There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Proto-Jardic noun morphology
From: Herman Miller
1b. Re: Proto-Jardic noun morphology
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2.1. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
From: Amanda Babcock Furrow
2.2. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
From: Allison Swenson
2.3. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
From: Alex Fink
2.4. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
From: Tony Harris
2.5. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
From: Roger Mills
2.6. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
From: Tim Smith
3.1. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
From: Iuhan Culmærija
3.2. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
From: Arthaey Angosii
3.3. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
From: Daniel Bowman
4a. Re: Ancient languages reconstructed by computer program
From: Armin Buch
5. THEORY: Lost of final-syllable rhotic.
From: Leonardo Castro
6a. OT: Ranking of living intellectuals.
From: Leonardo Castro
6b. Re: OT: Ranking of living intellectuals.
From: Cosman246
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Proto-Jardic noun morphology
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Wed Feb 13, 2013 8:15 pm ((PST))
On 2/12/2013 1:56 PM, Alex Fink wrote:
> Diphthongs being retained while simple vowels are lost is certainly
> plausible enough. Also, the change you're looking for might be
> stress-conditioned. Something like that immediate post-stress vowels
> are lost; or the same restricted to word-finally; or vowels in
> certain weak positions in feet are lost.
Yes, stress might explain some of the alternations. I'll have to think
about that. Verbs have an imperfective suffix, -sé or -ŏs. When preceded
by a voice suffix it's just -s.
>> So far so good. But the inanimate ablative suffix is -öl after
>> consonants and -l after vowels, and it's -ol after consonants and
>> -l after vowels for abstract nouns. This starts to get tricky.
>>
>> *siaḍu-ile> śaṛ-öl *zakiğ-ile> zaķi-l ?
>>
>> *vieze-elu> véz-ol *guleviğ-elu> gulvi-l ?
>
> I, for one, would not be satisfied with -öl and -ol having been
> _further apart_ in the proto-language, as with this -ile and -elu; I
> would want to draw them together.
It does seem that at some point they should have been more similar, but
that might have been earlier than Proto-Jardic.
> That is, if you do want to keep your modern table of inflections, it
> probably dictates what the most likely vowel coalescences from
> proto-Jardic to Jarda should have been! E.g., here, in the ablative,
> one wants to explain modern _ö_< *Vin+Vabl, _o_< *Vabs+Vabl, where
> Vin and Vabs were the former theme vowels of the inanimate and
> abstracts, and Vabl was the initial vowel of the ablative clitic.
> Then one could set up the proto-ablative as *VlV, and account for the
> patterns of vowel loss using some kind of metrical explanation. E.g.
> acute is stress, possibly secondary, below, and we suppose that a
> diphthong attracted it but otherwise it defaulted to the end syllable
> in words of a suitably canonical stem shape. animate: *...C+VlV́>
> C-lü inanimate: *...CV́+VlV> C-öl abstract: *...CV́+VlV> C-ol
I'm thinking it might simplify some things if length is distinctive in
Proto-Jardic. Say that inanimate nouns end in -i or -ī, where short -i
was lost (*siaḍi-olu > śaṛ-öl) but long -ī remained as -i (*zakī-olu >
zaķi-l). Abstract nouns might have ended in -o, or some other short
vowel that didn't mutate the -o in -olu.
> This supposes there was a simple *V that could have become -ü,
> though!
Yes, and I guess typically that would be *u. (On the one hand, that
would explain why the /l/ in -lü didn't get palatalized. But then modern
/u/ needs to come from somewhere else.) So maybe the animate nouns had a
stress on the ending, -olú instead of -ólu.
> The latter explanation actually stands a chance of being good, here,
> I think. That is, perhaps the dative and instrumental were actual
> cases in proto-Jardic, while the ablative was made of a clitic
> following an oblique case (maybe the same one as the antecedent of
> the modern absolutive or genitive?). Then we'd just have to suppose
> the oblique case ended in V for both inanimate and abstract, while in
> other cases the inanimate used a theme vowel and the abstract
> didn't.
A clitic might work. Cases might develop from postpositions, but I don't
think Jarda is the sort of language that would have postpositions (it's
pretty consistently head-initial).
> I may as well append a few things I meant to say regarding your
> earlier Proto-Jardic threads but never got around to:
>
> - In a language where there are lots of nonsystematic ablauting
> procedures, appearing in only a few word-families each, one expects
> the ablaut to be _old_. If I were you, I would not be trying to
> explain all the Jarda ablaut in Proto-Jarda! I'd be trying to
> explain some of it, especially the more contemporarily systematic
> parts, but then leave the residue as ablaut in the proto-language, to
> have arisen at an even earlier stage. (Differential treatment in
> loans of course helps too, but that is likelier to give all-out
> doublets than cases with systematic derivation-looking function.)
I haven't actually determined how old Proto-Jardic is: it could be old
enough to account for the ablaut. But I'm thinking more like
Proto-Germanic or Proto-Romance rather than Proto-Indo-European. So
there's still a lot of space for earlier ablaut processes.
> - IMO the idea of having a whole proto-series of retroflexes to
> explain your modern _ṛ_ is unlikely. It is very rare for whole
> place-of-articulation series to implode that catastrophically (manner
> series do it a bit more). Spontaneous retroflexion of a rhotic, on
> the other hand, *is* likely; it helps exaggerate the so-called
> flatness which is one of the perceptual cues of these sounds (a
> lowering of whatever formant it is). I suspect you just had an
> alveolar *r of some sort in the proto-language, which has gone to
> modern Jarda _ṛ_. Similarly:
Modern Jarda has an ordinary trilled /r/ as well, and I'm assuming that
was a trilled alveolar /r/ in Proto-Jardic. But looking at initial
consonant clusters in modern Jarda, it does seem likely that /ṛ/ was
some kind of approximant to begin with. You never see /ṛ/ as the first
consonant in an initial cluster (e.g. *ṛw or *ṛj), which would be
expected if it had been some kind of stop. It could have been a lateral,
but Jarda has enough laterals as it is. Or a tap, like /ɾ/ vs. /r/ in
Spanish.
Messages in this topic (5)
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1b. Re: Proto-Jardic noun morphology
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:06 am ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Thursday 14 February 2013 05:15:03 Herman Miller wrote:
> On 2/12/2013 1:56 PM, Alex Fink wrote:
> > Diphthongs being retained while simple vowels are lost is certainly
> > plausible enough. Also, the change you're looking for might be
> > stress-conditioned. Something like that immediate post-stress vowels
> > are lost; or the same restricted to word-finally; or vowels in
> > certain weak positions in feet are lost.
>
> Yes, stress might explain some of the alternations. I'll have to think
> about that. Verbs have an imperfective suffix, -sé or -ŏs. When preceded
> by a voice suffix it's just -s.
This looks quite a bit like Indo-European ablaut, and may indeed
be the result of accent alternations. (The origin of PIE ablaut
is not perfectly understood, but the main conditioning factor
seems to have been accent.)
> >> So far so good. But the inanimate ablative suffix is -öl after
> >> consonants and -l after vowels, and it's -ol after consonants and
> >> -l after vowels for abstract nouns. This starts to get tricky.
> >>
> >> *siaḍu-ile> śaṛ-öl *zakiğ-ile> zaķi-l ?
> >>
> >> *vieze-elu> véz-ol *guleviğ-elu> gulvi-l ?
> >
> > I, for one, would not be satisfied with -öl and -ol having been
> > _further apart_ in the proto-language, as with this -ile and -elu; I
> > would want to draw them together.
>
> It does seem that at some point they should have been more similar, but
> that might have been earlier than Proto-Jardic.
Yes. The suffixes are too similar to resemble each other
accidentally, and certainly have a common origin and thus should
be more similar in Proto-Jardic.
> > That is, if you do want to keep your modern table of inflections, it
> > probably dictates what the most likely vowel coalescences from
> > proto-Jardic to Jarda should have been!
Yep.
> > E.g., here, in the ablative,
> > one wants to explain modern _ö_< *Vin+Vabl, _o_< *Vabs+Vabl, where
> > Vin and Vabs were the former theme vowels of the inanimate and
> > abstracts, and Vabl was the initial vowel of the ablative clitic.
> > Then one could set up the proto-ablative as *VlV, and account for the
> > patterns of vowel loss using some kind of metrical explanation. E.g.
> > acute is stress, possibly secondary, below, and we suppose that a
> > diphthong attracted it but otherwise it defaulted to the end syllable
> > in words of a suitably canonical stem shape. animate: *...C+VlV́>
> > C-lü inanimate: *...CV́+VlV> C-öl abstract: *...CV́+VlV> C-ol
>
> I'm thinking it might simplify some things if length is distinctive in
> Proto-Jardic.
Why not? There are many languages where vowel length is
distinctive, and even families where it is distinctive in the
common ancestor but not in the daughters (e.g., Romance).
> Say that inanimate nouns end in -i or -ī, where short -i
> was lost (*siaḍi-olu > śaṛ-öl) but long -ī remained as -i (*zakī-olu >
> zaķi-l). Abstract nouns might have ended in -o, or some other short
> vowel that didn't mutate the -o in -olu.
That is my opinion, too.
> > This supposes there was a simple *V that could have become -ü,
> > though!
>
> Yes, and I guess typically that would be *u. (On the one hand, that
> would explain why the /l/ in -lü didn't get palatalized. But then modern
> /u/ needs to come from somewhere else.) So maybe the animate nouns had a
> stress on the ending, -olú instead of -ólu.
This is possible, though I wonder how that came about. Perhaps
a lost enclitic pronoun or whatever that dislocated stress to the
right?
> > The latter explanation actually stands a chance of being good, here,
> > I think. That is, perhaps the dative and instrumental were actual
> > cases in proto-Jardic, while the ablative was made of a clitic
> > following an oblique case (maybe the same one as the antecedent of
> > the modern absolutive or genitive?). Then we'd just have to suppose
> > the oblique case ended in V for both inanimate and abstract, while in
> > other cases the inanimate used a theme vowel and the abstract
> > didn't.
>
> A clitic might work. Cases might develop from postpositions, but I don't
> think Jarda is the sort of language that would have postpositions (it's
> pretty consistently head-initial).
That a language is head-initial now doesn't mean it always was.
It may have been head-final earlier. Proto-Celtic probably was
head-final (at least, Celtiberian was, and so was PIE). My own
Proto-Hesperic is also head-final, and while Old Albic is pretty
consistently head-initial, the old head-final word order shows
in compounds, and in the secondary case endings which evolved
from Proto-Hesperic postpositions.
> > I may as well append a few things I meant to say regarding your
> > earlier Proto-Jardic threads but never got around to:
> >
> > - In a language where there are lots of nonsystematic ablauting
> > procedures, appearing in only a few word-families each, one expects
> > the ablaut to be _old_.
Indeed. The less systematic a pattern is, the older it probably is.
> > If I were you, I would not be trying to
> > explain all the Jarda ablaut in Proto-Jarda! I'd be trying to
> > explain some of it, especially the more contemporarily systematic
> > parts, but then leave the residue as ablaut in the proto-language, to
> > have arisen at an even earlier stage. (Differential treatment in
> > loans of course helps too, but that is likelier to give all-out
> > doublets than cases with systematic derivation-looking function.)
>
> I haven't actually determined how old Proto-Jardic is: it could be old
> enough to account for the ablaut. But I'm thinking more like
> Proto-Germanic or Proto-Romance rather than Proto-Indo-European. So
> there's still a lot of space for earlier ablaut processes.
That is, I think, a good idea. The Proto-Jardic forms you have
given look about as close to their Jarda outcomes as Latin forms
to Romance ones. Having Jardic as a branch of a larger family
opens up a lot of possibilities (one of the reasons why I decided
a few years ago that Albic would be just a branch of a larger
family, Hesperic).
> > - IMO the idea of having a whole proto-series of retroflexes to
> > explain your modern _ṛ_ is unlikely. It is very rare for whole
> > place-of-articulation series to implode that catastrophically (manner
> > series do it a bit more). Spontaneous retroflexion of a rhotic, on
> > the other hand, *is* likely; it helps exaggerate the so-called
> > flatness which is one of the perceptual cues of these sounds (a
> > lowering of whatever formant it is). I suspect you just had an
> > alveolar *r of some sort in the proto-language, which has gone to
> > modern Jarda _ṛ_. Similarly:
>
> Modern Jarda has an ordinary trilled /r/ as well, and I'm assuming that
> was a trilled alveolar /r/ in Proto-Jardic. But looking at initial
> consonant clusters in modern Jarda, it does seem likely that /ṛ/ was
> some kind of approximant to begin with. You never see /ṛ/ as the first
> consonant in an initial cluster (e.g. *ṛw or *ṛj), which would be
> expected if it had been some kind of stop. It could have been a lateral,
> but Jarda has enough laterals as it is. Or a tap, like /ɾ/ vs. /r/ in
> Spanish.
So you have an alveolar and a retroflex rhotic. This *could* be
the residue of a merger of an alveolar and a retroflex series (or
whatever may have done in the other retroflexes), but that is not
necessary. Not knowing the phonology you have in mind, I cannot
tell which scenario makes the most sense, though.
--
... 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 (5)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2.1. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
Posted by: "Amanda Babcock Furrow" [email protected]
Date: Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:05 pm ((PST))
This discussion has been fascinating to cot/caught-merged
(Pittsburgh-born[1]) me, not least because I've finally realized
that it's *caught* and not *cot* which is the back-rounded
one! I never would have guessed.
On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 07:27:51PM -0500, Tony Harris wrote:
> Actually "Harry" and "hairy" sound different to me too, with the
> first having the same vowel as "Mary" and "marry", and the second
> having the same vowel as "hair" (which rhymes with "air" and
> "fair").
...do I read you right here, Tony, that "Mary" actually does
not have the same vowel as "air" for you? I could never have
imagined that being the case for anyone.
tylakèhlpë'fö,
Amanda
[1] We had phonics in second grade. I loved it, except for
the perplexing nonsense about there being different vowels
in OSTRICH and whatever other word they used to exemplify
the other vowel. I don't recall the teacher being able to
explain that one to us :)
Come to think of it, which vowel *is* in ostrich, cot or
caught?
Messages in this topic (45)
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2.2. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
Posted by: "Allison Swenson" [email protected]
Date: Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:31 pm ((PST))
COT is in OSTRICH for me.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 12:05 AM, Amanda Babcock Furrow
<[email protected]>wrote:
> This discussion has been fascinating to cot/caught-merged
> (Pittsburgh-born[1]) me, not least because I've finally realized
> that it's *caught* and not *cot* which is the back-rounded
> one! I never would have guessed.
>
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 07:27:51PM -0500, Tony Harris wrote:
>
> > Actually "Harry" and "hairy" sound different to me too, with the
> > first having the same vowel as "Mary" and "marry", and the second
> > having the same vowel as "hair" (which rhymes with "air" and
> > "fair").
>
> ...do I read you right here, Tony, that "Mary" actually does
> not have the same vowel as "air" for you? I could never have
> imagined that being the case for anyone.
>
> tylakčhlpė'fö,
> Amanda
>
> [1] We had phonics in second grade. I loved it, except for
> the perplexing nonsense about there being different vowels
> in OSTRICH and whatever other word they used to exemplify
> the other vowel. I don't recall the teacher being able to
> explain that one to us :)
>
> Come to think of it, which vowel *is* in ostrich, cot or
> caught?
>
Messages in this topic (45)
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2.3. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:42 pm ((PST))
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:05:14 -0500, Amanda Babcock Furrow <[email protected]>
wrote:
>[1] We had phonics in second grade. I loved it, except for
>the perplexing nonsense about there being different vowels
>in OSTRICH and whatever other word they used to exemplify
>the other vowel. I don't recall the teacher being able to
>explain that one to us :)
Oy vey, the state of linguistics education, even teachers aren't aware that
there _is_ dialectal variation on these points, oy vey.
>Come to think of it, which vowel *is* in ostrich, cot or
>caught?
My rule of thumb, as a fellow single low back vowel haver, is that spellings
with O have the "cot" vowel (something like /A/) and spellings with A have the
"caught" vowel (something like /O/). Cue eleventy people pointing out
exceptions, or systems incompatible with this...
Alex
Messages in this topic (45)
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2.4. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
Posted by: "Tony Harris" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:45 am ((PST))
That's right, Mary and air have different vowels. Not terribly
different, but I can hear them. The vowel in Harry, Mary, and marry is,
I believe, the same vowel as in cat.
OSTRICH and COT are the same vowel for me, too, which is different than
the one in CAUGHT.
On 02/14/2013 12:05 AM, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
> This discussion has been fascinating to cot/caught-merged
> (Pittsburgh-born[1]) me, not least because I've finally realized
> that it's *caught* and not *cot* which is the back-rounded
> one! I never would have guessed.
>
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 07:27:51PM -0500, Tony Harris wrote:
>
>> Actually "Harry" and "hairy" sound different to me too, with the
>> first having the same vowel as "Mary" and "marry", and the second
>> having the same vowel as "hair" (which rhymes with "air" and
>> "fair").
> ...do I read you right here, Tony, that "Mary" actually does
> not have the same vowel as "air" for you? I could never have
> imagined that being the case for anyone.
>
> tylakèhlpë'fö,
> Amanda
>
> [1] We had phonics in second grade. I loved it, except for
> the perplexing nonsense about there being different vowels
> in OSTRICH and whatever other word they used to exemplify
> the other vowel. I don't recall the teacher being able to
> explain that one to us :)
>
> Come to think of it, which vowel *is* in ostrich, cot or
> caught?
Messages in this topic (45)
________________________________________________________________________
2.5. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:27 am ((PST))
--- On Thu, 2/14/13, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:05:14 -0500, Amanda Babcock Furrow <[email protected]>
wrote:
>[1] We had phonics in second grade. I loved it, except for
>the perplexing nonsense about there being different vowels
>in OSTRICH and whatever other word they used to exemplify
>the other vowel. I don't recall the teacher being able to
>explain that one to us :)
Oy vey, the state of linguistics education, even teachers aren't aware that
there _is_ dialectal variation on these points, oy vey.
>Come to think of it, which vowel *is* in ostrich, cot or
>caught?
RM chez moi, [O]
My rule of thumb, as a fellow single low back vowel haver, is that spellings
with O have the "cot" vowel (something like /A/) and spellings with A have the
"caught" vowel (something like /O/). Cue eleventy people pointing out
exceptions, or systems incompatible with this...
===========================================
lots of exceptions. cot, mod, bod, rod, bog with [A], dog, log, fog, moth, et
no doubt al. with [O].
I assume wrath and wroth /rOt/ are somehow related. Note that the Germanic name
Roth [rot] becomes [rOt/] -- I think S.J. Perelman wrote something about
"waxing Roth" :-))
even "au" spellings aren't always [O]-- not too many, but e.g. draught (at
least when used in US), laugh and derivs. with [æ]; likewise the "ou" words,
sometimes [O] (wrought, bought, cough [contra hiccough!!!) ), others diphthong
[aw] bough, plough
This thread, albeit amusing, threatens to go on forever!!
Messages in this topic (45)
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2.6. Re: OT YAEPT -omp, -onk
Posted by: "Tim Smith" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 6:37 am ((PST))
For me, it's just the opposite: "ostrich" has the same vowel as "caught"
(the low back rounded vowel, /O/), and "cot" has the low mid-back
unrounded vowel /a/ or /A/. (I'm not totally clear on the difference
between /a/ and /A/, because I don't have that distinction in my 'lect.)
The first syllable of "ostrich" is, for me, identical to the first
syllable of "Australia" or "Austria".
As for "Mary", "marry", and "merry", they're all the same to me; they
all rhyme with "hairy". That vowel is closer to /&/ (as in "cat") than
to /E/ (as in "met"), but not exactly either, and heavily colored by the
following /r/.
FWIW, I'm from upstate New York (born and raised in Syracuse, but spent
most of my adult life in Albany).
- Tim
On 2/14/2013 5:44 AM, Tony Harris wrote:
> That's right, Mary and air have different vowels. Not terribly
> different, but I can hear them. The vowel in Harry, Mary, and marry is,
> I believe, the same vowel as in cat.
>
> OSTRICH and COT are the same vowel for me, too, which is different than
> the one in CAUGHT.
>
>
> On 02/14/2013 12:05 AM, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
>> This discussion has been fascinating to cot/caught-merged
>> (Pittsburgh-born[1]) me, not least because I've finally realized
>> that it's *caught* and not *cot* which is the back-rounded
>> one! I never would have guessed.
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 07:27:51PM -0500, Tony Harris wrote:
>>
>>> Actually "Harry" and "hairy" sound different to me too, with the
>>> first having the same vowel as "Mary" and "marry", and the second
>>> having the same vowel as "hair" (which rhymes with "air" and
>>> "fair").
>> ...do I read you right here, Tony, that "Mary" actually does
>> not have the same vowel as "air" for you? I could never have
>> imagined that being the case for anyone.
>>
>> tylakèhlpë'fö,
>> Amanda
>>
>> [1] We had phonics in second grade. I loved it, except for
>> the perplexing nonsense about there being different vowels
>> in OSTRICH and whatever other word they used to exemplify
>> the other vowel. I don't recall the teacher being able to
>> explain that one to us :)
>>
>> Come to think of it, which vowel *is* in ostrich, cot or
>> caught?
>
Messages in this topic (45)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3.1. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
Posted by: "Iuhan Culmærija" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:22 am ((PST))
I've heard of women who use masculine names online so that people will take
the more seriously While I guess this would probably be a minority of women
-- especially when it comes to conlanging -- it could have an effect on the
data. We could also question all those ambiguous nick-/usernames on the
more informal forums where real names are uncommon.
<side note>
It also reminds me of competitive Pokémon battling, where there has been a
trend for men to play as the female character.
2013/2/13 Jack Steiner <[email protected]>
> Sadly, while this post has provided many interesting possibilities into
> why differing choices of lifestyle could lead to a limited female presence
> in the conlanging community I think the answer is a tad more depressing.
> Conlangers tend to come from two groups: The hobbyist or geek community and
> the scientific community via linguistics. Now both these communities share
> a relative dearth of females in our society, which is probably what leads
> to the conlanging dearth. So why do these groups have less women? Because
> women are systematically excluded and disenfranchised in both those
> communities. This may be changing, but it's still true, especially in the
> geek community.
>
> > Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:43:35 -0600
> > From: [email protected]
> > Subject: Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
> > To: [email protected]
> >
> > My girlfriend has an interest in many 'geeky' activities: roleplaying,
> > linguistics, ancient cultures, and other things. But she tells me that it
> > is hard to fit these less than critical activities into her life.
> > I'd probably be more successful were I as driven as she is. But my
> > priorities are different. I've noticed that she cares A LOT about how
> > others see her. I couldn't care less about what others think of me.
> >
> > Is this a common difference? Men and women of the list; what are your
> > impressions on this?
> >
> > (Sorry if this is getting away from the OP's question but I feel that the
> > comparative geekdom of men and women may be closely related to the
> topic.)
> > On Feb 12, 2013 1:01 PM, "Krista D. Casada" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >
> > > :-)
> > > ________________________________________
> > > From: Constructed Languages List [[email protected]] on
> behalf
> > of Daniel Prohaska [[email protected]]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 12:30 PM
> > > To: [email protected]
> > > Subject: Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
> > >
> > > OK, Girls and Women!!!! Please feel free here to be as geeky as can
> be!!!!
> > > Dan
> > >
> > >
> > > On Feb 12, 2013, at 7:14 PM, Krista D. Casada wrote:
> > >
> > > > I think women in general, as has been mentioned, are under more
> > pressure than men are to justify how they spend their free time. I read
> > something a couple of days ago where a woman remarked to the effect that
> > mothering was like having homework every night for the rest of your life
> > > > On Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:08:54 +0100
> > > > "Elena ``of Valhalla''" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> Could it be that conlanging is a geeky endeavour, and that society
> > > >> still puts quite a pressure on females to avoid geekdom and focus
> > > >> on social activities?
> > > >
> > > > That's certainly true. "Play bridge, not poker; play tennis, not
> > > > cricket; make cakes, not engineering models." There's also the point
> > > > that women are also busier!
> > > >
> > > > The quality question may partly be a matter of "only the determined
> > > > swim against the stream" but there's also the point that women are
> > > > trained to expect scrutiny, whether of their appearance or their
> > > > housekeeping. This must inculcate a belief in doing things properly.
>
>
Messages in this topic (27)
________________________________________________________________________
3.2. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
Posted by: "Arthaey Angosii" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 9:38 am ((PST))
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:22 AM, Iuhan Culmærija <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've heard of women who use masculine names online so that people will
> take the more seriously While I guess this would probably be a minority of
> women -- especially when it comes to conlanging -- it could have an effect on
> the data. We could also question all those ambiguous nick-/usernames on the
> more informal forums where real names are uncommon.
Or women with made-up names that others just *assume* are male. ;)
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com
Messages in this topic (27)
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3.3. Re: Why are there fewer female than male conlangers?
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:54 am ((PST))
> Or women with made-up names that others just *assume* are male. ;)
>
Guilty as charged.
I wonder how often that's the case, actually. For example, when I write in
Angosey I sign my name as "Dantayaga," which to me is indisputably male.
However I could see someone mistaking that as a feminine version (of
Dantayago? which simply sounds ridiculous!).
Danny
>
>
> --
> AA
>
> http://conlang.arthaey.com
>
Messages in this topic (27)
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4a. Re: Ancient languages reconstructed by computer program
Posted by: "Armin Buch" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 2:37 am ((PST))
That's great. And less work for us to do, because in the next years I'll
be working on just that. (My professor of course sees this as a missed
chance for a publication of his own. He considers it well done.)
On 14.02.2013 02:25, Matthew Turnbull wrote:
> Thanks for pointing out this study, I read an article about it in Nature,
> but the link helped me actually find it. I'm not much for math, but it
> looks really cool. There is a part in the paper where they describe how to
> build a tree no? page 2 paragraph 7, or did I misunderstand that? Also they
> do a test where they do a random tree and the reconstruction fails
> considerably more, with only about 68% of words agreeing instead of 85%. It
> appears to be more affected by the size of the dataset than the tree, as
> shown in figure 1 A, no? (I understand the concepts here but not the actual
> implementation, so any help is appreciated if I've got this wrong). I
> couldn't find a link to the program, my guess is they will publish it with
> the paper if they do so, this is published ahead of print.
>
> -Matt
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 8:36 AM, Петр Кларк <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> The BBC has an article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-
>> environment-21427896) about computer reconstructions of proto-languages
>> (specifically Austronesian), with an 85% match with what linguists had
>> reconstructed "by hand". The full report is published in the Proceedings of
>> the National Academy of Science
>> (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/02/05/1204678110) -- anyone have
>> access to it?
>> I'm a little curious if they did any sort of checking for
>> accuracy; for
>> instance, inputing modern Romance langauges and seeing if the program spat
>> out
>> Latin.
>> :Peter
>>
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Armin Buch [email protected]
Zimmer 1.17, Blochbau (Wilhelmstr. 19) Tel. 07071/29-73960
Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Tübingen
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Messages in this topic (7)
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________________________________________________________________________
5. THEORY: Lost of final-syllable rhotic.
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:01 am ((PST))
I have noted that there is a tendency of omission or attenuation of
final-syllable rhotic in French, German, English and Portuguese.
OTOH, this doesn't happen in Spanish and Italian where "r" is always
pronounced as an alveolar flap. Is the alveolar flap "stronger" than
other rhotic phonemes?
Similarly, Arabic speakers omit final /h/ sometimes.
Is there any universal tendency which encompasses all these phenomena?
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (1)
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6a. OT: Ranking of living intellectuals.
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 10:06 am ((PST))
Hi!
I'm just curious to know what you think about rankings of intellectual
people like these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP_Top_100_Global_Thinkers
http://en.classora.com/reports/y96249/time-magazines-ranking-of-the-worlds-most-influential-intellectuals
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/06/16/the_world_s_top_20_public_intellectuals
I wonder why Harold Bloom is never in these lists...
And you, do you have your own greatest-intelectuals list?
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (2)
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6b. Re: OT: Ranking of living intellectuals.
Posted by: "Cosman246" [email protected]
Date: Thu Feb 14, 2013 12:34 pm ((PST))
I tend to regard such lists as complete bullshit, because I never know how
they rank them. In essence, it seems like it would amount to "my favorite
people who think"
-Yash Tulsyan
On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 10:05 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'm just curious to know what you think about rankings of intellectual
> people like these:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP_Top_100_Global_Thinkers
>
> http://en.classora.com/reports/y96249/time-magazines-ranking-of-the-worlds-most-influential-intellectuals
>
> http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2008/06/16/the_world_s_top_20_public_intellectuals
>
> I wonder why Harold Bloom is never in these lists...
>
> And you, do you have your own greatest-intelectuals list?
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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