There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: gsfa [WAS: Basic Word Lists]
From: Gary Shannon
1b. Re: gsfa [WAS: Basic Word Lists]
From: Gary Shannon
1c. Re: gsfa [WAS: Basic Word Lists]
From: Gary Shannon
2a. Re: <w> = /u/
From: Matthew Boutilier
3.1. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
From: Logan Kearsley
3.2. Japanese pronouns (was: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages,
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
4.1. Re: Fiat Lingua, September: Is a Collaborative Conlang Even Possible
From: Logan Kearsley
5a. Lexicography Project Update
From: Logan Kearsley
5b. Re: Lexicography Project Update
From: George Corley
6a. Re: Basic Word Lists
From: Padraic Brown
7a. New LCS Website
From: David Peterson
7b. Re: New LCS Website
From: George Corley
8a. what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect for?
From: And Rosta
8b. Re: what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect f
From: MorphemeAddict
8c. Re: what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect f
From: Wm Annis
Messages
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1a. Re: gsfa [WAS: Basic Word Lists]
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 10:38 am ((PDT))
There's no end to the job of collecting types of sentences I guess! :-)
It's a good thing I enjoy collecting them.
--gary
On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't seem to see any examples with comparatives of the type1) "I like rice
> more than potatoes" or 2) "I like X more than John does" or 3) "I prefer X
> more than/over Y" or 4) "he eats faster than me/ ~I (do, can)" or 5) "he
> [talks more /.eats faster] than he [ought to/ is necessary]" -- I mention
> this because they were a bit of a problem in Kash, in that when "than" is
> followed by a complete (or deleted) sentence (as in #4,5) it requires a
> slightly different construction......There is one examples of "Name1 is Xer
> than Pron/Name2" which would fall into the same category. Cf:
>
> �enji lavi yavital alo 2 li 'Shenji is taller than 2 li (=meters)' alternately
> vitalni �enji (yale) lavi alo 2 li [Shenji's height (is) more than 2 li" (no
> change of subject) vs.
>
> �enji lavi yavital alo re erek 'Shenji is taller than Erek [is (tall)] (_re_
> shows change of subject ~subord..clause)-- change of subject, deleted verb)
> and cf. also
>
> �enji lavi yavital alo re amani 'Shenji is taller than his father [is]'
> (father still living}
> (colloquially, of course, lots of speaker omit the _re_ in these cases) but
> not in
>
> �enji lavi yavital alo re yavitalsa amani 'Shenji is taller than his father
> was (tall)' (father is not living)-- change of both subject and tense (I
> think I have these right, without checking my syntax page :-))))
>
> --- On Sat, 9/8/12, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> From: Gary Shannon <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: gsfa [WAS: Basic Word Lists]
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Saturday, September 8, 2012, 1:07 AM
>
> On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Arthaey Angosii <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> It occurred to me that it might be interesting to paraphrase
>>> the sentences in some standard form, and with a small, controlled
>>> vocabulary, to serve not as models of sentence structure, but as a
>>> checklist of the general TYPES of things a conlang should be able to
>>> say, without regard to HOW those things are said.
>>
>> Do let us know if you ever write that up � I'd certainly be interested in
>> it! :)
>>
>
> I sometimes loose track of what is on my own web site. It turns out I
> already did something of this sort back in 2010:
> http://fiziwig.com/conlang/syntax_tests.html
>
> --gary
Messages in this topic (9)
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1b. Re: gsfa [WAS: Basic Word Lists]
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 1:58 pm ((PDT))
202. She is taller than her brother.
203. They are no wiser than we.
204. Light travels faster than sound.
205. We have more time than they.
206. She has more friends than enemies.
...
216. He has far more money than brains.
Or am I misunderstanding what you're looking for?
--gary
On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't seem to see any examples with comparatives of the type1) "I like rice
> more than potatoes" or 2) "I like X more than John does" or 3) "I prefer X
> more than/over Y" or 4) "he eats faster than me/ ~I (do, can)" or 5) "he
> [talks more /.eats faster] than he [ought to/ is necessary]" -- I mention
> this because they were a bit of a problem in Kash, in that when "than" is
> followed by a complete (or deleted) sentence (as in #4,5) it requires a
> slightly different construction......There is one examples of "Name1 is Xer
> than Pron/Name2" which would fall into the same category. Cf:
>
...
> I sometimes loose track of what is on my own web site. It turns out I
> already did something of this sort back in 2010:
> http://fiziwig.com/conlang/syntax_tests.html
>
> --gary
Messages in this topic (9)
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1c. Re: gsfa [WAS: Basic Word Lists]
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 2:02 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 3:27 PM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> 117, 153, 163, 176, 187, 193, 202
>
> stevo
Fixed. Thank you. --gary
Messages in this topic (9)
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2a. Re: <w> = /u/
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 12:14 pm ((PDT))
unless i'm mistaken, in Middle Welsh the digraph <uu> was used for /u:/ (or
whatever the sound was back then -- my Welsh kind of sucks), which might
naturally continue on to <w>. it makes a lot of sense, i think.
the *weirder* question is why, in Germanic (and, i'm sure, elsewhere), the
following arrangement seemed sensible:
<uu> = /w/
<u> = /u/
my 'instincts' would flip them, with the longer sound corresponding to the
longer symbol. unless the consonantality of /w/ suggested itself as more
prominent for the orthography. but, such is life. however, reading Old High
German texts with words like <uuurdun> (modern *wurden*) is quite the
thrill.
matt
On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Charlie Brickner <[email protected]
> wrote:
> I'm always trying to improve the orthography of Senjecas. I'd like to
> know why <w> was chosen to represent /u/ in Welsh, and when?
>
> Charlie
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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3.1. Re: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages, 2ed (2011)
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 12:47 pm ((PDT))
On 5 September 2012 00:54, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> 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.
This makes me think of Salish languages again, in which "noun" and
"verb" are argued not be separate classes but simply syntactic
functions that can be taken by any root.
Does Japanese have any other pronoun-like stuff going on, like verbal
agreement for person? Or could it be reasonably analyzed as not
grammaticalizing person or other pronominal stuff at all?
-l.
Messages in this topic (35)
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3.2. Japanese pronouns (was: Bernard Comrie, The World's Major Languages,
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 1:06 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Saturday 08 September 2012 21:47:06 Logan Kearsley wrote:
> Does Japanese have any other pronoun-like stuff going on, like verbal
> agreement for person?
Nope.
> Or could it be reasonably analyzed as not
> grammaticalizing person or other pronominal stuff at all?
Maybe.
Japanese pronouns behave just like ordinary nouns, except that
they take the plural marker -tachi if appropriate, which is
usually not used with nouns (I don't know, though, whether
pluralizing nouns is *forbidden* or just *not common practice*).
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (35)
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4.1. Re: Fiat Lingua, September: Is a Collaborative Conlang Even Possible
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 12:56 pm ((PDT))
On 7 September 2012 10:27, Matthew DeBlock <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> not a "standard for conlangs" just a "standard for describing and
> cataloguing a conlang and its features"
Part of this is part of what I aim to do with my lexicography software
project- providing a standard, language-agnostic data format for
computerized dictionaries requires a standard means of describing the
relevant features of languages.
> Why not go a couple steps further, instead of just a checklist, design a
> means of describing the gramatical rules etc..
Because it's hard. :) But I aim to do exactly that, as far as is
reasonable. Lexical Markup Format already contains lots of good ideas
in that general direction.
However,
On 7 September 2012 11:37, Sai <[email protected]> wrote:
[...]
> There's only so far you can go with describing grammars in a regular
> way — much sooner than later, you start to get into it being just too
> damn complicated and weird and unique (good things!) to fit into a
> standard form.
Hence, I'm restricting my efforts to formally describing the sort of
stuff that you would want in a good dictionary. I think that's
achievable. And then, if people want to use that framework, they can,
but they don't have to. I hope that it will be useful, and if there
are languages that break the framework, I'll either find ways to fix
it or just accept that it can't do everything, after all. But beyond
that, I don't see much hope for doing better than we already do with
every project designed and described individually.
-l.
Messages in this topic (31)
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5a. Lexicography Project Update
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 1:05 pm ((PDT))
Amazingly, my hopes for academic support for my plan to write
lexicography software have come true. I fortuitously managed to be
found by a professor in need of termbase software supporting TBX
import and export, and we managed to come to an agreement for an
internship project to implement hybrid termbase/lexicon software
(still supporting TBX import and export).
It's only a semester long, and I probably won't get all of the great
features we would all like in dictionary software completed in version
1 since the official focus is termbase management, but I should have a
pretty good start on it. The lexicography portion is going to be based
largely on the Lexical Markup Format specification- although I think
it has a few glaring technical design flaws, there's some really great
thought there on how to organize things like formal descriptions of
morphological processes and indicating semantic relations between
not-quite-equivalent terms in different languages.
The whole thing will be Free and Open Source, of course, so if anyone
else wants to help out with feature expansion later on, that'd be
great. Also, I'm very much open to anyone who would like to volunteer
to test the software.
-l.
Messages in this topic (2)
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5b. Re: Lexicography Project Update
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 2:48 pm ((PDT))
I'm always looking for new dictionary software. I'm a sucky alpha/beta
tester, though, as I'm often too lazy to give feedback.
On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 3:05 PM, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]>wrote:
> Amazingly, my hopes for academic support for my plan to write
> lexicography software have come true. I fortuitously managed to be
> found by a professor in need of termbase software supporting TBX
> import and export, and we managed to come to an agreement for an
> internship project to implement hybrid termbase/lexicon software
> (still supporting TBX import and export).
>
> It's only a semester long, and I probably won't get all of the great
> features we would all like in dictionary software completed in version
> 1 since the official focus is termbase management, but I should have a
> pretty good start on it. The lexicography portion is going to be based
> largely on the Lexical Markup Format specification- although I think
> it has a few glaring technical design flaws, there's some really great
> thought there on how to organize things like formal descriptions of
> morphological processes and indicating semantic relations between
> not-quite-equivalent terms in different languages.
>
> The whole thing will be Free and Open Source, of course, so if anyone
> else wants to help out with feature expansion later on, that'd be
> great. Also, I'm very much open to anyone who would like to volunteer
> to test the software.
>
> -l.
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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6a. Re: Basic Word Lists
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 2:14 pm ((PDT))
--- On Thu, 9/6/12, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think I have more than once touted
> by wordlist designed for research in Indonesia--
> http://cinduworld.tripod.com/wordlist.txt
> -- 1100+ words, but it can be adapted to fit any
> place..........
I know a lot of those words from Waray-Waray (PI). Interesting how
obviously cognate are certain words, like dua/duha, uban/oban, mata/mata,
telinga/talinga -- but others are completely different: tangan/camot,
kaki/ti'il, burit/bobot, jantung/puso, tooth/nipon; satu/usa. Pronouns
are very similar as well. I'm sure there must be a far deeper level of
cognate relationship than I'm aware of, you know, some words I think
aren't related might actually be related.
Thanks for reposting the list!
Padraic
> --- On Thu, 9/6/12, Jim Henry <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> From: Jim Henry <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: Basic Word Lists
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Thursday, September 6, 2012, 11:05 AM
>
> On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:38 AM, Alex Fink <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > Not to be unduly harsh, but I think most of these are
> not as good than the previous suggestions on this thread
> (Annis' thesaurus and SIL's DDP list, both of which are
> awesome), or at least not as good for the purpose.
>
> I haven't studied the latest version, but I remember that
> back in the
> day Rick Harrison's Universal Language Dictionary was pretty
> useful
> and non-relexy.
>
> http://www.uld3.org/
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
>
Messages in this topic (15)
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7a. New LCS Website
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 4:02 pm ((PDT))
Just a quick note to let everyone know that Sylvia Sotomayor's redesigned the
LCS website:
http://www.conlang.org/
If you spot anything broken or anything you think might be missing, please let
us know at [email protected]. Otherwise, we hope you like the new look and
format.
Fiat Lingua!
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (2)
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7b. Re: New LCS Website
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 4:19 pm ((PDT))
This looks so much better. I wish I could get her to do the Conlangery
site.
On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 6:02 PM, David Peterson <[email protected]> wrote:
> Just a quick note to let everyone know that Sylvia Sotomayor's redesigned
> the LCS website:
>
> http://www.conlang.org/
>
> If you spot anything broken or anything you think might be missing, please
> let us know at [email protected]. Otherwise, we hope you like the new look
> and format.
>
> Fiat Lingua!
>
> David Peterson
> LCS President
> [email protected]
> www.conlang.org
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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8a. what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect for?
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 4:21 pm ((PDT))
It's fairly common in natlangs for verbs to inflect for semantic properties of
one or more of their arguments, notably for the semantic properties of person
and number. For example, Italian _amo_ encodes that the lover argument is Me,
_ami_ that the lover argument is Thee, _ama_ that the lover argument is an
individual, and _amano_ that the lover argument is a group.
What other semantic properties of arguments do verbs (or other sorts of word)
inflect for in natlangs and/or conlangs?
I can think of inflections for physical properties of arguments (shape,
rigidity/consistency, arrangement) in (iirc, which is doubtful) Na Dene lgs.
What else?
--And.
Messages in this topic (3)
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8b. Re: what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect f
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 4:46 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 7:21 PM, And Rosta <[email protected]> wrote:
> It's fairly common in natlangs for verbs to inflect for semantic
> properties of one or more of their arguments, notably for the semantic
> properties of person and number. For example, Italian _amo_ encodes that
> the lover argument is Me,
"I", not "Me".
> _ami_ that the lover argument is Thee,
"Thou", not "Thee".
stevo
> _ama_ that the lover argument is an individual, and _amano_ that the lover
> argument is a group.
>
> What other semantic properties of arguments do verbs (or other sorts of
> word) inflect for in natlangs and/or conlangs?
>
> I can think of inflections for physical properties of arguments (shape,
> rigidity/consistency, arrangement) in (iirc, which is doubtful) Na Dene
> lgs. What else?
>
> --And.
>
Messages in this topic (3)
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8c. Re: what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect f
Posted by: "Wm Annis" [email protected]
Date: Sat Sep 8, 2012 5:09 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 6:21 PM, And Rosta <[email protected]> wrote:
> I can think of inflections for physical properties of arguments (shape,
> rigidity/consistency, arrangement) in (iirc, which is doubtful) Na Dene lgs.
This is not inflection in these languages. Rather, entirely different verb
stems are used depending on class. However, you could say that the
Bantu languages, and several in the Caucasus area, do inflect for class.
--
William S. Annis
www.aoidoi.org � www.scholiastae.org
Messages in this topic (3)
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