There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Leonardo Castro
1b. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: R A Brown
1c. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones
1d. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: C. Brickner
1e. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: George Corley
1f. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: H. S. Teoh
1g. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Padraic Brown
1h. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: MorphemeAddict
1i. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: George Corley
1j. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Alex Fink
2a. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: C. Brickner
2b. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: Daniel Bowman
2c. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: Wm Annis
2d. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: Gary Shannon
3a. Re: linguisticising throat-singing
From: Alex Fink
Messages
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1a. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:40 am ((PDT))
In Portuguese, "to lend" is "emprestar" and "to borrow" is "tomar
emprestado". The same verb used in different ways.
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/3/20 George Corley <[email protected]>:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:20 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
>> > wrote:
>> > > --- On Mon, 3/18/13, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >> > What's your opinion on the expression "could you borrow
>> > >> > me a pencil"?
>> > >>
>> > >> I'm not even sure what it means. Does it involve a
>> > >> request for another to
>> > >> borrow a pencil for the speaker's use, or a request to
>> > >> borrow a pencil from
>> > >> the addressee (that is, a request for them to loan a
>> > >> pencil)?
>> > >
>> > > The speaker is asking to borrow a pencil. It's a simple word-
>> > > replacement: in stead of asking "could you lend..." (in which case the
>> > > speaker would be "borrowing"), the speaker replaces the expected
>> > > action of the other person with his own.
>> >
>> > Really? I would interpret it as the speaker asking the listener to
>> > borrow a pencil on the speaker's behalf.
>> >
>>
>>
>> No, Padraic is correct. When I taught junior high and high school, I heard
>> this from students all the time.
>>
>> "Mr. Walker, could you borrow me a pencil, I left mine in my locker."
>>
>> "Lend."
>>
>> "What?"
>>
>> "Could you lend me a pencil."
>>
>> "That's what I said. I forgot mine in my locker."
>>
>> Sigh.
>>
>> I don't teach any more. Now I unload and load freight.
>
>
> This is really not an unusual shift. Chinese has the same word for both,
> and many English dialects have "learn" taking on the meaning of "teach" as
> well as "learn". There just seems to be something about these kinds of
> terms that lets this sort of consolidation occur. Maybe it's just that
> it's so clear from context who is the "giver" and "reciever" that you
> really only need one term.
Messages in this topic (23)
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1b. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:52 am ((PDT))
On 20/03/2013 17:59, Adam Walker wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Garth Wallace wrote:
[snip]
>
> No, Padraic is correct. When I taught junior high and
> high school, I heard this from students all the time.
>
> "Mr. Walker, could you borrow me a pencil, I left mine
> in my locker."
When I taught this side of the Pond, it was rather "lend"
used to mean "borrow."
"Sir, can I lend a pencil?"
"Yes, who do you want to lend it to?"
This was often followed by a blank look, then:
"No, sir, I ain't got mine. Can I lend a pencil off you?"
:)
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language
began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (23)
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1c. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:52 am ((PDT))
Similarly, in Spanish "estoy aburrido" means "I'm bored" (using an irregular
verb "estar" which means "to be, in an impermanent sense"), whereas "soy
aburrido" means "I'm boring" (using another irregular verb, "ser" which means
"to be, in a permanent sense"). Other uses of the respective verbs are "soy
chileno" "I'm from Chile" vs. "Estoy aquí" "I'm here". Spanish speakers
speaking English often say "I'm boring" when they mean "I'm bored".
Jeff
Sent from my iPhone
On 20 Mar 2013, at 18:40, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
> In Portuguese, "to lend" is "emprestar" and "to borrow" is "tomar
> emprestado". The same verb used in different ways.
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
>
> 2013/3/20 George Corley <[email protected]>:
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:20 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> --- On Mon, 3/18/13, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> What's your opinion on the expression "could you borrow
>>>>>>> me a pencil"?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm not even sure what it means. Does it involve a
>>>>>> request for another to
>>>>>> borrow a pencil for the speaker's use, or a request to
>>>>>> borrow a pencil from
>>>>>> the addressee (that is, a request for them to loan a
>>>>>> pencil)?
>>>>>
>>>>> The speaker is asking to borrow a pencil. It's a simple word-
>>>>> replacement: in stead of asking "could you lend..." (in which case the
>>>>> speaker would be "borrowing"), the speaker replaces the expected
>>>>> action of the other person with his own.
>>>>
>>>> Really? I would interpret it as the speaker asking the listener to
>>>> borrow a pencil on the speaker's behalf.
>>>
>>>
>>> No, Padraic is correct. When I taught junior high and high school, I heard
>>> this from students all the time.
>>>
>>> "Mr. Walker, could you borrow me a pencil, I left mine in my locker."
>>>
>>> "Lend."
>>>
>>> "What?"
>>>
>>> "Could you lend me a pencil."
>>>
>>> "That's what I said. I forgot mine in my locker."
>>>
>>> Sigh.
>>>
>>> I don't teach any more. Now I unload and load freight.
>>
>>
>> This is really not an unusual shift. Chinese has the same word for both,
>> and many English dialects have "learn" taking on the meaning of "teach" as
>> well as "learn". There just seems to be something about these kinds of
>> terms that lets this sort of consolidation occur. Maybe it's just that
>> it's so clear from context who is the "giver" and "reciever" that you
>> really only need one term.
Messages in this topic (23)
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1d. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 11:59 am ((PDT))
Spanish does the same thing.
lend = prestar
borrow = tomar prestado (or fijado, fix)
also, borrow = pedir (ask for) prestado
Charlie
----- Original Message -----
In Portuguese, "to lend" is "emprestar" and "to borrow" is "tomar
emprestado". The same verb used in different ways.
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/3/20 George Corley <[email protected]>:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:59 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:20 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
>> > wrote:
>> > > --- On Mon, 3/18/13, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >> > What's your opinion on the expression "could you borrow
>> > >> > me a pencil"?
>> > >>
>> > >> I'm not even sure what it means. Does it involve a
>> > >> request for another to
>> > >> borrow a pencil for the speaker's use, or a request to
>> > >> borrow a pencil from
>> > >> the addressee (that is, a request for them to loan a
>> > >> pencil)?
>> > >
>> > > The speaker is asking to borrow a pencil. It's a simple word-
>> > > replacement: in stead of asking "could you lend..." (in which case the
>> > > speaker would be "borrowing"), the speaker replaces the expected
>> > > action of the other person with his own.
>> >
>> > Really? I would interpret it as the speaker asking the listener to
>> > borrow a pencil on the speaker's behalf.
>> >
>>
>>
>> No, Padraic is correct. When I taught junior high and high school, I heard
>> this from students all the time.
>>
>> "Mr. Walker, could you borrow me a pencil, I left mine in my locker."
>>
>> "Lend."
>>
>> "What?"
>>
>> "Could you lend me a pencil."
>>
>> "That's what I said. I forgot mine in my locker."
>>
>> Sigh.
>>
>> I don't teach any more. Now I unload and load freight.
>
>
> This is really not an unusual shift. Chinese has the same word for both,
> and many English dialects have "learn" taking on the meaning of "teach" as
> well as "learn". There just seems to be something about these kinds of
> terms that lets this sort of consolidation occur. Maybe it's just that
> it's so clear from context who is the "giver" and "reciever" that you
> really only need one term.
Messages in this topic (23)
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1e. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:00 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 1:52 PM, Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Similarly, in Spanish "estoy aburrido" means "I'm bored" (using an
> irregular verb "estar" which means "to be, in an impermanent sense"),
> whereas "soy aburrido" means "I'm boring" (using another irregular verb,
> "ser" which means "to be, in a permanent sense"). Other uses of the
> respective verbs are "soy chileno" "I'm from Chile" vs. "Estoy aquí" "I'm
> here". Spanish speakers speaking English often say "I'm boring" when they
> mean "I'm bored".
>
> Jeff
>
Chinese uses æ è for both senses, with no grammar to distinguish them.
Messages in this topic (23)
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1f. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:05 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:59:46PM -0500, Adam Walker wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Garth Wallace <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 6:20 AM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> > > --- On Mon, 3/18/13, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
> > >
> > >> > What's your opinion on the expression "could you borrow
> > >> > me a pencil"?
> > >>
> > >> I'm not even sure what it means. Does it involve a request for
> > >> another to borrow a pencil for the speaker's use, or a request to
> > >> borrow a pencil from the addressee (that is, a request for them
> > >> to loan a pencil)?
> > >
> > > The speaker is asking to borrow a pencil. It's a simple word-
> > > replacement: in stead of asking "could you lend..." (in which case
> > > the speaker would be "borrowing"), the speaker replaces the
> > > expected action of the other person with his own.
> >
> > Really? I would interpret it as the speaker asking the listener to
> > borrow a pencil on the speaker's behalf.
>
> No, Padraic is correct. When I taught junior high and high school, I
> heard this from students all the time.
>
> "Mr. Walker, could you borrow me a pencil, I left mine in my locker."
>
> "Lend."
>
> "What?"
>
> "Could you lend me a pencil."
>
> "That's what I said. I forgot mine in my locker."
>
> Sigh.
[...]
Really? Where is this, North America?
... because I heard this *all* the time in Malaysia where I grew up. I
thought this was due to the Chinese influence (Chinese only has one word
for borrow/lend), but I'm quite surprised to hear that it's happening
spontaneously in a purely English-speaking environment.
T
--
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes." -- E.W. Dijkstra
Messages in this topic (23)
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1g. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 1:17 pm ((PDT))
--- I.M. Knotsure wrote:
> >> > > The speaker is asking to borrow a pencil. It's a simple word-
> >> > > replacement: in stead of asking "could you lend..." (in which
> >> > > case the speaker would be "borrowing"), the speaker replaces the
> >> > > expected action of the other person with his own.
>
> >> > Really? I would interpret it as the speaker asking the listener to
> >> > borrow a pencil on the speaker's behalf.
Interesting. While this does make sense -- and certainly runs in parallel
with scads of similar requests (could you buy me a coffee; could you rent
me a movie; could you get me a something-or-other) -- I've never
encountered the phrase as having an on-behalf-of meaning. In other words,
"could you buy me a coffee" never means "could you sell me a coffee";
"could you get a something" never means "could you take away my something".
The phrase always means a direct request to be lent something, and not a
request that something be borrowed on behalf of the speaker.
> > This is really not an unusual shift. Chinese has the same word for
> > both, and many English dialects have "learn" taking on the meaning of
> > "teach" as well as "learn". There just seems to be something about
> > these kinds of terms that lets this sort of consolidation occur.
I was actually considering mentioning learn/learn in this context, but
learn = teach is nòt a substitution at all. It's simply two different
words that have become pronounced the same:
learn (learn) < O.E. leornian "to get knowledge"
learn (teach) < O.E. læran "to teach"
Padraic
Messages in this topic (23)
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1h. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 1:36 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:16 PM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> --- I.M. Knotsure wrote:
>
> > >> > > The speaker is asking to borrow a pencil. It's a simple word-
> > >> > > replacement: in stead of asking "could you lend..." (in which
> > >> > > case the speaker would be "borrowing"), the speaker replaces the
> > >> > > expected action of the other person with his own.
> >
> > >> > Really? I would interpret it as the speaker asking the listener to
> > >> > borrow a pencil on the speaker's behalf.
>
> Interesting. While this does make sense -- and certainly runs in parallel
> with scads of similar requests (could you buy me a coffee; could you rent
> me a movie; could you get me a something-or-other) -- I've never
> encountered the phrase as having an on-behalf-of meaning. In other words,
> "could you buy me a coffee" never means "could you sell me a coffee";
> "could you get a something" never means "could you take away my something".
> The phrase always means a direct request to be lent something, and not a
> request that something be borrowed on behalf of the speaker.
>
> > > This is really not an unusual shift. Chinese has the same word for
> > > both, and many English dialects have "learn" taking on the meaning of
> > > "teach" as well as "learn". There just seems to be something about
> > > these kinds of terms that lets this sort of consolidation occur.
>
> I was actually considering mentioning learn/learn in this context, but
> learn = teach is nòt a substitution at all. It's simply two different
> words that have become pronounced the same:
>
> learn (learn) < O.E. leornian "to get knowledge"
> learn (teach) < O.E. læran "to teach"
>
Similar to German "lernen" ('to learn') and "lehren" ('to teach').
stevo
>
> Padraic
>
>
Messages in this topic (23)
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1i. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 2:00 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 3:16 PM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > > This is really not an unusual shift. Chinese has the same word for
> > > both, and many English dialects have "learn" taking on the meaning of
> > > "teach" as well as "learn". There just seems to be something about
> > > these kinds of terms that lets this sort of consolidation occur.
>
> I was actually considering mentioning learn/learn in this context, but
> learn = teach is nòt a substitution at all. It's simply two different
> words that have become pronounced the same:
>
> learn (learn) < O.E. leornian "to get knowledge"
> learn (teach) < O.E. læran "to teach"
Alright, then historically it's a different process. I would still expect
that, given what we know about similar situations, that synchronically
these have become a single lexeme. That jives with the other similar
situations we've been citing where give/recieve meanings are bound to the
same word.
Messages in this topic (23)
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1j. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 2:20 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:16:34 -0700, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > This is really not an unusual shift. Chinese has the same word for
> > > both, and many English dialects have "learn" taking on the meaning of
> > > "teach" as well as "learn". There just seems to be something about
> > > these kinds of terms that lets this sort of consolidation occur.
>
> I was actually considering mentioning learn/learn in this context, but
> learn = teach is nòt a substitution at all. It's simply two different
> words that have become pronounced the same:
>
> learn (learn) < O.E. leornian "to get knowledge"
> learn (teach) < O.E. læran "to teach"
Well, sure, but that also paints over a detail: a verb which straightforwardly
continued an OE _læran_ wouldn't have an /n/ in its stem; it would be a modern
"lear". So it's not that regular sound change has impassively made these fall
together; the latter word has clearly been reinterpreted as a secondary usage
of the former, differing in voice or something. (The German, which Stevo
cites, could OTOH be just sound change.)
I'm theorising out of an orifice not meant for it, but it seems to me that in
an English where "learn" has both these meaning, you could just characterise it
as an "indirectly labile" verb, that can raise its indirect object to subject,
e.g. "he learned me the piano; I learned the piano", just as ordinary labile
verbs can raise their direct object to subject, e.g. "he broke the piano; the
piano broke". Given that indirect objects share other properties with direct
objects in voice operations in English, e.g. they can both become the subject
under passivisation, maybe it's not surprising that indirect lability should
exist.
Of course, as others have pointed out, this seems to be a perfectly natural
semantic shift in argument usage that doesn't need a contortion like that to
get started. To me a kind of, hm, almost V->V conversion analysis feels
reasonable too:
"could you (perform an act of borrowing) a pencil to me?" -> "could you
borrow me a pencil?"
Alex
Messages in this topic (23)
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2a. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:06 pm ((PDT))
In point of fact, if two sentences in two different languages carry nearly
identical meaning then each element of that shared meaning _must_ be
carried by some element of the sentence, regardless of whether the carrier
is a word or an affix. It follows that the number of units of meaning
_must_ be the same from one language to another, and the only difference is
how those units are divided up between lexical words and grammatical
"words" (affixes).
--gary
Have I understood this correctly?
vir-um vide-o = I see a/the man.
In the Latin sentence I can see the "I", the "see", and the "man". But were is
the "a/the"? As far as I remember, the "-um" doesn't make the noun definite or
indefinite, just the object of the verb.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (11)
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2b. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:11 pm ((PDT))
>
> In other words, if all the affixes were detached and treated as separate
> "words" the "word" count might be very similar from one language to
> another. So there might be "conservation of units of meaning" where you
> could trade an affix for a word, but the count of words plus affixes would
> remain somewhat constant.
>
>
Yes, that was the line of thought I started with. The sum total of
"meaning" would be the same, but it would be distributed unequally between
grammar and lexicon, to the point where one could posit a lexically rich,
grammatically poor language or vice versa.
Messages in this topic (11)
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2c. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "Wm Annis" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 12:19 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 2:11 PM, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The sum total of
> "meaning" would be the same, but it would be distributed unequally between
> grammar and lexicon, to the point where one could posit a lexically rich,
> grammatically poor language or vice versa.
There are theories of language which don't put grammar and lexicon
into separate modules, but see them as essentially the same thing, or
at least on the same continuum. Varieties of Construction Grammar
(CxG), including Langacker's Cognitive Grammar in particular, take this
approach.
--
wm
Messages in this topic (11)
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2d. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 1:15 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:29 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
---
>
> Uh, do you mean morphemes?
>
Possibly. I'm an engineer not a linguist. :)
---
>> In point of fact, if two sentences in two different languages carry nearly
>> identical meaning then each element of that shared meaning _must_ be
>> carried by some element of the sentence, regardless of whether the carrier
>> is a word or an affix. It follows that the number of units of meaning
>> _must_ be the same from one language to another, and the only difference is
>> how those units are divided up between lexical words and grammatical
>> "words" (affixes).
>>
>
> I don't think this is a given. Lexical meaning is a very fuzzy thing --
> you can translate between languages, yes, but very often most of the words
> actually cover different semantic spaces when considering their use in
> other contexts. It's entirely possible to have two words in the same
> language that mean almost precisely the same thing as well, meaning that
> you could end up with alternate translations in language A for a single
> word in language B.
Certainly whenever a complex literary sentence rich with levels of
meaning is translated to another language, some of the nuances are
lost. But when you ask the man in the vegetable stall "Do you have any
cabbage today?" I'm sure that this meaning could be reliably
translated into any human language that includes the concept of
"cabbage", without measurable loss of meaning. That being the case,
there _must_ be _some_ element in each such translation that conveys
each element of the whole meaning. If some part of the meaning is
missing then the sentence has not been properly translated. If the
sentence has been properly translated then no part of the meaning is
missing, and is therefore carried by some element (or combination of
elements) in the sentence.
I'm speaking from the point of view of a software engineer. Uncle
Claude said that if the information is there it's encoded somehow,
otherwise it isn't really there.
--gary
Messages in this topic (11)
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3a. Re: linguisticising throat-singing
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 2:43 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:34:36 -0500, Robert Marshall Murphy
<[email protected]> wrote:
>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". /É/ make "re".
>/É/ 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 /É/ 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.
Mhmm, the most straightforward way to make a throat-singing conlang would be as
its own thing, I think, not trying to do the multi-modal trick of making an
ordinary-speech mode of the same phonology.
That said, I hadn't realized that it was just the formant differences of
ordinary vowels that were being co-opted to produce the overtones here! Neat.
Seems that, modulo not getting to have a voice contrast (unless "stopping the
singing" is okay? I mean, stops already stop the airflow), a phonemic
inventory of a throat-sung language might look positively unremarkable when
described, if the overtone pitches are really just something like /u o O A a/
plus /@ @\ 1 i/.
Though, hm, it'd be really neat if that meant the overtone tier was subject
both to the sort of phonological processes that characterise tone (relative
autosegmentality, obligatory contour stuff, drift and downstep and terracing oh
my) as well as those that characterise vowels (fronting near palatal
consonants, lowering near pharyngeal ones, rounding near round ones), and they
got to interact in unusual ways...
Alex
Messages in this topic (3)
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