There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: Pesky morphemes (was:: Is there an inverse relationship between
From: Jyri Lehtinen
1.2. Re: Pesky morphemes
From: BPJ
1.3. Re: Pesky morphemes
From: R A Brown
1.4. Re: Pesky morphemes
From: Jyri Lehtinen
2.1. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: Roger Mills
2.2. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
From: Gary Shannon
3a. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Roger Mills
3b. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Jyri Lehtinen
3c. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3d. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Paul Schleitwiler, FCM
3e. Re: Creating a Proto-language
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
4.1. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Isaac A. Penziev
4.2. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: David McCann
4.3. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Matthew George
4.4. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
From: Matthew George
Messages
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1.1. Re: Pesky morphemes (was:: Is there an inverse relationship between
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:15 am ((PDT))
It's certainly not always clear where to put morpheme boundaries. And it's
often impossible or at least unnecessarily complicated to force them into
positions that would limit all the allomorphy to the affixes and leave you
with unalternating word stems. A few examples from Finnish:
An extremely common noun/adjective type consists of words ending in -nen.
En example of this is
toinen
"second", "other"
When you start to inflect these words, the ending is changed into either
-se- or -s-:
toise-sta
other-ELATIVE
"from the other"
tois-ta
other-PARTITIVE
"other", "of the other"
tois-i-sta
other-PL-ELATIVE
"from the other ones"
The -nen/se/s formant is definitely part of the word stem rather than
allomorphy of the inflectional affixes. You can say this because all the
affixes have have completely regular forms and the allomorphy is restricted
into a phonologically separate element. The formant is typically part of
transparent derivational affixes but this is not always the case.
A second example are the verbs that have their basic infinitive end in -itA
(A denoting vowel harmony pair a~ä), such as
palkita
"to award"
Now, the prototypical shape of the the short form of the first infinitive
is -tA so you can argue that the stem of the verb is palki-. However, when
you start to conjugate the verb you end up with forms that have either
-itse- or -its- within them:
palkitse-n
award-1SG
"I award"
palkits-isi-n
award-CONDITIONAL-1SG
"I would award"
Again all the inflectional affixes show their regular forms and the
allomorphy is restricted to phonological segments more naturally clumped
together with the rest of the verb stem. Based on these observations, it's
not at all clear whether the /t/ in the infinitive of the verb belongs to
the verb stem (and it part of the stem allomorphy) or to the infinitive
affix.
Yet another similar example consists of verbs like
palata
"to return"
Again we have the infinitive ending in -ta but end up with complications
when conjugating the verb:
palaa-n
return-1SG
"I return"
palaa-va
return-PRES.ACTIVE.PARTICIPLE
"returning"
palas-i-n
return-PAST-1SG
"I returned"
The basic inflectional stem of the verb turns out quite unexpectedly to be
palaa- with a long vowel in the second syllable. We also have palas- before
the past tense affix -i-. Based on this it seems better to split the
infinitive as palat-a with the /t/ as part of the stem and not the affix.
If the infinitive affix would have the form -ta, we would in fact rather
expect it to result in a word form like *palaata similar to the participle
form also built with a -CV affix. This is in fact historically the case and
the reconstructed form of the stem is *palata- with forms like *palata-n
("I return") and *palat-i-n ("I returned"). Later the third syllable /t/
was sibilated before the past tense /i/ and consonant gradation eventually
murdered the remaining /t/s in many other cases. I think the remaining /t/
in the infinitive is ultimately a result of coalescence with the /t/ in the
beginning of the infinitive affix.
This verb class is particularly messy as the /s/ in the past tense stem is
detached from the stem and has become part of the past tense affix in at
least Estonian and the SW-dialects of Finnish. There it has further
generalised into other inflectional classes.
However you decide to to split these inflectional forms you always end up
with stem alternation that cannot be pushed into the affixes. Sometimes
it's possible to come up with some deep underlying forms of the morphemes
(including word stems). But when derivation of the surface forms results in
inventing irregular rules, it's much more productive to restrict the
description closer to the phonological surface.
-Jyri
On 22/03/2013 09:09, R A Brown wrote:
>
>> . For example the Latin genitive plural morpheme, with
>> the allomorphs _Ärum, Ärum, Årum, ium, um_,
>>
>
> OOPS! Morphemes are pesky little critters ;)
>
> I forgot to include the allomorph _uum_ which we find, e.g.
> with the noun _manus_ "hand: - genitive plural: mannuum.
>
> Ha, I hear you say, that's manu+um.
>
> That is, of course, true _diachronically_. But if one looks
> at all the various forms that _manus_ may take we find some
> problems if we accept _manu_ as the morpheme that means "hand".
>
> What do we decompose _manūs_? Do we say that the morpheme
> for singular+genitive, plural+nominative, plural+accusative
> is: vowel length + s?
>
> Or do we say that the long vowel is the result of a
> contraction of the final -u of the stem with the morphemes:
> - is (genitive+singular)
> - es (nominative+plural)
> - ns (accusative+plural)
>
> OK - these may be correct _diachronically_, but it's
> stretching things a bit to maintain that this
> _synchronically_ the best way of doing things.
>
> And what of the dative and ablative plural _manibus_?
>
> 'Tis simpler IMO to regard _man_ as the lexical morpheme,
> and _uum_ as the genitive plural of the 4th declension words.
>
> But, if you want to take a more generative approach and
> insist that the genitive plural morpheme is just plain _um_
> then, indeed, you can come up with an analysis of Latin
> which gives the genitive plural morpheme just the two
> allomorphs _rum_ and _um_. But you have to add quite a few
> rules about what happens when these allomorphs are suffixed
> to particular lexical bases.
>
> It still remains as I wrote before that the genitive plural
> morpheme
>
>> can be decomposed into "plural" and the various meanings
>> associated in Latin with "genitive." To maintain that
>> this morpheme corresponds to a unit of meaning is IMNSHO
>> nonsense.
>>
>
> Fusional languages, and a good many of them are spoken today
> (e.g. Russian, and related Slav languages) pose these lovely
> problems about where exactly the boundary between lexical
> stem and affix is, and IMO run a horse and cart through the
> notion of 1 morpheme = 1 sememe (unit of meaning).
>
> But then it's just these sort of problems that make
> languages so fascinating :)
>
> --
> 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 (30)
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1.2. Re: Pesky morphemes
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:31 am ((PDT))
On 2013-03-22 14:15, Jyri Lehtinen wrote:
> palata
> "to return"
>
> Again we have the infinitive ending in -ta but end up with complications
> when conjugating the verb:
>
> palaa-n
> return-1SG
> "I return"
>
> palaa-va
> return-PRES.ACTIVE.PARTICIPLE
> "returning"
>
> palas-i-n
> return-PAST-1SG
> "I returned"
>
> The basic inflectional stem of the verb turns out quite unexpectedly to be
> palaa- with a long vowel in the second syllable. We also have palas- before
> the past tense affix -i-.
This one at least has a solid diachronic explanation:
* -t- > zero between two unstressed vowels where the
syllable is closed, i.e. a variant of normal
consonant gradation.
* -t- > -s- before i.
But of course neither process is synchronically transparent
anymore, which was the point Ray was making.
/bpj
Messages in this topic (30)
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1.3. Re: Pesky morphemes
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 1:03 pm ((PDT))
On 22/03/2013 17:31, BPJ wrote:
> On 2013-03-22 14:15, Jyri Lehtinen wrote:
[snip]
>> The basic inflectional stem of the verb turns out
>> quite unexpectedly to be palaa- with a long vowel in
>> the second syllable. We also have palas- before the
>> past tense affix -i-.
>
> This one at least has a solid diachronic explanation:
>
> * -t- > zero between two unstressed vowels where the
> syllable is closed, i.e. a variant of normal consonant
> gradation. * -t- > -s- before i.
>
> But of course neither process is synchronically
> transparent anymore, which was the point Ray was making.
Quite so. Diachronically what one is doing is explaining,
in part at least, how the fusion came about. One could
take a diachronically inspired (i.e. "generative") approach
to fusion of endings and stem in Latin nouns and adjective;
but the result is messy.
It is much simpler IMO to take the invariable bit as the the
lexical base, and the rest as the suffix. OK, it does mean
that we have allomorphs for the suffixes, but we would have
that whatever we did, we avoid doing the same for the stem
and we produce 'rules' which have far fewer exceptions
(always a good thing IMO).
The pronouns, of course, are a different kettle of fish ;)
Although the Latin verb is delightfully regular when
compared with that of ancient Greek, it cannot be dealt with
as simply as nouns & adjectives.
As many know, the verb has three different stems which, with
the exception of only about half a dozen, can be derived
regularly from the 'principal' parts given in dictionaries
and grammars.
If we take the verb "to see" as an example, we have:
1. _vidÄ_, traditionally called the 'present stem' and
having the meaning of "see" + "imperfective aspect."
2. _vīd_ traditionally called the 'perfect stem'; but it
does not have the meaning of the perfective aspect, nor the
perfect aspect. It is rather "see" + "_relative_ past".
3. _vīs_ traditionally called the supine stem. But what's
its meaning? From it we form an active verbal noun
expressing purpose, a perfective passive verb adjective, and
a future active verbal adjective (note _verbal_ not
_deverbal_).
I suppose these could be regarded as three allophones of the
morpheme "to see" whose form is conditioned by the extra
meaning added to it. Or they could be regarded as three
separate but related morphemes.
The finite tenses, at least, can be divided into three
morphemes: verb stem + 'tense' + personal ending.
The stem, as we have seen, carries two meanings; 'tense'
(used in a very loose sense) carries the meanings of time
and mood, either indicative or subjunctive (rather wide,
loose meanings); the personal ending, though usually very
short, convey whether it's 12st, 2nd or 3rd person, singular
or plural, and whether active or passive!
Morphemes in fusional languages may be pesky, but they're
more interesting little critters than those in agglutinative
languages ;)
And that, folks, uses up my daily allows of 5 postings ;)
--
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 (30)
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1.4. Re: Pesky morphemes
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 3:41 pm ((PDT))
> Quite so. Diachronically what one is doing is explaining,
> in part at least, how the fusion came about. One could
> take a diachronically inspired (i.e. "generative") approach
> to fusion of endings and stem in Latin nouns and adjective;
> but the result is messy.
>
> It is much simpler IMO to take the invariable bit as the the
> lexical base, and the rest as the suffix. OK, it does mean
> that we have allomorphs for the suffixes, but we would have
> that whatever we did, we avoid doing the same for the stem
> and we produce 'rules' which have far fewer exceptions
> (always a good thing IMO).
>
Well, what was on my mind is that you can't use the same kind of splitting
mechanically for every language. A sane way to do morphemic breakdown for
Finnish will lead you to have stem alternation as well as allomorphy of the
affixes even when you disregard the uncertain cases. One argument for this
is that most of the affixes work in a very agglutinating manner and have
constant forms appearing everywhere. When you then have inflection classes
where something else is changing before the affixes but the affixes
themselves have their stereotypical forms it seems very strange to suddenly
suck extra elements to what you are thinking as the affix.
Besides this statistical argument there is also pervasive stem alternation
used with noun combining. So we have words like
nainen
"woman"
and
asia
"thing"
which when combined together produce a word like
naisasia
"feminism"
which uses the consonantal inflection stem nais-. Compare also
suuri saari
big island
and
Suursaari
[placename]
which contrast the independent form of the adjective suuri and its
consonantal inflection stem suur-. Here you don't have any additional
morphology besides the lexical stems where you could push the alternations
proving that the altered stems are indeed real things.
There is also stem alternation due to consonant gradation but that's beside
the point.
I suppose these could be regarded as three allophones of the
> morpheme "to see" whose form is conditioned by the extra
> meaning added to it. Or they could be regarded as three
> separate but related morphemes.
>
I have to say I'm a bit uncomfortable in making such terminological
distinction especially when it comes to lexical units. These questions
might be relevant in the light of various theories but when describing
individual languages I'd say use what ever fits your data best.
As you state, you can sometimes find correlations between allomorphic
alternations and different grammatical categories. But this is often not
the case at all and the forms are just parts of an inflectional paradigm. A
case in point is Estonian noun declension (seems I seriously need to
broaden my example pool).
-Jyri
Messages in this topic (30)
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2.1. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:19 am ((PDT))
This is interesting to me. Those of you who've read my old Locowrimo story
(basically about a first contact situation-- an alien (actually Terran) who
lands among the Kash) may recall--
He has the technology to learn their language, essentially by downloading the
linguistic contents of an informant's brain into his brain (by a computerized
device, which I can't go into any further :-) but wouldn't it be wonderful!!)
Presumably, along with the vocab and grammar etc., come all the associations
and background that exists in the informant's brain......
http://cinduworld.tripod.com/locowrimo.pdf -- if you search for _We finished
our meal_ you'll get to the relevant part. (unless you want to plow thru the
whole thing, which I encourage :-) toot toot!)
--- On Thu, 3/21/13, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Jim Henry <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and
grammatical complexity?
To: [email protected]
Date: Thursday, March 21, 2013, 1:59 PM
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:35 PM, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]> wrote:
> A thought experiment- how well could you get along conversing with
> someone (or something- an AI program, e.g.) that had a perfect
> knowledge of your language but absolutely no cultural experience? Not
> very well, unless you restrict yourself to vegetable-stall sentences.
I'm not sure the concept is coherent. If such an entity has perfect
knowledge of the language, it must at the very least have a vocabulary
as large as the average educated native speaker (not to get into
issues of what a totally complete lexicon would entail, or how you
could tell whether you'd left anything out). And if it "knows" those
words (and set phrases), it must know what they mean and not just what
part of speech they are and how they inflect (otherwise we could
hardly call its knowledge of the language perfect). And if it knows
the meanings of such words and phrases as "opera", "comics", "Internet
meme", and "talk show", then it must know an awful lot about the
culture of the people who speak the language.
One might posit another thought experiment -- suppose there's an
entity that has perfect knowledge of the language's phonology,
morphology and syntax, but a very limited vocabulary, or a very
limited mastery of a larger vocabulary. That's coherent, but perhaps
less interesting.
This breaks my suspension of disbelief, sometimes, when I read a story
in which magic has instantly given some character a full knowledge of
the language of the people they've fallen in among, but they still
stumble over the meanings of a lot of words and phrases, and they use
words and phrases and English idioms which confuse their
interlocutors, like an intermediate second-language learner. It's
possible to write such a scenario consistently, but most fantasy
authors who've used that trope do it inconsistently.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (30)
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2.2. Re: Is there an inverse relationship between lexical richness and gr
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:03 am ((PDT))
On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 1:46 AM, R A Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 21/03/2013 21:57, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:37 PM, R A Brown wrote:
---
>>>
>>> Ouch! A bit anglocentric, methinks.
---
>>
>> I also pointed out how English was deficient. You edited
>> that part out,
>
>
> Sorry.
In retrospect, "deficient" was a poor choice of word.
---
>
> All language teachers are very aware of the sort of nonsense
> that gets produced by those who do a literal word by word
> translation. It doesn't work because, far from conveying
> meaning of the original, it in fact often distorts it.
I can see that I'm interpreting these issues from a non-linguist
perspective, and probably confusing the issue by doing so. Without
stopping to define my own terms, in fact, I end up confusing myself as
well! A literal word-for-word translation from English into Spanish
might produce a mangled Spanish sentence that no native speaker would
ever utter, but to my (admittedly twisted) way of thinking, if it
conveys the correct meaning and abides by the letter of the
grammatical law then the sentence is a "correct" translation, in the
narrow sense that it succeeds in communicating the information that
needs to be communicated.
---
> You speak of "each element of meaning" being carried by "a
> word" or by "an affix". If you are not referring to
> morphemes, then what do you mean by "word" and "affix"?
>
O.K., this is an instance where I ended up confusing myself by not
defining my terms, even to myself. I switched what I meant by "unit of
meaning" in mid-stream. My apologies. I think I started out
considering a "unit of meaning" to be something that identified some
single participant in whatever event or state of affairs is being
described by the sentence. In that case "crayon" would, for example,
be a unit of meaning.
But then, after playing with the ideas for a bit, I ended up changing
my mind about "unit of meaning" and made it be about a single
_relationship_ between two named entities or attributes. In that case
"X is broken." is a unit of meaning involving two naming symbols or
tags and establishing a relationship between the the two things or
attributes named by the tags.
Now, however, I'm not sure what I mean by "unit of meaning."
---
>
>> "My red crayon is broken." Carries four (?) units of
>> meaning:
>>
>> 1. There exists an instance X of the class crayon. 2. I
>> own X. 3. X is red. 4. X is broken.
>>
>> That's four units of meaning in a five word sentence.
>> (Perhaps there are more units of meaning?)
---
> But what a unit of meaning is ain't so easy to define,
> otherwise we'd all agree what a sememe is. It's what
> semantics is about. It is not trivial.
---
> We seem, at last, to agree that "units of meaning" are not
> the same as morphemes.
>
> Yes, if a sentence in English and a sentence in Chinese
> conveys (more or less) the same meaning, then the two will
> have the same number of "units of meaning". It's pinning
> those units down that's often the non-trivial bit.
>
>
> --
> Ray
I've discovered my principle fault when posting my thoughts to this
list. Unlike those of you who actually know what you're talking about,
I don't post to defend my point of view. Instead, I post to _discover_
my point of view, and very often that point of view changes from one
post to the next. If you notice that I contradict what I said two or
three posts ago it's probably because two or three posts ago I had no
idea what I was talking about. (Of course I STILL don't know what I'm
talking about, but I might be getting closer.)
--gary
Messages in this topic (30)
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3a. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:22 am ((PDT))
--- On Thu, 3/21/13, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
You don't *need* to have a protolanguage. A lot of us like to do that
because we find figuring out the sound changes to be fun, but if you think
it's a chore, skip it.
======================================
Ah sad but true. And if you've created a living, modern language from thin air,
it's VERY HARD to devise it's proto-language, though it can be done.....
Imagine, trying to get back to Proto-IE just on the basis of modern English.
Messages in this topic (17)
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3b. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:14 am ((PDT))
2013/3/22 Roger Mills <[email protected]>
> --- On Thu, 3/21/13, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
> You don't *need* to have a protolanguage. A lot of us like to do that
> because we find figuring out the sound changes to be fun, but if you think
> it's a chore, skip it.
> ======================================
>
> Ah sad but true. And if you've created a living, modern language from thin
> air, it's VERY HARD to devise it's proto-language, though it can be
> done..... Imagine, trying to get back to Proto-IE just on the basis of
> modern English.
>
Well, you don't have to go many millennia back in time with your
proto-language. It all depends on what you want to do with it. Is it going
to function as a way to explain where the grammar of the "present" language
comes from or are you going to use it to derive some sister languages, or
maybe its an older form of the language that you see in old literature.
I think the hardness goes the other way around. When you have created the
grammar out of thin air it can be very hard to come u pwith a logical and
plausible history for it. But on the other hand, you can have a lot of
freedom explaining your word forms if you go by the way of extensive
simplification of the sound system (complicated words becoming simpler and
tidier ones).
-Jyri
Messages in this topic (17)
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3c. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:33 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Friday 22 March 2013 16:22:21 Roger Mills wrote:
> --- On Thu, 3/21/13, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
> You don't *need* to have a protolanguage. A lot of us like to do that
> because we find figuring out the sound changes to be fun, but if you think
> it's a chore, skip it.
> ======================================
>
> Ah sad but true. And if you've created a living, modern language from thin
> air, it's VERY HARD to devise it's proto-language, though it can be
> done..... Imagine, trying to get back to Proto-IE just on the basis of
> modern English.
It is difficult but doable with *one* language - but if you have
created *multiple* languages, each from scratch, or by randomly
altering the words of the first, and try to build a common proto-
language for these, you are screwed. It just won't work.
--
... 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 (17)
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3d. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Paul Schleitwiler, FCM" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:44 am ((PDT))
Another approach to "protolanguage" is to take two or more conlangs and try
to find common roots by sound or meaning shifts. Differences which cannot
be reconciled could be neologisms or borrowings from elsewhere. Such
borrowings could also add new dimensions to your conlangs history.
BTW, that would be an interesting exercise to find the common ancestor of
conlangs from diffrent members of this group.
God bless you always, all ways,
Paul
Messages in this topic (17)
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3e. Re: Creating a Proto-language
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:03 pm ((PDT))
I'm going to use it to explain the present language's etimology. But because
it's a dead language, does it still count as a proto-language, or is it a
dead language period. Also, how do I account for it dieing out, since no
Yemorans came into contact with Yardish, the present form of the language.
Also, here's a slightly off-topic question, how far back in time should I go
to get linguistic material, is 2003 to out-of-date, I'm thinking so, but am
curious to know what you think. I had a book called The Power of Babel, but
it was written in 2001, and I have a book called Language Endanger, I think
it was written in 2003.
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Jyri Lehtinen
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2013 10:14 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Creating a Proto-language
2013/3/22 Roger Mills <[email protected]>
> --- On Thu, 3/21/13, Patrick Dunn <[email protected]> wrote:
> You don't *need* to have a protolanguage. A lot of us like to do that
> because we find figuring out the sound changes to be fun, but if you think
> it's a chore, skip it.
> ======================================
>
> Ah sad but true. And if you've created a living, modern language from thin
> air, it's VERY HARD to devise it's proto-language, though it can be
> done..... Imagine, trying to get back to Proto-IE just on the basis of
> modern English.
>
Well, you don't have to go many millennia back in time with your
proto-language. It all depends on what you want to do with it. Is it going
to function as a way to explain where the grammar of the "present" language
comes from or are you going to use it to derive some sister languages, or
maybe its an older form of the language that you see in old literature.
I think the hardness goes the other way around. When you have created the
grammar out of thin air it can be very hard to come u pwith a logical and
plausible history for it. But on the other hand, you can have a lot of
freedom explaining your word forms if you go by the way of extensive
simplification of the sound system (complicated words becoming simpler and
tidier ones).
-Jyri
Messages in this topic (17)
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4.1. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Isaac A. Penziev" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:50 am ((PDT))
21.03.2013 23:27, H. S. Teoh пиÑеÑ:
> True, but AFAIK, there isn't a direct 1-word equivalent of "go" or
> "come" in Russian... is there? (Then again, I trip up on verbs of
> motion all the time, so maybe I'm dead wrong.) T
Nah. Both "ÑйÑи" (walk away) and "пÑийÑи" (walk toward the ref point)
use a ref point of speaker. They arent 100% equivalents of "go" and
"come", unfortunately. And then you have smth like "пойÑи" (start to
walk), "подойÑи" (come closer), "оÑойÑи" (walk a bit away),
"войÑи"
(enter), "вÑйÑи" (get out), "пеÑейÑи" (walk across)â¦
Ve anwa sermolya,
Yitzik
Messages in this topic (43)
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4.2. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:15 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:07:21 -0400
Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]> wrote:
> Russian uses aspect prefixes often to distinguish these. However,
> ÑÑиÑÑ is the verb for "teach", and with the reflexive suffix -ÑÑ it
> becomes "learn" (i.e. teach yourself).
>
That's like the use of the Middle Voice in Classical Greek:
edidaxamÄn (perfect. middle) "I learnt " but also edidaxamÄn se "I got
you taught"
daneizÅ "I lend", daneizomai (middle) "I borrow"
misthÅ "I let", misthoumai "I hire"
Messages in this topic (43)
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4.3. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:19 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 4:48 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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.
>
Which would be fine and dandy - except absent a nuance to distinguish the
different meanings, making the two words synonymously one deprives the
language of a way to express a meaning without gaining any expressiveness.
A net loss of utility.
I see no reason why any language (even English) *must* do things the way
English does at the moment... but the referenced usage doesn't represent an
alternate method, merely a breaking of the existing one.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (43)
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4.4. Re: CHAT: Does etymology awareness affect your speech?
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:35 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:35 AM, Douglas Koller
<[email protected]>wrote:
> 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.
The first example has no other English meaning - so even if it's considered
an error, its meaning is clear. The second example already has an
established meaning - to figure out what was meant, I have to first
recognize that the standard meaning isn't intended, then inhibit it. The
resulting dissonance is painful.
> 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!"
>
The conflation of ability and permission is both common and natural. It's
a social reality that the teacher's permission is 'necessary' to visit the
restroom, not a literal one. Speaking from that perspective is literally
incorrect, but meaningful in the social context.
>
> So I may not like "could you borrow me a pencil?", but I certainly
> understand it.
I do not immediately understand it. And it's not just a matter of
perspective. Use that question with me, and you ain't gonna get a pencil
no matter what. So, pragmatically, it's wrong.
Messages in this topic (43)
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