There are 4 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: introducing evidentiality into Angosey
From: Logan Kearsley
2a. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
From: Michael Everson
2b. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
From: David Peterson
3a. Re: multiple umlauts
From: neo gu
Messages
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1a. Re: introducing evidentiality into Angosey
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Tue Mar 27, 2012 11:49 pm ((PDT))
On 27 March 2012 19:31, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am on a roll tonight.
>
> About 6 months ago, I wrote about my intention to incorporate evidentiality
> into my conlang Angosey. Six months later, during a particularly boring
> meeting, I got around to it. There are six classes of evidentiality, and
> they are marked as a prefix on the verb. Since I think the evidentiality
> prefix evolved from adverbs, which are always placed before the verb phrase,
> I have made evidentiality precede other prefixes such as the gender
> conjugation.
>
> Here are the classes:
>
> Class 1: Visual/aural observation
>
> I see a dog.
>
> Class 2: Other senses (smell, taste), emotive sense, indirect observation
> (tracks)
>
> The soup is delicious.
>
> Class 3: Secondhand knowledge, generally through direct written or spoken
> communication
>
> She was at the concert yesterday (she told me so)
Thanks to the Conlangery podcast, I cannot help but wonder whether
this carries overtones of "hey, don't blame me, but somebody else
said..." or "seriously! I'm not crazy, somebody else said it, too!"
-Logan Kearsley
Messages in this topic (2)
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2a. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
Posted by: "Michael Everson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:48 am ((PDT))
On 28 Mar 2012, at 02:06, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> But for *myself*, I sure would like to be able to write myself notes about
> what I learn in my ASL class, make flashcards, etc.
See http://signwriting.org
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
Messages in this topic (9)
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2b. Re: Written Form of American Sign Language (ASL)
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:02 am ((PDT))
On Mar 27, 2012, at 6:06 PM, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> But for *myself*, I sure would like to be able to write myself notes
> about what I learn in my ASL class, make flashcards, etc.
First, let me say that I feel your pain. I felt EXACTLY the same thing when I
was taking ASL. I mean, when you take any language, you want to take notes and
look at what you wrote later and practiceand you just can't do it! It was a
powerless feeling at first, because when you get home, you feel like there's
really nothing you can do: you just have to wait for the next class.
In class, I started a writing system that used simplified body pictures (all
based on triangles) where I tried to sketch out the signs. I'd have a named
handshape up in the corner if I needed it, and would draw in the eyebrows.
Eventually, though, this became too cumbersome and I gave it up. This had the
benefit, though, of forcing me to kick lazy memory into gear, and I really felt
that I remembered a lot more from my ASL classes than I did from my other
language classes.
And to another comment regarding SLIPA, Arthaey's reply was spot on:
On Mar 27, 2012, at 7:43 PM, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> But I do see that David's goal was to make an sign-equivalent of IPA
> (hence the name). As he writes himself, "[SLIPA is] primarily intended
> for transcription. I don't think SLIPA is a good orthography or
> romanization for a signed language, just like I don't think the IPA is
> a good orthography for any spoken language."
At the end, I tried to suggest a way you could use SLIPA to then devise a
romanization system for a simpler sign language. I don't think the examples I
give would cover ASLor any other natural sign language, for that matter: the
movements don't fall into categories that are that neat.
Ultimately I think what would work best is, basically, employing two or three
different systems simultaneously, much like Japanese or Middle Egyptian. There
are a series of signs in ASL that can be spelled phonetically and convey
everything you need to know about the signespecially those signs that simply
involve a hand shape and movement from one place to another (you can pretty
much ignore the movement in such cases). For that, some kind of an
alphabet-like system would work. For those that it doesn't work for, it'd be
best to employ a different system.
For certain signs, I think either a Chinese-like glyph system or a
Egyptian-inspired system would work best. Each will have advantages and
disadvantages. With a Chinese system, you can imagine taking a SLIPA
description, making symbols of the various bits and adding a semantic
component, and then you could start building three- or four-part glyphs that
will stand for whole signs. So for a verb like CHANGE, you could have these
four parts:
1 - X handshape
2 - 2 hands
3 - Verb
4 - transfer
Or maybe place in place of 2 hands, or something. Each of those would have a
picture associated with it, and you'd draw it in a box, like a Chinese
character:
1 2
3 4
This wouldn't tell you exactly how to form the sign, but it would give you a
lot of information about itperhaps enough to recall it to memory, which is the
point, in this case. This, I think, would really well for certain types of
jargon. Consider the various scientific vocabulary (I learned linguistics
specific vocabulary that might not be as common, just as a caveat): SCIENCE,
BIOLOGY, MORPHOLOGY. All of these are formed the same way: you make each of
your hands into the handshape of the first letter, and your hands do kind of an
infinity sign in front of your body, like an old reel-to-reel tape deck. For
such signs, you could do this:
1 - S/B/M handshape
2 - 2 hands
3 - Noun
4 - science
Now imagine that you were actually reading someone else's writing. You knew
their background was in linguistics, and you saw this same glyph written but
with a P for the handshape. This would lead you to the conclusion that they're
talking about phonology (or maybe phonetics, depending on context)and not only
that, you'd know how to make the sign.
This approach, again, takes a lot of the precision of movement and orientation
out of the equation, but it might do the trick.
Now for the Egyptian method, you could stick with part 4, which would be your
determinative (like in Egyptian). The rest would be characters for
handshapesin sequencesand perhaps special glyphs denoting very short types of
movements, and also places. There would be less precision, but you'd have a
linear sequence, and hopefully enough information there that that plus the
determinative would help you arrive at the sign.
Those are just a couple ideas. I'd be eager to see what system you come up
with! Personally, though, I'd leave eyebrows and facial expressions out of it.
Mouth shape will often be a part of a sign, but it's rarely contrastive (i.e.
sign with lips in neutral position = X, sign with lips drawn back = Y [and a
totally unrelated Y at that]), and I think our English punctuation system
encodes eyebrows, etc. about as well as it encodes intonation in Englishi.e.
not at all, but we manage, anyway.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (9)
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3a. Re: multiple umlauts
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:28 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 27 Mar 2012 11:24:29 -0400, Roman Rausch
<[email protected]> wrote:
>>I'm not sure how natural the multiple umlauts are. Any comments?
>
> The umlauts I know have a historical order to them. In Welsh,
> a-umlaut comes before i-umlaut, so that L. _grammatica_ becomes
> W. _gramadeg_ rather than _*gremedeg_.
>
> Celtic and Germanic umlaut likes final syllables, for some reason,
> although there are other assimilation processes triggered by
> consonants; and your changes remind me more of the latter:
>
>e > i > y before g + vowel: _*tegos_ > _tig_ > _ty_ 'house'
>e > i > y before nasal + stop, or liquid + stop: _tempora_ > _tymor_
>e > a before r + cons.: _serpens_ > _sarff_
>e > i > y before ss, st: _testis_ > _tyst_
>e > a/o after non-syllabic u: _vesper-_ > _gosper_
Thanks.
>>This results in 7 vowels
>
>Not 6? Or do you have a [y] > [i] in there?
I didn't say, but a > [&] (i-umlaut) before that merges with e.
Messages in this topic (3)
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