There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: NATLANG: Writing questions and answers in Hamer
From: Garth Wallace
1b. Re: NATLANG: Writing questions and answers in Hamer
From: Peter Cyrus
1c. Re: NATLANG: Writing questions and answers in Hamer
From: Paul Bennett
2. Two Albic names
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3. Historical phonology of Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
4a. META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
From: Sam Stutter
4b. Re: META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
From: Alex Fink
4c. Re: META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
From: Sam Stutter
Messages
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1a. Re: NATLANG: Writing questions and answers in Hamer
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 6, 2012 8:37 am ((PST))
On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:03 AM, Paul Bennett <[email protected]> wrote:
> As stated in the text, yes/no questions in Hamer are identical in lexemes
> and word order to affirmative statements, with a rising pitch on the word
> being asked about. WH-questions seem to take a WH-word, and have the rising
> pitch on the (sentence-final) verb.
>
> It makes sense to me to mark the rising pitch in yes/no questions by placing
> the question mark immediately after the word being asked about, and for
> WH-questions, to place it at the end of the sentence.
>
> Also as stated in the text, negative statements are identical in lexemes and
> word order to affirmative statements, with a falling pitch on the word being
> denied.
>
> I think, for isomorphy and clarity, I need to invent a "negation" sign to be
> placed after negative words.
>
> I'm thinking right now of one of ¿, â½, or ¬, representing "unquestion",
> "struck-out question", or "the symbol used in math". If I go with the last,
> I may place it before rather than after the negative word, but I think that
> breaks isomorphy and thereby the principle of least surprise.
>
> Any suggestions?
I'd go with ¬. The turned question mark is usually interpreted as
marking the beginning of a question. The interrobang is supposed to be
a combination question mark and exclamation point, is very similar to
the question mark (especially at smaller font sizes), and is not found
in all fonts.
Messages in this topic (5)
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1b. Re: NATLANG: Writing questions and answers in Hamer
Posted by: "Peter Cyrus" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 6, 2012 11:09 am ((PST))
To stay in kind with the ?, you could use ! At least it would be read
correctly by latin-writers, if misunderstood.
On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 5:37 PM, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 4:03 AM, Paul Bennett <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > As stated in the text, yes/no questions in Hamer are identical in lexemes
> > and word order to affirmative statements, with a rising pitch on the word
> > being asked about. WH-questions seem to take a WH-word, and have the
> rising
> > pitch on the (sentence-final) verb.
> >
> > It makes sense to me to mark the rising pitch in yes/no questions by
> placing
> > the question mark immediately after the word being asked about, and for
> > WH-questions, to place it at the end of the sentence.
> >
> > Also as stated in the text, negative statements are identical in lexemes
> and
> > word order to affirmative statements, with a falling pitch on the word
> being
> > denied.
> >
> > I think, for isomorphy and clarity, I need to invent a "negation" sign
> to be
> > placed after negative words.
> >
> > I'm thinking right now of one of ¿, â½, or ¬, representing "unquestion",
> > "struck-out question", or "the symbol used in math". If I go with the
> last,
> > I may place it before rather than after the negative word, but I think
> that
> > breaks isomorphy and thereby the principle of least surprise.
> >
> > Any suggestions?
>
> I'd go with ¬. The turned question mark is usually interpreted as
> marking the beginning of a question. The interrobang is supposed to be
> a combination question mark and exclamation point, is very similar to
> the question mark (especially at smaller font sizes), and is not found
> in all fonts.
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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1c. Re: NATLANG: Writing questions and answers in Hamer
Posted by: "Paul Bennett" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 3:14 am ((PST))
On Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:09:25 -0500, Peter Cyrus <[email protected]> wrote:
> To stay in kind with the ?, you could use ! At least it would be read
> correctly by latin-writers, if misunderstood.
I think I'd stick with ! for its uses in English: at the end of
imperatives, exclamations, and the like.
I finally managed to get my hands on a chisel-tip pen last night, so I can
start writing Ge'ez by hand, and therefore see intuitively which symbol
feels more natural.
--
Paul
Messages in this topic (5)
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2. Two Albic names
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 6, 2012 11:15 am ((PST))
Hallo!
Today I wish to speak of two Albic names I have recently discovered.
The first name is _Madar_, which means 'middle island' in Old Albic,
and has been used for two different islands. The first is the one
now known as the Isle of Man; obviously, it was named so because it
lies in the middle between the two major British Isles. The second
of the two islands named thus is Madeira, which lies in the middle
between the Azores and the Canary Islands. In the highly
conservative Madeirese language, the name has essentially stayed
the same into modern times, and the Madeirese speakers still refer
to their island as _Madar_. Of course, _Madar_ sounds much like
_Madeira_, the latter meaing 'wood' in Portuguese; apparently, we
are dealing with a folk etymology here.
The second name is _Olias_. Progressive rock aficionados may
recall the album _Olias of Sunhillow_ by Jon Anderson, which relates
the tale of a hero, named Olias, who builds a spaceship and leads
his people out of their doomed homeland into a new world. For quite
a while, I have suspected an Albic source here, given the presumed
Ivernic (Irish Elvish) descent of Jon Anderson. Of course, _Olias_
cannot be a personal name in Old Albic: the /i/ would be umlauted
by the following /a/ to /e/, and personal names always end in /o/
for males and /e/ for females.
But the name is from a modern Albic language, namely the Ivernic
language spoken by Jon's forebears. Its Proto-Albic etymon is
*walajasawa; in Classical Old Albic, the name is _Valêso_. This
name consists of the Proto-Albic roots *wal- 'heart' (Old Albic
_vala_, Ivernic _ol_) and *jas- 'to boil' (Old Albic _jasa_).
Apparently, the bearer of this name (if one assumes that it is a
chosen name, as to be expected for names adult Elves are known
by) was a highly energetic individual!
So who is or was this Valêso/Olias? He is a mythological hero
- the man who told the Elves of the new land beyond the Sundering
Sea, called them to build ships and led them from the war-torn
continent into their new homeland in the British Isles. This is
quite similar to Anderson's story of Olias of Sunhillow - he just
put the hero and his people into space, as was fashionable in the
1970s. It helps that the Valêso of Old Albic mythology is said
to hail from a place named _Aredon_, which can be translated as
'Sunhillow'!
--
... 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 (1)
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3. Historical phonology of Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 6, 2012 5:16 pm ((PST))
One of the problems with my languages is that they don't have much of a
history. As a consequence, they tend to feel artificial and overly
regular. I'd like to try to fix that by elaborating the earlier history
of a few languages and ultimately building language families around each
one. Tirelat and Jarda are two of the languages I want to start with,
along with the Sangari roots of Zharranh (a mixed Sangari-Zireen
language) and whatever source languages may have contributed words to
Jaghri (an artificial language with Sangari roots).
I know a few things about how languages develop historically, but I've
been having a hard time trying to work backwards from existing languages
to reconstruct earlier versions. Still, I think it's worth exploring, so
here goes.
The consonant inventory of modern Tirelat looks something like this:
p b t̪ d̪ ʦ ʣ k ɡ
m n̪ Å
r̥ r
f v s z Ê Ê x É£
ɬ l
w j
Now what I need to do is figure out how it got that way. I know there've
been some splits and mergers along the way. One that I've mentioned is a
phoneme (call it /D/ for now) that merged with /d/ in one dialect and
/r/ in another.
orig. dial. A dial. B
/vidu/ /vidu/ /vidu/
/niDu/ /nidu/ /niru/
/viru/ /viru/ /viru/
One possibility is that this /D/ was actually /t/, and that modern /t/
(maybe also /ts/ in some cases) descends from /tÊ°/. It's a little
clearer what might have happened if you look at a broad phonetic
transcription, where /d/ and /t/ between vowels weakened to [ð] and [d].
In one dialect the [d] changed to [ð], and in the other both [d] and [r]
changed to [ɾ].
orig. later dial. A dial. B
[vidu] [viðu] [viðu] [viðu]
[nitu] [nidu] [niðu] [niɾu]
[viru] [viru] [viru] [viɾu]
So I'll assume for now there was a whole set of voiceless aspirated,
voiceless unaspirated, and voiced stops in Early Modern Tirelat
(possibly including a post-alveolar series). It's also likely that there
was a glottal stop, and corresponding voiced and voiceless fricatives
for each place of articulation.
pÊ° p b tÊ° t d á¹Ê° ṠḠkÊ° k É¡ Ê
f v s z Ê Ê x É£ h
The post-alveolar stops mainly seemed to have developed into affricates,
either /ts/ /dz/ or /tÊ/ /dÊ/ depending on the dialect.
One sound that sticks out in the modern Tirelat phoneme inventory is the
voiceless trill /r̥/. This is likely to have come from an originally
voiced trill /r/, which became voiceless by assimilation when adjacent
to a voiceless stop or fricative. (This is one reason I've postulated
the existence of the glottal stop in Early Modern Tirelat.) Indeed, in
the standard dialect, trills adjacent to voiceless stops or consonants
are always voiceless, although other dialects allow voiced trills in
those instances.
It's also possible that there may have been a voiced lateral fricative
/É®/ in EMT, to account for the /l/ ~ /d/ variations between dialects in
some words, but there may be other ways to account for that.
Approximants /w/ and /j/ are probably reduced forms of vowels
(especially when you consider that one Tirelat dialect has a phonemic
/É¥/, which could be related to /y/). I haven't looked much at the vowels
yet.
Messages in this topic (1)
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4a. META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
Posted by: "Sam Stutter" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 5:25 am ((PST))
I'm sorry to have to enquire about something already posted:
(A couple of months?) back, someone posted a link to a sort of conculture
check-list, a series of world building questions like: "does you culture have a
standing army?" and "what are your culture's main crops?". I've tried searching
the list archives, my email inbox and my whole computer with as many strings as
I could think of, but I haven't come across it. Can anyone remember who sent it
/ what subject it was in relation to / what the link was?
Sam Stutter
[email protected]
"No e na il cu barri"
Messages in this topic (3)
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4b. Re: META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 6:01 am ((PST))
On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:24:57 +0000, Sam Stutter <[email protected]> wrote:
>I'm sorry to have to enquire about something already posted:
>
>(A couple of months?) back, someone posted a link to a sort of conculture
check-list, a series of world building questions like: "does you culture
have a standing army?" and "what are your culture's main crops?". I've tried
searching the list archives, my email inbox and my whole computer with as
many strings as I could think of, but I haven't come across it. Can anyone
remember who sent it / what subject it was in relation to / what the link was?
http://www.frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir%E2%80%99s_Ethnographical_Questionnaire ,
maybe? Or http://bethisad.com/conculture/questionnaire.htm , which seems to
be an expansion of it?
Alex
Messages in this topic (3)
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4c. Re: META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
Posted by: "Sam Stutter" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 6:06 am ((PST))
That's the fella. Thank you :)
Sam Stutter
[email protected]
"No e na il cu barri"
On 7 Mar 2012, at 14:01, Alex Fink wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 13:24:57 +0000, Sam Stutter <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I'm sorry to have to enquire about something already posted:
>>
>> (A couple of months?) back, someone posted a link to a sort of conculture
> check-list, a series of world building questions like: "does you culture
> have a standing army?" and "what are your culture's main crops?". I've tried
> searching the list archives, my email inbox and my whole computer with as
> many strings as I could think of, but I haven't come across it. Can anyone
> remember who sent it / what subject it was in relation to / what the link was?
>
> http://www.frathwiki.com/Dr._Zahir%E2%80%99s_Ethnographical_Questionnaire ,
> maybe? Or http://bethisad.com/conculture/questionnaire.htm , which seems to
> be an expansion of it?
>
> Alex
Messages in this topic (3)
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