There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Vulcan Language (was: Loglan VS Natlang)
From: Tony Harris
2a. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
From: Leonardo Castro
2b. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
From: Mathieu Roy
2c. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
From: Leonardo Castro
3a. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
From: Mathieu Roy
4. Litorian vowel harmony
From: Charles W Brickner
5a. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Mathieu Roy
5b. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
From: Gary Shannon
5c. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
6a. OT: Decimal vs. duodeciml (was: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Charles W Brickner
6b. Re: Decimal vs. duodeciml (was: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Charles W Brickner
6c. Re: OT: Decimal vs. duodeciml (was: logical language VS not-so-logic
From: Leonardo Castro
7. Litorian consonants
From: Charles W Brickner
8a. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
9a. Re: Passive verb: inflection or modifier particle?
From: Leonardo Castro
Messages
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1a. Re: Vulcan Language (was: Loglan VS Natlang)
Posted by: "Tony Harris" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 7:09 am ((PST))
*WOW* was this message delayed! I sent this one yesterday, before
several other people commented, and it only showed in the list today,
meaning it's all pretty much old info.
On 01/18/2013 10:22 AM, Tony Harris wrote:
> Actually there's a fairly developed Golic Vulcan, including script.
> Based the same way Mark Okrand did Klingon, take the passages of
> spoken language with subtitles out of the first film where it's used,
> then parse that back into the language, and build from there.
> Paramount never officially approved it, although I think I heard that
> they did actually use some bits, without attribution.
>
> See here: http://www.stogeek.com/wiki/Category:Vulcan_Language_Institute
>
>
> On 01/18/2013 10:17 AM, George Corley wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 8:44 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>>> I discussed this elsewhere and those who know more about Star Trek
>>>>> than
>>>>> me seem to be saying that there is too much already written about
>>>>> Vulcans and their space elvish language,
>>>> But the Vulcans of Star Trek do NOT exist.
>>> True, and he didn't say they actually exist, but even if they did,
>>> there
>>> would be no reason to suppose they must speak a logical language
>>> (such as
>>> Lojban). We know just enough about Star Trek Vulcan culture, physiology
>>> and psychology to know that they are not so different from us: they are
>>> not logical by nature, but rather by long and arduous training. It may
>>> very well be that those Vulcans who are deepest in the art of logic use
>>> some kind of loglang as a second language; but I'd doubt that such a
>>> beast
>>> would be their cradle language.
>>>
>> We really don't have any info on the Vulcan language. As far as I know,
>> there are only a few lines in the language, developed by Mark Okrand to
>> match the mouth movements of the scene as performed in English. I'm sure
>> people have analyzed that small bit of data quite thoroughly, but I
>> doubt
>> we'll see more of Vulcan language later on.
>>
>>
>>> Within the ST universe, we also know that Romulans and Vulcans are very
>>> close (if not identical) physiologically and they have a shared
>>> history.
>>> It would stand to reason that the basic nature of the Vulcan
>>> language(s)
>>> is more like that of the Romulans, barring some sort of radical purge.
>>
>> It is well-established and often stated that the Romulan and Vulcan
>> languages are similar, so no purge. Probably both races speak some
>> descendant of a language that existed before the split, which would
>> in turn
>> be at least a descendant of a language that existed before the Vulcans
>> learned to suppress their emotions. Certainly such a language would be
>> naturally evolved.
>>
>>
>>>>> but I think real world Vulcans would either convert their natural
>>>>> language to a loglan or write one from scratch.
>>> They might very well do the latter.
>>
>> That would be very interesting to explore. I've noticed that as Star
>> Trek
>> went on Vulcan Logic became less a rationalist ideology and more of a
>> religion of sorts. Vulcans always did have incorrect or unusual
>> ideas as
>> to what was "logical" (look up the "Straw Vulcan" trope), and as their
>> culture got fleshed out through the decades with rituals and
>> mythology it
>> seems more and more that Vulcan Logic is very dogmatic and is revered
>> in a
>> way that seems quite religious.
>>
>> As such, it's hard to predict what they would do. Would they decide
>> that
>> the "logical" course of action would be to keep their own language, just
>> out of pure pragmatism? Would they iron out some irregularities and be
>> done with it? Or would the priesthood develop a loglang for themselves?
>> Lots of interesting questions that we, unfortunately, can't answer,
>> since
>> none of us get paid by Paramount to write about Vulcans.
Messages in this topic (8)
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2a. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 8:03 am ((PST))
2013/1/18 Mathieu Roy <[email protected]>:
>
> that doesn't assigning a gender to things that don't have one. Even people
> that speak such a language as their mother tongue make mistakes. And how
> does assigning a gender to things is "more human", "easier to learn for
> babies", or even "more poetic"?
Sometimes people take advantage of word gender in animismic stories to
associate real sex to things. For some reason, I always had little
influence of word gender in this type of association: as a child, I
used to see the Sun as a woman and the Moon as a man, although the
genders of these words in Portuguese suggest the opposite; I think I
was more influenced by the appearance of them...
[...]
> <<If so, no. No one really has any need for such a thing. Daily existence
> and daily needs are rarely so wanting of logical expression or precision
> that a loglang would foist upon it.>>
> I disagree. I think it would be helpful for communication to have less
> ambiguity. In addition to previous examples, I will add that having two
> times 12 hours in a day sometimes leads to misunderstanding and someone can
> end up somewhere at the wrong time. While it is true that we can precise if
> we mean in the afternoon or morning, etc., we can forget. But in a 24 hours
> base system (which some natural languages do use) one cannot forget to
> precise it. (and personally, I think 24 hours is still not ideal; something
> like 10 would be more useful IMO:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time).
OTOH, IMO it would be better to change eveything else to duodecimal
(as we are not talking about the viability of the change).
> << If the costs of switching languages were zero, and the only difference
> between natlangs and loglangs were the regularity of the grammar and the
> polysemy of the words in the lexicon, then there might be very little
> advantage in sticking with messy, irregular natlangs. Some other posters on
> the thread have mentioned poetry; it's possible to write poetry (and do
> other forms of wordplay) in an unnaturally regular and monosemous conlang
> (the many volumes of poetry published in Esperanto[*] are proof of that),
> but I'll concede for the sake of argument that it's somehwat more difficult
> than in the the typical natlang. >>
> I agree.
A well-know problem with poetry in Esperanto is that you can only
rhyme words of the same class. But there are natlangs that only have
three vowels, so they also have to find other ways to create poetry
that are not very dull.
> And I don't think it would be difficult for a
> native speaker of a logical language to make the difference between the two
> "or" for example.
In my conlang (that I want to be logic), I have a generic "and/or/xor"
word whose sense can be completed with particles that mean
"additionaly, too", "alternatively", "exclusively".
Messages in this topic (16)
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2b. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 8:43 am ((PST))
<<Njenfalgar: English has the words to express all these things. >>
I agree. But for me it seems more complicated to express my thoughts in the
natural languages I know. (I'm not saying this is good or bad, and I'm not
saying that this is true for everybody.)
What do you think is (approximately) the minimum number of words necessary
to express "all" human thoughts? For example, do you think that human can
express all there thoughts in Toki Pona? In fact, maybe someone on the list
speak Toki Pona and could say if s/he can express everything s/he wants to
communicate clearly. I would like to know.
<<Njenfalgar: And if you do find the exact word, chances are it will be so
specialised a word that your audience won't understand this word, and you're
only off worse.>>
I agree. I think a conversation can difficulty be more "intelligent" than
the "less intelligent" agent in the communication. (and by "intelligent", I
mean what you said, meaning if one agent don't know a word, than the other
cannot really use it).
<<Me: "In the end everybody is (or at least should be IMO) free to speak the
language they want (except maybe in court?).
Ray: "except maybe in court" - a little worrying, methinks>>
[off topic] IINM, in Canada, immigrants are obliged to learn one of the
official language; that's mainly why I wrote "except maybe in court". What
do you think about that law? (If this enter in the category "advocation for
language"; please ignore my question).
<<Me "So if you think that a logical language is "better", then learn one,
otherwise don't."
Ray: OK - but I have steeled myself and re-read your long email of the 18th
January. It reads to me a whole lot like advocating the use of loglangs.>>
Ok, I reread too, and I agree there were some points that could have looked
like this, and I will be more careful in the future on how I formulate my
sentences. I think that since I interpreted some people comments as
advocating for natlang, I answered by saying the points I liked/preferred
about loglang, hence the confusion. I think it's just fine to not allow that
people advocate for loglang in this list, but I think this should also apply
to advocating natlang.
<<Me: At worst, I implied that I personally prefer more logical language.
But I did not advocate for any specific language.
Ray: Indeed not. So then you advocate different people learning different
loglangs?>>
Honestly, I might have difficulty to interpret some connotations of the word
"advocate" (English isn't my first language). But I don't think anybody
should be imposed to speak any constructed languages (obviously), nor
natural languages (except *maybe* an official language of their country -
see my point above - but IDK, and I am not pronouncing myself on this
subject since I don't want to advocate any languages).
<<It was the overall impression I got from your very long email which, I
must confess, I found (and still find) difficult to follow in full.>>
Well, thanks for trying at least. I tried to make it my points clear, but
maybe I didn't after all.
<<Ray: That would be fine, if you confined your questions to loglang design.
But all the clap-trap about the advantages of a loglang is IMO advocacy.>>
Ok. In the future, I will try to avoid using the words "advantage" and
"disadvantage". I will be more specific. For example, I could ask: "How can
we make grammar with fewer rules?" but I will try to not pronounce myself on
whether this is "good" or "bad" IMO to have fewer rules.
<<Ray: BTW I don't really understand what the subject means. Is a
"not-so-logical language" something like Voksigid? Or what?>>
Well, at first I wanted to call it "stupid language", but then I thought
that was NOT the right way to express what I wanted to say because what I
really mean by "not-so-logical language" is simply a language that is not
loglang. And also, by a logical language, I did not meant a language without
metaphor and stuff like that, I meant with less ambiguity (for example, a
word that announce that one is going to do a metaphor) and with more regular
in grammar for example. I think that to classify languages in the binary
form: logical or not, is a lot simplified. I think there's a spectrum of
logic that a language can have, and I think that by "logic" I meant less
logic that what has been interpreted.
<<Leonardo: Sometimes people take advantage of word gender in animismic
stories to associate real sex to things. For some reason, I always had
little influence of word gender in this type of association: as a child, I
used to see the Sun as a woman and the Moon as a man, although the genders
of these words in Portuguese suggest the opposite; I think I was more
influenced by the appearance of them... >>
Thanks for your opinion.
<<Leonardo: OTOH, IMO it would be better to change eveything else to
duodecimal (as we are not talking about the viability of the change).>>
Could you explain me why?
<<Leonardo: A well-know problem with poetry in Esperanto is that you can
only rhyme words of the same class. But there are natlangs that only have
three vowels, so they also have to find other ways to create poetry that are
not very dull.>>
Thanks for your opinion. I agree.
<<In my conlang (that I want to be logic), I have a generic "and/or/xor"
word whose sense can be completed with particles that mean "additionaly,
too", "alternatively", "exclusively".>>
Interesting. So does all combinations are possible: and/or/xor with
additionaly, too/alternatively/exclusively? And do all 9 have different
meaning?
Mathieu
Messages in this topic (16)
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2c. Re: logical language VS not-so-logical language (was RE: Loglan[g] V
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:02 am ((PST))
2013/1/19 Mathieu Roy <[email protected]>:
>
> <<Leonardo: OTOH, IMO it would be better to change eveything else to
> duodecimal (as we are not talking about the viability of the change).>>
> Could you explain me why?
Because 12 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6
while 10 is divisible by 1, 2 & 5.
> <<In my conlang (that I want to be logic), I have a generic "and/or/xor"
> word whose sense can be completed with particles that mean "additionaly,
> too", "alternatively", "exclusively".>>
> Interesting. So does all combinations are possible: and/or/xor with
> additionaly, too/alternatively/exclusively? And do all 9 have different
> meaning?
No. I have a single word "tiu" that means "and/or/xor" (any one of
them, generic). For instance,
"Liai liefe pasuoki tiu mapanti tiu matuomi."
means
"He/she likes chocolate, banana, tomato..."
The word "tei" adds the meaning of "too" to the preceding word, so
"tiu-tei" means specifically "and":
"Liai liefe pasuoki tiu-tei mapanti tiu-tei matuomi."
= "He/she likes chocolate and banana and tomato."
The word "lou" adds the meaning of "alternatively", so
"Liai liefe pasuoki tiu-lou mapanti tiu-lou matuomi."
= "He/she likes chocolate or banana or tomato."
Using the particle for "exclusively, only", I get the "xor" in the
same way. I haven't chosen its exact form yet, since I'm more
concerned with grammar details first... Maybe "sou"...
Messages in this topic (16)
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3a. Re: French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical languag
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 8:48 am ((PST))
Are these phenomenon present in a lot of languages? If so, in what way?
Mathieu
-----Message d'origine-----
De : Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] De la
part de R A Brown
Envoyé : samedi 19 janvier 2013 10:22
À : [email protected]
Objet : French spelling (was: logical language VS not-so-logical language)
On 18/01/2013 19:28, BPJ wrote:
> On 2013-01-18 19:57, Mathieu Roy wrote:
>> I don't know if the following is true, but my French
>> teacher told me that monks in the past were paid by
>> letters and therefore were adding letters to some
>> words.
A bit of a myth, methinks. Monks weren't paid.
>> That would explain why a lot of words have for example
>> the letters "eau" pronounces as "o" (bateau, eau, beau,
>> chateau, etc.) or simply "au" pronounces as "o" (faux,
>> taux, etc.) or silent letter at the end (faux, taux,
>> etc.) or double letters that are indistinguishable from
>> one letter (balle, sale, association, etc.)
No, it does not explain any one of those things.
> It *is* true that they added letters here and there,
Yes, especially by early printers to justify lines (monks
could justify them more easily by slightly modifying width
of letters and spaces).
> but for the most part 'illogical' spellings in French
> reflect how the words were actually pronounced in the
> thirteent century.
Exactly! Yes, for the most part modern French spelling
reflects how the language was pronounced in the 13th
century. The reason for _eau_ and _au_ now pronounced as
/o/, is that the spellings represent the pronunciation of
the 13th century, the modern pronunciation is the result of
sound changes that have taken place since.
The reason silent letters occur at the end of words is that
they were not silent in the 13th century, but have become so
since. The only oddity here is the final -x of some plurals
where _x_ was mistaken for a common handwritten abbreviation
of -us.
> Some were meant to approximate the spelling to their
> Latin counterpart, sometimes mistakenly.
That accounts for geminate consonants.
Others were stuck in by learned or semi-learned people after
the renaissance; the same thing happened in English. Some,
as BPJ says, were mistaken, e.g. _sçavoir_ (<-- sapere) with
the mistaken idea it had something to with Latin _scire_,
and _dipner_ (<-- VL. *disjunáre) with mistaken idea that
somehow it was related to Greek _deipnein_! Fortunately,
the French were, for the most part, more sensible than their
English counterparts, and dropped nearly all these
absurdities, e.g. they now write: savoir, dîner. The only
common survival that comes to mind is the _p_ in _sept_.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language
began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (16)
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4. Litorian vowel harmony
Posted by: "Charles W Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:13 am ((PST))
Iâm working on another conlang. Itâs for an exoplanet Iâve named
Litoria. The language is named Litorian. While putting together the vowel
chart, I noticed that it was almost symmetrical (I hope the chart reproduces
clearly):
i/ü______________u
_____Ä______Å____
e/ö______________o
________Ä_______
Ä_______________ȯ
æ______________
________________a
I thought of an interesting way to use vowel harmony. The Litorian verb and
adjective are CVC. Affixes are used for modification. These affixes are
either âVC or CV-, but I have come up with a type of vowel harmony for the
participles. Since these are adjectives they must have the general form CVC,
but I extended this to the form CVVC.
The first I call horizontal vowel harmony, e.g., <i/ü> is followed by <u> and
<u> by <i/ü>, etc. Thus, âxivâ, run, has the agent particple âxiuvâ,
running, and âgojâ, receive, has the agent participle âgoejâ, receiving.
The second I call vertical vowel harmony, e.g., <i/ü> is followed by <e/ö> and
<e/ö> by <i/ü>, etc. Thus, âfÄgâ, have, has the patient particple
âfÄægâ, had, and âþæÅâ, grind, has the patient participle
âþæÄÅâ, ground.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (1)
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5a. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:18 am ((PST))
David wrote:
<<English has the words to express all these things. Maybe you won't get
there with just *one* word, but if you use a full sentence (like: "I think
I love you, but I don't know if I'm ready for a serious relationship.")
there's nothing that a human being can feel and that cannot be expressed in
living, natural language. When I was an adolescent I felt like you: the
languages I spoke seemed to "lack" the words to describe my feelings, but
growing up (and reading plenty of books) I realised that human
communication does not really depend on words. If you don't find the exact
word, there's always a gazillion other ways to express yourself clearly and
understandably. And if you do find the exact word, chances are it will be
so specialised a word that your audience won't understand this word, and
you're only off worse. That's why I once invented the 'õSet'akh proverb:>>
I'm pretty sure all of you are familiar with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. I
have just watched this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GRMNrEo7CRw and the
speaker thinks that having a word for something makes its concept more
likely to be significant for someone speaking the language (while she says
that it could also be the opposite: this society have a certain word because
its concept is more important to them). She gives the example of the
mandarin's word "lao" which would mean "respect for the elderly" (and in
French there's not even have a word for "elderly": one have to say
"personnes âgées" instead), and she thinks that this means that respect for
elderly is more important in China. IMO, I think there is some true to the
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but I would like to have your opinions because I am
not sure of what to think.
Mathieu
Messages in this topic (3)
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5b. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:44 am ((PST))
I believe that the opposite it true. We create words for things that
are important to us. It happens every day in the sciences, especially
biology and biochemistry. When some new organic compound becomes
important, instead of calling by it's chemical formula, a name is
created. The compound did not become important because it has a name,
it has a name because it became important.
But then, speaking as a non-linguist, I think Sapir-Whorf is a
questionable hypothesis. It really doesn't make a lot of sense to me,
because thought is non-verbal. When we "think in words", we are not
"thinking", we are reiterating what we have already thought without
words.
If you don't believe that, next time you catch yourself "thinking"
with a sentence, stop yourself mid-sentence, and you will discover
that you DO know what the sentence was going to say, even though you
did not complete the mental uttering of the sentence. And you know
what the last word of the of the sentence was going to be long before
you silently repeated that word to yourself. The words of the sentence
were put together to repeat the thought to yourself, but the thought
existed before the words.
It takes some practice, but you can easily teach yourself to think
without words. Just make it a habit to stop your "thoughts"
mid-sentence. You'll soon discover that repeating the sentence to
yourself mentally is an unnecessary extra step that we probably learn
as infants when we talk to ourselves our loud. Gradually, we learn to
talk to ourselves silently so as not to reveal our thoughts, but
"thinking" with words is just a bad habit we picked up while learning
to speak.
And how many times have you been speaking aloud and suddenly find that
you can't remember some particular seldom-used word. You know
perfectly well what the forgotten word means, and the word is "on the
tip of your tongue", but you can't quite dredge it up. Do you NEED the
word to have the concept? Clearly not. You already have the concept.
It's the word you can't find at the moment. Proof positive that the
concept can and does exist without needing the word to think the
thought.
--gary
On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 9:18 AM, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> David wrote:
> <<English has the words to express all these things. Maybe you won't get
> there with just *one* word, but if you use a full sentence (like: "I think
> I love you, but I don't know if I'm ready for a serious relationship.")
> there's nothing that a human being can feel and that cannot be expressed in
> living, natural language. When I was an adolescent I felt like you: the
> languages I spoke seemed to "lack" the words to describe my feelings, but
> growing up (and reading plenty of books) I realised that human
> communication does not really depend on words. If you don't find the exact
> word, there's always a gazillion other ways to express yourself clearly and
> understandably. And if you do find the exact word, chances are it will be
> so specialised a word that your audience won't understand this word, and
> you're only off worse. That's why I once invented the 'õSet'akh proverb:>>
>
> I'm pretty sure all of you are familiar with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. I
> have just watched this video
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GRMNrEo7CRw and the
> speaker thinks that having a word for something makes its concept more
> likely to be significant for someone speaking the language (while she says
> that it could also be the opposite: this society have a certain word because
> its concept is more important to them). She gives the example of the
> mandarin's word "lao" which would mean "respect for the elderly" (and in
> French there's not even have a word for "elderly": one have to say
> "personnes âgées" instead), and she thinks that this means that respect for
> elderly is more important in China. IMO, I think there is some true to the
> Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but I would like to have your opinions because I am
> not sure of what to think.
>
> Mathieu
Messages in this topic (3)
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5c. Re: Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (was RE: logical language VS not-so-logic
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 10:03 am ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Saturday 19 January 2013 18:43:58 Gary Shannon wrote:
> I believe that the opposite it true. We create words for things that
> are important to us. It happens every day in the sciences, especially
> biology and biochemistry. When some new organic compound becomes
> important, instead of calling by it's chemical formula, a name is
> created. The compound did not become important because it has a name,
> it has a name because it became important.
Yes. When something is important to us, we create a word. When
something becomes very important to us, we create a shorter word.
So a "carriage propelled by an engine built into it" became an
"automobile" and later a "car".
> But then, speaking as a non-linguist, I think Sapir-Whorf is a
> questionable hypothesis. It really doesn't make a lot of sense to me,
> because thought is non-verbal. When we "think in words", we are not
> "thinking", we are reiterating what we have already thought without
> words.
I think you are correct.
> If you don't believe that, next time you catch yourself "thinking"
> with a sentence, stop yourself mid-sentence, and you will discover
> that you DO know what the sentence was going to say, even though you
> did not complete the mental uttering of the sentence.
Right.
> And you know
> what the last word of the of the sentence was going to be long before
> you silently repeated that word to yourself. The words of the sentence
> were put together to repeat the thought to yourself, but the thought
> existed before the words.
And often you have a thought and are struggling for the right
word for it. If thought was in a language, one could not think
about what you don't know the word for. Also, as someone who
masters two languages well to the point of being almost equally
fluent in both, I sometimes remember a train of thought I have
read somewhere, but do not remember in which language I read it!
All this is evidence that language *reflects* thought rather than
determining it.
--
... 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 (3)
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6a. OT: Decimal vs. duodeciml (was: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Charles W Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:21 am ((PST))
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Leonardo Castro
> Because 12 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6 while 10 is divisible by 1, 2 &
5.
I do understand this but, not being a math-oriented person, I don't
understand why this is significant. With a vigesimal system, 20 is
divisible by 1, 2, 4, 5, and 10. We could use 36 which has 1, 2, 3, 4, 9,
and 18 as divisors. Why is the number of divisors significant?
Charlie
Messages in this topic (3)
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6b. Re: Decimal vs. duodeciml (was: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Charles W Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:26 am ((PST))
Whoops! I forgot 12 as a divisor of 36!
Charlie
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Charles W Brickner
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2013 12:21 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: OT: Decimal vs. duodeciml (was: logical language VS not-so-logical
language
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Leonardo Castro
> Because 12 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6 while 10 is divisible by 1,
> 2 &
5.
I do understand this but, not being a math-oriented person, I don't
understand why this is significant. With a vigesimal system, 20 is
divisible by 1, 2, 4, 5, and 10. We could use 36 which has 1, 2, 3, 4, 9,
and 18 as divisors. Why is the number of divisors significant?
Charlie
Messages in this topic (3)
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6c. Re: OT: Decimal vs. duodeciml (was: logical language VS not-so-logic
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:53 am ((PST))
2013/1/19 Charles W Brickner <[email protected]>:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
> Behalf Of Leonardo Castro
>
>> Because 12 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6 while 10 is divisible by 1, 2 &
> 5.
>
> I do understand this but, not being a math-oriented person, I don't
> understand why this is significant. With a vigesimal system, 20 is
> divisible by 1, 2, 4, 5, and 10. We could use 36 which has 1, 2, 3, 4, 9,
> and 18 as divisors. Why is the number of divisors significant?
They say that Babylonian base-60 numeral system was very convenient
because 60 was divisible by very many numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10,
12, 15, 20, and 30.
Since 1 hour is 60 minutes, we know that 1/2 hour is exactly 30, 1/3
is 20, 1/4 is 25, 1/5 is 12, and 1/6 is 10. If 1 hour were 100
minutes, 1/2 hour would be 50, 1/3 = 33,3333..., 1/4 = 25, 1/5 = 20,
1/6 = 16,66666...
A base-12 system is closely related to base-60 because 12 x 5 = 60. If
three people buy a package of dozen eggs, they can easily divide them
equally. With 10 eggs, someone would get an extra egg.
In short, the advantage of having more divisors is that you avoid
dealing with non-integer numbers and breaking eggs...
>
> Charlie
Messages in this topic (3)
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7. Litorian consonants
Posted by: "Charles W Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:24 am ((PST))
Litorian has two classes of consonants. The first Iâve named primary
consonants. These are 13 pairs of voiced/unvoiced consonants: p/b, t/d, s/z,
etc. These consonants are used to form the basic verbs, adjectives and nouns.
Verbs and adjectives have the form CVC: âÅüšâ, to see; âþȯsâ, to
blow; âzæpâ, (to be) shady ; etc.
Nouns have the form CVCVC, e.g., vazoc (c = /tS/), man. When nouns are derived
from verbs they must have this CVCVC form and this is where the secondary
consonants come in.
The secondary consonants are m, n, Š/N/, h, Š/l_0/, l, w, r /r\/, ħ /j_0/,
y, and Å /4/. These secondary consonants are used to form derivative nouns.
For example, the prefix âmuâ is used to form the agent noun: âsotâ, to
lodge; âmusotâ, lodger. The suffix â-omâ is used to form a concrete
noun from the verb: âsotâ, to lodge; âsotomâ, lodge.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (1)
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8a. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:26 am ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Saturday 19 January 2013 14:44:30 Melroch wrote:
> Given that both romanizations are transliterstions of a (supposed) native
> script I really see no problem. You won't e.g. generally se the same
> transliteration/transcription of Cyrillic, Devanagari, Japanese or other
> scripts on a general map or in a newspaper as in a philological article.
Sure. For Russian, for instance, there is a scholarly
transliteration that maps Cyrillic letters on Latin letters,
often with diacritics, loosely according to the conventions
used for languages such as Czech or Croatian. But in German
newspapers, one rather find spellings such as _Gorbatschow_
which simply attempt to apply German spelling conventions to
Russian names. This has many shortcomings. You never know
whether _s_ represents /s/ or /z/, or whether _sch_ represents
/Ê/ or /Ê/! (Also, it has a *heptagraph*: _schtsch_ for what
is a single phoneme in names such as _Chruschtschow_!)
> The uniform use of Pinyin to transcribe Mandarin is both recent and
> exceptional.
Other transcriptions such as Wade-Giles are not dead yet in
Germany (the capital of China is still spelled _Peking_ in
German newspapers), but Pinyin is indeed advancing.
> In particular you may take an analogy from the way different
> transcriptions of Japanese strive to represent either Japanese phonology,
> kana spelling or the pronunciation in the terms of the conventions of
> (usually) English, or some compromise between these according to the whim
> of the scheme designer.
I think Hepburn is about as well established for Japanese
as Pinyin is for Chinese. One rarely sees things such as
_Mitubisi_ (a purely phonemic transcription) or _Mizubischi_
(a German-wise spelling) for _Mitsubishi_ (Hepburn).
> In practice the choice of scheme or convention is
> mostly guided by the intended or expected audience of the publication -- in
> particular how much their bias is linguistic or not, or how desirable or
> critical lossless retranscription/retransliteration is. We all know that a
> cartographer will generally fall at or near the 'in terms of English/target
> audience's language conventions' end of the spectrum.
Yep.
> In fact there does seem to exist a fairly widespread comvention which can
> be summarized as "consonants according to or based on English conventions
> and vowels based on Italian/Spanish/German conventions" -- an effect of
> awareness that English vowel spelling conventions are very out of the
> mainstream for the Latin alphabet as well as internally ambiguous.
Right. It is the usual rule in much of the mass media,
including fantasy and science fiction.
> It is
> interesting to see that this 'AngloRomance' convention is widely adhered to
> even by Swedish writers targetting a Swedish audience. And even where you
> will see Swedish-based conventions for consonants like <tj sj zj> (mainly
> Cyrillic) you won't see Swedish-like <å o> but Italian-like <o u>. And the
> sibilants will be <zj tj sj sjtj> not <zj tsj sj tj> which would better
> reflect the fact that Swedish <tj> is [É] for most speakers, not to speak
> of the fact that Swedish lacks [z Ê] and <sj> is [x] or [Ï] for most
> speakers. The same goes for Ancient Greek: you may see <Atena> rather than
> <Athena> but you won't see <Athäna> and you may see <Akilles> but never
> <Såkratäs>!
In German, what you call the Anglo-Romance convention gradually
gains territory from the ad-hoc German-based conventions that
have been in use traditionally, but not for some of those
languages that are featured in the news often, such as Russian
or Chinese.
But it would indeed be nice if all countries using the Latin
alphabet would agree ;)
> My own shifts in conventions for transcribing Sohlob. I started out over 15
> years ago with an ASCII-based system using <tj sj dj zj> for alveopalatals.
> This was actually sub-phonemic since I decided very early that [Ê] was an
> allophone of /dÊ/, and <j> was used only in those digraphs.
Sensible!
> At the same
> time I used <ny hl hr> for single phonemes and <ng> ambiguously for /Å/ and
> /Åg/,
I know that ambiguity too well ;)
> justified by the conventions in the 'native' script which was and is
> under-specifying to a high degree. There were also the slightly odd <e> for
> /ɨ/ <ae> for /æ/ which was unambiguous because of vowel harmony.
Back when computers had difficulties with anything else than
ASCII (or whatever the relevant brand used, such as "PETSCII"),
I used a "universal transcription system" of *all* of my
conlangs that used only the 26 letters of the basic Latin
alphabet (actually, just 23: _c_, _q_ and _x_ weren't used,
though I sometimes used _x_ for /ks/ and _xh_ for /kÊ/)
with many digraphs but no diacritics. I have documented it
on FrathWiki:
http://www.frathwiki.com/Universal_Transcription_System_%28WeepingElf%29
Of course, I really knew close to naught about phonology when
I came up with this. One early version even had _r_ for /É£/,
reflecting an idiosyncrasy of my idiolect of German!
I no longer use it as it is, but I still find it moderately
useful as a starting point for the development of custom-built
romanizations.
For Old Albic, I use a romanization system which is mainly
based on Insular Celtic and Tolkienian Elvish spelling
conventions (chiefly, _c_ for /k/); I consistently use
h-digraphs for non-sibilant fricatives, and _ng_ for /Å/.
I have repeatedly considered chaging this into one that
uses _k_ for /k/, _f_ for /ɸ/, _z_ for /θ/ and _x_ for
/x/ (could not find something fitting for /Å/, though),
but that would mean changing thousands of occurences of the
spellings now used in the grammar, the dictionary and the
text samples! Also, I find that the current system *works
well* (there is also no ambiguity problem with the h-digraphs:
where a /h/ follows a voiceless stop, both sounds merge into
a fricative), so there is no need to change it.
The orthography of Roman Germanech is an unholy mixture of
German and Romance spelling conventions, reflecting the nature
of the language, but it works well, and I think it is something
a 19th-century clergyman or schoolmaster could have come up
with.
> I later
> switched to a Latin-1 based convention with <æ c ç j j> instead of <ae tj
> sj dj zj> and this in spite of the fact that /tÉ dÊ/ were digraphs in the
> native script! When Unicode entered the scene I did introduce <Å> instead
> of <ñ> in the transcription of the (then) protolanguage Kijeb, and I did
> consider introducing <ñ Å Å> instead of <ny ng hl> in Classical Sohlob but
> decided against it because it wasn't clear what I would replace <hr hm hn
> hny hng> with in the sister language Cidilib.
I used _ñ_ for /Å/ for a while in my notes on what was to
become Old Albic (as Tolkien did in some of his legacy papers),
but found that this was misleading - _ñ_ is for /ɲ/ and nothing
else!
> More recently when writing
> *in Swedish* about the Sohldar universe for a non-conlanger audience I've
> considered following AngloRomance conventions and use <ch sh j zh kh gh>
> rather than <c ç j j x q> -- being mostly concerned about the Cidilib
> placename Jdrig/Zhdrig The problem is that most Swedes would even pronounce
> <j> as [j] when speaking English!
This problem is less prominent in Germany; rather, one sometimes
finds hypercorrect pronunciations of English _v_ as /w/ and _y_
as /dÊ/!
> OTOH the 'SuedoCyrillic' <tj sj dj zj ch
> gh> might look silly to the audience (AngloRomance rather than Swedish
> expectations in a Swedish audience!) and moreover <sj ch> might be
> misleading. I got so despondent that I considered going for a straight
> transliteration of the native spellings using <ty sy zy zy x q> in Cidilib
> and <tx sx dz zz x q> in CS!
Seems to make sense to me.
> Should I even go so far as to use <Ä> or <ȧ>
> for /Ê/ and CS <bb dd gg> for /p t k/ and Cidilib <hb hd dy hg> for /p t tÉ
> k/?
That would be weird.
> Then why not <hh> for /s/ as is actually the case in the native script?
Bizarre!
> I think that would introduce bogus alienness were none actually exists and
> make the two conlangs seem more different than they are or would be to
> illiterate native speakers.
Amen.
--
... 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 (6)
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9a. Re: Passive verb: inflection or modifier particle?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:35 am ((PST))
Back to an old post:
2012/12/17 Padraic Brown <[email protected]>:
> --- On Mon, 12/17/12, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> BTW, "little" as pronounced by most Americans sound
>> as [li4@l] to my ears.
>
>> In X-SAMPA, [4] is the alveolar flap, just like how the
>> single "r" is pronounced in Spanish.
>
> I see. Yeah, I can see (or hear) the similarity there, though I think our
> [d] is much mushier.
Is there really any difference?
This Wikipedia article informs that these sounds (Spanish "r" and
American "tt" of "little") are exactly the same (alveolar flap):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intervocalic_alveolar_flapping
>
> Padraic
>
Messages in this topic (12)
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