There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: Leonardo Castro
1b. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: Leonardo Castro
2a. Re: How to choose the name of a conlang?
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3a. linguisticising throat-singing
From: Alex Fink
3b. Re: linguisticising throat-singing
From: Robert Marshall Murphy
4a. Old Georgian
From: Matthew Boutilier
4b. Re: Old Georgian
From: MorphemeAddict
5a. Re: Robot DARYL needs a conlang
From: Nonu Iazabo
Messages
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1a. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 10, 2013 6:55 am ((PDT))
I just found a paper:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=5254928E628E5212939FA61159BF21D7?doi=10.1.1.16.8251&rep=rep1&type=pdf
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.16.8251
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/3/10 Douglas Koller <[email protected]>:
>> Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2013 15:56:46 -0600
>> From: [email protected]
>> Subject: Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
>> To: [email protected]
>
>> On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Leonardo Castro
>> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> > I was thinking about how French people perceive stressed-unstressed
>> > contrast. Is it as strange and difficult as tones for those whose
>> > native language doesn't have them?
>
>> Speakers
>> of pitch-accent or simple tone systems may fix stress as a high tone or
>> something like that. In fact, I've heard that it's still under debate
>> whether some simple-tone languages have both tone _and_ stress.
>
> The converse was certainly true when I was first learning Japanese. Pitch
> accent? What was pitch accent? (no one *tells* you these things). I initially
> placed stress on the long vowel syllables ("eiga" ['e:ga]) and on syllables
> before geminate consonants ("katta" ['kat.ta]). If there were both, long
> vowels trumped ("gakkō" [gak'ko:]) (the flower/nose distinction, which offers
> neither, was lost on me). I guess sheer mimicry ironed it all out. Things
> being the way they are, of course, it wasn't until I had internalized it all,
> left Japan, and moved to Taiwan that I found a Japanese-Chinese dictionary
> that mapped out pitch patterns in utterly excrutiating detail. I'd *like* to
> think I've brought this all to bear in learning Swedish, and that souls and
> wild ducks are more than just me throwing stress around the room. Alas, I
> haven't run into an errant Swede lately to accost and regale.
>
> Kou
>
Messages in this topic (10)
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1b. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 10, 2013 1:31 pm ((PDT))
Apparently, stress and time are always correlated to some degree, as
some people claim that all language is something between purely
stress-rhythmed and purely syllable-rhythm. The third paper below
shows some interesting linear regressions of the graph "duration of
accentual group X number of syllables of the group":
http://www.solki.jyu.fi/apples/020201/The%20functional%20irrhythmicality%20of%20spontaneous%20speech.htm
http://www.personal.reading.ac.uk/~llsroach/phon2/frp.pdf
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-44502000000200006&script=sci_arttext
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/3/10 Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>:
> I just found a paper:
>
> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=5254928E628E5212939FA61159BF21D7?doi=10.1.1.16.8251&rep=rep1&type=pdf
> http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.16.8251
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
>
> 2013/3/10 Douglas Koller <[email protected]>:
>>> Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2013 15:56:46 -0600
>>> From: [email protected]
>>> Subject: Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
>>> To: [email protected]
>>
>>> On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Leonardo Castro
>>> <[email protected]>wrote:
>>
>>> > I was thinking about how French people perceive stressed-unstressed
>>> > contrast. Is it as strange and difficult as tones for those whose
>>> > native language doesn't have them?
>>
>>> Speakers
>>> of pitch-accent or simple tone systems may fix stress as a high tone or
>>> something like that. In fact, I've heard that it's still under debate
>>> whether some simple-tone languages have both tone _and_ stress.
>>
>> The converse was certainly true when I was first learning Japanese. Pitch
>> accent? What was pitch accent? (no one *tells* you these things). I
>> initially placed stress on the long vowel syllables ("eiga" ['e:ga]) and on
>> syllables before geminate consonants ("katta" ['kat.ta]). If there were
>> both, long vowels trumped ("gakkō" [gak'ko:]) (the flower/nose distinction,
>> which offers neither, was lost on me). I guess sheer mimicry ironed it all
>> out. Things being the way they are, of course, it wasn't until I had
>> internalized it all, left Japan, and moved to Taiwan that I found a
>> Japanese-Chinese dictionary that mapped out pitch patterns in utterly
>> excrutiating detail. I'd *like* to think I've brought this all to bear in
>> learning Swedish, and that souls and wild ducks are more than just me
>> throwing stress around the room. Alas, I haven't run into an errant Swede
>> lately to accost and regale.
>>
>> Kou
>>
Messages in this topic (10)
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2a. Re: How to choose the name of a conlang?
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 10, 2013 7:28 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Saturday 09 March 2013 02:49:15 Padraic Brown wrote:
> --- On Fri, 3/8/13, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
> > /kʷətç/ 'language of small time' because the language is
> > an attempt at a speedtalk with unisegmental morphemes.
> > The name is anglicized as "Quetch".
>
> I am sure there is no actual connection, but I do find a delicious irony
> between this language, Quetch, and its self professed conservation of time
> as a design goal, and the Yiddish near-sound-alike word, kvetch, which
> is anything but, being a long and interminably drawn out complaint about
> something.
I did notice the similarity to German _quetschen_ 'to squeeze',
which is may etymologically be the same as Yiddish _kvetch_
(if the latter is not instead related to _quatschen_ 'to
chat'), but this is not intended. The choice of /kʷ/ for
'to speak; language' is inspired by various words in Quenya
(the name _Quenya_ itself which means just 'language'), Old
Albic (_cvatha_ 'to speak') and English (_quoth_) beginning
with /kw/ and expressing notions related to speaking; that
of /t/ 'time' by the international physical formula symbol
for time, that of /ç/ 'small' by the German diminiutive
ending -chen.
But the language can indeed be considered one which attempts
to squeeze everything into expressions as short as possible.
So, from the German vantage point, it is aptly named!
> Every time I hear someone kvetching on and on about some issue, I'll always
> think to myself: ah, if only they were Quetching! They wouldn't waste even
> a tenth the time it takes to complain about nothing at such great length!
;)
I don't know yet how concise Quetch will be in actual practice;
I expect the brevity of its roots to be to a considerable part
cancelled out by the need of many multi-member compounds.
--
... 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 (13)
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3a. linguisticising throat-singing
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 10, 2013 12:05 pm ((PDT))
A little while back, Daniel Bowman pointed me to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0djHJBAP3U and wondered to what extent
throat-singing-style overtones could serve a phonemic function in a
language, with two different tonal tiers. Neither of us really know
enough about the mechanics of throat-singing to design something
plausible, though. What is it, in terms that a phonetician would use?
It's clearly possible to sing lyrics through it, but the result
sounds distorted; which sort of phonetic contrasts would it mesh well
with, which poorly?
Any cool ideas for how a language with overtone could use it?
Alex
Messages in this topic (2)
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3b. Re: linguisticising throat-singing
Posted by: "Robert Marshall Murphy" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 10, 2013 1:35 pm ((PDT))
As someone who throat-sings (moderately well), I am overjoyed to hear of other
conlangers who are interested in this! I've studied Tuvan throat-singing, so
I'm not sure about other methods of analysis.
In Tuva, they say there are three styles, conveniently called low, medium and
high. Low is like Tibetan Buddhist monk chants, and gets the false-vocal-folds
vibrating at half the frequency of the base note, i.e. one octave lower.
Exceptionally talented throat-singers can get a fifth above the fundamental
ringing as well, but this is very rare and I'm not even sure what anatomy is
producing it. Cardinal vowel /o/ produces the overtone (in solfeggio) "do".
/u/ produces a fifth below that, "sol". /ɔ/ make "re". /ɑ/ produces "mi".
/a/ makes "sol" above "do". These are all four octaves about the fundamental.
Speech-singing is possible, but unvoiced consonants either stop the singing or
are realized as voiced.
Middle style is like the low, but without the undertone. It is the easiest and
free-est, most often combined with various techniques.
High style (my best) is best accomplished with lips protruding. The vowels are
/ɚ/ through /i/, but I'm not good at notating all those central-vowels.
I've seen spectrograms of my throat-singing before, and it really changes the
formants F1 and F2. I don't think that it could be considered an extension of
ordinary speech, but would have to be its own thing.
-Robert Marshall Murphy-
On Mar 10, 2013, at 2:05 PM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> A little while back, Daniel Bowman pointed me to
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0djHJBAP3U and wondered to what extent
> throat-singing-style overtones could serve a phonemic function in a
> language, with two different tonal tiers. Neither of us really know
> enough about the mechanics of throat-singing to design something
> plausible, though. What is it, in terms that a phonetician would use?
> It's clearly possible to sing lyrics through it, but the result
> sounds distorted; which sort of phonetic contrasts would it mesh well
> with, which poorly?
>
> Any cool ideas for how a language with overtone could use it?
>
> Alex
Messages in this topic (2)
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4a. Old Georgian
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 10, 2013 1:33 pm ((PDT))
I have been really into Georgian lately, and Caucasian languages in
general, and am making reasonable progress on the (very first baby steps of
the) grammar. But I am growing more and more interested in the OLD GEORGIAN
phase -- it seems like there is probably some very interesting stuff there
-- but cannot find any books or websites dedicated to the study of Old
Georgian (spoken from c. 400 - 1000 AD or so, according to Wikipedia).
Does anybody have suggestions for further reading materials on this?
გმადლობთ
matt
Messages in this topic (2)
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4b. Re: Old Georgian
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Sun Mar 10, 2013 2:41 pm ((PDT))
I've asked a Georgian acquaintance of mine (a Facebook friend, actually).
Let's see what she comes up with.
stevo
On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Matthew Boutilier
<[email protected]>wrote:
> I have been really into Georgian lately, and Caucasian languages in
> general, and am making reasonable progress on the (very first baby steps of
> the) grammar. But I am growing more and more interested in the OLD GEORGIAN
> phase -- it seems like there is probably some very interesting stuff there
> -- but cannot find any books or websites dedicated to the study of Old
> Georgian (spoken from c. 400 - 1000 AD or so, according to Wikipedia).
>
> Does anybody have suggestions for further reading materials on this?
>
> გმადლობთ
> matt
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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5a. Re: Robot DARYL needs a conlang
Posted by: "Nonu Iazabo" [email protected]
Date: Mon Mar 11, 2013 2:05 am ((PDT))
Hi Kai,
please fill free to visit http://layertext.com
a constructed language that can be talked through anything.
We have two projects in place: one as interspecie language with the
Oceanographic of Valencia (bellugas) and also another project as DNA Coding
system.
We can transcribe layer_TEXT 10.3 through any media, any sensor, anything. A
lot of examples in the site.
rgds, Carlos
-----Original Message-----
From: Kai Oliver Arras [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, March 8, 2013 10:17 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Robot DARYL needs a conlang
Hi,I am new here and your help would be highly appreciated.My lab has built the
interactive robot DARYL. We are investigating abstract R2-D2- and Wall.e-like
languages for human-robot interaction since we believe that non-human social
cues make robots more believable. We developed a sound synthesizer architecture
based on SuperCollider to generate sounds in real-time and have created a sound
language -- so far in a totally informal way. Its purpose is to enhance the
robot's expressivity, see video at:
http://srl.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/videosdir/DARYLsounds.movOnly recently, I
came to realize that *you guys* are actually the experts in construct what
could be a proper, formally derived sound language for such robots. We are a
robotics research lab and have no expertise in this area.Questions:- Is this an
interesting problem for conlangers?- Has anyone done this before?- Are there
any links that I missed (after comprehensive internet searches including this
group)?- Where could I get more information on the specific problem of creating
such languages for robots?We are interested in creating a believable,
understandable, and socially acceptable conlang for DARYL. If anyone is
interested to team up with us on this, let me know :-)Thanks in advance, best
regards,- Kai........................................Prof. Dr. Kai O.
ArrasAssistant professorDFG Junior Research Group LeaderHead Social Robotics
LabUniversity of FreiburgGeorges-Koehler-Allee 074D-79110 Freiburg,
GermanyTel/Fax +49 761 203 979 46 / 75
20srl.informatik.uni-freiburg.de........................................
Messages in this topic (6)
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