There are 13 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Padraic Brown
1.2. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Alex Fink
1.3. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Herman Miller
1.4. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Douglas Koller
2a. Re: linguisticising throat-singing
From: Paul Roser
3a. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: R A Brown
3b. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: MorphemeAddict
3c. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: R A Brown
3d. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: taliesin the storyteller
4a. Re: Languages' Flag
From: A. da Mek
5a. Creating a Proto-language
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
5b. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones
5c. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
Messages
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1.1. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 4:42 pm ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 3/20/13, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: Alex Fink <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [CONLANG] CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2013, 5:20 PM
> 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 don't know the history of the two OE verbs and their immediate ME and
EME descendants to say for certain whether or not "lear" would be the
likely outcome or not.
> 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.
Could be, though there's still the fact that we've got two very similar
sounding OE verbs... But I'm no historical linguist! Either way, whatever
is going on with learn still isn't the same thing as what's going on with
*only* lend/borrow.
> 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?"
Whatever it is, and however it got there, it is very old (earliest use I
can find is in Shax (As You Like It)). You would think that if it were
good enough for Bill, it ought to be good enough for us! ;)
> Alex
Padraic
Messages in this topic (27)
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1.2. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 6:40 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:42:14 -0700, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> >--- On Wed, 3/20/13, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > From: Alex Fink <[email protected]>
> > On Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:16:34 -0700,
> > Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > 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"
[...]
> Could be, though there's still the fact that we've got two very similar
> sounding OE verbs... But I'm no historical linguist!
Oh yeah, I meant to throw in that the OE verbs are cognate too; they're,
respectively, old dynamic and causative extensions of a base whose simplex
didn't survive as a verb (outside Gothic), but which also provides the noun
"lore", as well as an archaic "list" 'art, cunning, etc.'.
Wiktionary, which gives the same pair of forms as you do, has a tendency which
I think is wrong from the point of view of sorting senses by etymology, as they
do: if two formations from the same root in Proto-Germanic, especially a noun
and a verb, differ in Old English only in that one has nominal and one has
verbal morphology, and then fall together as a zero-derivation pair in modern
English, their practice is (often?) to count these as just as different as two
homographs which never had anything to do with each other. I think this is
unfortunate 'cause it belies the _continuous_ existence of morphological
processes in English. It's not as though the verb budded off the noun (or vice
versa) and they turned their backs on each other and went their separate ways;
their relationship was clear throughout, from the time they diverge up through
the time they fall together again.
"Learn" is not _as_ clean-cut as a case of that, but I still on balance woulda
combined them into one entry. "Sense (1) from OE _leornian_, sense (2) from OE
_læran_ absorbed in form by sense (1); both ultimately from PGer *lais-."
> Either way, whatever
> is going on with learn still isn't the same thing as what's going on with
> *only* lend/borrow.
Sure, the particulars of every case are going to be idiosyncratic.
Alex
Messages in this topic (27)
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1.3. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 7:24 pm ((PDT))
On 3/20/2013 2:12 PM, George Corley 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. Maybe it's just that
> it's so clear from context who is the "giver" and "reciever" that you
> really only need one term.
That's the case in Jarda, where the "giver" and "receiver" are
respectively in the ergative and dative cases, so the same verb is used
for both meanings without confusion. Similarly "teach" vs. "learn",
"buy" vs. "sell".
siv "teach, learn"
źum "give, receive"
Åêm "borrow, lend"
zul "buy, sell"
Messages in this topic (27)
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1.4. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 10:35 pm ((PDT))
> Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 16:42:14 -0700
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
> To: [email protected]
> --- On Wed, 3/20/13, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> > From: Alex Fink <[email protected]>
> > Subject: Re: [CONLANG] CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
> > To: [email protected]
> > Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2013, 5:20 PM
> > 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"
Prior to today's little etymological lesson, I did not know this (and
apparently George didn't either). Which means that some (at least two) of us
*are* analyzing it (or, if etymology awareness *does* affect our speech, *have*
analyzed it) as a substitution. Given that French "apprendre" can be used
legitimately for "learn" and "teach" in various contexts, which is what *I*
assumed was going on in English as well, that's not a big reach. That said,
"learn" to mean "teach" sounds rather Appalachian folksy to my ear ("I'm gonna
learn 'em how to skin and boil them there possums."). So I just assumed it was
probably some sort of Shax-era usage that had been preserved in the more
remote, conservative, quaint dialects of the hill people before prescriptivists
back in Merry Ol' got their mitts on it. The prescriptivists did get their
mitts on *me* -- I would never use "learn" this way, except jocularly, though
recognizing that it's out there (in French, too, no less), makes it it somehow
less prescriptively jarring than (see below).
> Could be, though there's still the fact that we've got two very similar
> sounding OE verbs... But I'm no historical linguist! Either way, whatever
> is going on with learn still isn't the same thing as what's going on with
> *only* lend/borrow.
> > "could you borrow me a pencil?"
This, prescriptively, is fingernails down a blackboard. I *know* it's out
there. I've heard it. I *know* about Chinese. I *understand* the principle
intellectually. But while I can be safely and condescendingly amused by "I'll
learn him how to drive.", "borrow me a pencil" sounds perfectly ghastly -- I
just can't get past it. *However*, if someone says:
> Really? I would interpret it as the speaker asking the listener to
> borrow a pencil on the speaker's behalf.
That sounds like a grammar school teacher deliberately throwing out the
pragmatics and gettin' all literal on you just to be annoying, à la:
Pupil: (raising hand) Can I go to the bathroom?
Teacher: I don't know. *Can* you?
Pupil: (grabbing nearest available brick) SMASH!!! "I'm going to the *&%$#@!
bathroom!"
So I may not like "could you borrow me a pencil?", but I certainly understand
it. What you *meant* to say was, "*Would* you *lend* me a pencil?" ;D SMASH!
SMASH! SMASH!
Oddly, we all seem to move pragmatically seamlessly between "come" and "go",
assuming the listener's perspective when we speak, assuming that the listener
is assuming our perspective when we speak, assuming that the listener is
assuming our assuming that he's assuming our perspective when we speak... That
other directional pairings are seemingly thornier in varying ways in varying
dialects/languages is interesting stuff (I think I smell a graduate thesis...).
> Whatever it is, and however it got there, it is very old (earliest use I
> can find is in Shax (As You Like It)). You would think that if it were
> good enough for Bill, it ought to be good enough for us! ;)
Alas, methinks my doublet is at the dry cleaner's. Zounds!
Kou
Messages in this topic (27)
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2a. Re: linguisticising throat-singing
Posted by: "Paul Roser" [email protected]
Date: Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:30 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:43:56 -0400, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>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.
It's been a while since I'd studied this part of acoustic, but I suspect that
the reason some singers can achieve the fifth above the fundamental is because
their fundamental is so low.
[snipped]
>>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...
I believe that the vowel changes are are directly linked to the overtone
changes, so I don't think you can actually manipulate the overtones
independently of the vowels... at least, not in a human vocal tract.
If you're up for some fairly detailed phonetics treatments of overtone singing,
there are two papers online you could check out:
http://email.eva.mpg.de/~grawunde/files/GrawPhD3.pdf
http://physastro.pomona.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/R_Bryant_Foresman_Thesis.pdf
>
>Alex
Messages in this topic (4)
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3a. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 12:34 am ((PDT))
On 20/03/2013 19:06, C. Brickner wrote:
>> 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?
Probably.
> 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.
Correct - -um merely marks "man" as the direct object.
There is nothing in the Latin, either lexically or
grammatically corresponding to English "a" or "the".
As a single specimen sentence, either English translation is
'correct.' Whether, in a given context, one translates
_virum_ as "a man" or "the man" depends upon that _context_.
This, presumably, applies to other languages such as Russian
and Chinese, that lack formally marked definite and/or
indefinite articles.
--
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 (15)
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3b. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 12:46 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 3:34 AM, R A Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 20/03/2013 19:06, C. Brickner wrote:
>
>> 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?
>>
>
> Probably.
>
>
> 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.
>>
>
> Correct - -um merely marks "man" as the direct object.
> There is nothing in the Latin, either lexically or
> grammatically corresponding to English "a" or "the".
>
Shouldn't the order of the words also be considered? Isn't there a
difference in emphasis in the Latin between "virum video" and "video
virum"?
stevo
>
> As a single specimen sentence, either English translation is
> 'correct.' Whether, in a given context, one translates
> _virum_ as "a man" or "the man" depends upon that _context_.
>
> This, presumably, applies to other languages such as Russian
> and Chinese, that lack formally marked definite and/or
> indefinite articles.
>
> --
> Ray
> ==============================**====
> http://www.carolandray.plus.**com <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 (15)
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3c. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 2:17 am ((PDT))
On 21/03/2013 07:45, MorphemeAddict wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 3:34 AM, R A Brown wrote:
>
>> On 20/03/2013 19:06, C. Brickner wrote:
[snip]
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>>
>>
>> Correct - -um merely marks "man" as the direct object.
>> There is nothing in the Latin, either lexically or
>> grammatically corresponding to English "a" or "the".
>>
>
> Shouldn't the order of the words also be considered?
> Isn't there a difference in emphasis in the Latin
> between "virum video" and "video virum"?
Yes, but that does not per_se help with determining whether
'man" is definite or indefinite. There is still nothing in
either the lexis or the morphology of the Latin which
corresponds to English "a" or "an."
Also in Latin there is the complication that the languages
has been (and still to limited extent _is_) used over many
centuries. If we are dealing with Classical Latin, then
sure the word order should be considered; if we found such a
sentence in Medieval Latin, then the word order is probably
not significant, other than reflecting usage in the writer's
L1. If it's post-Medieval, then we'd need to know the
context and/or the writer to know whether the difference in
word order was significant.
Assuming we take the words as either Classical or following
the Classical norm, then the change does have some significance.
_virum video_ is the unmarked word order: "I saw a man" or
"I saw the man."
_video virum_ fronts the topic and puts the focus after it.
We know we topic is about your seeing something, but what
is it you see? In this case, I guess, the indefinite is
more likely, i.e.
"I see _a man_" or "It's a man that I see."
But the unmarked form is clear only in context.
But I'm not clear what Gary does mean. Consider the following.
=====================================================
On 20/03/2013 20:14, Gary Shannon wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:29 AM, George Corley wrote:
> ---
>>
>> Uh, do you mean morphemes?
>>
>
> Possibly. I'm an engineer not a linguist. :)
Either one does or one doesn't. If it is being claimed that
the morphemes of one language will be encoded with
linguistic elements that correspond to those morphemes in
another language, then that is clearly false.
[snip]
>>
>> 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.
Yes - translation is not a trivial matter, as anyone who has
been engaged in translation will know.
[snip]
> 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.
Obviously any translation will have a word meaning
"cabbage". That is trivial.
> 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.
I disagree. My understanding is that Chinese, for example,
would not normally have anything corresponding to "you", it
being understood that if you're asking a stall holder about
the availability of cabbages, you're interesting in whether
s/he can supply them. Presumably adding a word for "you"
would add a nuance not there in the English.
Many languages, of course, do not have a verb corresponding
to English "have". You'd probably say something like "Are
there [any] cabbages?" And, of course, many languages
would not use a word corresponding to English "any" - but, I
suppose, it will be argued that English "any" is an empty
word, conveying no meaning. So why use it?
Sure, "Do you have any cabbage today?" will have equivalents
in any language where cabbages are known. But the only two
elements that we can sure will appear in other languages are
"cabbage" (not all languages mark plural) and "today." If
we insist on having some lexical or grammatical equivalent
of all the other elements in the English sentence, then we
will, I'm sure, often produce something that is more formal
than the English or "sounds foreign" or have other nuances
not implied by the English sentence.
Certainly, in my opinion, the claim that " 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)" is false.
So much of *meaning* is conveyed by context and emphasis
and, in spoken language, tone of voice and other
extra-linguistic elements - not by lexical words or by
morphology.
--
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 (15)
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3d. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:03 am ((PDT))
On 03/20/2013 09:14 PM, Gary Shannon wrote:
> 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.
Meaning comes in two forms: denotation and connotation. The former you
find in a dictionary. the latter is context-dependent. A seafood-lover
and a person who is deadly allergic to seafood cannot have the exact
same connotations to seafood. Connotations also change through
experience, "to play" doesn't mean the same for an adult and a child.
> 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.
*That* Claude Shannon?
The problem isn't the string of tokens, the problem is that the sender
and recipient do not and cannot have the same hardware. An identical
string *will* be treated differently by different people. Encoding
doesn't apply.
.. and there are those that consider true communication between humans
impossible, as a received attempt at communication is run through the
emphatic system meaning that the receiver uses the string of tokens as
input to run a simulation of the reality of the sender in order to guess
at what the sender is attempting to convey. It's "monkey see, moneky
(mentally) do" all the way down.
t.
Messages in this topic (15)
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4a. Re: Languages' Flag
Posted by: "A. da Mek" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 1:43 am ((PDT))
> The idea that a nation and its language are synonymous is part of
> nationalism, which is a relatively recent development in the world.
What is meant here by "recent"? If it is meant "not palaeolithic nor
Mesolithic", then I could agree; but it is not for the first time that I
read a similar surprising claim, and then it was specified as last
century, so I wonder who and why invented it and how anybody can believe
it. Although I do not intend to kindle any off topic flame war whether
national states are a good or evil thing, I suppose that the attempts to
rewrite the known history of languages should not be left without any
comment.
From the very beginning of the history (and the history itself, that is
writing, begins as a consequence of the begin of states), the states
were essentially national, because it was a state what made from the
tribes a nation and from the continuum of dialects a language, that is a
nation and a language in the sense used in last four millennia,
expressed in the well known sayings that a language is a dialect with an
army.
Of course, as the states grew from tiny city states to huge empires,
they often became temporally multinational, but even in the cases when
such growth was accomplished peacefully and the greater unit began as a
personal union of several states electing the same person on their
thrones, such empire became stable only if the ruling dynasty succeeded
to establish one official language to the whole territory and assimilate
other nations.
I do understand that in the modern age (modern in the sense post
medieval), nation-less states came into being and so their citizens
reused the word nation in a different meaning, but they should be aware
that such redefinition inevitably causes misunderstanding in discussion
with people from the parts of the word where the traditional nations
still survived.
Also I do understand than people can have different opinions; some hold
that the traditional concept of nations is evil, or at least that the
traditional nationality is of no value and thus no harm will be done if
it is abandoned; and some even believe that a nation (that is its
culture, connected with its language) can survive without its own
national state. Such questions are a matter of politic and philosophy
and thus off topic. But to claim that there was no nationalism and
national states before the 19th century is either an anachronistic
application of (post)modern meanings to the past, or else maybe part of
some conspiratorial theory claiming that all historic documents, that
clearly shows the real history of nations and their states, are forgeries.
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:38 am ((PDT))
I haven't gotten to the section where I need this info, but when I do, how
do I create a proto-language for Yardish to borrow from? Can I have Yardish
borrow from itself? I think we may have discussed this awhile back. I took a
read through the lesson, but it's written as if I was taking the course with
colleagues. I don't need to create that language, just be able to borrow
words from it, and translate them into Yardish, and tell their original
form.
Messages in this topic (3)
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5b. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:48 am ((PDT))
You need to devise a series of sound shifts by which Yardish derived from the
proto-language, but in reverse. For example, if Yardish has /j/, you could
derive it from /g/ before a front vowel, (possibly via /dzh/, which would give
you an allophone of /g/; then you could posit the loss of front vowels after
/j/, which would result in /g/ being a different phoneme from /j/. To make it
more realistic, you also need to devise a phonology for the proto-language from
which derive the sound-changed which lead to Yardish, possibly along with
lexical, morphological and syntactic differences.
Jeff
Sent from my iPhone
On 21 Mar 2013, at 15:38, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
<[email protected]> wrote:
> I haven't gotten to the section where I need this info, but when I do, how
> do I create a proto-language for Yardish to borrow from? Can I have Yardish
> borrow from itself? I think we may have discussed this awhile back. I took a
> read through the lesson, but it's written as if I was taking the course with
> colleagues. I don't need to create that language, just be able to borrow
> words from it, and translate them into Yardish, and tell their original
> form.
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
5c. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:52 am ((PDT))
So, I was wong, and do need to create the language. Any name ideas?
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Jeffrey Daniel Rollin-Jones
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 5:47 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Creating a Proto-language
You need to devise a series of sound shifts by which Yardish derived from
the proto-language, but in reverse. For example, if Yardish has /j/, you
could derive it from /g/ before a front vowel, (possibly via /dzh/, which
would give you an allophone of /g/; then you could posit the loss of front
vowels after /j/, which would result in /g/ being a different phoneme from
/j/. To make it more realistic, you also need to devise a phonology for the
proto-language from which derive the sound-changed which lead to Yardish,
possibly along with lexical, morphological and syntactic differences.
Jeff
Sent from my iPhone
On 21 Mar 2013, at 15:38, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
<[email protected]> wrote:
> I haven't gotten to the section where I need this info, but when I do, how
> do I create a proto-language for Yardish to borrow from? Can I have
Yardish
> borrow from itself? I think we may have discussed this awhile back. I took
a
> read through the lesson, but it's written as if I was taking the course
with
> colleagues. I don't need to create that language, just be able to borrow
> words from it, and translate them into Yardish, and tell their original
> form.
Messages in this topic (3)
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