There are 13 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Logan Kearsley
1b. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
1c. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
1d. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
1e. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Padraic Brown
1f. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: Padraic Brown
1g. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
From: neo gu
2a. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
From: Douglas Koller
2b. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
From: Douglas Koller
2c. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
From: Amanda Babcock Furrow
2d. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
From: J. Snow
3. A Romance Language...
From: Logan Kearsley
4. OT: Linguistics applied to computer security
From: Sai
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 8:05 am ((PST))
On 27 December 2011 21:52, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> -- 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.
I think that's a misleading analogy. Latin didn't lack the means of
expressing certain things that early Spanish speakers then had to come
up with expressions for; the Latin verbal system could express
everything people wanted to say just fine, and merely underwent normal
historical change to end up being replaced by equally expressive
modern Spanish grammar. If that sort of thing happens in the internal
history of Naisek, and speakers are presumed to have fixed up their
grammar to shoehorn inanimates into subject positions with new
morphology or whatever, fine; but it's one thing to say "these
structures are complicated, so they get changed to this in Modern
Naisek", and something entirely else to say "there's no way to say
this, the grammar is incomplete, so here's a plastering job to make
the problem go away."
I thought of another possible way to solve the problem which oughtn't
to require any special-purpose grammatical changes- can you just use
appositive pronouns, or adjuncts with an animate pronoun? E.g., "The
wind, she blew the paper." I think this would work especially well for
things that are perceived as being more genuinely animate (like
weather events) or personified, thus justifying using an animate
pronoun to refer to them, as opposed to things that are really just
instruments.
-l.
Messages in this topic (20)
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1b. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 11:26 am ((PST))
On Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:29:26 -0800, Padraic Brown
<[email protected]> wrote:
>--- 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*!!??
How did -r nouns become inanimate in the first place, BTW?
> 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.
That's sort of what I'm thinking; treat them as if animate only when
necessary.
> 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
I've taken a closer look at the Naisek texts and found:
"from" + genitive phrase + passive is used in 2 relay translations
instrumental + passive is used in 1 relay translation
choice #3 above is used in 2 relay translations
A note I've discovered in the grammar suggests I should've used the
instrumental in all of the above texts. But in any case, that's a lot of
action done by inanimate objects!
Messages in this topic (20)
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1c. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 12:23 pm ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Tuesday 27 Dec 2011 14:34:00 -0500 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.
This is pretty much the same as in my Old Albic! In Old Albic,
inanimate nouns have defective case paradigms, lacking the
agentive, genitive, partitive and dative case.
> I'm considering the
> following change possibilities:
>
> 1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the ergative and
> dative cases
I once considered that for Old Albic, but decided against it
because it would have been a bag on the side of the system I had
in mind.
> 2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix instead
Clumsy and inelegant.
> 3. decline the nouns as if animate
This would work nicely, but remove an interesting distinction
from the grammatical machinery of the language.
> 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.
Old Albic has some semantically inanimate nouns that are
grammatically animate, such as forces of nature (so in a
sentence like "The wind shook the barley" the subject could
take the agentive case), celestial bodies and a few others.
> 5. no change, always use the passive.
Consider the sentence "The stone smashed the window". Did the
stone act out of itself to smash the window? Certainly not.
Some external force set it in motion such that the window got
smashed. Hence, the stone is not an agent but an *instrument*.
Hence, Old Albic uses the instrumental and says the equivalent
of "The window was smashed with the stone". (It helps that what
Old Albic has for a passive is a simple zero-agent construction
where you just remove the agent person suffix from the verb and
the agent NP from the clause.)
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (20)
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1d. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 2:28 pm ((PST))
On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 07:41:36 -0600, Wm Annis
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 10:37 PM, neo gu <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> "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.
>
>Then use the passive for that. There's no reason you have to use
>an identical strategy for all translations of English active sentences
>with semantically inanimate agents. It makes sense that natural
>forces and the weather seem of higher animacy than, say, a knife,
>since they operate without human intervention. Slot them into a
>different construction, and give a prayer of thanks to Saint Tolkien
>and Saint Hildegard that you didn't decide on something like
>Navajo's eight-level animacy hierarchy. :)
>
>--
>William S. Annis
>www.aoidoi.org www.scholiastae.org
Actually, I might end up with 3 animacy types if I make some nouns
heterogeneous, although they wouldn't constitute a Navajo-type
hierarchy.
Messages in this topic (20)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 2:53 pm ((PST))
--- On Wed, 12/28/11, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Logan Kearsley <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [CONLANG] Naisek Grammar Change Q
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Wednesday, December 28, 2011, 11:05 AM
> On 27 December 2011 21:52, Padraic
> Brown <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > -- 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.
>
> I thought of another possible way to solve the problem
> which oughtn't
> to require any special-purpose grammatical changes- can you
> just use
> appositive pronouns, or adjuncts with an animate pronoun?
> E.g., "The
> wind, she blew the paper." I think this would work
> especially well for
> things that are perceived as being more genuinely animate
> (like
> weather events) or personified, thus justifying using an
> animate
> pronoun to refer to them, as opposed to things that are
> really just instruments.
Well, the same issue would apply to forces of nature as apply to any other
formally animate but grammatically inanimate entity. The only one I have
a word for (yet) is thunder, parcar. It is grammatically inanimate, and
so some solution other than sticking parcar in the subject slot is
required. I don't think Talarian allows for appositive phrases. One thing
that strikes me as yet another solution is to simply combine the inanimate
thunder with some related but animate entity. Such binary compounds are
very common, and all you have to do is add the animate member on to the
end of the inanimate one, yielding a perfectly animate (though now dual
number) noun ready to take on the role of agency. So instead of percar,
say percoharyo: thundering-lord-DU. Also serves to emphasise the
personification that are always implied by forces of nature.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (20)
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1f. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:23 pm ((PST))
--- On Wed, 12/28/11, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 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*!!??
>
> How did -r nouns become inanimate in the first place, BTW?
A very ancient phenomenon indeed! The parent language had two classes,
animate and inanimate; Talarian has kept this distinction, eschewing
the proliferation of genders that the other Aryan languages have gone
in for. Back in the day, there were several subclasses of each. Some
animates terminated in -us or -as (what would eventually become fem. &
masc. in other languages), some in -@r (that would eventually become
various -r words, like "father", in other languages), some in -es; the
inanimates tended to terminate in -am, -um, -ar/-an and -em. Out of
all of these, -us, -am and -ar survived the "Great Vowel Collapse" of
some 18 centuries or so ago. This phenomenon led almost all vowels to
become either A or U. Long and short A remained; long O became long A;
short O became a kind of schwa; long and short E became long and short A
respectively; long U remained; short U also became a kind of schwa;
long and short I remained. -us was already the declension of old
animate words, while -ar was already the declension of many key inanimates.
It scooped up some -am inanimates, while some seem to have become -as
animates. Eventually -us and -as become conflated into one declension,
and anything in -r become conflated into another.
Culturally speaking, the idea of animate beings and inanimate entities is
already very strongly ingrained, and as this period of time progressed,
each declension became highly associated with one or the other. Of
course, even in those days, you needed some way to say "Father spanked
his recalcitrant son"! Traditional solutions tended to place the object
(the son) in the subject position with a middle verb and the agent in the
instrumental: the son him spanked with the rod of his father.
The various other solutions appear as time progressed. The morphological
shifts are the newest solutions, probably appearing no more than a
century ago or so. It is possible that Talarian is suffering from some
areal peer pressure.
> > 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.
>
> That's sort of what I'm thinking; treat them as if animate
> only when necessary.
This is certainly an easier solution -- less convoluted than bizarre
morphology or cumbersome circumlocutions!
> > 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
>
>
> I've taken a closer look at the Naisek texts and found:
> "from" + genitive phrase + passive is used in 2 relay
> translations
> instrumental + passive is used in 1 relay translation
> choice #3 above is used in 2 relay translations
>
> A note I've discovered in the grammar suggests I should've
> used the
> instrumental in all of the above texts. But in any case,
> that's a lot of
> action done by inanimate objects!
Yeah. Quite possibly one reason why so many ways of making a grammatically
inanimate noun act like an animate one is simply the large number of
them! A large number of Rumelian and Teutonic cognates that are masc. or
fem. are inanimate in Talarian; it is even far more common to borrow a
masc./fem. foreign word into the inanimate declension than it is to
borrow it into the animate. For some reason, the -ar/-an declension has
simply become dominant in the language.
Might be interesting to speculate what would happen if *all* the animates
got gobbled up, except perhaps a few stubborn hold-outs. Quite possibly
the animate conjugations would disappear. Everything would be expressed
in the medio-passive-stative continuum; or else some exceptions could
still do the old instrumental of agency trick.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (20)
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1g. Re: Naisek Grammar Change Q
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 8:58 pm ((PST))
On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:23:30 +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier
<[email protected]> wrote:
>Hallo conlangers!
>
>On Tuesday 27 Dec 2011 14:34:00 -0500 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.
>
>This is pretty much the same as in my Old Albic! In Old Albic,
>inanimate nouns have defective case paradigms, lacking the
>agentive, genitive, partitive and dative case.
>
>> I'm considering the following change possibilities:
>>
>> 1. add an animatizing suffix -d to inanimate nouns in the ergative
>> and dative cases
>
>I once considered that for Old Albic, but decided against it because
>it would have been a bag on the side of the system I had in mind.
>
>> 2. use the relative pronoun as the animatizing suffix instead
>
>Clumsy and inelegant.
I'm forced to agree about these.
>> 3. decline the nouns as if animate
>
>This would work nicely, but remove an interesting distinction
>from the grammatical machinery of the language.
true.
>> 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.
>
>Old Albic has some semantically inanimate nouns that are
>grammatically animate, such as forces of nature (so in a
>sentence like "The wind shook the barley" the subject could
>take the agentive case), celestial bodies and a few others.
I'll probably do that, or make those nouns heterogeneous (i.e. like
animate in the ergative and dative cases and inanimate otherwise),
which is a smaller change.
>> 5. no change, always use the passive.
>
>Consider the sentence "The stone smashed the window". Did the
>stone act out of itself to smash the window? Certainly not.
>Some external force set it in motion such that the window got
>smashed. Hence, the stone is not an agent but an *instrument*.
>Hence, Old Albic uses the instrumental and says the equivalent
>of "The window was smashed with the stone".
True, no matter how much the talking rock in the relay may disagree. :)
>(It helps that what Old Albic has for a passive is a simple zero-agent
>construction where you just remove the agent person suffix from the
>verb and the agent NP from the clause.)
I like that method of passive and am using it in some other sketches.
>
>--
>... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
>http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
>"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (20)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:02 pm ((PST))
> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:07:57 +0000
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: How Does Everyone Translate?
> To: [email protected]
> 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.
> I used to see the sentence "I went to the shops" and then translate
> holistically: look up "go", find the preterite, declarative, 1st person
> singular conjugation and then write that. Then "to" and then "shops" and
> decline that for lative definite.
> "Schàdha unla tyentàrré"
This one was easy, since I was able to do it directly wihtout thinking:
Sí lé chak hensash kadiz.
I-nom. aux.-past the-pl. store-loc./pl. go (I would not have had the locative
dual ending right there in my mind, so it is likely that "I went to the two
shops." would have come out: "Sí lé chal hensa[brbrbrmumble] kadiz.")
which means I actually went to some actual locations called "shops/stores". But
this sounds more to me like some quaint, twee Rightpondianism for "I went to
the store./I went shopping." which would be better as:
Sí lé ngorhof. I went shopping. OR maybe
Sí lé ptaimez. I ran/did some errands.
> Now when I translate I break each English sentence down grammatically and
> analyse how it might function in the target language. >So "I went to the
> shops" is transcribed "go"PRET.DECL.1PS.STILL *TOWARDS*
> "shop"NOM.DEF.PLU+LAT. Eventually the whole >document is converted into
> individual one line commands.
> Even though it takes a lot more work, I find it quicker. It also means I
> generate a list of words to look up in one go or to coin.
> What I wondered was, how does everyone else go about translating from English
> into their conlangs? Does anyone have a really efficient method? Since it was
> too easy, I decided to try something a little more daunting (olde worlde
> spellings retained for effect :) ): "Maja Lind bodde på landet i sina
> föräldrars välbyggda lilla envåningshus, hvilket stod midt i en trädgård med
> många krusbärs- och vinbärsbuskar, päron- och körsbärsträd." I found myself
> zeroing in on "bodde", "landet", "hus, hvilket", "trädgård", "buskar", and
> "träd". Translate, reshuffle to Géarthnuns SOV, add appropriate auxiliary and
> case endings. Now I won't lie and say there probably wasn't some sort of
> intermediary English step, but I knew these in Swedish. I did not know the
> Géarthnuns word for "på landet" off the top of my head; "busk" had to be
> coined. Words I did not know certainly leapt out next: "envåning", "krusbär",
> "vinbär", körsbär". Translate into English. They already exist in the lexicon
> (yippee!!!). Translate to Géarthnuns. Needed to be coined: "välbyggda", "med"
> (as used here), and "buskar". I ended up with: "Lind Maíats lü chöi
> bdézarhötsöiv chö béöbsöv meksíreböv jínsörböv küvaböv chaul zhbéörsauj, chöb
> lé sü mörveksüb waur chík ngkemebö- zhö auvaunathnalsíd ezgaulíd, chauk
> mnatöbö- zhö mferaubursaud ezgauraud vembö mal sho, hin." "Lind Maíats lü
> chöi bdézarhötsöiv chö béöbsöv meksíreböv jínsörböv küvaböv chaul zhbéörsauj,
> Lind Maja-nom. aux.-transcendent the country-loc. the house-loc.
> one.storey-loc. well.crafted-loc. small-loc. the-dual parent-gen./dual,
> chöb lé sü mörveksüb waur chík ngkemebö- zhö auvaunathnalsíd ezgaulíd,
> which-nom. aux.-past a yard/garden-postpositional in.the.middle.of the-pl.
> groseille- and cassis.bush-post./pl. many-post./pl., chauk mnatöbö- zhö
> mferaubursaud ezgauraud vembö mal sho, hin."the-pl. pear- and
> cherry.tree-post./pl. many-post./pl. with...therein be.situated SHO, live.
> "Maja Lind lived in the country in her parents' well-built one-story house,
> which stood in the middle of a garden (yard) with many gooseberry and currant
> bushes and pear and cherry trees." Aside from a rather long circumambulation
> on the web about gooseberries, this wasn't too bad speed-wise. As for
> efficiency, I dunno. It isn't often a goal where Géarthnuns and translations
> are concerned. I don't want to eat my large wedge of pecan pie with hard
> sauce efficiently -- I want to savor it (and feel my arteries congeal later).
> Kou What I found is that I zero in on the target words first
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 3:09 pm ((PST))
> Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:02:31 -0500
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
> To: [email protected]
> > Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:07:57 +0000
> > From: [email protected]
> > Subject: How Does Everyone Translate?
> > To: [email protected] Most annoyingly hard to read and not how I
> > formatted it. My apologies. I have no idea how to fix it.
> > Even though it takes a lot more work, I find it quicker. It also means I
> > generate a list of words to look up in one go or to coin.
> > What I wondered was, how does everyone else go about translating from
> > English into their conlangs? Does anyone have a really efficient method?
> > Since it was too easy, I decided to try something a little more daunting
> > (olde worlde spellings retained for effect :) ): "Maja Lind bodde på
> > landet i sina föräldrars välbyggda lilla envåningshus, hvilket stod midt i
> > en trädgård med många krusbärs- och vinbärsbuskar, päron- och
> > körsbärsträd." I found myself zeroing in on "bodde", "landet", "hus,
> > hvilket", "trädgård", "buskar", and "träd". Translate, reshuffle to
> > Géarthnuns SOV, add appropriate auxiliary and case endings. Now I won't lie
> > and say there probably wasn't some sort of intermediary English step, but I
> > knew these in Swedish. I did not know the Géarthnuns word for "på landet"
> > off the top of my head; "busk" had to be coined. Words I did not know
> > certainly leapt out next: "envåning", "krusbär", "vinbär", körsbär".
> > Translate into English. They already exist in the lexicon (yippee!!!).
> > Translate to Géarthnuns. Needed to be coined: "välbyggda", "med" (as used
> > here), and "buskar". I ended up with: "Lind Maíats lü chöi
> > bdézarhötsöiv chö béöbsöv meksíreböv jínsörböv küvaböv chaul zhbéörsauj,
> > chöb lé sü mörveksüb waur chík ngkemebö- zhö auvaunathnalsíd ezgaulíd,
> > chauk mnatöbö- zhö mferaubursaud ezgauraud vembö mal sho, hin." "Lind
> > Maíats lü chöi bdézarhötsöiv chö béöbsöv meksíreböv jínsörböv küvaböv chaul
> > zhbéörsauj, Lind Maja-nom. aux.-transcendent the country-loc. the
> > house-loc. one.storey-loc. well.crafted-loc. small-loc. the-dual
> > parent-gen./dual, chöb lé sü mörveksüb waur chík ngkemebö- zhö
> > auvaunathnalsíd ezgaulíd, which-nom. aux.-past a yard/garden-postpositional
> > in.the.middle.of the-pl. groseille- and cassis.bush-post./pl.
> > many-post./pl., chauk mnatöbö- zhö mferaubursaud ezgauraud vembö mal sho,
> > hin."the-pl. pear- and cherry.tree-post./pl. many-post./pl. with...therein
> > be.situated SHO, live. "Maja Lind lived in the country in her parents'
> > well-built one-story house, which stood in the middle of a garden (yard)
> > with many gooseberry and currant bushes and pear and cherry trees." Aside
> > from a rather long circumambulation on the web about gooseberries, this
> > wasn't too bad speed-wise. As for efficiency, I dunno. It isn't often a
> > goal where Géarthnuns and translations are concerned. I don't want to eat
> > my large wedge of pecan pie with hard sauce efficiently -- I want to savor
> > it (and feel my arteries congeal later). Kou
Messages in this topic (17)
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2c. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
Posted by: "Amanda Babcock Furrow" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 4:20 pm ((PST))
On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 05:16:15AM -0500, J. Snow wrote:
> Out of curiosity, what does -tylakèhlpë'fö- mean?
Glad to explain :) First off, it doesn't sound as interesting as it looks;
I can't quite bring myself to get rid of the diareses, despite the fact that
they just mean "unstressed but not lax vowel". Also the y is just /i/, and
reflects the fact that the morpheme ty- has its own character in the native
script, distinct from the usual ti. So it's pronounced: (CSX) tila'kEKpefo
(IPA) tila'kÉɬpefo
The -hl- /ɬ/ is an optative infix. The verb stem is tylakèp /tila'kÉp/, and
means to receive happily or well, from ty- /ti/ sacred or good, and
lakèp /la'kÉp/ to receive.
The -ë /e/ is a perfective aspectual suffix, and -fö /fo/ is the 2nd person
plural suffix, traditionally set off by an apostrophe for no good reason
(I've decided that with other person suffixes that begin with a vowel, the
apostrophe reflects the fact that they don't merge in writing with the
preceding
consonant in the native orthography, but the use of the apostrophe before
a consonant is at best an overgeneralization.)
So it means "May you (pl) receive it well". I cooked it up a few years
back when I decided I needed a standard email closing.
tylakèhlpë'fö,
Amanda
Messages in this topic (17)
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2d. Re: How Does Everyone Translate?
Posted by: "J. Snow" [email protected]
Date: Thu Dec 29, 2011 1:38 am ((PST))
I think my Wii messed with the coding of the message below :/ It's also the
reason
I'm not able to show the IPA pronounciation, as the Wii's browser doesn't
support it.
-Cool! I'm bored at the moment, so I decided to formulate my own translation of
"May you recieve it well": "Ewalesaren bone loresibid"
I'll admit, I haven't come up with a way of saying "may" in Sironu, so I
translated it
as "I hope you (will) recieve it well". So it goes e- "I" -wal- "you (plural)"
esaren
"hope (indicative present-tense)", bone "well", lo- "him/it" resibid "recieve
(indicative future-tense)"
I'll admit, my conlang is about as refined as a kindey stone, but I think it's
decent
for the time I've spent on it. :/
By the way, how do you set up the closing?
On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:20:13 -0500, Amanda Babcock Furrow
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 05:16:15AM -0500, J. Snow wrote:
>
>> Out of curiosity, what does -tylakèhlpë'fö- mean?
>
>Glad to explain :) First off, it doesn't sound as interesting as it looks;
>I can't quite bring myself to get rid of the diareses, despite the fact that
>they just mean "unstressed but not lax vowel". Also the y is just /i/, and
>reflects the fact that the morpheme ty- has its own character in the native
>script, distinct from the usual ti. So it's pronounced: (CSX) tila'kEKpefo
>(IPA) tila'kÉɬpefo
>
>The -hl- /ɬ/ is an optative infix. The verb stem is tylakèp /tila'kÉp/, and
>means to receive happily or well, from ty- /ti/ sacred or good, and
>lakèp /la'kÉp/ to receive.
>
>The -ë /e/ is a perfective aspectual suffix, and -fö /fo/ is the 2nd person
>plural suffix, traditionally set off by an apostrophe for no good reason
>(I've decided that with other person suffixes that begin with a vowel, the
>apostrophe reflects the fact that they don't merge in writing with the
>preceding
>consonant in the native orthography, but the use of the apostrophe before
>a consonant is at best an overgeneralization.)
>
>So it means "May you (pl) receive it well". I cooked it up a few years
>back when I decided I needed a standard email closing.
>
>tylakèhlpë'fö,
>Amanda
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3. A Romance Language...
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Dec 28, 2011 11:09 pm ((PST))
... of an entirely different sort. My fiancee and I have made some
excellent progress on our (as yet unnamed) collaborative conlang this
week; I think I'm doing vocabulary generation at a higher rate than
ever before (largely thanks to the regular derivational system).
I'm going about it largely by just trying to say stuff and and then
analyzing the results and trying to fit it all together, but with some
a-priori planning and nudging to make it go interesting directions.
The result is turning out to be a balance between weird and cool and
familiar enough that my fiancee is comfortable using it without too
much effort. In particular, aside from a phoneme inventory, the
phonology isn't very well worked out at all (with one exception*), and
I'm figuring it out as patterns of word creation and usage emerge. I
thus suspect it will turn out rather Englishy, but not completely. The
inventory starts out with English, but with a simplified vowel system
and the addition of voiced and unvoiced lateral (rr, ll) and palatal
(y, h) fricatives and an ayn (').
*That one exception is the sonority hierarchy. I'm putting to use my
idea of last June for the dicluster root / template system, and so the
syllabification rules that went along with that to resolve disallowed
consonant clusters are in effect, with the addition than ayn (')
syllabifies to /a/.
The consonantal root system does not dominate the entire language;
there are already a few basic words that exist outside of it. However,
there are well over 200 possible templates to use in constructing
derivational paradigms, which allows for having several declination
classes without getting anywhere near using up all the possible
three-syllable words, thus leaving plenty of extras for those basic
words outside of the system. Vocabulary construction so far has
resulted in the creation of 2 declination classes to account for roots
that can be made into ditransitives and roots that can't (the second
one having a smaller paradigm). This allows for easy vocabulary
generation by stealing the consonants from an existing
English/French/Russian/Latin word and then applying templates to them
to get 10-or-so brand new totally unrecognizable conlang words.
For now, a full paradigm includes
Agent/Focus verb
Agent/Patient verb
Agent/Patient/Focus verb
Agent+Patient (inherently reflexive) verb
Patient verb
Patient/Focus verb
Abstract Nominal
Agent Nominal
Patient Nominal
Focus Nominal
where Patient and Focus can also be Experiencer and Stimulus,
depending on the root. Roots themselves are specified as static or
dynamic in nature, which can be modified by various prefixes. The
abstract nominal serves as a base for potential further concatenative
derivation via noun-class affixes and such. Need to figure out
participles somehow. Verbs don't conjugate at all, which simplified
things a lot. Also note that there are no infinitives, but there are
nominalizing suffixes.
My next favorite part so far is the personal pronoun system, which
looks like this:
mi 1m.s.
ma 1f.s.
me 1.3.
nu 1.2.
ti 2m.s.
ta 2f.s.
vu 2p.
ci 3m.s. lli 3m.p.
ca 3f.s. lla 3f.p.
on 3n.s. err 3n.p.
Of particular note is the existence of a 1+2 plural pronoun, and a
1+3, but no single word to indicate a group of the speaker, addressee,
and someone else all together.
The basic word order is VSIO; however, the subject may be dropped at
whim (valency is encoded in the verb, so you always know if something
is missing), and the indirect object may take on optional case-ish
affix / clitic, the presence of which allows for the omission of the
direct object and arbitrary movement of the indirect object.
Tense is specified by a set of optional tense particles; the unmarked
form is not explicitly present, but rather indefinite, with tense
inferred from context.
I don't yet have the full structure of a noun phrase worked out;
particularly where adjectives and heavy modifiers go. In fact,
adjectives are a very fuzzy subject all around at the moment.
Questions are formed either by in-situ interrogative pro-forms
(including an interrogative pro-verb), or by an interrogative clitic
attached to whatever is in question to form yes/no questions. At the
moment, interrogatives are doing double-duty as conditionals when
adjoined to another clause.
The syntax makes clause boundaries (almost) always unambiguous, which
makes for some really nice pithy constructions; e.g., there's no need
for subordinating conjunctions, because prepositions can just take an
unmarked clause as an object. And despite not knowing where they go
yet, relative clauses are very simple as well- they're just bare
clauses with in-situ interrogatives as relative pronouns.
There's a good deal more to it, but that pretty much summarizes the
basics-that-are-pretty-sure-not-to-change.
-l.
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4. OT: Linguistics applied to computer security
Posted by: "Sai" [email protected]
Date: Thu Dec 29, 2011 2:42 am ((PST))
Might be of interest to y'all: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~sergey/langsec/
- Sai
Messages in this topic (1)
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