There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: No Songs To Sing
From: Padraic Brown
1b. Re: No Songs To Sing
From: Ben Scerri
1c. Re: No Songs To Sing
From: George Corley
1d. Re: No Songs To Sing
From: Padraic Brown
2a. Page makeover, see the before/after
From: taliesin the storyteller
2b. That girl is a well built sun-chariot...
From: Padraic Brown
2c. Re: That girl is a well built sun-chariot...
From: Padraic Brown
2d. Re: Page makeover, see the before/after
From: Herman Miller
3a. Re: An initial consonant mutatio n system â is this naturalis
From: Alex Fink
3b. Re: An initial consonant mutatio n system â is this natur
From: David Peterson
4a. Into the furious blue yonder
From: Daniel Bowman
4b. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: Sam Stutter
4c. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: MorphemeAddict
4d. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: Alex Fink
4e. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: Daniel Bowman
4f. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: Padraic Brown
4g. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: Amanda Babcock Furrow
4h. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: Brian
4i. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
From: Daniel Bowman
5a. Fusional Evidentiality on Nouns
From: Logan Kearsley
5b. Re: Fusional Evidentiality on Nouns
From: Herman Miller
6a. Language that Don't Change
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
6b. Re: Language that Don't Change
From: Matthew Boutilier
7. Language Families
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
8. Endangered Languages
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: No Songs To Sing
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 7:16 am ((PST))
--- On Sun, 2/5/12, Charles W Brickner <[email protected]> wrote:
> You might also consider parallelism,
> a device used in Hebrew poetry. There
> are several variations. If you are interested I'd be
> glad to tell you of them.
>
> Psalm 37:1-2
> Be not vexed over evildoers,
> Nor jealous of those who do wrong;
> For like grass they quickly wither,
> And like green herbs they wilt.
Parallelism works really well for languages high in synonyms. Languages
with a sparse lexicon would simply produce a repetition of lines with the
same words:
Be not upset about wrongdoers
nor upset about those wrongdoers;
like plants they quickly wilt,
like plants they wilt.
> I will be using parallelism when I attempt some poetry in
> Senjecas.
> Senjecas is not conducive to rhyme.
Parallelism is found in many poetic forms in the World as well. Never hurts
to say the same thing five different ways -- after all, before there was
writing and before you could just look up a line of poetry online, if you
stop paying attention during an epic recitation, you can easily miss a
key portion of the plot if it weren't repeated.
> Charlie
Padraic
Messages in this topic (11)
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1b. Re: No Songs To Sing
Posted by: "Ben Scerri" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 2:26 pm ((PST))
> Parallelism works really well for languages high in synonyms. Languages
> with a sparse lexicon would simply produce a repetition of lines with the
> same words:
Not necessarily. All you need to do is give several examples of a SIMILAR
concept. Therefore, all your language needs is the possibility of metaphor
or simile, and I can see no reason why any conlang trying to be
naturalistic could not fit this need.
Artlangs and the like might have a bit more of a problem, but then, not all
types of poetry and suited to every type of language.
In my most recent project (about which I've already mentioned the Wave
Pattern), I've borrowed a modern Chinese practice of giving things
nicknames of 4 characters (4 syllables). This also exists in lots of old
idioms, but the modern version is what intrigues me as they have a trend of
translating English words into Chinese characters with similar sounds and
then turning them into a 4 character nickname based on these sounds.
Therefore, those who know the English word have a funnier way of saying it
(as the combination of the 4 Chinese characters would invariably mean
something TOTALLY different in Chinese). Therefore, your language could
'make fun of' or be influenced by an old or revered language (similar to
English revering Latin) by having your people write poetry to SOUND like
the old language (or the new) whilst using syllables and roots from the new
(or old) to fit in with the sounds. However, the ACTUAL meaning is
completely different. I urge you to try this out, as it makes some very
humorous results!
On 6 February 2012 02:15, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> --- On Sun, 2/5/12, Charles W Brickner <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > You might also consider parallelism,
> > a device used in Hebrew poetry. There
> > are several variations. If you are interested I'd be
> > glad to tell you of them.
> >
> > Psalm 37:1-2
> > Be not vexed over evildoers,
> > Nor jealous of those who do wrong;
> > For like grass they quickly wither,
> > And like green herbs they wilt.
>
> Parallelism works really well for languages high in synonyms. Languages
> with a sparse lexicon would simply produce a repetition of lines with the
> same words:
>
> Be not upset about wrongdoers
> nor upset about those wrongdoers;
> like plants they quickly wilt,
> like plants they wilt.
>
> > I will be using parallelism when I attempt some poetry in
> > Senjecas.
> > Senjecas is not conducive to rhyme.
>
> Parallelism is found in many poetic forms in the World as well. Never hurts
> to say the same thing five different ways -- after all, before there was
> writing and before you could just look up a line of poetry online, if you
> stop paying attention during an epic recitation, you can easily miss a
> key portion of the plot if it weren't repeated.
>
> > Charlie
>
> Padraic
>
>
Messages in this topic (11)
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1c. Re: No Songs To Sing
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 3:31 pm ((PST))
When I think of parallelism I think mainly of structural parallelism, which
doesn't need synonyms, really. We did an episode of Conlangery all about
poetry and the various devices that can be used to give them structure:
http://conlangery.com/2011/10/24/conlangery-21-poetry/ It's definitely the
case that not every poetic device is useful for every language -- there are
a lot of considerations about linguistic structure that go into the
calculation of how poetry can work (and what poetic forms will be
interesting).
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: No Songs To Sing
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 4:45 pm ((PST))
--- On Sun, 2/5/12, Ben Scerri <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Parallelism works really well for languages high in synonyms. Languages
> > with a sparse lexicon would simply produce a repetition of lines with
> > the same words:
>
> Not necessarily. All you need to do is give several examples
> of a SIMILAR
> concept. Therefore, all your language needs is the
> possibility of metaphor
> or simile, and I can see no reason why any conlang trying to
> be naturalistic could not fit this need.
True. All I'm saying is if a language has only one word for something,
parallelism in poetry doesn't work as well. Using metaphor will certainly
improve the situation!, assuming that metaphor is allowable. Perhaps the
rule in poetry is "plain words only".
> Artlangs and the like might have a bit more of a problem,
> but then, not all types of poetry and suited to every type of language.
My point exactly.
> In my most recent project (about which I've already
> mentioned the Wave Pattern),
I like that concept, by the way.
> I've borrowed a modern Chinese practice of giving things
> nicknames of 4 characters (4 syllables). This also exists in
> lots of old idioms,
Is this chengyu? That in itself is pretty intriguing! And I'll have to
look into that further...
> but the modern version is what intrigues me as they have a trend of
> translating English words into Chinese characters with
> similar sounds and
> then turning them into a 4 character nickname based on these
> sounds.
Not quite sure I get the mechanics of this. Assuming a Chinese word with
two characters, does that mean they're trying to transliterate English
words into a group of two Chinese words each with two characters (and thus
end up with four characters)? Or syllable by syllable? Or is something
else going on. An example or two would be very helpful!
> Therefore, those who know the English word have a funnier
> way of saying it
> (as the combination of the 4 Chinese characters would
> invariably mean
> something TOTALLY different in Chinese).
So if I wanted to munge "paper clip" this way, and I had a language that
had characters BAA (fast), PING (tree), LE (run) and PI (slow), I'd end
up with a string of characters BAA-PING LE-PI and the nonce phrase "the
fast tree runs slow". Something like that?
> Therefore, your language could
> 'make fun of' or be influenced by an old or revered language
> (similar to
> English revering Latin) by having your people write poetry
> to SOUND like
> the old language (or the new) whilst using syllables and
> roots from the new
> (or old) to fit in with the sounds. However, the ACTUAL
> meaning is
> completely different. I urge you to try this out, as it
> makes some very humorous results!
Or is it like Dog Latin? You know, "o civile si ergo..."?
Padraic
Messages in this topic (11)
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2a. Page makeover, see the before/after
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 7:44 am ((PST))
Inspired by Conlangery podcast #34, I've been working om updating the
oldest of the webpages about Taruven.
The oldest of all was the page about pronunciation and transliteration
and that have been tackled first. At
http://taliesin.nvg.org/taruven/compare2.html
the old page is on the left and the new page on the right.
Would you say that the new page is an improvement over the old? What
could be made better on the new page?
t.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2b. That girl is a well built sun-chariot...
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 9:13 am ((PST))
... or how far afield meanings can drift in a language.
I've discovered that the Mentolatian word for beautiful, yûûnguscuw[1],
means quite literally, "for the sun, well axled". The old word yuwôl / yewon,
sun, migrated to "bright sun of the face" to "bright light of the
body" to "lamp of the mind" or, put simply, "eye". The old word
qes-qewontus meant "properly carved" or "nicely made into a round shape"
as was applied to waggon axles and wheels. It eventually migrated to "well
built" to "pleasant to ride in" to simply "pleasant" and then "lovely to
behold" and "beautiful". Along the way, it lost its verbal apparatus (the
-ntu-s bit) and is now simply an adjective. In the modern language, lond
i-durandu means a thing well made (can still see the old -ntu-s in the
verbal noun). Neither of the younger words is Aryan, while all the older
ones have Aryan roots.
So: ha mnare i-yûûnguscuw -- she/that girl (is) lovely in the eye. Mnare,
woman or girl, comes from *men-, ha derives from *ki-.
[1] sa@wel- + esu- + keue-
Padraic
Messages in this topic (4)
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2c. Re: That girl is a well built sun-chariot...
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:58 pm ((PST))
> ha mnare i-yûûnguscuw -- she/that girl (is) lovely in the eye. Mnare,
> woman or girl, comes from *men-, ha derives from *ki-.
That should be ha mnare yûûnguscuw -- without the possessive i-. What the
original actually means is rather nonsensical: "that girl (is) of
ALIEN.POSS.-beauty". As if beauty owns the girl and can dispose of her. I
suppose beauty may be possessed, but may not possess.
You can say i-mnare yûûnguscuw -- a beautiful girl, where beauty is an
inalienable possession of the girl; but not the other way around. Some
words work both ways: i-dazg firu = the of-the-house man, a major domo; or
you can say dazg i-firu = the house of-the-man, the man's house.
Possession must also be expressed in terms of things that are impossessible
or possessible. You can say dazg i-firu, but not landa i-firu (the man's
land). Land is not considered an ownable thing; nor are wild animals or
weather or aspects of nature. The only exception is landa i-arquân, which
means "the king's land", and is synonymous with the country of Mentolatum
itself. If a man has a wild animal in a cage and has tamed it, it still
isn't his. The best that can be said is questu og-dazg i-firu, the wild
animal at the house of the man. This kind of possession isn't marked with
an explicit particle; but one does have to know who can own what and what
can't be owned.
Can make for longish work-arounds: qua-ha, i-mnare yûûnguscuw, questu
og-dazg i-firu, hi i-dazg firu, he-hi slodnemnod; concerning-her, the girl
of-inalienable-beauty, the beast at-the-alienable-house of-the-man, him the
of-the-inalienable-house man, for-itself gobbled-middle-perfect. Or, more
succinctly, "the butler's beast ate the pretty girl"!
Padraic
Messages in this topic (4)
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2d. Re: Page makeover, see the before/after
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 4:03 pm ((PST))
On 2/5/2012 10:43 AM, taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> Inspired by Conlangery podcast #34, I've been working om updating the
> oldest of the webpages about Taruven.
>
> The oldest of all was the page about pronunciation and transliteration
> and that have been tackled first. At
>
> http://taliesin.nvg.org/taruven/compare2.html
>
> the old page is on the left and the new page on the right.
>
> Would you say that the new page is an improvement over the old? What
> could be made better on the new page?
It looks like an improvement in general. The description of {rÌ} is a bit
confusing. It sounds like you're describing a sequence [Êr] or [xr], but
you have it symbolized as /rÊË/ or /ÊÊË/.
Is there any reason to leave the ASCII transliteration on the main
chart? Has the sandhi table for vowels been moved to another page or is
it just redundant because of the content of the "long vowels" chart?
Messages in this topic (4)
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3a. Re: An initial consonant mutatio n system â is this naturalis
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 10:07 am ((PST))
On Sun, 5 Feb 2012 14:25:25 +0100, Arnt Richard Johansen <[email protected]> wrote:
>Alex Fink:
>> [...] or else originally included in the system and then analogised out
of existence. [...]
>> that opens the door to the /l L/-stem paradigm analogically stealing
nouns away from the mutating paradigm.
>
>Can you give me some pointers to help me understand what kind of process
"analogy" is? Is it the same as regularization?
Yes, just regularization; also called levelling. An infrequent paradigm (/
value) replacing some of its cells to be identical with a more frequent
paradigm. WP doesn't have a lot of detail on it but there's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_leveling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy#Linguistics
Alex
Messages in this topic (2)
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3b. Re: An initial consonant mutatio n system â is this natur
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:02 pm ((PST))
On Feb 5, 2012, at 10:07 AM, Alex Fink wrote:
> On Sun, 5 Feb 2012 14:25:25 +0100, Arnt Richard Johansen <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Alex Fink:
>>> [...] or else originally included in the system and then analogised out
> of existence. [...]
>>> that opens the door to the /l L/-stem paradigm analogically stealing
> nouns away from the mutating paradigm.
>>
>> Can you give me some pointers to help me understand what kind of process
> "analogy" is? Is it the same as regularization?
>
> Yes, just regularization; also called levelling. An infrequent paradigm (/
> value) replacing some of its cells to be identical with a more frequent
> paradigm. WP doesn't have a lot of detail on it but there's
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_leveling
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy#Linguistics
Really simple example from American English (especially since British English,
I believe, still has the old form):
Old: spell~spells~spelt
New: spell~spells~spelled
In American English, "spell" is now completely regular. The new regular
paradigm was formed on analogy with other regular paradigms (e.g.
"mill~mills~milled").
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (2)
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4a. Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 10:13 am ((PST))
All,
Padraic's email just jogged my memory-there's a mystery I need the
Listserv's help to solve. Also, I've been looking for an excuse to share
this winter's project with you, but it was not language related
enough...until now.
Here's the backstory:
A year ago, two friends of mine took a weather balloon, a camera, and a SPOT
tracker and released them into the sky in central New Mexico. The balloon
talked to them on the way up, but then they heard from it only once on the
descent. It disappeared into the New Mexico desert, and they never found it.
So this year, I joined the team and we decided to do it right this time. We
made a nice big parachute, got 2 tracking systems (a SPOT tracker, and a GPS
cellphone), and a new camera (my friend's mom's camera having been on the
ill-fated first spaceship). We released the balloon (code-named JAKE II)
into the sky from my mom's hay shed on Christmas Eve, just after a big
snowfall. We estimate the balloon went to 90,000 ft, and the pictures are
incredible (curved earth, black sky). We tracked the package on the descent
into some remote mountains, and my friends had to do a 3 day expedition to
get back.
Anyway (and I am getting to the point...), the local newspaper got wind of
this stunt and emailed my friend Paul. The resulting newspaper article was
also posted on the newspaper's web site. About two weeks later, Paul
discovered that the article had been reposted on a different web site, but
with some intriguing changes.
I have no idea how it got this mangled. My only thought is that it went
through a couple of translation programs. Anyone have any guesses on how
this happened?
by the way, the second article is HYSTERICAL.
Original article:
http://www.dchieftain.com/2012/01/18/into-the-wild-blue-yonder
Mangled article:
http://cellphonetrackerapp.com/into-the-wild-blue-yonder/
Balloon Photos :-)
launch, flight highlights:
https://picasaweb.google.com/103105207923503984635/NearSpaceBalloon
launch to landing full photo set:
https://picasaweb.google.com/107050167928892616939/JakeIILaunchToLandingSequence?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGwjbPNqPXUGw
Messages in this topic (9)
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4b. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Sam Stutter" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 10:46 am ((PST))
Those photos are incredible! ::Cmd-click - save to downloads; cmd-click -
change desktop background... ::
There's something not quite right about that site, I mean, other than its
Twitter account has only one post and has only been up for a few days, the site
makes hundreds of posts per day and only appears to go back to January 6th and
that everything is mistranslated.
Oh, and it isn't a Google translate backwards and forwards with Mandarin,
Russian, Hindi, Turkish or Arabic, because I've tried those. The question is,
which language has "crow" and "bluster" and "mobile" and "dungeon" (throughout
the website) as synonyms. I've seen stuff like this before, but I always
assumed it was garbage, just a load of tag words to attract search engines.
On 5 Feb 2012, at 18:13, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> All,
>
> Padraic's email just jogged my memory-there's a mystery I need the
> Listserv's help to solve. Also, I've been looking for an excuse to share
> this winter's project with you, but it was not language related
> enough...until now.
>
> Here's the backstory:
>
> A year ago, two friends of mine took a weather balloon, a camera, and a SPOT
> tracker and released them into the sky in central New Mexico. The balloon
> talked to them on the way up, but then they heard from it only once on the
> descent. It disappeared into the New Mexico desert, and they never found it.
>
> So this year, I joined the team and we decided to do it right this time. We
> made a nice big parachute, got 2 tracking systems (a SPOT tracker, and a GPS
> cellphone), and a new camera (my friend's mom's camera having been on the
> ill-fated first spaceship). We released the balloon (code-named JAKE II)
> into the sky from my mom's hay shed on Christmas Eve, just after a big
> snowfall. We estimate the balloon went to 90,000 ft, and the pictures are
> incredible (curved earth, black sky). We tracked the package on the descent
> into some remote mountains, and my friends had to do a 3 day expedition to
> get back.
>
> Anyway (and I am getting to the point...), the local newspaper got wind of
> this stunt and emailed my friend Paul. The resulting newspaper article was
> also posted on the newspaper's web site. About two weeks later, Paul
> discovered that the article had been reposted on a different web site, but
> with some intriguing changes.
>
> I have no idea how it got this mangled. My only thought is that it went
> through a couple of translation programs. Anyone have any guesses on how
> this happened?
>
> by the way, the second article is HYSTERICAL.
>
> Original article:
> http://www.dchieftain.com/2012/01/18/into-the-wild-blue-yonder
>
> Mangled article:
> http://cellphonetrackerapp.com/into-the-wild-blue-yonder/
>
> Balloon Photos :-)
> launch, flight highlights:
> https://picasaweb.google.com/103105207923503984635/NearSpaceBalloon
> launch to landing full photo set:
> https://picasaweb.google.com/107050167928892616939/JakeIILaunchToLandingSequence?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGwjbPNqPXUGw
Messages in this topic (9)
________________________________________________________________________
4c. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 10:51 am ((PST))
On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 1:13 PM, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]>wrote:
> All,
>
> Padraic's email just jogged my memory-there's a mystery I need the
> Listserv's help to solve. Also, I've been looking for an excuse to share
> this winter's project with you, but it was not language related
> enough...until now.
>
> Here's the backstory:
>
> A year ago, two friends of mine took a weather balloon, a camera, and a
> SPOT
> tracker and released them into the sky in central New Mexico. The balloon
> talked to them on the way up, but then they heard from it only once on the
> descent. It disappeared into the New Mexico desert, and they never found
> it.
>
> So this year, I joined the team and we decided to do it right this time.
> We
> made a nice big parachute, got 2 tracking systems (a SPOT tracker, and a
> GPS
> cellphone), and a new camera (my friend's mom's camera having been on the
> ill-fated first spaceship). We released the balloon (code-named JAKE II)
> into the sky from my mom's hay shed on Christmas Eve, just after a big
> snowfall. We estimate the balloon went to 90,000 ft, and the pictures are
> incredible (curved earth, black sky). We tracked the package on the
> descent
> into some remote mountains, and my friends had to do a 3 day expedition to
> get back.
>
> Anyway (and I am getting to the point...), the local newspaper got wind of
> this stunt and emailed my friend Paul. The resulting newspaper article was
> also posted on the newspaper's web site. About two weeks later, Paul
> discovered that the article had been reposted on a different web site, but
> with some intriguing changes.
>
> I have no idea how it got this mangled. My only thought is that it went
> through a couple of translation programs. Anyone have any guesses on how
> this happened?
>
I have no idea better than yours, i.e., all I have is pure speculation, but
I think you're right about the MT. It looks like nobody touched the text
after whatever changed it.
>
> by the way, the second article is HYSTERICAL.
>
> Original article:
> http://www.dchieftain.com/2012/01/18/into-the-wild-blue-yonder
>
> Mangled article:
> http://cellphonetrackerapp.com/into-the-wild-blue-yonder/
>
> Balloon Photos :-)
> launch, flight highlights:
> https://picasaweb.google.com/103105207923503984635/NearSpaceBalloon
> launch to landing full photo set:
>
> https://picasaweb.google.com/107050167928892616939/JakeIILaunchToLandingSequence?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGwjbPNqPXUGw
>
Awesome photos! While watching the slide show, I began to wonder what a
merging of all the photos into one big picture would look like. Maybe 3D.
That would be cool!
Great fun. Thanks for sharing.
stevo
Messages in this topic (9)
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4d. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 11:03 am ((PST))
On Sun, 5 Feb 2012 13:13:19 -0500, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]>
wrote:
>I have no idea how it got this mangled. My only thought is that it went
>through a couple of translation programs. Anyone have any guesses on how
>this happened?
Yeah, I've seen this before as a way of populating sites with content (ahh,
"content") for the usual spammesque link-farming reasons. What seems to
happen is that some program goes through with a generous thesaurus and
replaces most of the non-stopwords with random synonyms. Of course it can't
actually parse English, so it gets the part of speech wrong a lot of the
time. But if it's good enough to fool Google's crawler etc. into thinking
it's legitimate English text, that's quite sufficient.
>Balloon Photos :-)
>launch, flight highlights:
>https://picasaweb.google.com/103105207923503984635/NearSpaceBalloon
>launch to landing full photo set:
>https://picasaweb.google.com/107050167928892616939/JakeIILaunchToLandingSequence?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGwjbPNqPXUGw
Wonderful!
Alex
Messages in this topic (9)
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4e. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 11:28 am ((PST))
The interesting thing is that it is cellphonetrackerapp.com. We *were*
using a smart phone to track the balloon in addition to our SPOT satellite
tracker (the cellphone disappeared into the great radio silence that is the
New Mexico wilderness, but it did work for a while).
My thought was that somehow a foreign company is trying to attract users to
their cell phone app store, and they translated it, then google translated
it back.
2012/2/5 Alex Fink <[email protected]>
> On Sun, 5 Feb 2012 13:13:19 -0500, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]
> >
> wrote:
>
> >I have no idea how it got this mangled. My only thought ies that it went
> >through a couple of translation programs. Anyone have any guesses on how
> >this happened?
>
> Yeah, I've seen this before as a way of populating sites with content (ahh,
> "content") for the usual spammesque link-farming reasons. What seems to
> happen is that some program goes through with a generous thesaurus and
> replaces most of the non-stopwords with random synonyms. Of course it
> can't
> actually parse English, so it gets the part of speech wrong a lot of the
> time. But if it's good enough to fool Google's crawler etc. into thinking
> it's legitimate English text, that's quite sufficient.
>
> >Balloon Photos :-)
> >launch, flight highlights:
> >https://picasaweb.google.com/103105207923503984635/NearSpaceBalloon
> >launch to landing full photo set:
> >
> https://picasaweb.google.com/107050167928892616939/JakeIILaunchToLandingSequence?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGwjbPNqPXUGw
>
> Wonderful!
>
> Alex
>
Messages in this topic (9)
________________________________________________________________________
4f. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 12:46 pm ((PST))
--- On Sun, 2/5/12, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
> Padraic's email just jogged my memory-there's a mystery I need the
> Listserv's help to solve.
> Here's the backstory:
>
> A year ago, two friends of mine took a weather balloon, a camera, and a
> SPOT tracker and released them into the sky in central New Mexico.
Wow! First I just want to say how gorgeous the pictures are. Especially
those higher up.
Question:
Are you the guys portrayed in the Citibank commercial?
Glad the well-built sun-chariot girl came in useful!
Padraic
Messages in this topic (9)
________________________________________________________________________
4g. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Amanda Babcock Furrow" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 1:07 pm ((PST))
On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 02:28:23PM -0500, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> The interesting thing is that it is cellphonetrackerapp.com. We *were*
> using a smart phone
So cellphonetrackerapp.com is programmed to grab news articles that feature
cell phone tracking...
> My thought was that somehow a foreign company is trying to attract users to
> their cell phone app store, and they translated it, then google translated
> it back.
I don't think this bears any of the hallmarks of having been translated
through another language. No word order has been changed, no suffixes have
appeared on English words, no other-language words remained in other-language
during retranslation, and (most damning of all) the number of words in each
sentence remains the same.
I think it has just had enough words changed that it won't show up as an
exact copy of the original - perhaps to defeat Google's new "prioritize
original content" policy? - and that they are trying to get the site to
show up high in Google result ranks, at which point I assume they will
do something to monetize it.
tylakèhlpë'fö,
Amanda
Messages in this topic (9)
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4h. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Brian" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 7:44 pm ((PST))
First, those are amazing pictures!
Second, where can I get a dungeon phone? Lol!
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Bowman <[email protected]>
Sender: Constructed Languages List <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 2012 13:13:19
To: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <[email protected]>
Subject: Into the furious blue yonder
All,
Padraic's email just jogged my memory-there's a mystery I need the
Listserv's help to solve. Also, I've been looking for an excuse to share
this winter's project with you, but it was not language related
enough...until now.
Here's the backstory:
A year ago, two friends of mine took a weather balloon, a camera, and a SPOT
tracker and released them into the sky in central New Mexico. The balloon
talked to them on the way up, but then they heard from it only once on the
descent. It disappeared into the New Mexico desert, and they never found it.
So this year, I joined the team and we decided to do it right this time. We
made a nice big parachute, got 2 tracking systems (a SPOT tracker, and a GPS
cellphone), and a new camera (my friend's mom's camera having been on the
ill-fated first spaceship). We released the balloon (code-named JAKE II)
into the sky from my mom's hay shed on Christmas Eve, just after a big
snowfall. We estimate the balloon went to 90,000 ft, and the pictures are
incredible (curved earth, black sky). We tracked the package on the descent
into some remote mountains, and my friends had to do a 3 day expedition to
get back.
Anyway (and I am getting to the point...), the local newspaper got wind of
this stunt and emailed my friend Paul. The resulting newspaper article was
also posted on the newspaper's web site. About two weeks later, Paul
discovered that the article had been reposted on a different web site, but
with some intriguing changes.
I have no idea how it got this mangled. My only thought is that it went
through a couple of translation programs. Anyone have any guesses on how
this happened?
by the way, the second article is HYSTERICAL.
Original article:
http://www.dchieftain.com/2012/01/18/into-the-wild-blue-yonder
Mangled article:
http://cellphonetrackerapp.com/into-the-wild-blue-yonder/
Balloon Photos :-)
launch, flight highlights:
https://picasaweb.google.com/103105207923503984635/NearSpaceBalloon
launch to landing full photo set:
https://picasaweb.google.com/107050167928892616939/JakeIILaunchToLandingSequence?authkey=Gv1sRgCPGwjbPNqPXUGw
Messages in this topic (9)
________________________________________________________________________
4i. Re: Into the furious blue yonder
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 8:49 pm ((PST))
Question:
>
> Are you the guys portrayed in the Citibank commercial?
>
Haha, definitely not. Everyone assumes that we got the idea from the
commercial(s) featuring this sort of stunt, but my friend Paul (in the
picture) had started thinking about it a year and a half ago. We were most
inspired by the 1337arts.com project.
It is really quite simple in principle. Balloons are $20-75 (depends on
size and where you buy them), helium is around $80, the SPOT tracker can be
had for around $150, you can program a Canon camera to take a photo every X
seconds (10 secs, in this case), we got the styrofoam cooler at walmart and
attached a few hand warmers to it, and I wasted dozens of hours in
programming a flight trajectory model that turned out to be completely
wrong :P
The amazing thing is that in the USA, this sort of thing is perfectly
legal. I know people have done it in Poland and the UK too.
Before the launch, I thought of posting a "first conlang in space" idea on
the list, where list members could send in clips of text and I'd see to it
that they were launched. Unfortunately I was so busy with grad school apps
I wasn't able to get it off the ground (barely got my conlang christmas
card out on time, in fact).
Anyway, if we do one again, I'll see if anyone's interested in sending
their conlang 20 miles up (since, naturally, future launches will be higher
:-))
>
> Glad the well-built sun-chariot girl came in useful!
>
> Padraic
>
Messages in this topic (9)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Fusional Evidentiality on Nouns
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 10:43 am ((PST))
All the recent discussion around 'audio case' and someone mentioning
that it sounded like evidentiality have inspired me with a new idea.
Obligatorily mark every noun phrase with evidentiality, indicating how
you are aware of that noun's existence or it's particular role in the
sentence. Since this is orthogonal to things like case and gender, the
complexity of the inflectional system could get quite large if all of
those grammatical categories are simultaneously indicated by a single
fusional inflection. But if you were to, say, drop gender, then
fusional case+evidentiality would be no more complex than, say,
Russian's fusional case+gender inflections.
Now the question is, can anyone think of a reasonable way that such a
system might evolve? Specifically, the "marking evidentiality on all
nouns" part; once you've got that, evolution of fusional inflections
is easy.
-l.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: Fusional Evidentiality on Nouns
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 4:26 pm ((PST))
On 2/5/2012 1:43 PM, Logan Kearsley wrote:
> All the recent discussion around 'audio case' and someone mentioning
> that it sounded like evidentiality have inspired me with a new idea.
> Obligatorily mark every noun phrase with evidentiality, indicating how
> you are aware of that noun's existence or it's particular role in the
> sentence. Since this is orthogonal to things like case and gender, the
> complexity of the inflectional system could get quite large if all of
> those grammatical categories are simultaneously indicated by a single
> fusional inflection. But if you were to, say, drop gender, then
> fusional case+evidentiality would be no more complex than, say,
> Russian's fusional case+gender inflections.
>
> Now the question is, can anyone think of a reasonable way that such a
> system might evolve? Specifically, the "marking evidentiality on all
> nouns" part; once you've got that, evolution of fusional inflections
> is easy.
>
> -l.
Possibly from obligatory marking of possession? Something like "my rain"
might come to mean "the rain that I personally experienced", while rain
in general would be "your rain" or "their rain". I don't know how
realistic it would be to require marking possession on all nouns, but
there are languages like Navajo (and Tirelat) that require possessive
affixes for some nouns (for inalienable possession).
The Tirelat word "ruhba" for instance means "house" or "home", but it's
never used in isolation. You have to say "tÄruhba", "someone's house",
if you're talking about a house in general. But this only applies to a
class of "inherently possessed" nouns in Tirelat. On the other hand,
Tirelat does have obligatory marking of evidentiality on verb tenses, so
it's possible that some kind of agreement between verbs and nouns might
develop from that.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Language that Don't Change
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 8:59 pm ((PST))
Are there languages that don't change? If Yardish doesn't change, how could
that affect the Yemorans? Since they're mostly telepaths, does that make
telepathy a language or a sense?
Nicole Andrews
Pen name Mellissa Green
Budding novelist
Tweet me
@greenNovelist
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: Language that Don't Change
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 9:11 pm ((PST))
>
> Are there languages that don't change?
>
no. not spoken languages. not real ones.
but that's not a rule that's consistently followed in fantasy, or
necessarily ought to be.
Since they're mostly telepaths, does that make telepathy a language or a
> sense?
>
i think telepathy would be a *medium* for their language. like speech, or
writing, or signing. assuming their telepathy involves pronounceable
yardish words, and isn't some kind of mental logographic morse code where a
certain frequency of signal means "tree."
If Yardish doesn't change, how could that affect the Yemorans?
>
this is an interesting question. obviously real-world history can't answer
it for you, since this isn't a real situation. personally, i would be more
interested in knowing what cultural factors are responsible for the
language not changing. i'm picturing a kind of idyllic lothlorien of
timeless creatures who are impervious to the passage of time and somehow
have minds that transcend it, whatever that means. on the other hand, you
could have a society whose penalty for grammar-rule-breaking is immediate
decapitation.
cheers
matt
On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Are there languages that don't change? If Yardish doesn't change, how
> could that affect the Yemorans? Since they're mostly telepaths, does that
> make telepathy a language or a sense?
> Nicole Andrews
>
> Pen name Mellissa Green
> Budding novelist
> Tweet me
>
>
>
> @greenNovelist
>
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. Language Families
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 9:08 pm ((PST))
What are language families, and Yardish function without one?
Nicole Andrews
Pen name Mellissa Green
Budding novelist
Tweet me
@greenNovelist
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
8. Endangered Languages
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sun Feb 5, 2012 9:10 pm ((PST))
How can a language become endangered?
Nicole Andrews
Pen name Mellissa Green
Budding novelist
Tweet me
@greenNovelist
Messages in this topic (1)
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