There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Quoting dialog
From: Jim Henry
1b. Re: Quoting dialog
From: Padraic Brown
2a. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
From: Patrick Dunn
3a. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: George Corley
3b. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
3c. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: Alex Fink
3d. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: George Corley
3e. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
From: Mathieu Roy
4a. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
From: Douglas Koller
5. Help - I can't keep up.
From: R A Brown
6a. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: David Peterson
6b. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
From: Alex Fink
7a. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
7b. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Alex Fink
7c. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
From: Mathieu Roy
Messages
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1a. Re: Quoting dialog
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:03 pm ((PST))
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> Even so, it's a little hard to tell when she stops speaking.......
French generally uses a dash or guillemets to mark quoted speech, but
for some reason the dialogue tags usually aren't offset or de-quoted
in any particular way. In practice, I haven't found that this causes
confusion very often, and I suspect native French speakers have even
less trouble with it. I like Gary's way of de-quoting non-dialogue,
but I think it needs to be combined with some way to show where quoted
speech begins, and probably where a different speaker starts talking
-- maybe an em dash.
On a related note, I think during one of the LoCoWriMo threads of
recent years we talked about the syntax of quoted speech -- whether
the language allows dialogue tags to be embedded in the middle of a
quote, or requires them to be preposed or postposed. I decided that
gjâ-zym-byn doesn't allow embedded dialogue tags; it can have them
preposed or postposed, but the preposed and postposed have slightly
different syntax.
twâ-ƥ-zô Φǒ: {?mrân-zô srem Ќ-ť.}
She said, "Shall we eat?"
or:
{?mrân-zô srem Ќ-ť.} ce ĉul-i twâ-ƥ-zô.
"Shall we eat?" (She said this.)
Actually, one can embed a dialogue tag in the middle of a discourse --
begin as in the second example above, and then continue with quoted
speech after the dialogue tag. But it doesn't allow inserting a
dialogue tag into the middle of a quoted sentence, as in English:
"Shall we eat here," she asked, "or go find some restaurant with a
higher score from the health department?"
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (7)
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1b. Re: Quoting dialog
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 9:29 pm ((PST))
--- On Sun, 1/20/13, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've been wondering about long stretches of non-dialog myself. My first
> thought was to indent dialog and non-dialog differently, or to have
> different margins, so that narrative text is full width and dialog text
> is in a narrower block, like the HTML "blockquote" tag.
>
> Here's a sample I threw together. I think it looks useable:
>
> http://fiziwig.com/conlang/quotes.html
Yes, though it looks like you've got three levels of indentation -- two
of them are used for quoted text (the third being flush with the left
margin), and that block that's separate doesn't seem to be visually
connected with what the prisoner has just said. Do I assume right that the
prisoner says both "It was a purely scientific" and "We were unprepared"?
Perhaps if "What is your name", "Dejah Thoris", etc are indented to the
same level as "We were unprepared" it might set off the quoted material a
little bit better?
Padraic
Messages in this topic (7)
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2a. Re: A Practice Conlang - For Your Enjoyment & Critiques
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 7:22 pm ((PST))
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 3:40 PM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > PREPOSITIONS:
> > la by
> > hik for
> ========================
> You'll surely need many more than these, no?
>
>
Maybe he will, but maybe not. Some languages get by with very few. My
conlang Oasa has only one real preposition (although some other kinds of
phrases can do some of the work of prepositions, especially the somewhat
unnatural consecutive verb phrases).
Still, "by" and "for" seem like two rather arbitrary definitions to give
the two prepositions (I'd assume "near to" and "far from" would cover more
ground). So maybe this is just a partial list.
--
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 (12)
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3a. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:13 pm ((PST))
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> --- On Sun, 1/20/13, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
> > What do you think of people "writing in sound" (the way they hear).
>
> Bad social engineering. English with its unreformed orthography allows
> the engaged reader to read (though not necessarily understand) everything
> ever written all the back to the Beginning of History when Julius Caesar
> invaded England, thus causing the English language. The more "reformed"
> we make an orthography, the harder it will be for anyone brought up on
> the new version to read anything in the old version.
>
This is so false that it sounds like satire. English spelling was not
standardized at all until printing became popular, and it has undergone
significant changes since that time. Beyond a certain point, important
English-language literature must be *translated* into modern English to be
understood by a modern audience (think of Beowulf) and more recent works
such as those of Shakespeare and Chaucer certainly cause some confusion
among modern learners. We also never read Shakespeare in the original --
manuscripts where the man never spells his own name the same way twice (I
personally, I think it's better to see them performed than to read the
script, being plays and all).
> When you do something like this, and begin to teach
> the younger generation to read and write this way, you end up destroying
> their ability to read anything written before the Reform. You cut them off
> from an independent study of previous generations' literature and force
> them to read whatever it is the Central Committee decided is worthy of
> translation into the new orthography. If language informs culture, then I
> as a Central Planner could determine the way future culture moves by the
> nature of the orthographical Reform and the content of the literature
> that gets "translated". Or at least make an attempt at the same.
>
> For example, were I such a Central Planner, I may not want the newly
> educated children to read such dangerous books as the Bible or Moliere or
> Locke. Whereas those little skulls full of mush are perfectly fine with
> Harry Potter or teenage werewolves or any other relatively innocuous
> stories that don't obviously put subversive thoughts in their heads.
>
Do spelling reforms have to come from a despotic "Central Planner"?
Webster's reforms caught on in the US because his dictionary sold well.
Many languages have undergone reforms due to independant action of
intellectuals and writers which were only later officially supported. Even
the Chinese Communist Party, when it created simplified characters, drew
from existing calligraphic forms and shorthand that was already in use. If
such a strictly authoritarian system can draw from the existing culture
when making reforms, certainly small reforms occuring in the populace can
bubble up in a democratic system.
On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> --- On Sun, 1/20/13, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > > Bad social engineering.
> > >
> > >
> > What a load of nonsense!
>
> 1. Take a pill
> 2. Turn on your hyperbolometer -- twill come in handy here!
Wait, I'm confused. You were being satirical? It's really hard to tell,
because people make exactly that argument without being satirical or
realizing their exaggeration.
Messages in this topic (10)
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3b. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:34 am ((PST))
On 20 January 2013 23:20, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> --- On Sun, 1/20/13, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > > Bad social engineering.
> > >
> > >
> > What a load of nonsense!
>
> 1. Take a pill
>
No. I will always call out nonsense when I see it. If you don't like it,
that's *your* problem. Stop spouting nonsense then.
> 2. Turn on your hyperbolometer -- twill come in handy here!
>
>
If you were not being serious, there was *absolutely no way to see that in
your mail*. On the contrary, it was very much in line with the
ultra-conservative opinions you've shown time and again on the list. This
is email: there's no way to see if you're winking!
As George's message shows, I'm not the only one who took what you wrote
seriously. So maybe the problem is not on my side but rather on yours.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (10)
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3c. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 2:33 am ((PST))
On Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:29:37 +0100, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Nikolay <<Russian was like that before the orthography reforms of early XX
>century.>>
>
>What do you think of such "controlled" modifications over natlangs?
Well, this Russian case, for instance, had the intention and effect of drawing
written Russian _closer_ to spoken. That is by far the main reason that
orthographic reforms are undertaken, when they're not as extreme as switching
scripts -- those are more usually affirmations of cultural identity. Things
like French's re-introduction of supposed dropped Latinate letters probably
also falls well under this latter rubric, having the aim of emphasising their
cultural continuity with the great cultures of antiquity; "purification"
efforts, demanding that writers stick closer to a given extant standard, can
also be seen in this light.
I cannot think of any Earthly writing reform whose purpose was, expressly,
linguistic engineering, except when its end was simplification to remove
phenomena relevant to the old system of writing but irrelevant to speech. (And
in this way, at least governments are more pragmatic than auxlangers, who think
the world's linguistic ills will be solved once the set of grammatical features
is gotten right!)
>What do you think of people "writing in sound" (the way they hear).
Ab initio, at least, it allows for a liberating lack of distinction between the
socially "high" and "low". Pity it so rarely lasts.
>Eugene << Not necessarily. Same or similar sounding words in Classical Chinese
>have diverged in pronunciation despite bein written with the same radical(s).
>That could be interpreted as a parallel phenomenon.>>
>
>The grandparents of a Brazilian friend of mine are Japanese, but they have
>lived in Brazil for around 50 years or so. They still speak Japanese between
>them, but when they call family that still live in Japan, they don't
>understand each other at all if they speak in Japanese because the spoken
>language have evolve too much. So my hypothesis was that since Japanese
>writing is less phonological than the English language (for example), the way
>the language sounds had more chance to evolve faster (even faster with
>mandarin for example). Can someone validate or invalidate this hypothesis?
I would reject it, for the good old reason of _primacy of speech_. To first
order, speech evolves; writing plays catch-up. In literate societies the
relationship is more complicated, with writing exerting a second-order tug back
on speech. But even so, regular phonological sound change creeps in unnoticed
under speakers' radar and iota by iota magnifies itself; it's too gradual to be
reined in by writing. The effects that one does see of writing on phonology
are later reversions within the already-changed system, like spelling
pronunciations.
On Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:12:39 +0100, Nikolay Ivankov <[email protected]>
wrote:
>On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 12:04 AM, Nikolay Ivankov <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> As to why, it is a tradition. Sometimes even superficially established. I
>> don't speak French myself, but I know that in the French word _doigt_ there
>> was nothing like [g] since at least 7th century AD. But /g/ was in the
>> Latin word _digitum_ that finally gave rise to _doigt_. So the grammarians
>> included /g/ to keep track of the language's history, although at no point
>> of the history of French language people seemed to pronounce _doigt_ like
>> [doigt] (though [dojt] seem to have taken place).
>>
>> As for other languages, it is more then common. English and AFAIK Danish
>> may be named as the ones that preserve most oddities, and Russian was like
>> that before the orthography reforms of early XX century. Virtually every
>> language, in which the pronunciation of /c/ depends of the next sound are
>> applying the old norms of Latin, where /c/ was pronounced as /k/ in all
>> positions.
>>
>> In fact, as the languages develop, it is inevitable that orthographic
>> norms start reflecting not an actual pronunciation, but some older version
>> of language. In a way, all languages do this, the question is, how much.
>>
>
>Small correction: every language that is written with some sort of abajad
>or alphabet. But even only semi-abjad Japanese uses the hiragana-symbol
>"ha" to write [wa] of the nominative case, which, AFAIR, reflects its old
>pronunciation as [pa].
Japanese in fact also underwent a spelling reform with respect to kana vèry
recently, in 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_kana_usage
The spelling of the case-tags <ha> /wa/ and <he> /e/ and <wo> /o/ were as far
as I know the only historical things retained through the reform, but before it
things were significantly worse.
And it's only 1900 that they got rid of the hentaigana!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana
Alex
Messages in this topic (10)
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3d. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 2:37 am ((PST))
On Mon, Jan 21, 2013 at 4:31 AM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> And it's only 1900 that they got rid of the hentaigana!
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana
Which is, of course, a hilarious pun, even thought I have an idea of how
that word is related to *hentai* in another sense.
Also, those look similar to Chinese Grass Script forms.
Messages in this topic (10)
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3e. Re: Natlang evolution (was RE: French spelling (was: logical languag
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 3:44 am ((PST))
<<Padraic: 2. Turn on your hyperbolometer -- twill come in handy here!
Chirstophe: If you were not being serious, there was *absolutely no way to see
that in your mail*. On the contrary, it was very much in line with the
ultra-conservative opinions you've shown time and again on the list. This is
email: there's no way to see if you're winking!>>
I call Poe's law. ;) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)
Alex <<Well, this Russian case, for instance, had the intention and effect of
drawing written Russian _closer_ to spoken. That is by far the main reason
that orthographic reforms are undertaken, when they're not as extreme as
switching scripts -- those are more usually affirmations of cultural identity.
Things like French's re-introduction of supposed dropped Latinate letters
probably also falls well under this latter rubric, having the aim of
emphasising their cultural continuity with the great cultures of antiquity;
"purification" efforts, demanding that writers stick closer to a given extant
standard, can also be seen in this light.>>
Do you think French will or should go into such a reform in the next 50 years
since its writing part and speaking part diverge quite a lot? Why or why not?
-Mathieu
Messages in this topic (10)
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4a. Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Sun Jan 20, 2013 10:36 pm ((PST))
> Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2013 21:39:40 +0100
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Romanization: digraphs vs. diacritics
> To: [email protected]
> In my romanization of Old Albic, _ng_ is always /ŋ/; the sequence
> /ŋg/ is transcribed _ngg_, /ŋk/ is _ngc_,
Just so in Géarthnuns, too. "Bangui" (in the news of late) is rendered
"Banggísars"; "Ankara", "Angkarasars".
> (a nasal preceding a stop always assimilates to the latter's POA).
This is true of syllabic nasals in Géarthuns, certainly, but one can easily
imagine morpheme boundaries knocking up against each other à la "input",
"painkiller", and "ingrown" (examples in Géarthnuns are not legion, though).
> so /ng/ does not occur
For the Miami store "ManGear", you'd have to run with "Man'gírs" using our
trusty friend, the apostrophe, to break up digraph romanizations. That pops up
most often with a'u, sometimes with o'u and r'h, and only one set of related
words with t'h that I can think of off hand. s'h, d'h, z'h, k'h may exist out
there in the lexicon, but nothing springs to mind. I don't think n'g has
occurred...yet. It's really hard to see z'ç happening any time soon if at all.
> Of course, in the native script, there is a letter for /ŋ/ (also
> letters for /ɸ/, /θ/ and /x/, so no digraphs are needed at all).
Indeed. Just the opposite, in fact. There are fourteen letters which represent
two consonant sounds together. (I'm really warming to [ɸ] BTW -- perhaps I can
shoehorn it in as an allophone somewhere ;) )
Kou
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5. Help - I can't keep up.
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:10 am ((PST))
Whoah! I can't keep up with all the emails. I keep seeing
bits I want to respond too, but a whole lot more are waiting
The log-jam was caused because it was brought to my notice
how ghastly the Wikipedia page on Eteocretan was. Jörg took
it down and, as a temporary measure, substituted a
translation of the short, but fairly sound, German entry.
Last week I spent quite a lot of time re-doing the whole thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eteocretan_language
The result is I'm now behind with some "real life" stuff and
need to catch - and there's about 50 Conlang mails still to
read :(
I think I'll just have to delete them and go NOMAIL for the
next few days.
Bye for now!
--
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 (1)
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6a. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "David Peterson" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:16 am ((PST))
Just a note: A very much enjoyed reading this whole post. I just snipped a
relevant part below (and repaired, if I was writing in doing so, your list):
On Jan 20, 2013, at 11:07 AM, Melroch <[email protected]> wrote:
> At the risk of angering any
> Chomskyans I believe that there are four factors enabling and inclining
> humans to create and use language, none of them originally, primarily or
> exclusively linguistic in nature:
>
> 1) The ability to think with and in terms of symbol and symbolized which
> are distinct yet arbitrarily linked. Symbolic thinking for short.
> 2) The ability to build up symbols from smaller parts which are themselves
> arbitrary and asymbolic. I call this 'double symbolization'.
> 3) The typically human way of vocalization.
> 4) The ability to usefully combine (2) and (3) aka double articulation.
>
> To these I should probably add the ability to replace (3) with something
> else if you aren't capable of it, an area I alas know very little of.
>
> Humans are probably just the only species where all of these abilities are
> present.
I think this is a good list, but I would add one item:
5) The capacity for linguistic analogy (which itself is built off the capacity
for abstract analogy).
This is really what allows languages to expand, in my opinion. Someone can hear
a sentence like:
My mother was drinking water.
And generalize:
My X was Ying Z.
And then also:
My X was Ying.
And:
X was Ying.
Etc.
And the patterns themselves are used to generate new patterns, which hold if
the hearer can figure out how the pattern was generated�and if it can be,
there's a chance they'll use it and repeat it themselves, and so forth.
David Peterson
LCS President
[email protected]
www.conlang.org
Messages in this topic (24)
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6b. Re: So, about Ithkuil...
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 2:10 am ((PST))
On Sun, 20 Jan 2013 10:32:40 +0400, Gleki Arxokuna <[email protected]>
wrote:
>On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 11:50 PM, selpa'i <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Is it simply that people are overwhelmed by Ithkuil? Or are they not
>> motivated enough? Is the general opinion really that it cannot be learned?
>> Because I actually doubt that. It is a very difficult language, no
>> question, but other than that, there are polysynthetic natural languages
>> with similarly complex morphologies, and there are also natural languages
>> with similarly complex phonologies.
>
>For me the biggest obstacle is that Ithkuil is not decomposable. You can't
>utter only one affix. You have to build the whole word. This is in direct
>violation of esperantic principle of sufficiency and necessesity (add as
>many affixes as you need but not more). Of course esperanto itself violates
>this principle although not to such extent.
I find this a difficulty for a similar reason. To the extent Ithkuil is an
experiment in whether it's possible for a speaker to learn all its categories
fluently, the _means_ of their expression seems to me to introduce a horrible
confound. I dare say that, even given a set of categories which I could deploy
with complete fluency in my native language, I'd never be able to master such a
fusional expression of them as is found in e.g. tables 5(a)--(l) of
http://www.ithkuil.net/03_morphology.html ! There are various local
similarities of nearby values in that table, but globally it has nothing like a
pattern (that I can discern).
The situation has been improved since the first revision of Ithkuil, but I
would've probably still gone much further -- make every non-uniplex
configuration some nonzero affix, every non-delimitative extension some
non-zero affix, etcetera, then string the whole lot together agglutinatively,
and just bear the blow to compactness.
Alex
Messages in this topic (24)
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7a. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 12:20 am ((PST))
On 20 January 2013 23:43, Herman Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I agree that familiarity is a major factor in languages being easy to
> learn, but I do think there are other factors. I think if you pick a
> selection of non-IE languages, say Burmese, Hawaiian, Navajo, Quechua,
> Swahili, Telugu, and Yidiny, and try learning them, I think you'd find a
> lot of similarity in how learners rank the difficulty of learning them.
I agree, if all those learners are IE-language speakers. I'm willing to bet
the similarity would be thrown of if you included non-IE-language speakers
as learners.
> Specifically I'd predict that Navajo would be near the "hard to learn" end
> of the scale for most people, on account of the complex verb morphology.
> (The tones, nasalized vowels, and unusual consonants would also make things
> difficult, but that's more a matter of familiarity.) Hawaiian would
> probably be closer to the easier end of the scale.
>
>
I'm willing to bet Athabaskan-language speakers would *not* find Navajo
that hard to learn, while they might be thrown off by Hawaiian. Familiarity
really trumps all.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
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7b. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 3:07 am ((PST))
On Sun, 20 Jan 2013 15:34:27 +0100, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On 20 January 2013 14:06, Mathieu Roy <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Let's say there's only 1000 people that are alive, and we're all one of
>> them. We are all in the same village and speak only American Sign Language.
>> [...] What do you think the spoken language will
>> look like in 30 days?
>>
>Probably like a spoken version of ASL (with the bits and pieces that
>strictly depend on its spatial nature linearised, or more likely partly
>ignored), [...]
>Sign languages are
>nothing *special*, besides being spoken using hands, face and body rather
>than sounds. They are handled by the same language facility in our brains
>as spoken languages are, and are subject to the same restrictions. They
>appear on the surface different, but that's only because the medium is
>different.
I think linearisation won't be the biggest part of the change, or at least
isn't the most apt description. Even though a signer has more simultaneous
articulators available than a speaker, the receiver still has the same limits
on attention and comprehension.
I think the greatest part of the change would follow on from being deprived of
the vast resources of iconicity and specialised human cognitive tools that are
associated with _space_. A direct morpheme-for-morpheme conversion, as it
were, of the sort of scene depiction ASL can use for say "the car swerved to
avoid the deer and crashed into the tree" probably couldn't bear the load of
all the opaque "morphemes" that would convey the speed and degree of
skiddingness and whatnot which are entirely transparent in sign.
As I was arguing on the last thread about this, I think spatiality is also
essential to the "lots of pronouns of potentially arbitrary referent" system
that ASL have, which functions on a spatial metaphor (we are imagining that
Linda _is actually_ over there, to my left and behind a bit). That probably
also wouldn't survive the transition to speech -- I don't think it's an
accident that spoken natlangs don't do "the pronoun /fti/ is used for things
which are to the speaker's left and behind a bit".
Alex
Messages in this topic (11)
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7c. Re: Hypothetical situation (RE: logical language VS not-so-logical l
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Mon Jan 21, 2013 3:29 am ((PST))
Padraic: <<Question: are all 1000 people in on the project, or is there just
a small cadre of conlangers in on it?>>
I don't know. What do you think most humans would prefer? What do you think
would work best?
Padraic: <<I get from Mathieu's scenario that everyone has the capacity to
talk, but no one uses that modality to communicate. Most people will
probably not even be aware that they can talk with their mouths and see with
ears!>>
Exactly. It's like a children (or anyone) that have never "heard" of a
signing language and sees one for the first time.
Christophe: << easy to learn" for languages boils down to one thing, and one
thing only: *familiarity*>>
I have read "Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard"
(http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html) and I agree with this essay.
My hypothesis is that it would be easier for Chineses to learn a language
with an alphabet than another one with different symbols for each concept.
Is their Chineses on the list that can approve or disapprove this? Anyway, I
agree that familiarity has a lot to do with the easiness of learning, but I
don't think it's the absolute only thing. Moreover, in creating a spoken
language from a signing language, the phonology will have to be created
based on no previous languages, so the concept of familiarity does apply for
that, but I don't think that means that all possible phonology these people
can chose will be equally learnable.
Christophe: << There are plenty of things that are just not realistic in
this thought experiment.>>
I think my situation is extremely improbable, but not physically impossible.
Christophe: <<And there is still merit to thought experiments>>
I agree.
-Mathieu
Messages in this topic (11)
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