There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Jarda vowel alternation
From: Herman Miller
1b. Re: Jarda vowel alternation
From: BPJ
2a. Re: A uniform linked-clause grammar
From: George Corley
2b. Re: A uniform linked-clause grammar
From: Gary Shannon
2c. Re: A uniform linked-clause grammar
From: George Corley
3. THEORY: Models of language spread.
From: Leonardo Castro
4a. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
From: Leonardo Castro
4b. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
From: MorphemeAddict
5. USAGE: Speak fast or slow?
From: Leonardo Castro
6a. Re: Creating a Pronunciation Guide
From: Carsten Becker
7a. Re: vowels: five to three?
From: BPJ
8a. Re: The language previously known as hɛlo, Take 5
From: neo gu
Messages
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1a. Jarda vowel alternation
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Tue Jan 29, 2013 8:22 pm ((PST))
A long time ago, I tried to come up with a proto-language for Jarda,
which never got very far. Now that Jarda is one of the Sangari
languages, I'd like to start over with a new proto-language. It would be
nice if some of the words coincidentally end up as cognates with
Tirelat, Zharranh, or Lindiga, but mainly I want to figure out a
language that could plausibly end up as Jarda.
I thought I'd start by looking at vowel alternations. I know there's at
least one, /i/ vs. /e/:
miṛ "to sing" vs.
méṛ "song"
I originally assumed this was a kind of a-mutation, where an original
"miṛag" changed to "méṛa", but it could have gone the other way, an
original /e/ being raised to /i/. Looking through the Jarda vocabulary,
I notice "ðix" (necessary) vs. "ðéx" (necessity), which has got to be
another example of the same thing. Then there's "ķig" (to eat) vs. "ķég"
(food), which continues the pattern of the object noun having a lowered
vowel. And then there are other alternations of a similar kind: "nés"
(to see) vs. "nes" (view), "leg" (to bear) vs. "lag" (burden), "nün" (to
study) vs. "nön" (topic of study). On the other side of the vowel chart
there's "jus" (to follow) vs. "jós" (road), "łós" (to remember) vs.
"łos" (memory). There's actually more of these pairs than what I remembered.
It looks like the object noun always has a lowered vowel, but what if
the verb has an "a" in it? There's a pair "zab" (to cover) vs. "zib"
(skin), but this could be just coincidence.
Looking for other possible alternations, I didn't find anything very
interesting, but there are a few pairs that might hint at other
potential connections.
biṛ (support), boṛ (stable)
buṛ (money), bŭṛ (to collect)
brağ (to scratch), bruğ (danger)
ğiṛ (long), ğaṛ (wire)
kin (to serve), kan (robot)
plén (to pull), plon (to raise)
ṛén (river), ṛŭn (wash)
śŭṛ (coherent), śóṛ (well-formed concept)
tŏn (cold), tón (dark)
vön (good), vón (to honor), von (hello)
Messages in this topic (2)
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1b. Re: Jarda vowel alternation
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:53 am ((PST))
The obvious candidate for a culprit here is of course umlaut. Lets see, we
have the tree basic types:
-a : lowering
-i/-j- : fronting/raising
-u/-w- : rounding (backing?)
then the combined types
-ja : fronting/lowering
-wa : rounding/lowering
-ju : fronting/rounding
-wi : fronting/rounding
I think you can probably cover all your cases there. You needn't worry too
much about what vowels come in the next syllable in derivation since any
discrepancy can be blamed on analogy or on formation taking place after
umlaut was productive. The only thing which worries me a little is that so
many different vowels alternate with /i/ but I guess that you can assume
that */e/ from whatever source (which could include i-umlaut of /o/) merged
with /i/ while */E/ > /e/. If you have a synchronic /E/ it could arise from
*a/_i or *E/_ja.
You could e.g. have
e/_i > i
E/_i > e > i
E/_a > a
E/_ja > a > E/e
E/_u > œ
E/_ju > e > ø > y
If you have both palatalized and unpalatalized consonants preceding front
vowels that can be explained by palatalization preceding umlaut like in Old
English.
It would help to know the synchronic inventory but assuming that the CALS
data on Jarda is up to date you do have high and mid front rounded vowels.
This need not be a problem if i- and u-umlaut weren't simultaneous.
Possibly i-umlaut of back rounded vowels resulted in front unrounded vowels
and u-umlaut of front unrounded vowels resulted in front rounded.
u/_i > y > i
o/_i > ø > e
a/_i > æ > E
i/_u > > y
e/_u > > œ
a/_u > > O
u/_ju > y > i > y
ikju > yč
iku > yk
ikwa > øk
ikjwa > øč
You get the idea: you can get any outcome you want!
You can also treat front rounded monophthongs and diphthongs differently.
My own conlang Rhodrese has this pattern:
a/_i > E
o/_i > ø > e > E
u/_i > y
ou/_i > øy > y
uO/_i > yœ > œ
so you get
COSTAS > kost@z > kost@j > kosti > køst > kest
but
CAUSAS > > kousti > køyst > kyst
and
CORES > > kuor@j > kuori > kyœr > kœr
Front vowels can arise and disappear again under different conditions
Den onsdagen den 30:e januari 2013 skrev Herman Miller:
> A long time ago, I tried to come up with a proto-language for Jarda, which
> never got very far. Now that Jarda is one of the Sangari languages, I'd
> like to start over with a new proto-language. It would be nice if some of
> the words coincidentally end up as cognates with Tirelat, Zharranh, or
> Lindiga, but mainly I want to figure out a language that could plausibly
> end up as Jarda.
>
> I thought I'd start by looking at vowel alternations. I know there's at
> least one, /i/ vs. /e/:
>
> miṛ "to sing" vs.
> méṛ "song"
>
> I originally assumed this was a kind of a-mutation, where an original
> "miṛag" changed to "méṛa", but it could have gone the other way, an
> original /e/ being raised to /i/. Looking through the Jarda vocabulary, I
> notice "ðix" (necessary) vs. "ðéx" (necessity), which has got to be another
> example of the same thing. Then there's "ķig" (to eat) vs. "ķég" (food),
> which continues the pattern of the object noun having a lowered vowel. And
> then there are other alternations of a similar kind: "nés" (to see) vs.
> "nes" (view), "leg" (to bear) vs. "lag" (burden), "nün" (to study) vs.
> "nön" (topic of study). On the other side of the vowel chart there's "jus"
> (to follow) vs. "jós" (road), "łós" (to remember) vs. "łos" (memory).
> There's actually more of these pairs than what I remembered.
>
> It looks like the object noun always has a lowered vowel, but what if the
> verb has an "a" in it? There's a pair "zab" (to cover) vs. "zib" (skin),
> but this could be just coincidence.
>
> Looking for other possible alternations, I didn't find anything very
> interesting, but there are a few pairs that might hint at other potential
> connections.
>
> biṛ (support), boṛ (stable)
> buṛ (money), bŭṛ (to collect)
> brağ (to scratch), bruğ (danger)
> ğiṛ (long), ğaṛ (wire)
> kin (to serve), kan (robot)
> plén (to pull), plon (to raise)
> ṛén (river), ṛŭn (wash)
> śŭṛ (coherent), śóṛ (well-formed concept)
> tŏn (cold), tón (dark)
> vön (good), vón (to honor), von (hello)
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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2a. Re: A uniform linked-clause grammar
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 2:54 am ((PST))
On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:55 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 2:06 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:48 AM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >
> > > The word "with" can be either a preposition, when pre-positioned, or a
> > > conjunction, when it joins two noun phrases:
> > >
> > > "I left AT noon." where "at" stands alone at the head of the phrase;
> > > This "at" is a preposition.
> > >
> > > In "the man WITH a beard..." the word 'with' can be taken to be a
> > > conjunction joining "The man" to "a beard".
> > >
> >
> > No. When I say "The man with a beard walked up to me on the street."
> the
> > beard is doing absolutely nothing. Saying "The man and the beard walked
> up
> > to me on the street." triggers either the wacky image of a disembodied
> > beard walking around, or some sort of metaphor where the beard is a
> > girlfriend, a second man with a beard, or some other animate being.
> >
> > I can see how your analysis can be tempting. I know that almost all of
> the
> > words for "and" used in Mandarin can also be translated as "with", so it
> is
> > possible for the two meanings to be related, but I don't think English is
> > working that way.
>
> You're talking semantics. It matters to you what the sentence means,
> or whether than meaning seems peculiar. I'm talking only about surface
> syntax. My concern is abstract symbol manipulation without regard for
> the meaning of those symbols. My purpose is not to describe how
> English "works", or what a given sentence "means". My purpose is to
> parse out the major components of a sentence. If I'm trying to
> identify the noun phrase, I can give equal SYNTACTIC weight to:
>
> (The man WITH the beard) = noun phrase
> (The man AND the dog) = noun phrase
> (The man FROM Canada) = noun phrase
> (The man IN the moon) = noun phrase
> ((The man IN the blue suit) AND (the man FROM Canada)) = noun phrase
>
What purpose do you have for identifying a noun phrase with none of its
internal structure?
> The SURFACE STRUCTURE is identical, which is all that matters for my
> purposes.
>
That use of "surface structure" doesn't jive with what I've learned so far.
My understanding is that at least current theory still treats the surface
structure as hierarchical, so that "man and a beard" and "man with a beard"
would be different. If there is a current theory that treats everything
linearly in this way, I'm curious to see it. Sounds interesting.
> I've got two parallel projects going on here. One is developing a
> conlang that can be the target language of a machine translation
> program, and the other is parsing English sentences for the first pass
> of that machine translation process. So I'm confusing the two
> sub-projects a bit here.
>
> Typically, a parser uses a grammar which can be used either to parse a
> sentence of the language, or to generate a sentence of the language.
> My parsing grammar is not adequate for generating sentences of the
> language because it is too lenient, and seriously under-specified. It
> DOES suffice, however, to parse a sentence that is already known to be
> grammatically correct.
>
How does your parser understand structures like "He hit me with a spear",
where the preposition modifies the verb phrase? (Or some might say the
entire sentence?)
> In fact, my parser also considers articles and determiners to be the
> same as adjectives. While that's not "correct", it _does work_ for my
> purposes. But there is nothing in the grammar to prevent it from
> generating "The the the old man...". But that doesn't matter because
> it is assumed that such a noun phrase won't be encountered in
> practice, and the grammar is not used for generation anyway. (If such
> a sentence were to be encountered, however, the parser would handle it
> without missing a beat.)
>
I'm very curious what the purpose of this parser is, exactly. It can't be
for interpreting spoken language, since it wouldn't correct for
ungrammatical strings created by repetition disfluencies.
> Another example is that "if" can be a conjunction when it joins two
> sentences: "(I will stay home) IF (it is raining)." which I take to
> have identical surface structure with "(I will stay home) AND (it is
> raining)."
>
This looks more defensible, even if it's not commonly analyzed that way.
How do you handle the flip of that "If it is raining, I will stay home."
> And in "That paint is called chocolate brown." "Chocolate" is an
> adjective and "brown" is a noun. But in "I prefer brown chocolate."
> those roles are reversed. Maybe that's not "correct", but it works in
> my parser.
>
It might work that way, actually. Nouns modifying nouns is a little weird
to analyze, I think.
> Anyway, since this is just a hobby project, and only for fun, I can
> easily afford to be wrong with no lasting consequences. :-)
I should have read the whole thing before asking the purpose. Still,
surely you have some purpose to your hobby, perhaps to learn a little about
language? Or about programming?
Messages in this topic (9)
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2b. Re: A uniform linked-clause grammar
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:29 am ((PST))
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 2:54 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>> ----SNIP--- If I'm trying to
>> identify the noun phrase, I can give equal SYNTACTIC weight to:
>>
>> (The man WITH the beard) = noun phrase
>> (The man AND the dog) = noun phrase
>> (The man FROM Canada) = noun phrase
>> (The man IN the moon) = noun phrase
>> ((The man IN the blue suit) AND (the man FROM Canada)) = noun phrase
>>
>
> What purpose do you have for identifying a noun phrase with none of its
> internal structure?
Internal structure comes later in the parsing process. I start just by
what should probably be called chunking rather than parsing; picking
the sentence apart at the coarsest level.
>> The SURFACE STRUCTURE is identical, which is all that matters for my
>> purposes.
>>
>
> That use of "surface structure" doesn't jive with what I've learned so far.
---snip---
Maybe I shouldn't have co-opted Chomsky's term "surface structure",
because I'm not talking Chomsky here. I'm talking from the viewpoint
of a software engineer analyzing a string of arbitrary symbols. I've
purposely "forgotten" everything I know about linguistics for the
purpose of approaching the problem from a novel angle.
---snip---
>>
>
> How does your parser understand structures like "He hit me with a spear",
> where the preposition modifies the verb phrase? (Or some might say the
> entire sentence?)
That use of "with" is taken to be a preposition, not a conjunction, as
per examples in my earlier post. (And "conjunction" is probably not a
good word either since I have four different kind of "connectors" in
my tag set.)
---snip---
>
> I'm very curious what the purpose of this parser is, exactly. It can't be
> for interpreting spoken language, since it wouldn't correct for
> ungrammatical strings created by repetition disfluencies.
I have no interest in translating spoken language. I'm starting with
text sample that I can assume are grammatically correct. But the
algorithm, so far, seems pretty tolerant of grammatical errors. If I
say "Him give it to I." I have no problem with that since I tag
pronouns as nominals, with the same tag I use for nouns, regardless of
whether they are nominative or accusative.
>> Another example is that "if" can be a conjunction when it joins two
>> sentences: "(I will stay home) IF (it is raining)." which I take to
>> have identical surface structure with "(I will stay home) AND (it is
>> raining)."
>>
>
> This looks more defensible, even if it's not commonly analyzed that way.
> How do you handle the flip of that "If it is raining, I will stay home."
I have a part of speech I call "function" for lack of a better name,
that takes two arguments, usually complete sentences:
IF (it is raining) (I will stay home).
WHEN (I see him) (I'll call you).
As yet another unconventional aside, I analyze possessives by taking
them apart and treating the possession particle as a type-K
conjunction (structurally equivalent to "with" in "Man with a beard"):
John's book => John/N s/K book/N
My puppy => my/N ø/K puppy
---snip---
>
>> Anyway, since this is just a hobby project, and only for fun, I can
>> easily afford to be wrong with no lasting consequences. :-)
>
>
> I should have read the whole thing before asking the purpose. Still,
> surely you have some purpose to your hobby, perhaps to learn a little about
> language? Or about programming?
I don't know a whole lot about linguistics, but I'm a retired software
engineer, and one-time professor of computer science so I've got the
programming part down pat. What I'm trying to do is explore and look
at things in a fresh way. I'm not trying to learn Chomsky's paradigm
(I'm already pretty familiar with his work) I'm trying to see if there
are other "non-Chomskian" ways to look at the problem. This is the
sort of thing that will turn out one of three ways: 1) a dead end, 2)
a curious, but not particularly useful alternative approach, 3) a
major breakthrough to a new paradigm. I'm hoping for at least outcome
#2. But I'll settle for #1 and just having some fun with it. :-)
--gary
--gary
Messages in this topic (9)
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2c. Re: A uniform linked-clause grammar
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:49 am ((PST))
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 11:29 AM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 2:54 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> ----SNIP--- If I'm trying to
> >> identify the noun phrase, I can give equal SYNTACTIC weight to:
> >>
> >> (The man WITH the beard) = noun phrase
> >> (The man AND the dog) = noun phrase
> >> (The man FROM Canada) = noun phrase
> >> (The man IN the moon) = noun phrase
> >> ((The man IN the blue suit) AND (the man FROM Canada)) = noun phrase
> >>
> >
> > What purpose do you have for identifying a noun phrase with none of its
> > internal structure?
>
> Internal structure comes later in the parsing process. I start just by
> what should probably be called chunking rather than parsing; picking
> the sentence apart at the coarsest level.
I see.
> >> The SURFACE STRUCTURE is identical, which is all that matters for my
> >> purposes.
> >>
> >
> > That use of "surface structure" doesn't jive with what I've learned so
> far.
> ---snip---
>
> Maybe I shouldn't have co-opted Chomsky's term "surface structure",
> because I'm not talking Chomsky here. I'm talking from the viewpoint
> of a software engineer analyzing a string of arbitrary symbols. I've
> purposely "forgotten" everything I know about linguistics for the
> purpose of approaching the problem from a novel angle.
>
Yeah. Though it's currently called S-Structure for some bizarre reason.
> >> Another example is that "if" can be a conjunction when it joins two
> >> sentences: "(I will stay home) IF (it is raining)." which I take to
> >> have identical surface structure with "(I will stay home) AND (it is
> >> raining)."
> >>
> >
> > This looks more defensible, even if it's not commonly analyzed that way.
> > How do you handle the flip of that "If it is raining, I will stay home."
>
> I have a part of speech I call "function" for lack of a better name,
> that takes two arguments, usually complete sentences:
>
> IF (it is raining) (I will stay home).
> WHEN (I see him) (I'll call you).
>
I see. That looks similar to a "complementizer", but since you are
building a new theory it might help to have a different term.
> As yet another unconventional aside, I analyze possessives by taking
> them apart and treating the possession particle as a type-K
> conjunction (structurally equivalent to "with" in "Man with a beard"):
>
> John's book => John/N s/K book/N
> My puppy => my/N ø/K puppy
>
Interesting. Why not put my in the same "adjective" category as
determiners? There's no real reason for possessive pronouns to be
identical to cliticized forms syntactically. And zero morphs /
phonologically empty items might need to be used sparingly. One issue I
have with the "Chompskyan" paradigm is that it has lots of phonologically
empty items filling various slots.
> >
> >> Anyway, since this is just a hobby project, and only for fun, I can
> >> easily afford to be wrong with no lasting consequences. :-)
> >
> >
> > I should have read the whole thing before asking the purpose. Still,
> > surely you have some purpose to your hobby, perhaps to learn a little
> about
> > language? Or about programming?
>
> I don't know a whole lot about linguistics, but I'm a retired software
> engineer, and one-time professor of computer science so I've got the
> programming part down pat. What I'm trying to do is explore and look
> at things in a fresh way. I'm not trying to learn Chomsky's paradigm
> (I'm already pretty familiar with his work) I'm trying to see if there
> are other "non-Chomskian" ways to look at the problem. This is the
> sort of thing that will turn out one of three ways: 1) a dead end, 2)
> a curious, but not particularly useful alternative approach, 3) a
> major breakthrough to a new paradigm. I'm hoping for at least outcome
> #2. But I'll settle for #1 and just having some fun with it. :-)
I see. Well, that is how people do science. I'm not sure if you'll get
much useful out of it -- it'll need some evidence from native speakers to
confirm any conclusion, but it can't hurt to try.
Messages in this topic (9)
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3. THEORY: Models of language spread.
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 6:48 am ((PST))
I would like to hear some comments on how realistic do you think that
the assumptions of computational simulation of language spread are:
-> Viviane model [1]:
* language simply labelled by an integer number;
* heterogeneous environment with square cells of different
"capabilities" (related to natural resources) homogeneous distributed
between 0 and 1;
* language "fitness" defined as the sum of the capabilities of all
sites that language occupies;
* probability of occupying a new neighbour site directly proportional
to the language fitness and to new site capability;
* probablility of language mutation (creating a new language labelled
with another unused integer) inversely proportional to its fitness.
-> Modified Vivane model [2]:
* each language is described as a 16-bits string;
* when a language occupies a new site, one of its bits can change;
* if the bit strings of the languages of two sites are the same, they
are the same language (so I presume that the original language can be
reobtained from one of its mutated versions);
* as "there are more bad places than good ones for people to live",
the capabities C of the sites are distributed inhomogeneously with
frequency proportional to 1/C;
* in each time step, they choose two sites and occupie that of higher
capability C.
-> Schulze model [3]:
* simulation of N people initially speaking the same language (or grammar);
* each language (grammar) is described as having F features with Q
possible values each one;
* each feature changes with probability p in each iteraction;
* with probability q the mutation above is not random, but a "copy" of
the value of a neighbour person;
* with probability (1-xˆ2)*r, a person discards the mother language
and adopts the language of another person.
---
[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03784371/361/1 (article # 30)
[2] http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608204
[3] http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0691
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (1)
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4a. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:25 am ((PST))
2013/1/20 MorphemeAddict <[email protected]>:
> Aren't Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish all able to use a lot of suffixes at
> once?
> E.g., Finnish "tottelemattomuudestansa" = 'because of his disobedience' is
> tottele-ma-ttom-uude-sta-nsa (obey + deverbal suffix, used to form
> action/result nouns from verbs + -less + quality noun from adjective +
> elative singular + 3rd person possessive), with five suffixes.
>
> stevo
But do these morphemes change its form depend on the particular word?
For instance, the -less morpheme "ttom" is always spoken this way or
can have several forms?
[...]
2013/1/20 Js Bangs <[email protected]>:
> On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 4:53 AM, Leonardo Castro
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
> I think it's pretty clear that the inflectional complexity of Sanskrit,
> Greek, etc. was present in the spoken language at some point---otherwise
> what was the point of initially writing them down that way? Furthermore,
> there are other living, spoken languages whose morphological complexity
> equals or exceeds that of the old IE languages. Navajo and Greenlandic come
> immediately to mind here.
>
> The Indo-European languages have been trending towards morphological
> simplicity for several millenia, now, which explains why the familiar
> European languages are all somewhat simpler in their spoken forms than
> their written forms. But this is by no means universal or required.
And how do you think this phenomenon happens to IE languages?
Messages in this topic (8)
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4b. Re: THEORY: Practical limit of inflection complexity?
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:42 am ((PST))
On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
> 2013/1/20 MorphemeAddict <[email protected]>:
> > Aren't Finnish, Hungarian, and Turkish all able to use a lot of suffixes
> at
> > once?
> > E.g., Finnish "tottelemattomuudestansa" = 'because of his disobedience'
> is
> > tottele-ma-ttom-uude-sta-nsa (obey + deverbal suffix, used to form
> > action/result nouns from verbs + -less + quality noun from adjective +
> > elative singular + 3rd person possessive), with five suffixes.
> >
> > stevo
>
> But do these morphemes change its form depend on the particular word?
> For instance, the -less morpheme "ttom" is always spoken this way or
> can have several forms?
>
In this case, "-ttom-" is the stem; the basic form (nom sg) is "-ton". In
all three of the ones I mentioned there is also vowel harmony, and Finnish
also has two different consonant gradations to take into account. The exact
form depends on the root of the word in most cases. The Finnish genitive
plural, in particular, has a lot of variability in its forms.
stevo
[...]
>
> 2013/1/20 Js Bangs <[email protected]>:
> > On Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 4:53 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]
> >wrote:
> >
> > I think it's pretty clear that the inflectional complexity of Sanskrit,
> > Greek, etc. was present in the spoken language at some point---otherwise
> > what was the point of initially writing them down that way? Furthermore,
> > there are other living, spoken languages whose morphological complexity
> > equals or exceeds that of the old IE languages. Navajo and Greenlandic
> come
> > immediately to mind here.
> >
> > The Indo-European languages have been trending towards morphological
> > simplicity for several millenia, now, which explains why the familiar
> > European languages are all somewhat simpler in their spoken forms than
> > their written forms. But this is by no means universal or required.
>
> And how do you think this phenomenon happens to IE languages?
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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5. USAGE: Speak fast or slow?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:39 am ((PST))
I'm in Paris right now and I've noted that, while some Brazilian
friends of mine that are also here tend to speak French faster making
many mistakes, I speak it more slower because I think more about how I
should build the sentences right. But I feel that sometimes people
might be impatient with such a slow speech.
Which approach do you think is better while speaking foreign languages?
---
BTW, sometimes I'm just prepared to speak some verb in the Future
tense but then I remember the discussion about French diglossia in
this list and I recede, but I just can rapidly remember how to speak
in an informal way what I just wanted to speak. Especially, I spend
sometimes thinking "Which auxiliar verb should I use, 'avoir' or
'être'?").
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (1)
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6a. Re: Creating a Pronunciation Guide
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:48 am ((PST))
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:56:01 -0500, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
<[email protected]> wrote:
>How do I create a pronunciation guide for my conlang?
Like Dirk said, if it's for a novel or so, readers will hardly care about IPA.
Personally, even if there's a pronunciation guide in some appendix to a book
with just Englishy examples ("A as in *a*pple"), I will hardly even follow that.
For my conlang site, I made a table like this -- see
<http://benung.nfshost.com/dico/notes-on-use#pronunciation>:
Grapheme -- <IPA> as in <Engl. example word> -- <conlang example word> <IPA>
I think that's maybe a good compromise. Linguistically inclined readers will be
able to read IPA, non-linguistic people get an approximation by an English
example word which is sometimes (esp. with the vowels) not quite accurate, but
good enough. Of course, this only works for simple phonemic inventories that do
not use too many sounds that English does not have.
That's my € 0.02.
Regards
Carsten
Messages in this topic (3)
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7a. Re: vowels: five to three?
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:35 am ((PST))
Sicilian comes close with
ī ĭ ē > i
ū ŭ ō > u
ā ă > a
Had only ĕ ŏ merged with a it would have been a done deal. IIRC unstressed
vowels really did collapse into three qualities after loss of length. Will
check when I get home.
/bpj
Den onsdagen den 30:e januari 2013 skrev Alex Fink<[email protected]>:
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:43:38 -0600, Patrick Dunn
> <[email protected]<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
>
> >I know that three-vowel systems sometimes become five vowel systems, but
> >are there attestations of five-vowel systems collapsing into a three-vowel
> >system?
>
> Some of the outlying Japonic languages do the merger Roger suggested, [e
> i] > [i] and [o u] > [u]. I'm surprised I can't think of more ANADEW for
> this as an unconditional change, mostly just loan behaviour, but I would
> guess it would be the most likely way to get from five to three (though not
> by too huge a margin).
>
> Or you could go the other way, [e a o] > [a], which has ANADEW in
> Indo-Iranian, with the further wrinkle of Brugmann's law, that (certain?)
> *o went to [a:] (in open syllables). (Length _distinctions_ arising from
> quality distinctions seems to be the preserve of low vowels.)
>
> As for the diphthongisation, I don't think I've seen it per se (though I
> think some posit its like for pre-PIE). But it reminds me of these funny
> central-only vowel systems (e.g. Ubykh and its areamates; Marshallese)
> which have dramatic collapses of the phonemic vowel inventory after
> consonants get coloured by surrounding vowels. [i 1 u] > [_j1 1 _w1] and
> whatnot. So I could see e.g. [i E a O u] > /_ji _ja a _wa _wu/ [_ji _jE a
> _wO _wu] with the colouring later breaking again to /i ja a wa u/ [i jE a
> wO u] > [i ja a wa u].
>
> >I'm toying with /ɑ/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ in a protolanguage
> >collapsing into /ɑ/ , /i/, /u/, with length distinctions, in the daughter
> >language.
>
> Not really a collapse, is it, if you gain length distinctions in it.
>
> Alex
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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8a. Re: The language previously known as hɛlo, Take 5
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:01 pm ((PST))
On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 17:09:47 +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>
wrote:
>Hallo conlangers!
>
>On Monday 28 January 2013 06:16:26 Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Jan 27, 2013 at 7:39 PM, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > I'm having trouble figuring out how it works, but then I've been feeling
>> > dull-witted lately. I like how RAT is the tag for people. Is it spoken by
>> > rat-people? What are all the noun classes?
>>
>> Nah. RAT is just short for rational. I think your mail client may have
>> obscured the original message, which I had replied to while correcting
>> things.
>>
>> The noun classes are:
>> I rational animates, people
>> IIA wild animals and body parts
>> IIB paired body parts
>> IIC domesticated food animals
>> III plural animals (like ants) and weather phenomena
>> IV landcape features and other natural phenomena, forces, events
>> V non-solid natural phenomena, light and darkness and dreams
>> VIA most natural objects
>> VIB food items
>> VIC natural collectives
>> VIIA man-made objects
>> VIIB paired man-made objects like gloves or shoes, sets of man-made objects
>> VIIC generally plural or elongated man-made objects, like string
>> VIII speech, abstractions.
>>
>> The small closed class of "verbs" describe motion and paths. So rather than
>> subject and object, this language uses sources, destinations, and objects,
>> and some of the verbs take sessile forms, while others take first or second
>> motile forms.
>
>Yours is a very interesting language, Sylvia. It encodes the
>predicate-argument structure in a unique way I have never seen
>in any other language, not even a conlang (it reminds me a bit
>of H. S. Teoh's Ebisedian, but it is still quite different from
>that); and it is crafted very beautifully and in quite a
>naturalistic way: it does not feel much like an engelang.
>
>The noun class system also makes perfect sense and does not
>feel too artificial.
>
>Any chance we will see a grammar sketch soon? I find it easier
>to analyse a glossed text sample when I have an overview of the
>paradigms involved at hand.
I agree. I do much better with grammars than with texts. I tried to make a
model in order to understand your text, but I ended up creating something quite
different. My Jan29 is your fault, Sylvia.
Messages in this topic (10)
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