There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: letter for 'th'
From: BPJ
1.2. Re: letter for 'th'
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2a. Re: New LCS Website
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2b. Re: New LCS Website
From: Roger Mills
2c. Re: New LCS Website
From: Sylvia Sotomayor
3a. Re: Basic Word Lists
From: Roger Mills
4a. Re: what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect f
From: And Rosta
Messages
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1.1. Re: letter for 'th'
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Sun Sep 9, 2012 2:54 am ((PDT))
On 2012-09-04 00:15, Alex Fink wrote:
> From a modern perspective I vote for C as well,
> also on account of such things as Castilian. But I
> wonder if X started being used for (essentially) an
> extra fricative in Spanish / Portuguese / ... (and
> a graphic variant of final S in French?) earlier
> than affricate values of C started losing their
> closure; if so, X might be the more compelling
> choice at the time.
X = /ʃ/ was much earlier than /ts/ > /s/θ/, but far
from being a random assignment of a new sound to a
spare letter -- AFAIK the ancients didn't deal in
such -- it was the result of regular sound change:
Latin /ks/ between vowels had become /ʃ/ in the
local Romance. IIRC even the name of the letter had
gone through /eks/ > /ekse/ > /eçse/ > /ejse/ >
/esʲe/ > /eʃe/!
That's not to say that they were incapable of conscious
innovation, such as splitting two allographs into
distinct letters to express a phonemic distinction, as
when Ç, originally an allograph of Z, was assigned to
/ts/ while the ordinary Z was assigned to /dz/.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigothic_script>
But imagine if they _had_ been recycling letters
semirandomly! English might have ended up with
C = /tʃ/, G = /dʒ/, K = /k/, Q = /g/, X = /ʃ/
and Z = /θ/ð/, later introducing Ç for /θ/! ;-)
In fact there was some limited use of X = /ʃ/
in Middle English, in 'small words' like _xall_
and _xo_ 'she'.
As for And's original query I think Ç may provide an
explanation for C = /θ/. While the /ts/ > /s/θ/ was
late it is possible that people who lack /θ/ but have
/ts/ in their native phonology replace /θ/ with /ts/
when speaking a foreign language. I've heard this in
German speakers' English, _thing_ coming out as [tsɪŋ].
Also Z/C/Ç were from early times used to express the
Basque laminal alveolar /s̻/ as opposed to the apical
alveolar /s̺/ which was written S. Given the location
And assigns to Livagia it would in fact be strange if
it hadn't been visited by Basque sailors! Phonetically
/θ/ is of course laminal, so that a laminal/apical
alveolar distinction may sound similar to a laminal
dental/apical alveolar one. In fact Icelandic Þ and S
are both alveolar, the distinction being a
laminal/apical one, with /s/ often sounding [ʃ]-ish to
my ears, and of course the intermediate stage between
/ts/ and /θ/ in Spanish was laminal /s̻/, the /t̻s̻/
originating from /tɕ/ having been laminal against
apical /s̺/ S. That pronunciation may actually have
been current for centuries.
/bpj
Messages in this topic (27)
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1.2. Re: letter for 'th'
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sun Sep 9, 2012 6:23 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Sunday 09 September 2012 11:53:30 BPJ wrote:
> [...]
> As for And's original query I think Ç may provide an
> explanation for C = /θ/. While the /ts/ > /s/θ/ was
> late it is possible that people who lack /θ/ but have
> /ts/ in their native phonology replace /θ/ with /ts/
> when speaking a foreign language. I've heard this in
> German speakers' English, _thing_ coming out as [tsɪŋ].
The most common outcome of /θ/ in German mouths is [s],
while [ts] is less common; I have also occasionally
encountered [tʃ].
> Also Z/C/Ç were from early times used to express the
> Basque laminal alveolar /s̻/ as opposed to the apical
> alveolar /s̺/ which was written S.
AFAIK Old Spanish used the same conventions as Basque, with
/s̻/ later becoming Modern Spanish /θ/ and /ʃ/ becoming /x/.
Also, Old High German: _z_ was laminal /s̻/ (which was the
reflex, by High German Sound Shift, of Proto-Germanic */t/),
and _s_ was apical /s̺/ (from Proto-Germanic */s/). The
letter _z_ was also sometimes used for the laminal affricate
/ts̻/, and when the two sibilants merged (around 1300 or so),
_z_ became the letter for /ts/, while /s/ was always spelled
_s_.
Madeirese, a descendant of Old Albic, uses the same convention
as Basque: _z_ for /s̻/, _s_ for /s̺/, and _x_ for /ʃ/ (the Old
Albic sources of these consonants are /θ/, /s/ and /x/,
respectively).
--
... 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 (27)
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2a. Re: New LCS Website
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sun Sep 9, 2012 6:32 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Sunday 09 September 2012 01:02:11 David Peterson 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.
Excellent work!
--
... 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 (7)
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2b. Re: New LCS Website
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sun Sep 9, 2012 8:11 am ((PDT))
On Sunday 09 September 2012 01:02:11 David Peterson 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.
====================================================
I just noticed-- there are two entries for the premiere of "Alien Nation (TV
Series)"-- one for Sept.18, 1989, another for Oct 18,1989. Didn't the TV
series arise out of a movie? And I thought it was earlier than 1989, as I seem
to recall watching it for at least a couple seasons before moving to Saugatuck
in May 1990 (and no TV for 6 mos. or so.)
It WAS a neat show!!!!
Messages in this topic (7)
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2c. Re: New LCS Website
Posted by: "Sylvia Sotomayor" [email protected]
Date: Sun Sep 9, 2012 9:18 am ((PDT))
On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 8:11 AM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sunday 09 September 2012 01:02:11 David Peterson 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.
> ====================================================
>
> I just noticed-- there are two entries for the premiere of "Alien Nation (TV
> Series)"-- one for Sept.18, 1989, another for Oct 18,1989. Didn't the TV
> series arise out of a movie? And I thought it was earlier than 1989, as I
> seem to recall watching it for at least a couple seasons before moving to
> Saugatuck in May 1990 (and no TV for 6 mos. or so.)
>
> It WAS a neat show!!!!
Thanks. I updated the source for the calendar feed, and eventually the
feed will update itself, too. The actual date of the premiere was Sept
18, 1989.
-S
--
Sylvia Sotomayor
The sooner I fall behind the more time I have to catch up.
Messages in this topic (7)
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3a. Re: Basic Word Lists
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sun Sep 9, 2012 7:28 am ((PDT))
--- On Sun, 9/9/12, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
--- On Sat, 9/8/12, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
Or anjing 'dog', where
> almost every other MP language has a cognate of *asu.
Well, W-W has ayam!
=====================================
Ho ho, that's 'chicken' in Indonesian!! Apparently the original basic meaning
was something like *'domesticated animal' or 'pet'
Messages in this topic (18)
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4a. Re: what sort of semantic properties of arguments do verbs inflect f
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Sun Sep 9, 2012 7:55 am ((PDT))
Zach Wellstood, On 09/09/2012 01:15:
> So I can't really remember any other semantic properties verbs show in
> natlangs (maybe the obvious physical gender rather than grammatical
> gender??),
Yes, obvious, but not so obvious that I hadn't overlooked it!
> but I'll shamelessly plug łaá siri and say that its verb roots
> conjugate for the argument's(s') spatial deixis relative to the speaker
> (based on five degrees: right here, right there, over there, not here, and
> somewhere/anywhere).
Good stuff. For Livagian I currently have inflections for nonthird person, for
6 degrees of spatial deixis (based on +/-near me, +/-near you), which also
double as degrees of (in)definiteness, for taboo/unmentionable, for ineffable,
for thing pointed to, for thing demonstrated, for good thing and for bad thing.
> On Sat, Sep 8, 2012 at 7:45 PM, MorphemeAddict<[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> 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".
Weird. I never received this message, and I've checked spam folders.
By "Me" and "Thee" I meant that the inflections encode that the lover is the
speaker and the addressee, not that the (unpronounced) subject is the word
_io_, "I", and _tu_, "thou".
--And.
Messages in this topic (5)
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