There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Boontling 'language'
From: MorphemeAddict
1b. Re: Boontling 'language'
From: Douglas Koller
2. LCC5 Relay
From: Sylvia Sotomayor
3. Book sale from University of Nebraska Press
From: Amanda Babcock Furrow
4a. NATLANG: Dropping Forms
From: Anthony Miles
4b. Re: NATLANG: Dropping Forms
From: Patrick Dunn
4c. Re: NATLANG: Dropping Forms
From: Roger Mills
5a. Re: Verb Reform - Na'gifi Fasu'xa
From: Anthony Miles
6a. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: MorphemeAddict
6b. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: George Corley
6c. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: H. S. Teoh
6d. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Roger Mills
6e. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
From: Roger Mills
7a. 2012 Cambridge journal articles free online for a few days
From: Eric Christopherson
7b. Re: 2012 Cambridge journal articles free online for a few days
From: MorphemeAddict
Messages
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1a. Boontling 'language'
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 12:55 pm ((PST))
My brother-in-law just told me about something called Boontling, a
derivative language based mostly on English, spoken in Boonville,
California.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boontling
stevo
Messages in this topic (2)
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1b. Re: Boontling 'language'
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 8:46 pm ((PST))
> Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2013 15:54:58 -0500
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Boontling 'language'
> To: [email protected]
> My brother-in-law just told me about something called Boontling, a
> derivative language based mostly on English, spoken in Boonville,
> California.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boontling
I, and I think most members of my immediate family, are/were familiar with
"cheaters" for "glasses/spectacles", though I'd associate it with obsolete
early 20th-century usage ("We come to here to cut a rug and you bring your
cheaters?! Take a powder."), not regionalism ("Would you like a sack for your
pop?"). And the "Bucket of Blood" is, for me, practically a cliché term for
that type of drinking establishment. One wonders if these particular words
trickled down from Boonville to Hollywood and out or something vice versa-like.
The rest of the list is news to me. Kou
Messages in this topic (2)
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2. LCC5 Relay
Posted by: "Sylvia Sotomayor" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 12:59 pm ((PST))
We will be having a relay for LCC5, May 4-5 in Austin, TX. If you
would like to participate, please send me your name and contact info,
your availability between Mar 11 and April 27, and a statement that
you understand the rules. I will subscribe you to the separate relay
list for LCC5.
Rules
1. This relay is only open to people who expect to attend LCC5
2. A person will have 48 hours to complete their leg of the relay, so
if you receive the text on a Monday, you must hand it off to the next
person on or before Wednesday or you will be skipped.
3. What you are expected to provide to the next person (the torch):
a) The relay text in your language
b) A list of vocabulary used in the relay text
c) An explanation of any and all grammar needed to translate the relay text
d) Ideally this will all be in one document.
4. You must keep track of the relay and whose turn it is. When it is
your turn, look for the relay text in your inbox (check your spam
folder, too), and announce to [email protected] that you
have received it. If you haven't yet received it, let the list know.
When you hand off the text to the next person, announce that to the
list, too.
5. If you do not announce to the list that you have received your text
within 24 hours of your turn starting, you will be skipped.
6. Send a smooth English translation of your relay text to:
[email protected], using the subject LCC5 [name of language] TORCH,
along with a copy of your torch.
Questions? Let me know.
Also, feel free to copy this message to other groups. I have sent this
message to the relay list and to the conlang list.
Thank you,
-S
--
Sylvia Sotomayor
The sooner I fall behind the more time I have to catch up.
Messages in this topic (1)
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3. Book sale from University of Nebraska Press
Posted by: "Amanda Babcock Furrow" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 1:01 pm ((PST))
Stumbled across a 75% off sale on selected books from the University of
Nebraska Press. There are a few linguistics books (on American Indian
languages) among the sale books.
Sale books (mostly not linguistics, and also my browser is unable to pull up
the 2nd and 3rd pages of results):
http://nebraskapress.unl.edu/Catalog/ProductSearch.aspx?search=SALE75&ItemsPerPage=100
Their catalog of American Indian anthropology/linguistics (mostly not on
sale):
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/Catalog/ProductSearch.aspx?ExtendedSearch=false&SearchOnLoad=true&rhl=Studies+in+the+Anthropology+of+North+American+Indians&sf=ss=Studies+in+the+Anthropology+of+North+American+Indians&ItemsPerPage=100
Sale books of linguistic interest:
The Semantics of Time
Aspectual Categorization in Koyukon Athabaskan
Melissa Axelrod
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Semantics-of-Time,671634.aspx
Yup'ik Words of Wisdom
Yupiit Qanruyutait
Edited by Ann Fienup-Riordan
http://nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Yupik-Words-of-Wisdom,671795.aspx
Koasati Grammar
Geoffrey D. Kimball
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Koasati-Grammar,671649.aspx
If you find any others, I'd be interested!
tylakèhlpë'fö,
Amanda
Messages in this topic (1)
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4a. NATLANG: Dropping Forms
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 1:14 pm ((PST))
I finally finished my Maltese grammar. It's a wonderful language and an
excellent illustration of what long-term contact change looks like. But I had a
few questions.
1. Arabic Form IV (af'ala) is the only verbal Form which has almost entirely
disappeared in Maltese. Are there patterns to which Forms are dropped in
various forms of Colloquial Arabic?
2. Maltese has a strong prefence for /ie/ [i:] where Arabic has [a:]. Is this
just a Maltese quirk or is this a more broadly regional feature? At first I
thought it might be a Punic inheritance, Punic [u:] > [y:] > [i:], but then I
read that that was nationalist hokum on the part of the Maltese.
3. Arabic verbs in Maltese have separate masculine and feminine forms in the
singular of the suffix conjugation. Verbs borrowed from English and Italian do
not have this distinction (they use the "feminine" form in -t fro both). Is
this reduction typical of contact languages? Maltese seems happy to introduce
broken plurals for borrowed nouns.
4. Verbs borrowed from Italian end in -a, those borrowed from English end in
-ja. Since English and Italian are both not Arabic, this stratification seems
strange. Are there other examples in other languages? Perhaps this is more a
matter of the century in which the source languages were more common rather
than a strict delineation along linguistic lines?
Messages in this topic (3)
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4b. Re: NATLANG: Dropping Forms
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 2:07 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> 4. Verbs borrowed from Italian end in -a, those borrowed from English end
> in -ja. Since English and Italian are both not Arabic, this stratification
> seems strange. Are there other examples in other languages? Perhaps this is
> more a matter of the century in which the source languages were more common
> rather than a strict delineation along linguistic lines?
>
That does seem strange, but my guess is that it comes from some
phonological difference in the borrowed form. I don't know Italian, but is
there a commonly used form that ends in [a] or something that would, in
Maltese, become [a]? Perhaps a commonly used tense form that requires
little conjugation? That might get borrowed as the default form.
Is -ja pronounced [ja] or [d3a]? If it's the latter, that might be a
reanalysis of the past tense form of the verb in English.
Of course, origin specific morphology isn't unheard of: datum/data, for
example, or the (actually not attested in antiquity, I guess),
syllabus/syllabi. But most of the examples I can think of of origin
specific morphology in English come from a particular register, viz.,
Academic English. Which, of course, comes from a longer tradition of using
Latin as the language of academic discourse.
I'm probably wrong about *everything* above, though, since I know nothing
about Maltese. But it's the saturday before spring break and seriously, I
need a grading break. So I expressed my uninformed opinion.
--Patrick
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (3)
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4c. Re: NATLANG: Dropping Forms
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 8:20 pm ((PST))
--- On Sat, 3/2/13, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> 4. Verbs borrowed from Italian end in -a, those borrowed from English end
> in -ja.
That does seem strange, but my guess is that it comes from some
phonological difference in the borrowed form. I don't know Italian, but is
there a commonly used form that ends in [a] or something that would, in
Maltese, become [a]? Perhaps a commonly used tense form that requires
little conjugation? That might get borrowed as the default form
====================================================
Yes to that... Ital. verbs whose infinitive ends in -are (very common) have -a
in the 3d sing. (and the familiar imperative). Those ending in -ere,-ire have
3d sing. -e; it could be that borrowed -e gets changed to _a_..... maybe....?
==============================================
PD Is -ja pronounced [ja] or [d3a]? If it's the latter, that might be a
reanalysis of the past tense form of the verb in English.
===============================================
That just strikes me as very odd. A remote possibility-- maybe they've appended
Ital. gia [dZa] 'now, already' ??????? Aren't (or weren't) many Maltese quite
familiar with Italian? I can imagine some English colonial who knows some
Italian but not much Maltese giving commands to the natives, saying something
like "come gia!!, go gia!!"
.
Messages in this topic (3)
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5a. Re: Verb Reform - Na'gifi Fasu'xa
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 2:07 pm ((PST))
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS THREAD (as narrated by Majel Barrett):
The synonymous-root solution is quite naturalistic, but 351 roots is probably
insufficient for a naturalesque language (if every word is to belong to a
root). That said, 702 roots is already a very tight budget.
Regarding the syllable non-repeating constraint, one slick but very engey
solution would be to have one suffix which stands in for whichever suffix is
forbidden by the last-syllable rule. For instance, if the standin was -xu,
then you would form
pata- + -ta --> pataxu
pata- + -ka --> pataka
paka- + -ta --> pakata
paka- + -ka --> pakaxu
You may think "but what about a root like paxu-"? Well, there's no reason to
use the standin with such a root, since none of the normal suffixes can collide
with it!
Regarding the number of forms, I think the main important thing you haven't
said -- at least according to my old understanding of NF from before -- is that
stems consist of three *unordered* CV pairs. That is, this stem /pataka/ could
really be mathematically notated as
({p,a},{t,a},{k,a})
where the outer parenthesised structure is a ordered triple of "syllables", but
each braced "syllable" is an unordered _set_ of two phones. The inflection
consists of choosing
(1) where the stress goes,
(2) whether each V goes before or after its respective C.
Have I understood right?
Alex
NOW VERB REFORM, PART II:
The revised verb system is as follows, using KAFISU as a demonstration
Active Forms
a'Kfisu - Base
a'Kfius - Causative
a'kifsu - Reflexive
a'kifus - Benefactive
Passive Forms
akfi'su - Base
akfius (<akfi'us) - Causative
akif'su - Impersonal ("It rains")
aki'fus - Anti-Benefactive?
Basically, promoting the direct object of the benefactive verb to Subject
status.
I cooked for you > I was cooked for (by you)
The pluractional element is gone, since Na'gifi Fasu'xa is back to being an
Accusative language. I'm sure I'll use it elsewhere.
Reduplication in verbs indicates intensification ('to see' > 'to watch') and
provides a little bit of derivation to stretch the vocabulary.
fa'kfisu
fa'kfius
ka'kifsu
ka'kifus
etc.
The word order is still VSO, but VP > Aux V.
The complex tense system is kept, but the haphazard mood system is gone.
The adverbs (VC in the initial syllable, accent on the final syllable) no long
have to agree in gender and number with the verb they modify (this will allow
more distinctions in the verbal system)
Nouns
Nouns can have two genders: masculine (CVCV-) and feminine (CVVC-). Nouns have
four numbers: singular, plural, collective, and singulative. The vast majority
of Na'gifi Fasu'xa nouns have a singular (-CV) versus plural distinction (-VC).
There are however, a small number of nouns that use a collective-singulative
distinction. The collective looks the same as the plural (-VC) and the
singulative the same as the singular (-CV), so the only way to distinguish them
is 1) lexically in the absence of an adjective 2) via noun-adjective agreement.
An adjective modifying a collective noun takes a singular number, as does an
adjective modifying a singulative noun. A plural adjective modifying a
singulative noun indicates discrete individuals.
Masculine Example
CV'CVVC CVCV'CV
CV'CVCV CVCV'CV
CV'CVCV CVCV'VC
Feminine Example
CV'VCVC CVV'CCV
CV'VCCV CVV'CCV
CV'VCVC CVV'CVC
If the subject of a transitive sentence is a collective noun, the number of the
verb is singular!
The General Prepositional Construct has been replaced with a general
preposition. Prepositions (CV in the initial syllable, accented on the final
syllable) are derived from nouns and do not have to agree in gender and number
with the governing or governed noun (again, this will allow more distinctions).
Messages in this topic (6)
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6a. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 2:36 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones <
[email protected]> wrote:
> It probably also depends on what languages you learn.
I think not as much as you might expect. Any second language, even one very
similar to your L1, is still a different language with its own
peculiarities, and learning it will facilitate learning even a radically
different language.
stevo
For example, it might be easier to learn (say) Navajo as a third language
> if your first language is English and your second Mandarin, than if your
> first is English and your second Spanish; English and Mandarin are very
> different and so are those two from Navajo, whereas Spanish is relatively
> easy.
>
> Jeff.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 2 Mar 2013, at 16:59, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 10:55 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]
> >wrote:
> >
> >> Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
> >> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110201110915.htm
> >>
> >> Actually, I wasn't able to learn a third language when I was a
> monolingual!
> >
> >
> > This has been out there for a while. As you learn more languages, it
> > apparently gets easier.
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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6b. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 2:40 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 4:36 PM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
> > It probably also depends on what languages you learn.
>
>
> I think not as much as you might expect. Any second language, even one very
> similar to your L1, is still a different language with its own
> peculiarities, and learning it will facilitate learning even a radically
> different language.
>
This is certainly true for vocabulary. When I was learning Chinese, I
would often describe the meanings of words in Spanish in my head, as well
as English, in order to work out the different semantics and uses. It
helps to have those multiple translations, since a simple English gloss for
a word will not give you the myriad nuances of its meaning and usage.
Messages in this topic (8)
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6c. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 6:41 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Mar 02, 2013 at 04:40:43PM -0600, George Corley wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 4:36 PM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones <
> > [email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > > It probably also depends on what languages you learn.
> >
> >
> > I think not as much as you might expect. Any second language, even
> > one very similar to your L1, is still a different language with its
> > own peculiarities, and learning it will facilitate learning even a
> > radically different language.
> >
>
> This is certainly true for vocabulary. When I was learning Chinese, I
> would often describe the meanings of words in Spanish in my head, as
> well as English, in order to work out the different semantics and
> uses. It helps to have those multiple translations, since a simple
> English gloss for a word will not give you the myriad nuances of its
> meaning and usage.
I think it's not so much that growing up with multiple languages makes
it *easier* to learn a new one, but that knowing different languages in
your childhood makes you *aware* of differences in sounds, nuance,
syntax, etc., that otherwise you'd be oblivious to.
For example, in English, [p] and [p^h] are allophonic, but in my L1 they
are distinct; so when learning Russian, I was able to notice that the
Russian Ð is [p], not [p^h] as an English-speaker would be liable to
pronounce, especially word-initially. So I can "hear" the difference,
whereas a native English speaker would have a hard time. But Russian
also has gender, which my L1 does not have; so knowing English from my
childhood helped me to be aware of genders in words, which a native
speaker of my L1 would have trouble with.
But this didn't really make Russian that much easier to learn, though --
just because you're aware of the differences doesn't necessarily make it
any easier to learn them! There are also features that are absent from
the languages I grew up with: the extensive case system, for example,
and sound distinctions like Ш and Щ, and and Рand Ы, which took me
quite a while to even hear the difference. Russian also has a lot of
idioms and expressions and particular ways of saying things, that one
has to learn "from scratch" -- literal translations sound very odd.
So ultimately, regardless of whether your childhood languages give you a
headstart or not, you still have to put in the effort to learn the ins
and outs of the foreign language. In the long run, I don't know if the
*total* amount of effort required is that different between someone who
grew up with fewer languages or someone who grew up with many.
T
--
"Holy war is an oxymoron." -- Lazarus Long
Messages in this topic (8)
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6d. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 8:42 pm ((PST))
--- On Sat, 3/2/13, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 4:36 PM, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
> > It probably also depends on what languages you learn.
>
>
> I think not as much as you might expect. Any second language, even one very
> similar to your L1, is still a different language with its own
> peculiarities, and learning it will facilitate learning even a radically
> different language.
>
This is certainly true for vocabulary. When I was learning Chinese, I
would often describe the meanings of words in Spanish in my head, as well
as English, in order to work out the different semantics and uses. It
helps to have those multiple translations, since a simple English gloss for
a word will not give you the myriad nuances of its meaning and usage.
================================================
I'm not at all sure about this. It may also depend on the person...?
I don't mean to boast, and I seem to have some innate love of languages...but--
I had no trouble learning Latin, then Spanish, in high school. In college I
took Italian, no problem (of course they're all closely related). I learned to
read French on the fly, mainly from newspapers, back in the 50s. But enough
that I could pass the Fr. reading exam in grad school (70s). STill can't speak
it properly, even though I know how it's _supposed_ to sound.....
In grad school (68-75) I took on Dutch (from reading + dictionary) then a
required German reading course (vocab was easy, correct grammar wasn't , esp.
the declination of the articles and adjectives.....) Plus, 3+ years of
Indonesian, which never perplexed me either and which served me well when I
went over there. And bits and pieces of lots of its relatives (< dictionaries
and a little actual speaking in the field).
One afternoon in grad school I sat down with a Chinese speaker and tried to
figure out the tones. _That_ I just couldn't get (and I have trouble doing the
tones in my own Conlang Gwr :-(((( ) Maybe formal course work would help, but
at that time I wasn't really interested, sorry to say.
I have the feeling (at least in my own mind) that the various semantic concepts
(and the words associated with them, even my conlangs) are all stored in one
place in the mind/brain. I can give you the words for "dog, love, eat, come,
go, house"-- almost anything you might ask-- at the drop of a hat.
Messages in this topic (8)
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6e. Re: THEORY: Bilinguals Find It Easier to Learn a Third Language
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 8:51 pm ((PST))
Responding further, esp. to Teoh's post, I should mention that I grew up in a
monolingual (Engl.) family....and had no exposure to other languages before I
went to high school.
Messages in this topic (8)
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7a. 2012 Cambridge journal articles free online for a few days
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 2, 2013 7:49 pm ((PST))
I'm *terribly* sorry I've forgotten to post this until now -- it's only good
until March 5, which I assume is to be interpreted as in GMT -- but Cambridge
Journals is offering free unlimited access to its 2012 journal content.
http://cup.linguistlist.org/2013/01/free-access-to-all-2012-content-on-cambridge-journals-online/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=free-access-to-all-2012-content-on-cambridge-journals-online
(Talk about waiting until the last minute. Of course, now that I've posted,
I'll probably wait another couple of days before actually scouring the articles
myself.)
Messages in this topic (2)
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7b. Re: 2012 Cambridge journal articles free online for a few days
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 3, 2013 2:14 am ((PST))
I tried to register but got an unexplained "error occurred" message.
stevo
On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 10:49 PM, Eric Christopherson <[email protected]>wrote:
> I'm *terribly* sorry I've forgotten to post this until now -- it's only
> good until March 5, which I assume is to be interpreted as in GMT -- but
> Cambridge Journals is offering free unlimited access to its 2012 journal
> content.
>
>
> http://cup.linguistlist.org/2013/01/free-access-to-all-2012-content-on-cambridge-journals-online/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=free-access-to-all-2012-content-on-cambridge-journals-online
>
> (Talk about waiting until the last minute. Of course, now that I've
> posted, I'll probably wait another couple of days before actually scouring
> the articles myself.)
Messages in this topic (2)
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