There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: NATLANG: Con-scripting a Hamer writing system
From: Alex Fink
1b. Re: NATLANG: Con-scripting a Hamer writing system
From: Paul Bennett
2a. Re: META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
From: Padraic Brown
3a. Re: A New Lang is Born
From: Virginia Keys
4a. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
From: Alex Fink
4b. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
From: Herman Miller
5. TECH: Linguistic Database Software
From: Jeff Sheets
6a. Re: Nonhuman features: birdspeak
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
6b. Re: Nonhuman features: birdspeak
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
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1a. Re: NATLANG: Con-scripting a Hamer writing system
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 6:50 am ((PST))
On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 10:57:32 -0800, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
>Idle thoughts: I wonder if a Hamer tengwar mode would work.
Hey, it would actually work pretty well, wouldn't it? Hamer has just four C
series and just five V qualities and not too many bizarre manner-phonation
combos, so it should fit tidily. Let's see:
main grid:
I II III IV
1 t p c k
2 d b J\ g
3 f S x
4 d< b< g<
5 n m J N
6 ts q>
Row 4 for implosives instead of voiced frics isn't a stretch. /ts) q_>/
form a kind of 'leftover stops' row; given that row 6 is supposed to be for
the sonorantiest consonants it's not great to put them there, but what it
_does_ achieve is a perfect correlation between double bows and voicing.
If that's too far out there, one could reassign my 4 5 6 to 5 6 4 (then the
extra voiceless stop series is row 4, as in Quenya).
extras:
4 l
s z
j w
Nothing to see here.
raised-stem carrier: Category II; /h/
short carrier: umlaut category (and /0/?)
long carrier: Category I; /?/
It seems like it would work to let the carriers have their consonantal
values if they bear an o:matehta, and their category-indicating values
otherwise -- presumably indicating the category of _following_ material
'cause whether /?/ or /h/ arises depends also on following material. (I'm
assuming /?/ and /h/ can't be codas, I guess.)
Alex
Messages in this topic (26)
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1b. Re: NATLANG: Con-scripting a Hamer writing system
Posted by: "Paul Bennett" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 8, 2012 3:27 am ((PST))
On Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:50:35 -0500, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Mar 2012 10:57:32 -0800, Garth Wallace <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Idle thoughts: I wonder if a Hamer tengwar mode would work.
>
> Hey, it would actually work pretty well, wouldn't it? Hamer has just
> four C
> series and just five V qualities and not too many bizarre
> manner-phonation
> combos, so it should fit tidily.
Oh, boy. You're trying to get me to cause a minor stir on Languagelog and
Wikipedia, aren't you?
I can see the headlines now. They'd be marginally-more sensationalized
versions of the headlines we had when that Indonesian language decided to
go with Hangul as its writing system.
"Amateur linguist teaches Elvish to Ethiopian tribe! Film at eleven!"
However, I'm going to give this whackadoo notion at least a little bit of
serious thought. Dang it.
--
Paul
Messages in this topic (26)
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2a. Re: META: Trying to recall link to conculture checklist
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 7:17 am ((PST))
--- On Wed, 3/7/12, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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?
Sort of. The first link is to the set of questions written by David Zahir.
I wrote the second set. There was a much older list of questions, compiled
by Tom Chappel as well, that we later used as a source for the revised
versions.
When I rewrote the Questionnaire, I got rid of all the little follow-up
questions in Tom's original (things like "why?" or "why not?" or "how do
people feel about this?") -- I felt they were redundant and a bit cluttery.
They are surely important for teasing further information out of
an informant, but I didn't think they had to be spelled out! I also added
several sections that the earlier iterations lacked and a number of
additional questions.
It should be noted that the link at Frathwiki is *not* "Dr. Zahir's
Ethnographical Questionnaire" -- that is the title that properly went with
an earlier version of the questionnaire at bethisad.com "Dr. Zahar" is a
character from the World (who is an eminent anthropologer of the
Eastlands) -- David Zahir is an entirely real-world conculturer who is not
a doctor. The title seems to have been conflated with the other list a
number of years back under circumstances I am not quite able to sort out.
Either way, any of the lists are a great aide de wossname for sorting out
issues related to culture. Hard to believe that it's been almost ten years
since these questionnaires were developed. Might be time to revisit and
revise a bit...
Padraic
> Alex
>
Messages in this topic (4)
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3a. Re: A New Lang is Born
Posted by: "Virginia Keys" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 7:53 am ((PST))
>Some things just have to done with a brush or a broad nibbed pen or a
>stylus. Any other means would yield a less than perfect result.
>
>I was instantly impressed with the organic flow of the script and the
>way it almost screams "use me to write beautiful verses about flowing
>waters and growing things in quiet nature!" I just somehow don't see
>this being used for grocery lists scribbled with a pencil nub on the back
>of a check register!
>
A compliment!
>Mind you, I'm not saying the language itself couldn't handle a mundane
>list; just that this particular script form seems like it should be used
>for nobler purposes!
>
>All that said, I'd like to know more about how the script works. You know,
>the mechanics. As well as the language and culture that go with, if you
>have any ideas on those.
>
>Padraic
>
I am glad of your interest. I will work on making something available to
explain how it works. As for the conculture, I have a few ideas, but they're
not fleshed out yet.
I also posted a couple more images of slightly more complex sentences,
including the one from which the name is derived.
Messages in this topic (23)
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4a. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 10:00 am ((PST))
On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 20:16:35 -0500, Herman Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
>The consonant inventory of modern Tirelat looks something like this:
>
>p b t d ts dz k g
>m n N
> r0 r
>f v s z s` z` x G
> K l
>w j
>
>Now what I need to do is figure out how it got that way.
Have you looked through your lexicon for lumpiness in the phoneme
distributions? Sounds which occur more than they should be "expected" to
(probably the result of a merger), sounds which are nearly absent from
certain environments (probably reflect an old conditional change), ...
Conversely, to give one example, if /j w/ are frequent and you try to
explain them away as arising from /i u/ in hiatus, you haven't actually
explained very much yet, since a distributional oddity remains. Why did the
proto-language have so many hiatic clusters of vowels? Most likely,
whatever did form them also formed hiatic clusters without /i/ or /u/ in
them; what happened to those?
>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 /t_h/. 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 [D] and [d].
>In one dialect the [d] changed to [D], and in the other both [d] and [r]
>changed to [4].
>
>orig. later dial. A dial. B
>[vidu] [viDu] [viDu] [viDu]
>[nitu] [nidu] [niDu] [ni4u]
>[viru] [viru] [viru] [vi4u]
That looks to work. But you can get by with less change and less dialectal
divergence by doing [d] > [4] ([> r]) intervocalically in the second type,
and after that [D] > [d] in both. This avoids the [d] > [D] in the first.
AFAIK intervocalic voicing and frication generally apply to all places of
articulation (even when they don't it's rarely just the dental place.
Tapping at the dental place alone is common though). For the initial shifts
of *[t d] > [d D] that's no problem; you get mergers into the voiced
fricatives in other places. But if your second posited [d] > [D] in dialect
A has parallels in other places, then you get rid of all the voiced stops.
(Is that ok?)
>It's also possible that there may have been a voiced lateral fricative
>/K\/ in EMT, to account for the /l/ ~ /d/ variations between dialects in
>some words, but there may be other ways to account for that.
Yeah. Clusters that resolve differently in different dialects are one.
Perhaps Proto-Tirelat allowed /dl/ etc. (does modern Tirelat?)
Also, watch out for reconstructing èvery such variation into an original
phonemic difference; you are liable to get an unrealistic number or
distribution of proto-phonemes if you do. If regular, Neogrammarian
explanations fail, the alternations might just come from dialect mixing, or
incomplete sound changes, or ...
Alex
Messages in this topic (3)
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4b. Re: Historical phonology of Tirelat
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 7:12 pm ((PST))
On 3/7/2012 1:00 PM, Alex Fink wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 20:16:35 -0500, Herman Miller<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> The consonant inventory of modern Tirelat looks something like this:
>>
>> p b t d ts dz k g
>> m n N
>> r0 r
>> f v s z s` z` x G
>> K l
>> w j
>>
>> Now what I need to do is figure out how it got that way.
>
> Have you looked through your lexicon for lumpiness in the phoneme
> distributions? Sounds which occur more than they should be "expected" to
> (probably the result of a merger), sounds which are nearly absent from
> certain environments (probably reflect an old conditional change), ...
It would be nice if I could find patterns like that, but since the
existing Tirelat vocabulary hasn't actually gone through those
historical changes that a real language would have done, probably the
best I could hope for is a few vague hints. It's worth a try though.
When I looked at tones in Simik, I found some interesting patterns in
distribution that helped me to reconstruct a basic tone system for the
proto-language.
> Conversely, to give one example, if /j w/ are frequent and you try to
> explain them away as arising from /i u/ in hiatus, you haven't actually
> explained very much yet, since a distributional oddity remains. Why did the
> proto-language have so many hiatic clusters of vowels? Most likely,
> whatever did form them also formed hiatic clusters without /i/ or /u/ in
> them; what happened to those?
I'm thinking some sort of vowel breaking may be involved, like what
happened in Spanish with /ie/ and /ue/. One clue is the word "Åjandi"
/rÌ¥jandi/, which I'm assuming came from an original *hrjandi or *Êrjandi.
A 3-consonant initial cluster is unusual for Tirelat (I can't find any
examples of one), so a reconstruction as *hriandi or *Êriandi seems more
likely to me. Another possibility would be a vowel that was lost,
*hrÉjandi or *ÊrÉjandi.
>> orig. later dial. A dial. B
>> [vidu] [viDu] [viDu] [viDu]
>> [nitu] [nidu] [niDu] [ni4u]
>> [viru] [viru] [viru] [vi4u]
>
> That looks to work. But you can get by with less change and less dialectal
> divergence by doing [d]> [4] ([> r]) intervocalically in the second type,
> and after that [D]> [d] in both. This avoids the [d]> [D] in the first.
Well, [D] is just the allophone of /d/ between vowels. One dialect does
have a /ð/ phoneme, but it corresponds with /v/ in the standard dialect.
Maybe [t] > [4] directly in dialect B without going through [d] (English
has something like that), then [d] could remain as [d] and dialect A
would just have [t] > [d].
> AFAIK intervocalic voicing and frication generally apply to all places of
> articulation (even when they don't it's rarely just the dental place.
> Tapping at the dental place alone is common though). For the initial shifts
> of *[t d]> [d D] that's no problem; you get mergers into the voiced
> fricatives in other places. But if your second posited [d]> [D] in dialect
> A has parallels in other places, then you get rid of all the voiced stops.
> (Is that ok?)
There's a variation between /É£/ and /É¡/ between dialects that may
parallel the /d/ ~ /r/ variation (or may be unrelated). It's possible
that Early Modern Tirelat only had voiceless fricatives (not an uncommon
situation) and that the voiced fricatives of the modern language were
originally voiced stops. But that would only explain voiced fricatives
between vowels, not in other places (where voiced stops are still
present in all dialects).
>> It's also possible that there may have been a voiced lateral fricative
>> /K\/ in EMT, to account for the /l/ ~ /d/ variations between dialects in
>> some words, but there may be other ways to account for that.
>
> Yeah. Clusters that resolve differently in different dialects are one.
> Perhaps Proto-Tirelat allowed /dl/ etc. (does modern Tirelat?)
Modern Tirelat has [tɬ] and [dÉ®] (spelled tÅ, dÅ in romanization), which
may have been *tl and *dl originally. The devoicing of the l in *tl is a
regular change (which happens also with *pl and *kl), but the absence of
/dl/ is unexpected. (I'm wondering if the occurrences of "dÅ" might just
be an error in documentation from all the changes that Tirelat has
undergone...)
> Also, watch out for reconstructing èvery such variation into an original
> phonemic difference; you are liable to get an unrealistic number or
> distribution of proto-phonemes if you do. If regular, Neogrammarian
> explanations fail, the alternations might just come from dialect mixing, or
> incomplete sound changes, or ...
>
> Alex
Messages in this topic (3)
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5. TECH: Linguistic Database Software
Posted by: "Jeff Sheets" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 7, 2012 12:46 pm ((PST))
It's been a long, long time since I've posted to the list, which is typical
for me.
This time I'm wondering what lexical and linguistic software is out there.
I'm particularly interested in Mac OS X compatible software, but there
seems to be about nothing at all along those lines. While I'm not willing
to dual boot/boot camp my mac, that is an option to others.
SIL FieldWorks SE
Active development, from what I can see, and it uses a newer GUI and
look. When I last gave it a try back when I was still using Windows XP, it
seemed a bit unstable, and a good deal of the interlinear text generation
code seemed lacking. That said, it also came with an integrated semantic
databse which looked quite nice for coming up with areas of a lexicon to
expand. I've recently tried to see if I could get this working on my mac
using WineSkin, but to no avail.
SIL Toolbox
Not sure how active the development is on this software, and it is
definitely showing its age. I've always liked it for its ease of use once
you get it up and running, but these days I'd like something a bit more
modern, at least as far as the user interface is concerned. I have this
working to some extent using WineSkin, though there are some glitches
currently that make it not usable.
Tiddly Wiki
One of the bits of software I used a while back was Tiddly Wiki, however
I feel it is somewhat lacking in the area of lexical databases. It is nice
in that you can easily add wiki entries and journal entries in one place,
but this is not what I'm looking for these days.
Kura
I never really got too deep into Kura, and from what I can see it seems
dead. Anybody have any info?
Hyperdictionary
It seems like this might be a continuation or reboot of Kura, but hasn't
been worked on in a year, that I can see.
---
Currently I'm using a google docs file to save everything, but I'm spoiled
by SIL Toolbox, and would love to get a more useful database with reversal
functionality (English-Conlang in addition to Conlang-English).
Jeff Sheets
Messages in this topic (1)
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6a. Re: Nonhuman features: birdspeak
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 8, 2012 4:00 am ((PST))
On 3 March 2012 05:50, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Interesting, and I guess therein lies my confusion! I had gotten into my
> head that Westron was Germanic-like, when in fact it's not but has been
> "translated".
>
>
Indeed. Basically, "in-story", both the Silmarillion and the Lord of the
Rings are English translations of different parts of the "Red Book" written
by Bilbo and Frodo.
> >
> > When Tolkien said he translated all the Westron words into
> > English, he was
> > not kidding about it! :P
>
> I guess not!! Does he ever say (explicitly) anywhere why he does this
> translation thing?
Yes, or at least I remember reading about it (can't remember the source).
Basically, he did the translation thing simply to make LotR more
Anglo-Saxon-like, so that it could pass for Anglo-Saxon mythology.
> Why not just tell a (necessarily backgrounded) story
> about Kudduks named Bilba and Maura?
>
>
Because he felt it would confuse readers and nobody would want to read his
books! I'm sure he was mistaken about the conservatism of his readers, but
this is someone who specifically designed the Valar in the way they appear
in the Silmarillion (i.e. as angelic beings all created by the one God, Eru
Ilúvatar, but effectively also as physical gods who gave shape to the
world), in order to have a story in a polytheistic setting, like most
mythologies, that would be acceptable to all good Christians that can only
accept true monotheism! (for this I have an actual source, it's in a letter
from Tolkien used as foreword to the Silmarillion)
Tolkien simply went out of his way to make his stories "acceptable" to a
very conservative, English-speaking Christian audience, basically people
like himself. It's all consistent with the kind of "shame" he seemed to be
feeling for writing all those "silly stories" (his words) and for creating
languages (there's a reason he called it a "secret _vice_").
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (19)
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6b. Re: Nonhuman features: birdspeak
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 8, 2012 4:25 am ((PST))
--- On Thu, 3/8/12, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <[email protected]> wrote:
> Basically, he did the translation thing simply to make LotR
> more Anglo-Saxon-like, so that it could pass for Anglo-Saxon
> mythology.
Wonder if he was at all influenced by Waddell's British Edda?
> > Why not just tell a (necessarily backgrounded) story
> > about Kudduks named Bilba and Maura?
>
> Because he felt it would confuse readers and nobody would
> want to read his books!
(:
> I'm sure he was mistaken about the conservatism of his readers, but
> this is someone who specifically designed the Valar in the
> way they appear
> in the Silmarillion (i.e. as angelic beings all created by
> the one God, Eru
> Ilúvatar, but effectively also as physical gods who gave
> shape to the
> world), in order to have a story in a polytheistic setting,
> like most
> mythologies, that would be acceptable to all good Christians
> that can only
> accept true monotheism! (for this I have an actual source,
> it's in a letter
> from Tolkien used as foreword to the Silmarillion)
In all fairness, he himself *was* one of those "good Christians" and
that no doubt played a part in his fantasy!
> Tolkien simply went out of his way to make his stories
> "acceptable" to a
> very conservative, English-speaking Christian audience,
> basically people like himself.
Well, he was Catholic in what was still largely an Anglican world.
> It's all consistent with the kind of "shame" he seemed to be
> feeling for writing all those "silly stories" (his words)
> and for creating languages (there's a reason he called it a "secret
> _vice_").
Indeed. That whole era seems to be one of violent twists of progressive
realism and flights of fancy with heaps of guilt thrown in for good
measure.
Padraic
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
Messages in this topic (19)
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