There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
From: Charles W Brickner
1b. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
From: Mathieu Roy
1c. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
From: Herman Miller
1d. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
From: Herman Miller
2a. Re: USAGE: Symmetric and asymmetric formal and informal pronouns.
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
2b. Re: USAGE: Symmetric and asymmetric formal and informal pronouns.
From: Mathieu Roy
2c. Using pre-existing conlang Roots to create a new language
From: Elliott Lash
2d. Re: USAGE: Symmetric and asymmetric formal and informal pronouns.
From: Ph. D.
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
Posted by: "Charles W Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 3:46 pm ((PST))
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf
Of Alex Fink
This is strange to me. If you can express "satiate" in Senjecas, why would you
not be able to express its synonyms? Are you adding words to Senjecas in a
one-to-one correspondence with English? Or are you just talking about making
very comprehensive glosses in your dictionary documents?
==========================
The synonyms of 'satiate' given are sate, surfeit, cloy, pall, glut, and gorge.
The article then explains the nuances. I haven't worked on it yet, so I'm not
sure how I'll order these words. Perhaps two, maybe three, words will serve to
include all these synonyms.
I have a word 'sááa' which I translate as sate, satisfy, slake, and quench.
These are not strong enough for glut & gorge. Senjecas has an intensive
prefix, qoo-, which I may use, 'qoosááa'.
I also have a word 'kíta', which means exceed, surpass, outdo, outstrip,
surfeit.
'Cloy' and 'pall' need some work.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (24)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 5:53 pm ((PST))
<<[T]axonomic languages have a significant flaw in usability. They give the
most similar words to the most similar meanings, and that means that if I
accidentally mishear you a little bit, it will often not be obvious that the
word that got changed was an accident -- instead it will be far more likely to
make a significant difference to the meaning, undetected!>>
(summary of the following: I would like to hear opinions from other people on
this subject. ;) )
The first time I saw this term applied for languages was by reading on the
Ygyde page.* I know that most people who don't like taxonomic language is for
that argument, but I'm still not convince by it.
For a taxonomic language, an example would be: "Bu" mean "food", "Buka" means
"fruit", "Bukabo" means "apple", and "Bukabomi" means "Adanac apple" (a kind of
apple). If one misunderstand the "Bu" for "Bo" which means "Transportation", it
will be easy for him to understand that it was "Bu" in fact as one couldn't
have eaten a military plane (well, that would be difficult at least). And if
one misunderstand "mi" for "mu", than the listener would think the speaker ate
a "Mairac apple" instead of a "Adanac apple", so still nothing catastrophic
here. The only "real" misunderstanding would be if one misunderstand "bo" for
"po" which means "peanut butter" and he is allergic to it. So maybe the central
part should vary more. For example using "bol" and "por" but not allowing "bor"
and "pol". The disadvantage of this is that possible words would be removed, so
the average words are longer than they would have been by assigning "all" words
to different CV combinations in a random way which would have allow to keep all
possible combinations... hmmm, so I guess I just agreed with you finally. I
will have to rethink/continue to think about how I want to construct the words
in my conlang before going too far ^^. I would like to hear opinions from other
people on this subject.
However, I don't think an oligosynthetic language is better (ie. more compact
or less ambiguous) than a taxonomic language. For example, if the words "Ro"
means "round", "fru" means "fruit" and "bo" means "red", they could be used to
make the word "Rofrubo" which means "Adanac apple". And the same thing apply
here: if one misunderstand "red" for "green", no big deal as this will only be
another kind of apple, but if one misunderstand "fru" for "pe" that means
"butter", than the same problem arises as in a taxonomic language IMO.
*It is written:
"Philosophical languages are conlangs devoid of unnecessary randomness. There
are two kinds of philosophical languages: taxonomic and oligosynthetic.
Taxonomic languages resemble the Dewey Decimal Classification System used in
libraries. The undesirable consequence of this taxonomy is that all words for
different vegetables sound similar and may be misunderstood in a noisy
environment. Almost all the words of the oligosynthetic languages have compound
words defined in such a way that their meanings can often be guessed from the
meanings of their morphemes. For example, if you know the meaning of the
morphemes "mail" and "man," you can guess the meaning of the compound word
"mailman." If the language has more than about 1000 morphemes, it is not easy
to learn for an average, randomly selected student, so it is not a true
oligosynthetic language."
http://www.medianet.pl/~andrew/ygyde/ygyde.htm
But I find the way Ygyde names colors seems pretty taxonomic, so maybe Ygyde
isn't entirely oligosyntetic? Anyway, I like the way it names colors :)
-Mathieu
Messages in this topic (24)
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1c. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 5:59 pm ((PST))
On 1/25/2013 10:33 AM, Alex Fink wrote:
> Maybe chemistry is anomalous in having decided that it wants an
> actually languagey name for all these compounds, for which systematic
> notations of the (CH_3CH_2)_4Pb type would have totally sufficed. I
> mean, to nowhere nearly the same extent do mathematicians give wòrds
> to all the different algebraic expressions, or physicists give words
> (only letters and indices) to all the new composite subatomic
> particles they're making these days, or biologists give words to
> every sequence of amino acids, or music theorists give words to every
> chord progression, or scholars of chess/go/... give words to every
> different line of play. Important ones will have names in an
> individual and idiosyncratic fashion, but no-one has had the idea to
> name every single one in a systematic way, as opposed to just reading
> the notation aloud. Why did the chemists diverge?
>
> Alex
Maybe to some extent because of isomers? Two different chemical
compounds can have the same composition, but with the chemical bonds
arranged differently. Or it could be that the "languagey" name is just
easier to say or less confusing when heard.
Music theorists might not have a name for every chord progression, but
they do have names for a great number of chords, when a simple
systematic notation would have worked fine. (even so, there are still
lots of potential chords without names). Indian music has names for all
the ragas, which are more than just collections of notes (more like
melodic progressions).
Messages in this topic (24)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Lexicon (proportion and quantity)
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 6:57 pm ((PST))
On 1/25/2013 12:35 AM, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> That makes me feel like I need to be an expert in every fields to
> create a language I consider good/logical/coherent/complete; and I
> think it is the case actually (IMO). The good side of it is that I
> learn amazing things in a lot of domains; like one time I've read
> during two days on how humans perceive colors, so I could find a
> good/logical/coherent/complete way to name them. But in order to name
> every insects (of the order of 100k), not even a doctorate in biology
> would be enough. Not only there's a huge amount of them, but there's
> not always a clear-cut between two species (or any taxonomic ranks).
> I wish my conlang had no ambiguities, but that just seems practically
> impossible. But teamwork with people specialized in different fields
> can help to achieve something better (in the sense
> complete/logical/coherent/less ambiguous). And logical ways to name
> things, like the IUPAC system for molecules, can allow to name a big
> amount of things with a small set of rules.
You don't need to be an expert, but it's useful to be able to follow
what the experts are saying. As far as insects, the experts will use the
Latin names regardless of what language they speak, so you don't need a
whole other set of insect names. But one of the most frustrating things
with biological names is that even the Latin names change frequently.
It wasn't long ago that there was a species of bird called the Plain
Titmouse, with the Latin name Parus inornatus. Recently ornithologists
decided that there were really two species, the Oak Titmouse (Baeolophus
inornatus) and the Juniper Titmouse (Baeolophus ridgwayi). (Baeolophus
is an older genus name that for some time had been considered a subgenus
of Parus, but was recently promoted to a full genus.) So the same bird
could be either Parus inornatus or Baeolophus ridgwayi depending on when
it was described. I have an old bird guide from the 1960s that has
Caracara cheriway as the Latin name of the Crested or Northern Caracara
(then simply called Caracara in English). After spending some time as
Polyborus plancus, then Caracara plancus, it's back to Caracara cheriway.
With all that confusing complexity in the field of biological species
names, I don't see much hope for any kind of systematic naming scheme.
My language Minza has "tyrik" (a borrowing from Jarda "türik") as a name
for both chickadees and titmice. If I need a name for the Oak Titmouse,
I could either translate the English name word for word (tyrik xaxta
"oak titmouse"), translate the Latin name "inornatus", or give it a
specific Minza name something like "brownish titmouse" (tyrik marvwi).
Messages in this topic (24)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: USAGE: Symmetric and asymmetric formal and informal pronouns.
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 4:27 pm ((PST))
On 26 January 2013 00:10, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have heard that the distinction between formal and informal pronouns
> (the T-V distinction) is kind of symmetric in some languages such as
> French and asymmetric in languages such as Japanese and Brazilian
> Portuguese.
>
> Let me explain: in French, a student uses a formal pronoun for her/his
> professor and vice-versa, while in Japanese the vice-versa part
> doesn't work (student uses a pronoun and professor uses other).
>
>
That's actually incorrect. When I was in primary and junior high school, we
pupils would all use "vous" towards our teachers, and they all used "tu" to
reply to us. So it was just as asymmetric as in Japanese. Only when I
reached high school did the usage change, and only then did the teachers
start to use "vous" towards us as well. So it's far more complicated than
French having symmetrical politeness and other languages having
asymmetrical politeness. At least age seems to have an influence as well.
The usage may also vary from school to school. While I was used to being
referred as "tu" by my teachers in primary school, I know in others the
teachers used "vous" to talk to pupils. It always sounded weird to me:
using "vous" against a 10-year-old child strikes me as so over-polite it
becomes sarcastic.
In any case, the picture is much more complicated than what you made it
look like.
> Someone told me that the difference is that in French the T-V
> distinction is used to keep a distance between people, while in
> Japanese it is used to make clear who is hierarchically superior to
> whom.
>
> Do you agree with this analysis?
> Any comments?
>
>
As a first step, this is not bad, but in both cases the picture is far more
complicated than that. There is definitely a matter of hierarchy going on
in French, as it's perfectly normal in a company to use "vous" when talking
to one's boss, while they use "tu" towards you (a usage I've always hated
BTW. I'm so happy such nonsense doesn't happen in the Netherlands). As for
Japanese, besides the hierarchy issue, the in-group vs. out-group issue is
quite important in deciding how to address someone as well, and that's a
matter of keeping a distance towards those in the out-group, while keeping
those in the in-group close together (and those in-groups and out-groups
change with context!).
So in both cases both distance and hierarchy play a role. They just do so
differently in both languages.
> ---
>
> Personally, a French professor who is 20 or 30 years older than me has
> been calling me "tu" and signing her first name in e-mails. Should I
> automatically use "tu" as well or not? (I'm a ~30 years old professor
> [as you can infer by my e-mail address].)
>
>
Personally I would use "tu", but I've been living in the Netherlands for so
long that it's probably the Dutch influence in me that's saying that (the
rule in Dutch is simple: if someone calls you "jij" –the Dutch equivalent
of "tu"–, you're entitled to use "jij" back. Unfortunately it doesn't
always work that way in French).
This said, the use of the first name and the fact that you are both
professors are strong indications that symmetrical use of pronouns is
warranted, even in French. I think.
Thinking of the headaches politeness has always caused me when I lived in
France makes me glad I chose to move to the Netherlands.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: USAGE: Symmetric and asymmetric formal and informal pronouns.
Posted by: "Mathieu Roy" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 5:27 pm ((PST))
Most of what Christophe said also applied to how French is being used in
Quebec, so I will not repeat in the case of primary and high school.
The usage of "tu" and "vous" has changed a lot in the last 50 years and I think
it is still changing. My grandfather (67 years old) was using "vous" to talk to
his father, but not all is sibling did because they were in the period this was
changing. Personally, I only have heard one time in my life someone using
"vous" for their parents and they were very old (I'm not counting the times
I've heard it on television since some movie take place before 1960).
Personally I always used "tu" with my grandparents (I'm 22), and using "vous"
would feel very distant for me. Most people I know of my age use "tu" for their
grandparents.
Personally (and I think this apply to many), I have a hard time knowing if I
should use "tu" or "vous". For example, I was using "vous" with my professor
(he is around 50 years old) where I had an internship and he was using "tu".
But it felt too distant using "vous", so I switched to "tu", but that also
feels awkward. I've talked about it with another person (who is around 27 years
old), and he was using "vous" at first, but then wanted to switch, so he
started to write "tu" in his emails with our professor, but then when he saw
him face to face it felt too awkward for him to start using "tu" so he went
back to using "vous". I like when teachers make it clear what they would
prefer. One of my teacher said she would prefer us calling her "tu" so she
doesn't feel old; another one said he was fine if we used either "tu" or "vous"
(he didn't care).
If I go to a store and buy something, and the cashier seems to be of my age,
some will use "tu" and other "vous". Personally, I use "tu" and feel awkward
when the other use "vous". Once I've heard someone from France that was in
Quebec and she was complaining about cashiers who were calling her "tu" and
said she wasn't their friend.
I have noticed that when I meet francophone from Africa, they tend to use
"vous" a lot more, which also feels awkward for me.
My mother told me to ask people whether they prefer me using "tu" or "vous",
but that also feels awkward for me, because I feel that a person will not
necessarily admit s/he preferred being call "vous" but still might be somewhat
offended.
Personally, I would prefer there wasn't this constant dilemma in my mother
tongue, but there is. But I would rationally like to try to avoid using "vous"
as much as possible, but I still often do because it feels more "right" and
also because in some cases the person I'm talking to might think I'm a better
person because of this, which I think is silly.
In my last year before university (I was then going to an Anglophone school),
one of my teacher was signing is surname "Gabe" instead of "Gabriel". That felt
awkward to, but I prefer too much casual than not enough ^^.
In fact, I really like that on a mailing list like this there might be plenty
of "types" of people (which is rarely the case in our everyday life). There are
people in high school and other in retirement, there are people from USA and
other from China, etc. And not knowing that information, I always use the name
that is sign at the end of the email, and I think this is nice like that.
To answer to the question whether in your case you should use "tu" or "vous", I
would say even francophone people would be confused. Personally, I would use
"vous" if I want the relation to be strictly teacher/student and stay distant
(ex: not talking about things that are unrelated to your teacher/student
relation), otherwise I would use "tu". However, using "tu" when a "vous" is
excepted could be more offending than the opposite for some person. And if you
use "vous" when the person would prefer "tu", in most case s/he will tell you.
However, the opposite is not true IME.
Final thought: I don't know if it is "normal" that so many francophone don't
know which one to use and that many people come to different conclusions in
similar situation? Do you think this is because we are in a transition period
and that "vous" will be less and less use in the future in the sense of a
polite singular second person pronoun?
-Mathieu
-----Message d'origine-----
De : Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] De la part
de Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Envoyé : samedi 26 janvier 2013 01:27
À : [email protected]
Objet : Re: USAGE: Symmetric and asymmetric formal and informal pronouns.
On 26 January 2013 00:10, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have heard that the distinction between formal and informal pronouns
> (the T-V distinction) is kind of symmetric in some languages such as
> French and asymmetric in languages such as Japanese and Brazilian
> Portuguese.
>
> Let me explain: in French, a student uses a formal pronoun for her/his
> professor and vice-versa, while in Japanese the vice-versa part
> doesn't work (student uses a pronoun and professor uses other).
>
>
That's actually incorrect. When I was in primary and junior high school, we
pupils would all use "vous" towards our teachers, and they all used "tu" to
reply to us. So it was just as asymmetric as in Japanese. Only when I
reached high school did the usage change, and only then did the teachers
start to use "vous" towards us as well. So it's far more complicated than
French having symmetrical politeness and other languages having
asymmetrical politeness. At least age seems to have an influence as well.
The usage may also vary from school to school. While I was used to being
referred as "tu" by my teachers in primary school, I know in others the
teachers used "vous" to talk to pupils. It always sounded weird to me:
using "vous" against a 10-year-old child strikes me as so over-polite it
becomes sarcastic.
In any case, the picture is much more complicated than what you made it
look like.
> Someone told me that the difference is that in French the T-V
> distinction is used to keep a distance between people, while in
> Japanese it is used to make clear who is hierarchically superior to
> whom.
>
> Do you agree with this analysis?
> Any comments?
>
>
As a first step, this is not bad, but in both cases the picture is far more
complicated than that. There is definitely a matter of hierarchy going on
in French, as it's perfectly normal in a company to use "vous" when talking
to one's boss, while they use "tu" towards you (a usage I've always hated
BTW. I'm so happy such nonsense doesn't happen in the Netherlands). As for
Japanese, besides the hierarchy issue, the in-group vs. out-group issue is
quite important in deciding how to address someone as well, and that's a
matter of keeping a distance towards those in the out-group, while keeping
those in the in-group close together (and those in-groups and out-groups
change with context!).
So in both cases both distance and hierarchy play a role. They just do so
differently in both languages.
> ---
>
> Personally, a French professor who is 20 or 30 years older than me has
> been calling me "tu" and signing her first name in e-mails. Should I
> automatically use "tu" as well or not? (I'm a ~30 years old professor
> [as you can infer by my e-mail address].)
>
>
Personally I would use "tu", but I've been living in the Netherlands for so
long that it's probably the Dutch influence in me that's saying that (the
rule in Dutch is simple: if someone calls you "jij" –the Dutch equivalent
of "tu"–, you're entitled to use "jij" back. Unfortunately it doesn't
always work that way in French).
This said, the use of the first name and the fact that you are both
professors are strong indications that symmetrical use of pronouns is
warranted, even in French. I think.
Thinking of the headaches politeness has always caused me when I lived in
France makes me glad I chose to move to the Netherlands.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Using pre-existing conlang Roots to create a new language
Posted by: "Elliott Lash" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 6:03 pm ((PST))
Dear all,
I have not been posting at all for a few years, but I have been trying to keep
up with the conversations. One of my interests has always been to use my
database of roots for proto-Silinestic to create new languages, specifically
languages that sounds like they are sort of like weird versions of real actual
languages - like German for example.
I have finally found a way to make it work! I think.
Here are some sentences:
De See würe of den Esset ernören.
"The dove was sitting on the nest."
*ta sêwa busî opod tanô ess-sida essnorani
(ta = that, sêwa = dove, bu-sî 'be-past', opod 'over', ta-nô 'that-dative',
ess-sida 'on/in-sit', ess-nor-ani 'on/in-dwell-pres.participle' - the umlaut
of the 'ernören is due to influence from the infinitive which is from
*ess-nor-ye-llo > er-nör-ie-l > ernör-e-l/n)
By the way this would be, in Silindion:
mistinë i siva emë i essiravi.
mist-i-në i sivaemëessira-bi
sit-them-impfthedoveonnest-loc
(this has a totally different word for 'sit', but the word ernor- 'dwell'
exists in Silindion and is related to ernör- in the above 'Germanic' language).
You see here that the 'Germanic' language uses the dative ending -nô on the
determiner, but Silindion uses the locative -bi (which was originally a post
position). I am assuming the proto-language did not have any case endings (or
perhaps just an nominative-accusative-genitive system). I think that it is not
unrealistic for related languages to differ with regard to the placement of
post/prepositions and hence the different position of the later case endings
can be explained.
Another example:
De Erzel fürte sên de Wetze!
"The prophet told me the truth!"
*ta arhtilo bur- sêt-ni de westitû
(ta = that, arh-til-o 'future-see-er', bur- 'tell', sêt-ni 'me-dat', westi-tû
'true-abstr.noun')
The Silindion would be:
Avuri sinti i astilo i vestimán!
a-vur-i sinti i astilo i westima-n
AUG-tell-PAST me.dat the prophet the truth-ACC
Note that the 'Germanic' language differs from Silindion in having another
abstract noun suffix -tû instead of -ma - this I think is fairly common amongst
related languages.
The one thing to note her is that the past tense of the 'Germanic' language is
-te. This is not directly from German -te, although of course it is modeled
after it. Instead, I found a pre-existing that could wind up as -te, depending
on how I worked out the sound changes and the syntactic changes.
So, there is a root *sthe^ (^ = glottal stop) in Silinestic. The -th- stands
for a aspirated 't'. This mean 'stand' (it is modeled on the PIE root of a
similar shape). In Silinestic, its past tense was (a)-sth^-i. I decided that
sth- would be simplified to 'th' in the 'Germanic' language. This would then
change to 'd-' (aspirated t to voiced stop seems like a fair change to me).
Then this would be devoiced (in the equivalent of the High German Sound Shift).
This would give:
sth^i > th^i > thi > di > de > te
Now, where to attach this? I went with the infinitive:
*bur-ye-llo 'tell-CLASS1-INF' (-ye- is one of several infinitive class markers
that existed in Silinestic). > pur-ie-l (with the equivalent of 'Grimms law',
devoicing voiced stops) > pür-ie-l (umlaut) > pfürie-l (HG sound shift) >
fürie-l (further change) > fürien (final -l to -n, just to get it closer to
German), and then füren.
So, this gives you: fürente, with syncope (a general process in the language)
you get: fürnte, which could be simplified to fürte.
So what do you think?
Elliott
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: USAGE: Symmetric and asymmetric formal and informal pronouns.
Posted by: "Ph. D." [email protected]
Date: Fri Jan 25, 2013 6:47 pm ((PST))
On 1/25/2013 7:27 PM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
> On 26 January 2013 00:10, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I have heard that the distinction between formal and informal pronouns
>> (the T-V distinction) is kind of symmetric in some languages such as
>> French and asymmetric in languages such as Japanese and Brazilian
>> Portuguese.
>>
>> Let me explain: in French, a student uses a formal pronoun for her/his
>> professor and vice-versa, while in Japanese the vice-versa part
>> doesn't work (student uses a pronoun and professor uses other).
>>
> That's actually incorrect. When I was in primary and junior high school, we
> pupils would all use "vous" towards our teachers, and they all used "tu" to
> reply to us. So it was just as asymmetric as in Japanese. Only when I
> reached high school did the usage change, and only then did the teachers
> start to use "vous" towards us as well. So it's far more complicated than
> French having symmetrical politeness and other languages having
> asymmetrical politeness. At least age seems to have an influence as well.
>
> <snip>
On a somewhat related note, I am 58. When I was in college back in the
1970s,
we students would call a graduate teaching assistant by his/her first
name as
they were only four or five years older, but we would refer to any
instructor
more than ten years older as Prof. Smith or Mr. Smith.
When I took a few college classes a few years ago, I was shocked to hear all
the students call their instructors by their first names, no matter how
much
older they were. The instructors didn't seem to mind.
--Ph. D.
--near Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Messages in this topic (5)
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