functions of articles could be used,
e.g. "expressing (un)countability", "indicating a presumed known
referent", etc.
-l.
Messages in this topic (39)
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4.3. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:41 pm ((PST))
I'm sure you're right. But writing specifically for an English
speaking audience addressing the issue by referencing the difference
between English and the target language seems to be the most
straightforward way. And there is also the issue of accessibility.
Assuming one would want non-linguists to be able to learn the language
as well, then obscure linguistic terminology should be avoided where
ever possible.
--gary
On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 27 December 2011 12:27, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>> It occurred to me that even if your language does not have articles,
>> if you are writing a textbook for English speakers you must still
>> address the issue of articles in order to explain to the English
>> speaker that the language does not have articles, and how the
>> functions normally performed by articles in English (definiteness,
>> for example) are handled by your language.
>>
>> So the textbook template still needs a section on articles, just as it
>> needs other sections that are somewhat "English-centric" in order to
>> address the differences between English and the target language.
>
> I suspect there are ways to address the issue without having a section
> specifically on the use or lack thereof of articles. Sections that
> address the different semantic functions of articles could be used,
> e.g. "expressing (un)countability", "indicating a presumed known
> referent", etc.
>
> -l.
Messages in this topic (39)
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4.4. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:18 pm ((PST))
> Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:33:20 -0800
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Conlang Textbook Template
> To: [email protected]
> Part of the problem there is that some language don't use the verb "to
> be", or even have such a verb. And the notion of "indirect object"
> depends on focus as well, so what is an indirect object in an English
> sentence might be the subject, or at least the topic of the equivalent
> sentence in language X. What if the only culturally correct
> translation of "John gave the book to Mary." is "Mary received the
> book that was offered by John."? So what would that lesson be called?
> It's a complicated subject, no doubt.
> Simple greeting are probably a good place to open the first chapter,
> though. But where to go next?
I should think simple copula sentence patterns would work. "Be" verb? Zero
copula? Who cares? You're pointing and naming and/or equating. Most textbooks
start around here.
John is a teacher.
Bai Wenshan is a student.
I am a jelly doughnut.
This is a car.
Go nuts. Negate them. Feeling frisky? Make yes/no questions out of them? (One
of my favorite Berlitz examples: "Is it a pencil? No, it is a
window.")(Regardless of the languages I've studied and the differing strategies
they use for negating and forming a yes/no question, this usually gets started
here.)But beyond that...
> The ultimate goal of a language textbook is to teach the student how
> to read and write in the target language. Listening to and speaking
> the language are skills that must be practiced to be mastered, and if
> those skills are to be taught in a textbook then they must be taught
> through the medium of reading and writing what is to understood and
> spoken.
> If the textbook is written in English then it must teach how to
> translate from English to the target language and how to translate the
> target language into English. The objective of each lesson must then
> be to teach how to translate a specific class of sentences to and from
> the target language.
> Take, for example, the notion of existence. The target language may or
> may not use a verb like the English "to be" to express existence.
> Instead of saying "There is a book on the table." it might use a
> verb-less construction like "On table a book." Or it might use a verb
> like "to have": "The table has a book." (The Spanish "Hay un libro en
> la mesa." uses "hay", a form of the verb "haber" to have." And even in
> English it's possible to say things like "On this table we have a
> book.")
> For this reason there could not be a lesson titled "The Verb To Be".
> Instead, the lesson must be described in terms of the objective of
> that lesson: Expressing Existence. And the specific objective of the
> chapter is to teach how to translate such English sentences as "There
> is a book on the table." and "There are no people in the room."
> Likewise, if the target language does not use a verb like "to have" to
> talk about possession, the language still has some way or another to
> talk about possession. (e.g. Russian: "With me a book.") Therefore the
> lesson title should not be anything like "The Verb To Have", but
> should instead be something like "Talking About Possession." The
> objective of the lesson is, again, to learn how to translate various
> English sentences into the target language; including things like:
> "The boy has a book."; "The girl does not have a pencil." With
> sentences to distinguish between alienable and inalienable possession,
> ("John has two ears.") mere possession versus ownership, ("Tom owns
> the book.") and "the having" of relatives like; "Mary has two
> sisters.".
> So I think the lesson plan, or outline of the text would run something
> like: (just to pick some random subject and random fictional lesson
> numbers)
> 1. Talking About Existence. (with target sentences)
> 2. Talking About Possession and Ownership. (with target sentences)
> 3. Talking About Attributes. (With target sentences using "copula plus
> adjectives" or "verbal adjectives" (The book reds.) or whatever the
> languages uses to translate "The book is red."
> 4. Qualifying Nouns With Attributes, (How to translate "I have a red
> book." and "There is a red book on the table."
> ...
> 7. Making Comparisons, ("John is taller than Mary." "My father is as
> old as your father.")
> ...
> 15. Qualifying Nouns With Associations, (How to translate "I found the
> book _that was lost_." "I saw the boy _with red hair_."
> ...
> 22. Contingent Expressions. (How to translate "_If_ it rains _then_ I
> will stay inside." "I bought a bicycle _so that_ I can ride to work."
> And so on.
And here is where it gets hinky for me. If you're writing a descriptive
grammar, you can say, "Okay, here's how target language X deals with function
Y. Here's a list of sample words, here's how to manipulate them. Have fun." And
that might work for an audience like those of us here at Conlang. But a
traditional language textbook, for a novice, likes to build cumulatively, even
if it adopts a
"learn-it-like-you-did-as-a-toddler-and-not-worry-about-this-now" approach.
Even a seemingly simple transition from "The book is red." to "I have a red
book." can get dicey, even from Eurolang to Eurolang. Le livre est rouge. Un
livre rouge. J'ai un livre rouge.La jupe est rouge. Une jupe rouge. J'ai une
jupe rouge. Lovely. Le livre est vert. Un livre vert. J'ai un livre vert.La
jupe est verte. Une jupe verte. J'ai une jupe verte. Presumably, we've talked
in the previous lesson about gender and how both predicative and attributive
adjectives agree in Romance. Perhaps we got into spelled the same/sound the
same (rouge/rouge; facile/facile), spelled differently/sound the same
(bleu/bleue; joli/jolie (oh, but wait, that one goes before the noun)), spelled
differently/sound different (vert/verte; violet/violette) distinctions. But:
Das Buch ist rot. Ein rotes Buch. Ich habe ein rotes Buch.Der Rock ist rot. Ein
roter Rock. Ich habe einen roten Rock. Wellllll, predicative adjs are the same,
but attributives inflect for gender and case. Where do I discuss the
accusative? Do I discuss the accusative? How 'bout: De rok is rood. Een rode
rok. Ik heb een rode rok. Het boek is rood. Een rood boek. Ik heb een rood
boek. BUT Ik heb het rode boek. Or: Boken är röd. En röd bok. Jag har den röda
boken.Huset är rött. Ett rött hus. Jag har det röda huset. Predicative and
attributive behaviors that are different still. And we haven't gone that far
off the language reservation yet and dealt with alienable/inalienable,
animate/inanimate distinctions mentioned earlier. In Chinese, we learned the
"although..., however..." structure really early on (I think the characters for
"sui1ran2" were introduced in our second month). "Although" triggers
subjunctive in Romance, and you ain't gettin' to that for a while, son.
"Although" would trigger "verb at the end of the subordinate clause, main verb
in second position" in German and Dutch (though my Dutch word order is still
quite shaky, thank you very much). I guess my point is: "I have a red house."
seems like a fairly straightforward concept in a straightforward function, and
hell, any four-year-old in any given language ought to be able to express it.
And yes, that is a sentence we would want a L2 learner to get to in fairly
short order. But would we be able to/want to teach it in the same lessons along
the same continuum at the same time, as a "template" suggests? Kou
Messages in this topic (39)
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4.5. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:42 pm ((PST))
On 27 December 2011 17:17, Douglas Koller <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> Where do I discuss the accusative? Do I discuss the accusative?
I'd put all that technical grammar stuff that you don't need to know
to repeat a template, but you do need to know to get why you're
repeating the template and how to be fully productive with it, in the
section where that bit of grammar first becomes relevant. Some of it
could be sidebarred to indicate that it's good to know this, but you
can skip it for now if you just wanna get on with speaking.
> And yes, that is a sentence we would want a L2 learner to get to in
> fairly short order. But would we be able to/want to teach it in the
> same lessons along the same continuum at the same time, as a
> "template" suggests?
I think the template just needs to be slightly flexible about the
order that you put the lessons in. If you decide that a particular
construction requires too much new grammar all at once, hopefully you
can find some other semantically independent lessons that each cover
some overlapping piece of that grammar and move them first. Or if the
web is just too tangled, include some footnotes saying "if you wanna
know *why* it's said this way, look at the grammar in this other later
lesson". Frantz's _Blackfoot Grammar_ does that all the time: "here's
an example of this thing in action; it's necessarily doing a bunch of
other funky stuff to make a complete sentence, so just see chapter X
for why it's doing that other funky stuff."
-l.
Messages in this topic (39)
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4.6. Re: Conlang Textbook Template
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:47 pm ((PST))
On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 6:17 PM, Douglas Koller
<[email protected]>wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 10:33:20 -0800
> Go nuts. Negate them. Feeling frisky? Make yes/no questions out of them?
> (One of my favorite Berlitz examples: "Is it a pencil? No, it is a window
Wow! Gotta love Berlitz. LOL'd f'reelz!
Adam
Messages in this topic (39)
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5a. Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:34 am ((PST))
Currently, inanimate nouns and their modifiers lack ergative and dative
forms. This means that they can't be used as the subjects of many
verbs; instead a passive plus oblique construction must be used, which
is ok in theory but often awkward in practice. I'm considering the
following change possibilities:
1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the ergative and
dative cases
2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix instead
3. decline the nouns as if animate
For all of the above, modifiers take animate forms in the ergative and
dative.
4. reclassify some of the inanimate nouns as animate, otherwise use
the passive.
5. no change, always use the passive.
I'd like to hear opinions. For reference, the current grammar is at
http://qiihoskeh.conlang.org/cl/o/Naisek/NTOC.htm
Messages in this topic (11)
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5b. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:04 pm ((PST))
I don't know if it would make sense given the current state of the language,
but why not introduce an inverse marker to the verbal conjugation system? Thus,
let's say this is the ordinary way:
man-ERG tears paper-ABS
"The man tears the paper."
And this is how it would work with the inverse marker:
man-ERG tears-INV paper-ABS
"The paper tears the man."
Bizarre sentence, but you get the idea. This would be really cool, because the
case markers wouldn't change, leading to a *really* bizarre construction, where
the ergative marks the patient, and the absolutive marks the agent!
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
On Dec 27, 2011, at 11â34 AM, neo gu wrote:
> Currently, inanimate nouns and their modifiers lack ergative and dative
> forms. This means that they can't be used as the subjects of many
> verbs; instead a passive plus oblique construction must be used, which
> is ok in theory but often awkward in practice. I'm considering the
> following change possibilities:
>
> 1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the ergative and
> dative cases
>
> 2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix instead
>
> 3. decline the nouns as if animate
>
> For all of the above, modifiers take animate forms in the ergative and
> dative.
>
> 4. reclassify some of the inanimate nouns as animate, otherwise use
> the passive.
>
> 5. no change, always use the passive.
>
> I'd like to hear opinions. For reference, the current grammar is at
>
> http://qiihoskeh.conlang.org/cl/o/Naisek/NTOC.htm
Messages in this topic (11)
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5c. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Wm Annis" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:05 pm ((PST))
On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 1:34 PM, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
> 5. no change, always use the passive.
Don't lose your nerve!
Blackfoot has an identical restriction: semantically inanimate nouns
cannot be the subject of a transitive verb. It handles the issue by
using applicatives. For example, you cannot say "the knife cut the
bread," you have to say "someone cut the bread with the knife." So,
you might want to supplement the passive with some prepositional
constructions and an indefinite pronoun, if you're not ready to tack
on applicatives.
(Or the inverse David described while I was composing this.)
--
wm
Messages in this topic (11)
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5d. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:33 pm ((PST))
On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:01:26 -0800, David Peterson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't know if it would make sense given the current state of the
> language, but why not introduce an inverse marker to the verbal
> conjugation system? Thus, let's say this is the ordinary way:
>
> man-ERG tears paper-ABS
> "The man tears the paper."
>
> And this is how it would work with the inverse marker:
>
> man-ERG tears-INV paper-ABS
> "The paper tears the man."
>
> Bizarre sentence, but you get the idea. This would be really cool,
> because the case markers wouldn't change, leading to a *really*
> bizarre construction, where the ergative marks the patient, and the
> absolutive marks the agent!
That's a very interesting idea, but it doesn't really fit Naisek. The case
of the subject and the verb ending always coordinate. Also, what
about when there are 2 inanimates, as in
Papir.ABS hume.ABS INV-halfa.3SABS
"A wind blew some paper."
The inverse wouldn't do anything because of the free word order,
though that's probably not clear from the example.
>
>David Peterson
>LCS President
>[email protected]
>www.conlang.org
>
>On Dec 27, 2011, at 11â34 AM, neo gu wrote:
>
>> Currently, inanimate nouns and their modifiers lack ergative and
dative
>> forms. This means that they can't be used as the subjects of many
>> verbs; instead a passive plus oblique construction must be used,
which
>> is ok in theory but often awkward in practice. I'm considering the
>> following change possibilities:
>>
>> 1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the ergative
and
>> dative cases
>>
>> 2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix instead
>>
>> 3. decline the nouns as if animate
>>
>> For all of the above, modifiers take animate forms in the ergative
and
>> dative.
>>
>> 4. reclassify some of the inanimate nouns as animate, otherwise use
>> the passive.
>>
>> 5. no change, always use the passive.
>>
>>
>> http://qiihoskeh.conlang.org/cl/o/Naisek/NTOC.htm
Messages in this topic (11)
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5e. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:34 pm ((PST))
On 27 December 2011 12:34, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
> Currently, inanimate nouns and their modifiers lack ergative and dative
> forms. This means that they can't be used as the subjects of many
> verbs; instead a passive plus oblique construction must be used, which
> is ok in theory but often awkward in practice. I'm considering the
> following change possibilities:
>
> 1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the ergative and
> dative cases
>
> 2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix instead
>
> 3. decline the nouns as if animate
These all sound like cop-outs. "I don't like the fact that these
classes of words are distinct, so I'm just going to erase the
distinction." Presumably, you put the distinction in there for a
reason in the first place. And there are plenty of other natural
languages that disallow inanimates from being used as agents, so there
are lots of ways that have been devised for getting around the
apparent problem.
> For all of the above, modifiers take animate forms in the ergative and
> dative.
>
> 4. reclassify some of the inanimate nouns as animate, otherwise use
> the passive.
That sounds like something you can explain as naturalistic historical
change- some things that used to be grammatically inanimate got used
as agents so much that speakers just re-classified them.
> 5. no change, always use the passive.
6. Sometimes use the passive, but also come up with some other ways of
obliquely indicating the inanimate participant that may be more
pragmatically appropriate in certain situations.
I rather like David's suggestion of adding an inverse, though I'd like
it better if it came with an explanation of origin. Maybe, rather than
a verbal affix, it could be some sort of periphrastic construction
with an auxilliary verb, similar to a passive but not reducing
valency.
Or an indefinite agent with the inanimate participant attached by any
of a range of prepositions that indicate subtle differences in its
actual role.
Or maybe idiomatic conjunctive/adjunctive constructions, like "the
window broke and the ball fell through it" or "the window broke
because the ball fell" instead of "The ball broke the window".
Heck, no reason you can't use all three of 'em.
-l.
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
5f. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:43 pm ((PST))
On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:05:44 -0600, Wm Annis
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 1:34 PM, neo gu <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> 5. no change, always use the passive.
>
>Don't lose your nerve!
>
>Blackfoot has an identical restriction: semantically inanimate nouns
>cannot be the subject of a transitive verb. It handles the issue by
>using applicatives. For example, you cannot say "the knife cut the
>bread," you have to say "someone cut the bread with the knife." So,
>you might want to supplement the passive with some prepositional
>constructions and an indefinite pronoun, if you're not ready to tack
>on applicatives.
I'm not sure how an applicative would solve the problem. I thought
applicatives moved oblique arguments to the direct object, replacing
the original direct object. Is there another kind of applicative? I already
have a prepositional construction with the passive, only it's awkward
stylistically. As in "From the wind was blown the paper." or "From the
knife was cut the bread." [Hmm. I have an instrumental case; I wonder
why I'm not using it there....]
>
>--
>wm
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
5g. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 5:29 pm ((PST))
--- On Tue, 12/27/11, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
> Currently, inanimate nouns and their
> modifiers lack ergative and dative
> forms. This means that they can't be used as the subjects
> of many
> verbs; instead a passive plus oblique construction must be
> used, which
> is ok in theory but often awkward in practice. I'm
> considering the
> following change possibilities:
Talarian has the same issue: inanimates may not take agent or subject of
verb roles. Obviously, they lack the *will* of animate beings and thus
can only suffer passive or non-agent roles.
> 1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the
> ergative and
> dative cases
>
> 2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix
> instead
>
> 3. decline the nouns as if animate
The issue in Talarian is that not all words that have inanimate declension
are actually inanimate by nature. Some are inanimate only by accident of
termination. Thus all the family nouns in -r, like patar and matar, agent
nouns in -r, etc. are all inanimate. Gosh -- how can an *agent* noun be
*inanimate*!!??
The Talarian solution is twofold: whenever such nouns don't need to express
their inherent animacy, they are simply declined as inanimate nouns. But,
when they need to express an agential role, a new "transanimate" declension
of some kind is used.
In the case of the familial nouns, modified inanimate case forms are used.
So patar becomes patrâm (actually, obviously a kind of accusative ending
is being recycled here). Patrâm will thus be the subject of active verbs;
but patar will continue to be the subject of stative verbs (and also the
object of active verbs). In the case of inanimate proper names, they are
simply double-declined (that is, animate case forms are simply tacked on
to the end of the normally declined inanimate case forms): Patarus (nom),
Patanosáça (gen), Patanam (acc). Agent nouns have followed protocol No. 4
and have been reanalysed as animates: halomtaras = drinker, one who is
drinking.
> For all of the above, modifiers take animate forms in the
> ergative and
> dative.
>
> 4. reclassify some of the inanimate nouns as animate,
> otherwise use the passive.
>
> 5. no change, always use the passive.
This is also an option that is met with on many occasions.
> I'd like to hear opinions. For reference, the current
> grammar is at
>
> http://qiihoskeh.conlang.org/cl/o/Naisek/NTOC.htm
Hope this helps!
Padraic
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
5h. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 5:57 pm ((PST))
On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:43:36 -0500, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:05:44 -0600, Wm Annis
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 1:34 PM, neo gu <[email protected]>
>wrote:
>>> 5. no change, always use the passive.
>>
>>Don't lose your nerve!
>>
>>Blackfoot has an identical restriction: semantically inanimate nouns
>>cannot be the subject of a transitive verb. It handles the issue by
>>using applicatives. For example, you cannot say "the knife cut the
>>bread," you have to say "someone cut the bread with the knife." So,
>>you might want to supplement the passive with some prepositional
>>constructions and an indefinite pronoun, if you're not ready to tack
>>on applicatives.
>
>I'm not sure how an applicative would solve the problem. I thought
>applicatives moved oblique arguments to the direct object, replacing
>the original direct object. Is there another kind of applicative? I already
>have a prepositional construction with the passive, only it's awkward
>stylistically. As in "From the wind was blown the paper." or "From the
>knife was cut the bread." [Hmm. I have an instrumental case; I wonder
>why I'm not using it there....]
Okay, using the applicative per se doesn't solve the problem. What solves
the problem is introducing a completely generic agent: "*someone* cut the
bread with the knife". Are there any *inanimate-subject sentences which you
think would suffer horribly having a generic agent introduced like this?
The implication that there was an agent could easily be seen by the speakers
as purely a syntactic requirement, and basically expletive.
Anyway, this is my favourite solution, or Logan's
>6. Sometimes use the passive, but also come up with some other ways of
>obliquely indicating the inanimate participant that may be more
>pragmatically appropriate in certain situations.
I agree it seems copoutish to just introduce new morphology, or new binding
possibilities for old morphology, for this. (Including an inverse, to be
honest.)
Alex
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
5i. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:38 pm ((PST))
On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:56:57 -0500, Alex Fink <[email protected]>
wrote:
>On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:43:36 -0500, neo gu
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:05:44 -0600, Wm Annis
>><[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 1:34 PM, neo gu <[email protected]>
>>wrote:
>>>> 5. no change, always use the passive.
>>>
>>>Don't lose your nerve!
>>>
>>>Blackfoot has an identical restriction: semantically inanimate nouns
>>>cannot be the subject of a transitive verb. It handles the issue by
>>>using applicatives. For example, you cannot say "the knife cut the
>>>bread," you have to say "someone cut the bread with the knife."
So,
>>>you might want to supplement the passive with some prepositional
>>>constructions and an indefinite pronoun, if you're not ready to tack
>>>on applicatives.
>>
>>I'm not sure how an applicative would solve the problem. I thought
>>applicatives moved oblique arguments to the direct object, replacing
>>the original direct object. Is there another kind of applicative? I
already
>>have a prepositional construction with the passive, only it's awkward
>>stylistically. As in "From the wind was blown the paper." or "From the
>>knife was cut the bread."
>> [Hmm. I have an instrumental case; I wonder why I'm not using it
there....]
[...and it looks like I should be using it instead of a "from" phrase.]
> Okay, using the applicative per se doesn't solve the problem. What
> solves the problem is introducing a completely generic agent:
> "*someone* cut the bread with the knife". Are there any
> *inanimate-subject sentences which you think would suffer horribly
> having a generic agent introduced like this?
"Someone blew the paper with the wind."
Ota halfata hi papir hipe humepe.
There's no way this could not refer to a person, however unknown. In
fact, it would emphasize the personal factor. I'd have to invent a new
pronoun just for that purpose.
> The implication that there was an agent could easily be seen by the
> speakers as purely a syntactic requirement, and basically expletive.
>
> Anyway, this is my favourite solution, or Logan's
>
>> 6. Sometimes use the passive, but also come up with some other
>> ways of obliquely indicating the inanimate participant that may be
>> more pragmatically appropriate in certain situations.
>
> I agree it seems copoutish to just introduce new morphology, or
> new binding possibilities for old morphology, for this. (Including an
> inverse, to be honest.)
>
>Alex
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
5j. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 8:52 pm ((PST))
-- On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:56:57 -0500, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 6. Sometimes use the passive, but also come up with some other
>> ways of obliquely indicating the inanimate participant that may be
>> more pragmatically appropriate in certain situations.
>
> I agree it seems copoutish to just introduce new morphology, or
> new binding possibilities for old morphology, for this. (Including an
> inverse, to be honest.)
I don't see it necessarily as a copout. New morphology could be one
solution among many -- just like in real langauges. Was it a copout for
Spanish to develop new verbal morphology as the old Latin verbal system
began to erode? No. It's just one solution to the problem.
In my own examples, I focused only on morphological solutions, but there
are other possibilities. One can use various circumloctions (much like the
"window broke and the ball fell through" example); one can use an animate
but dummy subject, subordinate it by using a secondary topic marker, then
put the *real* agent in the instrumental with a primary topic marker.
No matter what choice is made, nothing can change the fundamental war of
animacy v. inanimacy that is waged within these kinds of words that are
formally inanimate but substantially animate. The solutions are simply
people's way of respecting the concept of animate/inanimate while
recognising the need to communicate something in a sensible way.
>Alex
Padraic
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
5k. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 9:34 pm ((PST))
On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:31:56 -0700, Logan Kearsley
<[email protected]> wrote:
(2nd try)
>On 27 December 2011 12:34, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Currently, inanimate nouns and their modifiers lack ergative and
>> dative forms. This means that they can't be used as the subjects
>> of many verbs; instead a passive plus oblique construction must
>> be used, which is ok in theory but often awkward in practice. I'm
>> considering the following change possibilities:
>>
>> 1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the ergative
>> and dative cases
>>
>> 2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix instead
>>
>> 3. decline the nouns as if animate
I should probably mention somewhere that inanimate _nouns_ are
declined just like animate ones except that they don't use the ergative
and dative forms. The modifiers all distinguish animacy, though, and
actually lack those forms.
> These all sound like cop-outs. "I don't like the fact that these
> classes of words are distinct, so I'm just going to erase the
> distinction." Presumably, you put the distinction in there for a
> reason in the first place. And there are plenty of other natural
> languages that disallow inanimates from being used as agents,
> so there are lots of ways that have been devised for getting
> around the apparent problem.
>
>> For all of the above, modifiers take animate forms in the ergative
>> and dative.
>>
>> 4. reclassify some of the inanimate nouns as animate, otherwise use
>> the passive.
>
> That sounds like something you can explain as naturalistic historical
> change- some things that used to be grammatically inanimate got
> used as agents so much that speakers just re-classified them.
I'll take a closer look at that one then. I have a bunch of similar nouns
I'd like to treat uniformly (all ending in |me|).
>> 5. no change, always use the passive.
>
> 6. Sometimes use the passive, but also come up with some other
> ways of obliquely indicating the inanimate participant that may be
> more pragmatically appropriate in certain situations.
OK.
> I rather like David's suggestion of adding an inverse, though I'd like
> it better if it came with an explanation of origin. Maybe, rather than
> a verbal affix, it could be some sort of periphrastic construction
> with an auxilliary verb, similar to a passive but not reducing
> valency.
Actually, the Naisek passive isn't periphrastic; it uses a prefix along
with changing the personal ending for the passive. E.g. halfator
(active) => dohalfato (passive).
> Or an indefinite agent with the inanimate participant attached by
> any of a range of prepositions that indicate subtle differences in its
> actual role.
>
> Or maybe idiomatic conjunctive/adjunctive constructions, like "the
> window broke and the ball fell through it" or "the window broke
> because the ball fell" instead of "The ball broke the window".
These are already possible, but they sound awkward as replacements.
> Heck, no reason you can't use all three of 'em.
>
>-l.
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Re: New Blog Post: Moten Part IV
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 11:40 am ((PST))
On Thu, 22 Dec 2011 09:14:55 +0100, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<[email protected]> wrote:
> The morphophonological rules can be complex, but they make a lot
> of phonological sense, so they are easy to internalise. See this post:
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/2009/12/moten-part-ii-
nouns-and-pronouns.html
> for more information on the cases.
>
> And now I'm curious what kind of comments I will get on this post :) .
> Probably a whole lot of o_O ;) .
>--
>Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
>http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
>http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
I have no comments on it except that the peculiar use of the cases of
the infinitive and participle in the verbal constructions is consistent with
the case polysemy in general.
--
neogu
Messages in this topic (13)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
7a. Verbal Numerals
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:04 pm ((PST))
Only about 18 hours after listening to the last episode of Conlangery
on numeral systems, I just read about Blackfoot numerals, which behave
in a way that I don't believe was addressed, and which I find to be
quite odd. Apparently, Blackfoot basic numerals are all verbs (and
thus have come in variant stem forms for animate and inanimate
subjects like other Blackfoot verbs) which express "to be X in
number". E.g., "ni'to`kska-wa" (inan) / "ni'to`kskamm-a" (anim)
express "there is one thing"; "niiwo`kska-yi (nooko`waistsi)"
expresses "there are three (my houses)" / "I have three houses."
I don't have morpheme-by-morpheme glosses to be sure of my
interpretations, but it looks like quantified noun phrases are
expressed as zero-derived nominalized clauses (which in Blackfoot
refer to the subject of the embedded verb):
"na`a`to'kammi a`passtammiinammi" - "there are two apples"
"ni`tsoyi na`a`to'kammi a`passtammiinammi" - "I ate two apples"
Counting is done by listing the inanimate stem forms. Compound
numerals ("twenty five", "one hundred and one") are formed by
juxtaposition of the largest quantity and a combinatorial derived form
of the lower quantity: "na`a`tsippo nii'tsiko`poto" - "twenty one".
Unfortunately, I do not know how those compound forms are conjugated.
-l.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
7b. Re: Verbal Numerals
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 2:55 pm ((PST))
On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 23:04, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]> wrote:
> Only about 18 hours after listening to the last episode of Conlangery
> on numeral systems, I just read about Blackfoot numerals, which behave
> in a way that I don't believe was addressed, and which I find to be
> quite odd. Apparently, Blackfoot basic numerals are all verbs (and
> thus have come in variant stem forms for animate and inanimate
> subjects like other Blackfoot verbs) which express "to be X in
> number".
I think this is how numbers work in Niuean (a Polynesian language
closely related to Tongan) as well. (Well, modulo the
animate/inanimate distinction.)
> I don't have morpheme-by-morpheme glosses to be sure of my
> interpretations, but it looks like quantified noun phrases are
> expressed as zero-derived nominalized clauses (which in Blackfoot
> refer to the subject of the embedded verb):
I believe Niuean does subordinate clauses for this kind of thing; see
the examples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niuean_language#Numbers ,
for example. So you'd have something like "I ate the apples, which
were-two" or, slightly differently, "were-two the apples which I ate"
(Niue is VSO... well, VAP, really, since it's ergative).
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <[email protected]>
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
8. Blast From the Past was: Excerpts from imaginary books
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue Dec 27, 2011 7:16 pm ((PST))
I have found that Eggplant is back in business and looking for excerpts
from fantastic and conlinguistical works! I submitted a piece back when
John first posted this. Eggplant went on hiatus for a number of years, but
it now seems like they are going to try to make another go of it.
Looks like almost anything is fair game, including conlang texts, poetry,
anything from our other worlds!
http://eggplantproductions.com/
Padraic
--- On Tue, 6/22/04, John Cowan <[email protected]> wrote:
From: John Cowan <[email protected]>
Subject: [conculture] Excerpts from imaginary books
To: [email protected]
Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2004, 4:44 PM
http://www.eggplant-productions.com/library/guidelines.asp is an
offer to buy excerpts (300 words, US$10, payment upon acceptance)
from imaginary books. I know nothing about this offer that isn't
on the Web page, but it sounds interesting to people who find the
prospect of writing whole short stories or novels daunting.
There are several existing examples on line.
--
John Cowan www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com [email protected]
[T]here is a Darwinian explanation for the refusal to accept Darwin.
Given the very pessimistic conclusions about moral purpose to which his
theory drives us, and given the importance of a sense of moral purpose
in helping us cope with life, a refusal to believe Darwin's theory may
have important survival value. --Ian Johnston
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