There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: multi-lang-conlang?
From: Herman Miller
1b. Re: multi-lang-conlang?
From: Matthew DeBlock
2a. Re: A Portrait of the Conlanger as a Young Man
From: Herman Miller
2b. Re: A Portrait of the Conlanger as a Young Man
From: Anthony Miles
3a. Re: Dessert
From: Douglas Koller
3b. Re: Dessert
From: Daniel Prohaska
4a. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
From: Eric Christopherson
4b. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
4c. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
From: Padraic Brown
4d. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
From: Cíat Ó Gáibhtheacháin
5a. Re: letter for 'th'
From: Wesley Parish
5b. Re: letter for 'th'
From: A. da Mek
5c. Re: letter for 'th'
From: David McCann
6a. Re: Pronoun systems that don't mark person?
From: Anthony Miles
7a. Re: Language Academies for Your Conlang
From: Anthony Miles
Messages
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1a. Re: multi-lang-conlang?
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Tue Sep 4, 2012 8:57 pm ((PDT))
On 9/3/2012 10:22 PM, Matthew DeBlock wrote:
> Anyone played with combining multiple languages? Not sure what the
> approach is usually
Minza has vocabulary from multiple languages, mainly Lindiga, Tirelat,
and Zharranh. But the morphology and syntax are basically from Lindiga
(in a simplified form).
Messages in this topic (16)
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1b. Re: multi-lang-conlang?
Posted by: "Matthew DeBlock" [email protected]
Date: Tue Sep 4, 2012 9:41 pm ((PDT))
> On 9/3/2012 10:22 PM, Matthew DeBlock wrote:
>> Anyone played with combining multiple languages? Not sure what the
>> approach is usually
>
> Minza has vocabulary from multiple languages, mainly Lindiga, Tirelat,
> and Zharranh. But the morphology and syntax are basically from Lindiga
> (in a simplified form).
>
hmm.. ok.. looks interesting.. but any using large languages
(english+Spanish, French+Spanish, etc..)?
Messages in this topic (16)
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2a. Re: A Portrait of the Conlanger as a Young Man
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Tue Sep 4, 2012 9:16 pm ((PDT))
On 9/4/2012 2:34 PM, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 03, 2012 at 08:42:59PM -0400, Daniel Bowman wrote:
>
>> So I did my first real work on Angosey when I was 12, but I didn't actually
>> make it into a coherent language until I was 16. I translated the poem
>> with "your eyes are like an ocean..." when I was 17.
>
> 12-going-on-13 is a magical age. That's also when I started my language,
> and 13-going-on-14 is when I rehauled it to have the first inklings of
> non-relexed-English grammar.
>
> tylakèhlpë'fö,
> Amanda
Coincidentally, 12 going on 13 is about what my age was when I saw Star
Wars for the first time, which I've credited with giving me the idea for
making languages. I suppose if it wasn't Star Wars, eventually I would
have got the idea from reading Tolkien. But I don't have any actual
notes dated from as early as 1977, and I'm not sure exactly when I
started on Olaetian.
Messages in this topic (16)
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2b. Re: A Portrait of the Conlanger as a Young Man
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 7:53 am ((PDT))
I read Tolkien at 11-12, and bought the Klingon Dictionary at 12-13. I also
started Latin class at 12. I learned some basic phonetics from Tolkien and a
Sanskrit consonant chart, and wrote my first ugly ugly Latin relex at 13-14. My
first proper conlang, naRenga Ri, I started around 15-16.
Messages in this topic (16)
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3a. Re: Dessert
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Tue Sep 4, 2012 9:19 pm ((PDT))
> Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2012 09:35:11 -0400
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Dessert
> To: [email protected]
> Travlangâs Word of the Day (9/3/12) (travlang.com/wordofday) is
> âdessertâ. Many languages use some form of that word. A few use some
> form of âdolceâ (Greek âγλÏ
κάâ). German, Dutch and Afrikaans
> use a word based on ânach-â, after (Swedish âefterrätâ?). Many of
> the Romance languages (and Basque) use a variation of âpostreâ, which I
> assume is cognate to âpastryâ.
Most of the languages I track on a regular basis also offer "dessert" as the
chi-chi sounding alternative (German and Dutch included (das/het D/dessert)).
But having your word of the day be "dessert" across the board wouldn't be very
interesting, would it?
> Iâm interested in the etymology of some of the other words:
> Hungarian â édesség "édes" is "sweet" ("édesapam" and "édesanyam" for
> "Daddy" and "Mumsy" is, well, kinda sweet, IMNSHO); "-ség", and its variants
> are like "-ness", I think. So, "sweetness". It seems to be used also for
> "bonbons" and the like. And then there's "desszert".
> Icelandic â eftirréttir (eftir = after?)
As you mention, Swedish has "efterrätt", the "after course". Of course, there's
also "en dessert". For Danish I found "efterret", also "dessert". For
Norwegian, both in/on Wikipedia and in my dictionary, which admittedly is
rather limited, I found only "dessert". I don't see why "etterret(t?)" would
not be possible, unless it's too archaic, too earthy, or too Nynorsk, or
something. Perhaps the resident Norsk can enlighten. :) So the Icelandic is
certainly not a big reach. If it's as resistent to loans as I've heard,
"dessert" may not be an option. I certainly didn't see it floating around on
the Icelandic Wikipage.
> Korean â hu-sik Wikipi offers íì(å¾é£), so "hu-sik" is "after
> food/meal (however you want to treat "é£" shi2)". But let us not forget:
> ëì í¸(dessert).
An aside, in addition to the ubiquitous "dezert" variant, Czech also has
"mouÄník", which seems to relate to "flour", which seems to hark back to your
idea of "pastry" cognates. I don't know if/how "zákusek", another word for
"dessert", relates to anything else semantically.
> For Senjecas Iâve coined the word âpo(sÉ)šáádosâ, after-sweet. The
> parentheses mean the syllable is optional. I looked "dessert" up in the
> Géarthnuns lexicon, and found "talsengöns". No bells went off, so I thought I
> may just have coined it on the fly with no connection to anything, like I'd
> never pieced together "dessert" with "desservir" before now. But then I went
> to the Géarthnuns-English side and found that "talsengöns" springs from
> "talsengeb", "sweet" (so there's no angels-descending-from-Heaven inspiration
> on this one). "talsengeb" refers to the sweetness of confections as opposed
> to the natural sweetness found in things like fruit, honey, or yams,
> described by "belíérab" (though part of the word for "sugar(cane)" is nestled
> in there). Maybe there's a glucose/fructose thang going on -- I dunno, I'm
> not a nutritionist. From there, there's also "tals" for "candy". And one of
> my faves, "volvöilítals" for "lollypop". It has the alliteration of
> "lollypop" and "æ£æ£ç³" (bang4bang4tang2)(and the rhythm I like of
> Taiwanese "æ¯æ¯ä»é¨" (mng-mng-a-ho, "drizzle"). And "vol" means "amuse"
> which ties into the Chinese notion of ç©å´å·´ (wan2zui3ba1) "play with your
> mouth". "Why are you gnawing on that chicken claw? There's, like, *no* meat
> on it. It hardly seems worth the effort to me." "It's just to ç©å´å·´
> (wan2zui3ba1)." So, surprise, surprise, I actually did play around and work
> with this area of semantic space. Who knew? Sometimes I just coin a word out
> of thin air just so I can get on with it and then maybe back-derive if
> there's a need. But this was not one of those times. :) Nor is this a time to
> pull in "dessert" (prononciation française) as a coexistent highfalutin loan
> -- to get it to sound right, one would have to spell it in the native
> orthography as "désers" or "déserlats" (with the foreign loan suffix) -- you
> lose the "t", you lose the connection to French, why bother? And "dizörts" (à
> la anglaise)? Please. Just take me now and have done with it.
Kou
Messages in this topic (12)
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3b. Re: Dessert
Posted by: "Daniel Prohaska" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 12:10 am ((PDT))
In Austria we say 'Mehlspeis' "flour-dish".
Dan
Sent from my iPhone
On 05.09.2012, at 06:19, Douglas Koller <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2012 09:35:11 -0400
>> From: [email protected]
>> Subject: Dessert
>> To: [email protected]
>
>> Travlangâs Word of the Day (9/3/12) (travlang.com/wordofday) is
>> âdessertâ. Many languages use some form of that word. A few use some
>> form of âdolceâ (Greek âγλÏ
κάâ). German, Dutch and Afrikaans
>> use a word based on ânach-â, after (Swedish âefterrätâ?). Many of
>> the Romance languages (and Basque) use a variation of âpostreâ, which I
>> assume is cognate to âpastryâ.
> Most of the languages I track on a regular basis also offer "dessert" as the
> chi-chi sounding alternative (German and Dutch included (das/het D/dessert)).
> But having your word of the day be "dessert" across the board wouldn't be
> very interesting, would it?
>
>
>> Iâm interested in the etymology of some of the other words:
>
>
>> Hungarian â édesség "édes" is "sweet" ("édesapam" and "édesanyam" for
>> "Daddy" and "Mumsy" is, well, kinda sweet, IMNSHO); "-ség", and its variants
>> are like "-ness", I think. So, "sweetness". It seems to be used also for
>> "bonbons" and the like. And then there's "desszert".
>
>> Icelandic â eftirréttir (eftir = after?)
>
> As you mention, Swedish has "efterrätt", the "after course". Of course,
> there's also "en dessert". For Danish I found "efterret", also "dessert". For
> Norwegian, both in/on Wikipedia and in my dictionary, which admittedly is
> rather limited, I found only "dessert". I don't see why "etterret(t?)" would
> not be possible, unless it's too archaic, too earthy, or too Nynorsk, or
> something. Perhaps the resident Norsk can enlighten. :) So the Icelandic is
> certainly not a big reach. If it's as resistent to loans as I've heard,
> "dessert" may not be an option. I certainly didn't see it floating around on
> the Icelandic Wikipage.
>
>> Korean â hu-sik Wikipi offers íì(å¾é£), so "hu-sik" is "after
>> food/meal (however you want to treat "é£" shi2)". But let us not forget:
>> ëì í¸(dessert).
>
>
> An aside, in addition to the ubiquitous "dezert" variant, Czech also has
> "mouÄník", which seems to relate to "flour", which seems to hark back to
> your idea of "pastry" cognates. I don't know if/how "zákusek", another word
> for "dessert", relates to anything else semantically.
>
>
>> For Senjecas Iâve coined the word âpo(sÉ)šáádosâ, after-sweet.
>> The parentheses mean the syllable is optional. I looked "dessert" up in the
>> Géarthnuns lexicon, and found "talsengöns". No bells went off, so I thought
>> I may just have coined it on the fly with no connection to anything, like
>> I'd never pieced together "dessert" with "desservir" before now. But then I
>> went to the Géarthnuns-English side and found that "talsengöns" springs from
>> "talsengeb", "sweet" (so there's no angels-descending-from-Heaven
>> inspiration on this one). "talsengeb" refers to the sweetness of confections
>> as opposed to the natural sweetness found in things like fruit, honey, or
>> yams, described by "belíérab" (though part of the word for "sugar(cane)" is
>> nestled in there). Maybe there's a glucose/fructose thang going on -- I
>> dunno, I'm not a nutritionist. From there, there's also "tals" for "candy".
>> And one of my faves, "volvöilítals" for "lollypop". It has the alliteration
>> of "lollypop" and "æ£æ£ç³" (bang4bang4tang2)(and the rhythm I like of
>> Taiwanese "æ¯æ¯ä»é¨" (mng-mng-a-ho, "drizzle"). And "vol" means "amuse"
>> which ties into the Chinese notion of ç©å´å·´ (wan2zui3ba1) "play with
>> your mouth". "Why are you gnawing on that chicken claw? There's, like, *no*
>> meat on it. It hardly seems worth the effort to me." "It's just to ç©å´å·´
>> (wan2zui3ba1)." So, surprise, surprise, I actually did play around and work
>> with this area of semantic space. Who knew? Sometimes I just coin a word out
>> of thin air just so I can get on with it and then maybe back-derive if
>> there's a need. But this was not one of those times. :) Nor is this a time
>> to pull in "dessert" (prononciation française) as a coexistent highfalutin
>> loan -- to get it to sound right, one would have to spell it in the native
>> orthography as "désers" or "déserlats" (with the foreign loan suffix) -- you
>> lose the "t", you lose the connection to French, why bother? And "dizörts"
>> (à la anglaise)? Please. Just take me now and have done with it.
>
> Kou
>
>
>
>
Messages in this topic (12)
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4a. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [email protected]
Date: Tue Sep 4, 2012 11:54 pm ((PDT))
On Sep 2, 2012, at 11:08 PM, Padraic Brown wrote:
> --- On Sun, 9/2/12, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>> He also does not bother to mention some cool stuff that
>>> at least Norwegian
>>> and Swedish have: where English has "99 bottles of
>>> beer" N/Sw has "99
>>> flasker øl", no "of". That is: noun+noun where the
>>> second noun is a mass
>>> noun or an indefinite plural, and the first is an
>>> (indefinite) grouping,
>>> duration or container like stack, crate, heap, load,
>>> second. See section 3.3.1.1 in "Norsk referansegramatikk".
>>
>> Actually, I think it's pretty standard Germanic fare, with
>> English the odd
>> one out for not having it. Dutch does it as well ("99
>> flessen bier"), and I
>> believe German does too, although I could be wrong.
>
> English used to, but we seem to have switched to almost always using "of"
> where before we used the genitive. You can still see it as late as
> Shakespeare: "so that his face Might every manner man behold".
>
> Where we continue with the zero genitive is with measures: "two foot
> length of rope"; "four cup coffee maker"; "seven day cruise".
Those seem different.
"two[-]foot length" is not "too feet of length" (although you could describe
something with an adjective phrase "two feet _in_ length);
"four[-]cup coffee maker" is not "four cups of coffee maker" (unless you
bracket it as "[four cups of coffee] maker", which isn't really grammatical);
"seven[-]day cruise" is not "seven days of cruise" (although you can do this if
you use a mass noun instead of _cruise_; perhaps even _cruising_)
On second thought, you may be on to something here, judging from my "although"s.
Messages in this topic (26)
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4b. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Tue Sep 4, 2012 11:54 pm ((PDT))
On 5 September 2012 02:21, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
> Cristophe,
>
> In English, pronouns are functionally entire noun phrases. For example:
>
> [The man]NP is my friend.
> [He]NP is my friend.
> *[The [he]]NP is my friend.
>
> Contrary to what is taught to people in school, a pronoun does not replace
> a noun.
>
>
OK, so I did understand it correctly after all :P . BTW, very interesting
discussion afterwards.
> It sounds like this is indeed not the case with Japanese.
>
>
Indeed. Basically, in Japanese it seems any noun that isn't semantically
too weird for it can become an anaphoric reference, or a reference to a
participant in the discourse (i.e. first or second person, or even third
person). And when they do, they behave exactly like the other nouns we
usually call "pronouns", like "watashi", "boku" or "anata". That's true of
proper names (which are often used instead of pronouns in formal settings
and to talk to people you don't know well), but also of common nouns
referring to people. For instance, when talking to a teacher, professor,
doctor or expert of some kind, people will often use the word "sensei"
("teacher, scholar, doctor") like we would simply use a second-person
pronoun, with mandatory addition of "-tachi" when talking to more than one
teacher at the same time. And "sensei" can be used like a third-person
pronoun when talking to someone else *about* that person. It can even be
used as a first-person pronoun, but someone doing that would probably do it
ironically, otherwise they'd sound insufferably arrogant :P .
Another example is the use of "okyakusan" (literally "honorable customer")
by shop owners, both when referring to a customer, or when talking to a
customer directly.
Some people analyse this as meaning that the pronoun class in Japanese is
open. I personally think it rather means that pronouns don't exist as a
separate class, but rather as a *function* that can be taken by many common
nouns, some more often than others.
ObConlang: Moten does have a separate class of pronouns that is
grammatically different from common nouns, but not from proper names.
Basically, the difference is that pronouns and proper names cannot take the
definite infix, while common nouns always can (even mass and/or abstract
nouns). But that's the only difference. Syntactically, pronouns and common
nouns (and proper names) behave exactly the same: they can all take
adjectives, genitive phrases and relative subclauses, or be used as
adjectives themselves. Pronouns in Moten are a closed class, but one that
by and large doesn't behave any differently from other nominals.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (26)
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4c. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 7:03 am ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 9/5/12, Eric Christopherson <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>> He also does not bother to mention some cool
> stuff that
> >>> at least Norwegian
> >>> and Swedish have: where English has "99 bottles
> of
> >>> beer" N/Sw has "99
> >>> flasker øl", no "of". That is: noun+noun where
> the
> >>> second noun is a mass
> >>> noun or an indefinite plural, and the first is
> an
> >>> (indefinite) grouping,
> >>> duration or container like stack, crate, heap,
> load,
> >>> second. See section 3.3.1.1 in "Norsk
> referansegramatikk".
> >>
> >> Actually, I think it's pretty standard Germanic
> fare, with
> >> English the odd
> >> one out for not having it. Dutch does it as well
> ("99
> >> flessen bier"), and I
> >> believe German does too, although I could be
> wrong.
> >
> > English used to, but we seem to have switched to almost
> always using "of"
> > where before we used the genitive. You can still see it
> as late as
> > Shakespeare: "so that his face Might every manner man
> behold".
> >
> > Where we continue with the zero genitive is with
> measures: "two foot
> > length of rope"; "four cup coffee maker"; "seven day
> cruise".
>
> Those seem different.
>
> "two[-]foot length" is not "too feet of length" (although
> you could describe something with an adjective phrase "two
> feet _in_ length);
> "four[-]cup coffee maker" is not "four cups of coffee maker"
Indeed not! It's "four cups'" = "four of cups".
> (unless you bracket it as "[four cups of coffee] maker",
> which isn't really grammatical);
> "seven[-]day cruise" is not "seven days of cruise" (although
> you can do this if you use a mass noun instead of _cruise_;
> perhaps even _cruising_)
Right. It's "seven of days"
You can still see the proper genitive in for example the older form of
"nine day wonder", when in 1600 when it was first done, twas "Kemps nine
daies vvonder."
> On second thought, you may be on to something here, judging
> from my "although"s.
No doubt that English has undergone considerable change. Even back in ME,
we had a lot more straight genitive constructions where we now are
obliged to use the of construction.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (26)
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4d. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
Posted by: "Cíat Ó Gáibhtheacháin" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 8:26 am ((PDT))
It's an interesting construction, I think, and points to the delimiting line
between pronouns and nouns as not being quite as sharp as we like to think it
is. In English, I've seen it used with first and second-person accusative
pronouns, never third person, and never with nominative. I guess you *could*
think of them as nominalised pronouns at a push.
Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
>I would argue that the "you" there isn't a pronoun but a noun. My evidence
>would be that a pronoun is an entire noun phrase.
>
>So . . . yeah, ignore that circularity.
>
>::waves hands in the air to distract you::
>
>--Patrick
>
>On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:29 PM, Cíat Ó Gáibhtheacháin
><[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> On the other hand, you do occasionally get NPs like 'a more beautiful you'
>> (to take an example from some advertising), which is perfectly fine
>> English, even if it's not exactly common and largely restricted to a subset
>> of pronouns.
>>
>> Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> >Cristophe,
>> >
>> >In English, pronouns are functionally entire noun phrases. For example:
>> >
>> >[The man]NP is my friend.
>> >[He]NP is my friend.
>> >*[The [he]]NP is my friend.
>> >
>> >Contrary to what is taught to people in school, a pronoun does not replace
>> >a noun.
>> >
>> >It sounds like this is indeed not the case with Japanese.
>> >
>> >--Patrick
>> >
>> >On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <
>> >[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On 4 September 2012 17:34, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > Huh. Are pronouns in Japanese entire noun phrases, as they are in
>> >> English?
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > That might indicate a difference between, say, boku used as a noun and
>> >> boku
>> >> > used as a pronoun.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> What do you mean exactly? I'm not sure I understand what you mean by
>> >> "pronouns in English are entire noun phrases".
>> >>
>> >> In Japanese, there is not syntactic difference between nouns and
>> pronouns:
>> >> they take exactly the same postpositions, in exactly the same way.
>> Pronouns
>> >> can be completed by adjectives, noun phrases, or even by relative
>> >> subclauses, just like other nouns. I can think of only a single feature
>> >> where Japanese nouns and pronouns behave somewhat differently: the use
>> of
>> >> the plural suffix "-tachi". With common nouns it's always optional. With
>> >> pronouns it's mandatory. *However*, the use of "-tachi" with pronouns is
>> >> very similar to how it is used with people's names, where it's also
>> >> mandatory (basically, "-tachi" isn't a true plural suffix. Rather, it
>> means
>> >> "and others, and company". So "bokutachi" means "we" because it actually
>> >> means "I and others", in the same way that "Tanakatachi" means "Tanaka
>> and
>> >> co."). It's also similar to how other terms of address are used (which
>> can
>> >> be basically any noun that can refer to a person): for those as well,
>> >> "-tachi" is mandatory when someone addresses more than one person at
>> once.
>> >>
>> >> So the difference in the use of the plural marker doesn't seem to be a
>> mark
>> >> of a separate category of pronouns, but rather a consequence of the use
>> of
>> >> pronouns as terms of address.
>> >>
>> >> Basically, it seems that common nouns in Japanese can take an
>> "identifier"
>> >> function, similar to that of proper names, in which case they become
>> >> similar to what we call "pronouns". But that's simply a possible
>> function
>> >> of nouns, not a separate grammatical category.
>> >> --
>> >> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>> >>
>> >> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
>> >> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >--
>> >Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
>> >order from Finishing Line
>> >Press<
>> http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
>> >and
>> >Amazon<
>> http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2
>> >.
>>
>
>
>
>--
>Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
>order from Finishing Line
>Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
>and
>Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (26)
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5a. Re: letter for 'th'
Posted by: "Wesley Parish" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 12:44 am ((PDT))
Cakobau (Thakombau) says, use C.
Wesley Parish
On 4/09/2012, at 4:24 AM, And Rosta wrote:
> Which of the following is the least rebarbative choice of grapheme
> for a phoneme whose primary allophone is [T] ('th' in _thin_), that
> eternal conlang favourite? Choices are:
>
> c (with or without overdot or underdot)
> d with underdot (where d without underdot is voiced [D])
> x
> h with underdot (where h without underdot is [h, X, x])
>
> My preference would be for C, but I remember what explosions of
> disgust from listfreres my former use of <q> for /N/ (now <n-
> underdot>) engendered, with particular stridor and decrepitation
> resounding from the west coast or Ireland.
>
> --And.
Messages in this topic (22)
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5b. Re: letter for 'th'
Posted by: "A. da Mek" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 2:19 am ((PDT))
> þ would be my preference too, but I cannot think of a historically
> plausible explanation for Livagian using it.
Could be plausible Greek theta?
Or t followed by the rough breathing diacritic mark (similar grapheme as
left single quotation mark).
t'
Messages in this topic (22)
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5c. Re: letter for 'th'
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 7:55 am ((PDT))
The historical argument supports c (or rather Ä). In the Middle Ages
and Renascence, t was often without an ascender ê, while in some
late Gothic cursive (e.g. English Secretary Hand) c can look like Ñ.
This would make it easy to switch from a dotted t to a dotted c.
On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 00:31:10 +0100
And Rosta <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm assuming that the available stock of letters is the Latin
> alphabet, augmented, out of necessity, by ash and letters with over-
> and/or under- dots. I haven't been able to find anything less odd. I
> have a rule that an overdot can't occur with a letter whose roman or
> italic minuscule sometimes has an ascender and an underdot can't
> occur with a letter whose roman or italic minuscule sometimes has a
> descender -- not counting fancy swashy italics (so z can have an
> underdot but f and s can't). This rule must, I guess, have developed
> with the maturation of minuscules and Renaissance lettering. If the
> dot diacritics antedate the standardization of ascenders and
> descenders, then perhaps /T/ was originally T-overdot, but this in
> time came to fall foul of the "no overdot when there's an ascender"
> rule (& indeed, Livagian does not allow <t>-overdot, even tho most
> permitted combos of letters and over- and under- dot are assigned
> some orthographic function), which led to the search for a
> replacement letter, in which case by this time (Renaissance) thorn,
> altho no longer used, would be available to be borrowed. But I think
> Livagians would have been perfectly happy to use C; it's only the
> rest of us that feel uncomfortable with C and want thorn instead.
>
> --And.
Messages in this topic (22)
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6a. Re: Pronoun systems that don't mark person?
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 7:33 am ((PDT))
If I understand it, this K-L system sounds a bit like the conjunct and natlang
Awa Pit, a Barbacoan language of South America. I don't have the article with
me, but I copied out the example sentences into my sketchlang Utu Nes (Martian,
extinct, pre-Ulok language of the Kingdom of Nesa (<Nes)). Conjunct marking
goes on the 1st person in declaratives and 2nd person in interrogatives,
everything else uses disjunctive:
Statements:
(Mumu) nuku yolsop.
mu-0-mu nuku yo-lso-p
1sg-NOM-TOP Martian.banana eat-IMPFV-CONJ
I eat Martian bananas.
(Momu) nuku yolsow.
mo-0-mu nuku yo-lso-w
2sg-NOM-TOP Martian.banana eat-IMPFV-DISJ
You eat Martian bananas.
(Opmu) usuk mulsow.
op-0-mu usuk mu-lso-w
3sg-NOM-TOP Tharsis.scrub.chicken cook-IMPFV-DISJ
(S)he cooks Tharsis scrub chickens.
Questions:
Lemsulu upyupsow?
lem-su-lu upyup-so-w
who-ACC-INTER annoy-IMPFV-DISJ
Whom am I annoying?
("up yup, up yup, up yup" is the nocturnal cry of the Tharsis scrub chicken)
Telu yelsop?
te-lu ye-lso-p
what-INTER do-IMPFV-CONJ
What are you doing?
Lemsup ulsow?
lem-su-p u-lso-w
where-LOC-ABL come-IMPFV-DISJ
Where is he coming from?
Of course, I would say that the system does mark person, just a bit defectively
from the point of view of western grammar. Infomally, I frequently drop
pronouns insufficiently cliched contexts. "(Do you)Want some?" "Yes please"
"(Are you) Coming?" "No, my favorite show is on tonight".
Messages in this topic (6)
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7a. Re: Language Academies for Your Conlang
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Wed Sep 5, 2012 7:43 am ((PDT))
As for my other conlangs, Na'gifi Fasu'xa, spoken on the post-apocalyptic Stone
Age planet Ka'manu in the Post-Catastrophe Semiramis Universe, has a script but
no academy. The 3000 speakers don't engage in much trade, but they do have a
strong tradition of oral recitation which helps to standardize the language.
Fortunatian probably has an academy shortly after the FIU European countries
invent the concept.
Messages in this topic (19)
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