There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
From: BPJ
1b. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
From: H. S. Teoh
1c. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
From: Jim Henry
1d. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
From: H. S. Teoh
2a. Re: Chomskybot
From: Gary Shannon
2b. Re: Chomskybot
From: Dustfinger Batailleur
2c. Re: Chomskybot
From: Garth Wallace
2d. Re: Chomskybot
From: Alex Fink
2e. Re: Chomskybot
From: Gary Shannon
2f. Re: Chomskybot
From: Alex Fink
2g. Re: Chomskybot
From: Gary Shannon
2h. Re: Chomskybot
From: Ralph DeCarli
3.1. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
From: Jyri Lehtinen
4a. Re: New Year / Easter Greetings to All (longish)
From: Roger Mills
5. Auxiliaries - want
From: neo gu
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 5:56 am ((PDT))
On 2013-04-01 14:23, Jim Henry wrote:
> Amiable possession marks healthy body
> parts, kinfolks one is on good terms with, and sometimes artifacts
> with strong sentimental value. Inamiable possession marks unhealthy
> body parts, kinfolks one is on the outs with, and artifacts one has no
> emotional attachment to.
That's *really* cool. Is there an ANADEW?
Sohlob has garden variety (in)alienable possession,
but I guess it could do the same trick with body parts:
an alienable body part would be lost or 'out of order'.
The only trouble I can see is that alienable possession
normally uses the superessive case, whereas a lost pody
part would more naturally use the delative or elative.
/bpj
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 9:58 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 01, 2013 at 02:56:22PM +0200, BPJ wrote:
> On 2013-04-01 14:23, Jim Henry wrote:
> > Amiable possession marks healthy body
> >parts, kinfolks one is on good terms with, and sometimes artifacts
> >with strong sentimental value. Inamiable possession marks unhealthy
> >body parts, kinfolks one is on the outs with, and artifacts one has no
> >emotional attachment to.
>
> That's *really* cool.
Yeah, that *is* really cool! I'm gonna hafta ste^H^H^H borrow that idea
for my own conlangs. ;)
> Is there an ANADEW?
[...]
Not that I know of. But then I don't know that many natlangs. :)
T
--
Gone Chopin. Bach in a minuet.
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 10:17 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 8:38 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> Very interesting stuff there. Any ANADEW for the kinship system?
Not that I know of.
> And I
> really like the distinction in possessives! Major coolness.
Thanks.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Kinship system of Fqasim (formerly known as čvuuţxh)
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 10:43 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 01, 2013 at 09:56:43AM -0700, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > On 2013-04-01 14:23, Jim Henry wrote:
> > > Amiable possession marks healthy body
> > >parts, kinfolks one is on good terms with, and sometimes artifacts
> > >with strong sentimental value. Inamiable possession marks unhealthy
> > >body parts, kinfolks one is on the outs with, and artifacts one has no
> > >emotional attachment to.
[...]
> > Is there an ANADEW?
> [...]
>
> Not that I know of. But then I don't know that many natlangs. :)
[...]
On second thought, while I don't know of any anadewism for this, my
Tatari Faran does distinguish between genitive, compositive
(appositive), and partitive:
- Genitive is for general possession or source (e.g., tatari faran =
tatari (language) + fara (Fara) + -n (genitive): the language _of_
Fara).
- Compositive is for making compounds, e.g., servant girl (the servant
is the girl, the girl is the servant): diru ihinan (diru (girl) + i-
(compositive prefix) + hina (servant) + -n (compositive suffix))).
- Partitive is for indicating parts of a larger whole; this would be
used for body parts, components, subsets, etc.. E.g.: jibin kuanas
(jibin (child) + kuana (family) + -s (partitive suffix)) = a child of
the family (the child is a part of the family); pika kiranis = hand of
the man (pika (hand) + kiran (man) + -is (partitive suffix); the hand
is part of the man).
This is more of an acadebism than an anadewism, though. :-P (Although I
wouldn't necessarily claim it's *better* in this case -- Tatari Faran
doesn't indicate healthy vs. unhealthy body parts, for example.)
Sighh. It's been years since I touch Tatari Faran. Maybe it's time to
revive it!!
T
--
Prosperity breeds contempt, and poverty breeds consent. -- Suck.com
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 8:47 am ((PDT))
I think to pass for a real language the easiest way to approach a
conlangbot would be to have it build a lexicon of a couple thousand words,
making a clear distinction between words types (parts of speech). Each word
should have a specific, but randomly generated frequency of occurrence.
Then there should be an actual generative grammar that would build random
sentences in a systematic way. There would not have to be a systematic
phonology since it would only be a written language, but there would need
to be a systematic orthography and morphology.
The grammar might even include systematic construction of noun cases, verb
tenses, grammatical gender, structure of compound sentences, dependent
clauses, formulaic structures like "AS large AS..." or "should never have
been..." etc. The lexicon should also include common idioms and set phrases.
.
In other words, it would essentially be a complete conlang, but without any
semantic content. It would be all grammar and no meaning.
--gary
On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 9:13 PM, Daniel Myers <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I wrote a program quite a while back that generated nonsense based on
> text from Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. I had code that deconstructed the
> source text and build new words based on letter and syllable patterns,
> and then used the new words to construct sentence fragments. Those
> fragments were then used to build text the same way as done by the
> Chomskybot.
>
> I suspect that it would pass at least some of the statistical tests for
> a language, but its output is indeed gibberish.
>
> http://www.medievalcookery.com/bookofrefreshments/cgi/pnakotic.pl
>
> While the text generator is currently using the same sentence fragments
> over and over, however I could probably combine the code for all the
> steps pretty easily. Here's a sample of the output:
>
> Zadai tsag nagn, coggoth ign zhol nkothai zophkaul gnuntath ph'ngla
> shaagai wgua schi unai bung mnihi sauth yoth ngegn ygguthu nilabbai
> nkaattath tsun ki yuttaong bung glath. R'loih untor mnath cfigar
> wgobbiggua bui gho ph'nglac shuak paghyaem: shoghoir yiddah gnichos
> untognaghal cthol nkobhoggighagl untognaghal hun gnichos ngharibbor
> gnichos chagh coth gnuntath iteg ph'nglonthoiphki kagoqiggak sagl pnafl
> yalha ithara gnosti yaggar ghoth. Cfagua, yalha chogn pna yokeh nuh,
> waag untognaghal n'gaulattoa gnichos tastoa gnichos untognaghal wua
> llenao schoh'nong ghag glar lauth wgua fezaddogogg zos ghogai. Nagons
> tah gho ph'nglac tayazoa nuggal wguth pna yarlah ghabbugn gnichos
> coggoth rhuk nkur cothlegn zolommoggir llokang r'lyeh ugn gnuntath
> bothal mglw'noba choghoquth gafh ki aghaoh unai og ybbaufh lornar unai
> ki fu. Llo hagn, shoghoir saghon fohang mglw'nethoith nonagg cfto ki hib
> zadai op unai ki zoltgm.
>
> - Doc
>
>
> > -------- Original Message --------
> > From: Gary Shannon <[email protected]>
> > Date: Sun, March 31, 2013 11:55 pm
> >
> > I'd be interested in seeing a conlangbot that put out text that passes
> all
> > statistical tests for an actual language, but isn't. Kinda like a Voynich
> > generator, but with a known alphabet.
> >
> > --gary
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >
> > > --- On Sun, 3/31/13, Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > > This is actually amazing.
> > > >
> > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomskybot
> > >
> > > Yeah. That is amazingly comprehensible. If this bot puts out linguistic
> > > gibberish, then one wonders what sorts of rubbish the actual linguist
> put
> > > out? ;))
> > >
> > > Padraic
> > >
> > >
>
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Dustfinger Batailleur" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 8:50 am ((PDT))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law
The above sounds convenient for this purpose.
On 1 April 2013 11:47, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think to pass for a real language the easiest way to approach a
> conlangbot would be to have it build a lexicon of a couple thousand words,
> making a clear distinction between words types (parts of speech). Each word
> should have a specific, but randomly generated frequency of occurrence.
>
> Then there should be an actual generative grammar that would build random
> sentences in a systematic way. There would not have to be a systematic
> phonology since it would only be a written language, but there would need
> to be a systematic orthography and morphology.
>
> The grammar might even include systematic construction of noun cases, verb
> tenses, grammatical gender, structure of compound sentences, dependent
> clauses, formulaic structures like "AS large AS..." or "should never have
> been..." etc. The lexicon should also include common idioms and set
> phrases.
> .
> In other words, it would essentially be a complete conlang, but without any
> semantic content. It would be all grammar and no meaning.
>
> --gary
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 9:13 PM, Daniel Myers <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >
> > I wrote a program quite a while back that generated nonsense based on
> > text from Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. I had code that deconstructed the
> > source text and build new words based on letter and syllable patterns,
> > and then used the new words to construct sentence fragments. Those
> > fragments were then used to build text the same way as done by the
> > Chomskybot.
> >
> > I suspect that it would pass at least some of the statistical tests for
> > a language, but its output is indeed gibberish.
> >
> > http://www.medievalcookery.com/bookofrefreshments/cgi/pnakotic.pl
> >
> > While the text generator is currently using the same sentence fragments
> > over and over, however I could probably combine the code for all the
> > steps pretty easily. Here's a sample of the output:
> >
> > Zadai tsag nagn, coggoth ign zhol nkothai zophkaul gnuntath ph'ngla
> > shaagai wgua schi unai bung mnihi sauth yoth ngegn ygguthu nilabbai
> > nkaattath tsun ki yuttaong bung glath. R'loih untor mnath cfigar
> > wgobbiggua bui gho ph'nglac shuak paghyaem: shoghoir yiddah gnichos
> > untognaghal cthol nkobhoggighagl untognaghal hun gnichos ngharibbor
> > gnichos chagh coth gnuntath iteg ph'nglonthoiphki kagoqiggak sagl pnafl
> > yalha ithara gnosti yaggar ghoth. Cfagua, yalha chogn pna yokeh nuh,
> > waag untognaghal n'gaulattoa gnichos tastoa gnichos untognaghal wua
> > llenao schoh'nong ghag glar lauth wgua fezaddogogg zos ghogai. Nagons
> > tah gho ph'nglac tayazoa nuggal wguth pna yarlah ghabbugn gnichos
> > coggoth rhuk nkur cothlegn zolommoggir llokang r'lyeh ugn gnuntath
> > bothal mglw'noba choghoquth gafh ki aghaoh unai og ybbaufh lornar unai
> > ki fu. Llo hagn, shoghoir saghon fohang mglw'nethoith nonagg cfto ki hib
> > zadai op unai ki zoltgm.
> >
> > - Doc
> >
> >
> > > -------- Original Message --------
> > > From: Gary Shannon <[email protected]>
> > > Date: Sun, March 31, 2013 11:55 pm
> > >
> > > I'd be interested in seeing a conlangbot that put out text that passes
> > all
> > > statistical tests for an actual language, but isn't. Kinda like a
> Voynich
> > > generator, but with a known alphabet.
> > >
> > > --gary
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sun, Mar 31, 2013 at 7:33 PM, Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > > --- On Sun, 3/31/13, Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > This is actually amazing.
> > > > >
> > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomskybot
> > > >
> > > > Yeah. That is amazingly comprehensible. If this bot puts out
> linguistic
> > > > gibberish, then one wonders what sorts of rubbish the actual linguist
> > put
> > > > out? ;))
> > > >
> > > > Padraic
> > > >
> > > >
> >
>
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 8:56 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think to pass for a real language the easiest way to approach a
> conlangbot would be to have it build a lexicon of a couple thousand words,
> making a clear distinction between words types (parts of speech). Each word
> should have a specific, but randomly generated frequency of occurrence.
>
> Then there should be an actual generative grammar that would build random
> sentences in a systematic way. There would not have to be a systematic
> phonology since it would only be a written language, but there would need
> to be a systematic orthography and morphology.
>
> The grammar might even include systematic construction of noun cases, verb
> tenses, grammatical gender, structure of compound sentences, dependent
> clauses, formulaic structures like "AS large AS..." or "should never have
> been..." etc. The lexicon should also include common idioms and set phrases.
> .
> In other words, it would essentially be a complete conlang, but without any
> semantic content. It would be all grammar and no meaning.
That's what I was thinking. I'm not sure you'd even need to come up
with a morphology though. You could just use lists of static
wordforms. It wouldn't be all that difficult actually.
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 9:01 am ((PDT))
On Mon, 1 Apr 2013 08:47:49 -0700, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>I think to pass for a real language the easiest way to approach a
>conlangbot would be to have it build a lexicon of a couple thousand words,
>making a clear distinction between words types (parts of speech). Each word
>should have a specific, but randomly generated frequency of occurrence.
>
>Then there should be an actual generative grammar that would build random
>sentences in a systematic way. There would not have to be a systematic
>phonology since it would only be a written language, but there would need
>to be a systematic orthography and morphology.
>
>The grammar might even include systematic construction of noun cases, verb
>tenses, grammatical gender, structure of compound sentences, dependent
>clauses, formulaic structures like "AS large AS..." or "should never have
>been..." etc. The lexicon should also include common idioms and set phrases.
>.
>In other words, it would essentially be a complete conlang, but without any
>semantic content. It would be all grammar and no meaning.
What you describe here is quite cool -- and fits right in with my
random-language-generation megaproject; semantics is hàrd so something
approximating this is probably the furthest I'll ever get in actuality -- but
would probably be an immense lot of work.
I think that to pass for a real language, the _easiest_ way would be something
like projects you've suggested around here earlier: pick a random passage in a
random natlang from the internet or something, then massage it by enough
randomly generated local rewrite rules (think sound changes, but they don't
have to be plausible sound changes; 'swap "b" and "ch"' is fine too) until any
resemblance to the original has entirely receded from detectability.
Alex
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2e. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 10:37 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Apr 2013 08:47:49 -0700, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >I think to pass for a real language the easiest way to approach a
> >conlangbot would be to have it build a lexicon of a couple thousand words,
> >making a clear distinction between words types (parts of speech). Each
> word
> >should have a specific, but randomly generated frequency of occurrence.
> ----
>
> What you describe here is quite cool -- and fits right in with my
> random-language-generation megaproject; semantics is hàrd so something
> approximating this is probably the furthest I'll ever get in actuality --
> but would probably be an immense lot of work.
>
> I think that to pass for a real language, the _easiest_ way would be
> something like projects you've suggested around here earlier: pick a random
> passage in a random natlang from the internet or something, then massage it
> by enough randomly generated local rewrite rules (think sound changes, but
> they don't have to be plausible sound changes; 'swap "b" and "ch"' is fine
> too) until any resemblance to the original has entirely receded from
> detectability.
>
> Alex
>
Another easy approach would be like "MadLibs". Just have a collection of a
few hundred sentences, or phrases with some "conjunctions" that could be
used to paste simple ones together into longer ones. Then just fill the
empty slots from a random lexicon with the appropriate frequency
distribution.
[name], [job title] who is the [adj] [occupation] for [organization] where
the [event] occurred, told me that [noun] was less [adjective] this month
as [event] continued, saying it was [comparative adj] than the [noun]
[verb-ed] on a [noun].
Then, of course, you could construct similar templates using nonsense words
with slots to be filled from one of several different lexical classes based
on Zipf-type frequency distribution.
Ur [class 1] myogin da [class 3a] sen [class 2], [class 2] [class 4], num
da [class 1] ka+[root 7]+ya min.
--gary
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2f. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 11:32 am ((PDT))
On Mon, 1 Apr 2013 10:37:18 -0700, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 9:01 AM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 1 Apr 2013 08:47:49 -0700, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> >I think to pass for a real language the easiest way to approach a
>> >conlangbot would be to have it build a lexicon of a couple thousand words,
>> >making a clear distinction between words types (parts of speech). Each
>> word
>> >should have a specific, but randomly generated frequency of occurrence.
>> ----
>>
>> I think that to pass for a real language, the _easiest_ way would be
>> something like projects you've suggested around here earlier: pick a random
>> passage in a random natlang from the internet or something, then massage it
>> by enough randomly generated local rewrite rules (think sound changes, but
>> they don't have to be plausible sound changes; 'swap "b" and "ch"' is fine
>> too) until any resemblance to the original has entirely receded from
>> detectability.
>
>Another easy approach would be like "MadLibs". Just have a collection of a
>few hundred sentences, or phrases with some "conjunctions" that could be
>used to paste simple ones together into longer ones. Then just fill the
>empty slots from a random lexicon with the appropriate frequency
>distribution.
>
>[name], [job title] who is the [adj] [occupation] for [organization] where
>the [event] occurred, told me that [noun] was less [adjective] this month
>as [event] continued, saying it was [comparative adj] than the [noun]
>[verb-ed] on a [noun].
>
>Then, of course, you could construct similar templates using nonsense words
>with slots to be filled from one of several different lexical classes based
>on Zipf-type frequency distribution.
>
>Ur [class 1] myogin da [class 3a] sen [class 2], [class 2] [class 4], num
>da [class 1] ka+[root 7]+ya min.
Mm, maybe you could dig up a copy of old Racter
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter> and gibberish its data files
appropriately.
But here are some ways I might try to tell those apart, at least with large
corpora (of course, the larger the corpus, the harder it is to pass):
- Can you see the sentence types repeating? :-p
- Are there correlations between pairs of content words which tend to appear in
proximity? Natlang passages will have topics, so you're liable to get a bunch
of food words together, or of political vocab together, or whatnot.
Alex
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2g. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 2:32 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> ---
>
> Mm, maybe you could dig up a copy of old Racter <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter> and gibberish its data files
> appropriately.
>
> But here are some ways I might try to tell those apart, at least with
> large corpora (of course, the larger the corpus, the harder it is to pass):
> - Can you see the sentence types repeating? :-p
> - Are there correlations between pairs of content words which tend to
> appear in proximity? Natlang passages will have topics, so you're liable
> to get a bunch of food words together, or of political vocab together, or
> whatnot.
>
> Alex
>
Maybe content words could be grouped into "topics" (where topic does not
refer to anything real, of course, but just to a chance association between
groups of words). Of course if this type of reasoning is carried too far
then the "gibberish" might start to become meaningful, just because it
meets the statistical criteria for meaningful text. Then the task would be
to discover the meaning. Kind of like picking up a book in some language
you know nothing about and trying to figure out the meaning without a
dictionary or reference grammar.
One way to construct conlang gibberish automatically would be to collect
three-word sequences from a source language and then look for collocations
shared between groups of words. For example, "the old man", "the last man",
"the unhappy man",... would imply that {old, last, unhappy} constitutes a
set of interchangeable words. We can call it category 1. Now a template
"the [1] man" could be created. Further analysis might reveal that "man"
also has many other words that occur in similar contexts (say category 2)
so that the template can be generalized to read "the [1] [2]", and so on.
By cross referencing the data in every way imaginable you should be able to
come up with sub-templates that might look like "[3] [12] [6]" where those
three numbers refer to three word categories. Then that pattern could be
concatenated with another pattern that shared the last two category
numbers, e.g. "[12] [6] [9]" giving the pattern "[3] [12] [6] [9]", and so
on until an "end-of-sentence" flag was found in a pattern. Then words could
be extracted from the lexicon and plugged into the template to create a
"sentence".
This, of course, is just a second order Markov chain, but with the
generated strings being a list of word categories rather than actual words.
Then a second pass would select words from each given category to generate
the actual text. That second pass could filter for "topic".
Using this method a bogus hybrid conlang could be generated automatically
by scanning a large sample of a source text in language A (say Hungarian)
to extract the sentence-level word chain statistics, and a second language
B (say Spanish) to extract the syllable-level word generation statistics.
Then the bogolang would have the large scale statistical properties of
Hungarian with the word-level orthographic properties of Spanish.
--gary
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
2h. Re: Chomskybot
Posted by: "Ralph DeCarli" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 6:37 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:55:35 -0700
Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'd be interested in seeing a conlangbot that put out text that
> passes all statistical tests for an actual language, but isn't.
> Kinda like a Voynich generator, but with a known alphabet.
>
> --gary
>
That sounds a little like DadaDodo.
>From the website:
"DadaDodo is a program that analyses texts for word probabilities,
and then generates random sentences based on that. Sometimes these
sentences are nonsense; but sometimes they cut right through to the
heart of the matter, and reveal hidden meanings."
http://www.jwz.org/dadadodo/
Ralph
--
[email protected] ==> Ralph L. De Carli
Have you heard of the new post-neo-modern art style?
They haven't decided what it looks like yet.
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3.1. Re: Creating A Prononominal System
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 1:42 pm ((PDT))
> > Many languages of the area also make only partial person distinction in
> > their non-singular pronouns. So for example Awa contrasts in plural _ite_
> > (1/2.PL) with _se_ (3.PL) and Iatmul in dual _an_ (1.DU) with _mpɨk_
> > (2/3.DU).
> >
> > Some of these features are very strange and I would have considered them
> > wildly unnaturalistic if I would have encountered them first in someone's
> > conlang.
>
> Now *that's* cool. It's sort of a mirror image of the 1st person
> inclusive/exclusive distinction- English "we" is ambiguous between
> including the addressee or not (but always includes the speaker),
> while I'd guess Awa "ite" is ambiguous between including the speaker
> or not (but always includes the addressee; if I'm wrong in that guess,
> well, there's a cool conlang idea for you)
The full material presented in the book gives a somewhat more complicated
picture of the whole situation of pronominal marking in Awa. The full set
of personal pronouns is
SG PL
1 ne ite
2 are ite
3 we se
where we have the conflation of 1PL and 2PL. The basic system of subject
suffixes of the verbs is
SG DU PL
1 -ga -ya -na
2 -na -ya -wa
3 -de -ya -wa
We have even heavier conflation here than with the independent pronouns but
the patterns are totally different. Firstly the plural series merges 2PL
with 3PL instead of 1PL. The 1PL has the same form as 2SG displaying the
same pattern as the Suki pronouns but unlike the language's own independent
pronouns. Finally there's a dual series that merges all persons and
signifies only the number of the subject.
The material doesn't give any information on the use of the independent
pronouns and subject suffixes. Most importantly, how mandatorily are the
independent pronouns used to clarify unspecified person and number of the
subject or are they just reserved for stuff like topicalised subjects? In
any case the language has in principle tools for distinguishing all other
person-number combinations of the subject except probably 1DU and 2DU. I
suspect these will both get _ite_ and -ya.
The language also has a secondary set of subject suffixes:
SG DU PL
1 -ʔ -yaʔ -naʔ
2 -naʔ -yaʔ -ʔ
3 -ʔ -yaʔ -ʔ
This system is even more conflated than the first set of suffixes.
Annoyingly no information is given concerning when this system should be
used instead of the first one.
So it turns out to be rather tricky to come up with any overarching
philosophy behind the person and number marking in Awa. What this example
tells us is that it's certainly possible to merge different cells of the
person-number matrix quite heavily and even have multiple patterns for it
within the same language. Some of the patterns that are present here are
not too rare and especially the lack of person distinction in dual (or
other highly marked numbers) is something that you run across now and then.
I don't know how accurate your analysis is of _ite_ being ambiguous
regarding the inclusion of the speaker but always including the addressee.
I'd suspect it can also be used in the sense of an exclusive we thus
excluding the addressee.
-Jyri
Messages in this topic (29)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: New Year / Easter Greetings to All (longish)
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 2:38 pm ((PDT))
Thanks to all for the many and varied responses to my idea, which is just that,
though it's been kicking around for quite a while, actually....
The problem with it being an event in Kash history is precisely their
telepathic ability and resultant cultural cohesiveness. Even so, anciently,
telepathy was just something that happened to exist, in various strengths. Most
people just used it in their social relationships, and weren't very skilled.
Those who were skilled (and sometimes frightened by it) early on gravitated to
the priestly caste (shamans more or less), whose job was thought to be "to
communicate with the Spirits of the natural world"-- these were considered to
be manifestations on earth of the Primum Mobile ("e parahambesa"), who was
considered to be unapproachable. IT (for lack of a proper pronoun), having
created the universe and set it in motion, withdrew to other tasks and took no
further note of IT's creation.
The priests, as they found more skilled people (by sniffing them out in schools
and/or just hanging around "eavesdropping" on people's mental conversations),
branched off into the Law, Medicine, Psychology, occasionally Education. Some
became advisors to rulers, or to business men who used them to pry into the
competition's motives (now considered a no-no, though it happens :-)) ) Some
("lawyers, psychologists") were able to probe quite deeply into others' minds
(usually only with permission, except in the case of criminals). Very few
ordinary people knew how to block such probes.
The very very few (I think I've written " about one per generation" ) who had
real power-- i.e. could control another person-- usually found their way into
the rulers' bodyguard, provided they were detected. If not, they were
sometimes tempted to misuse their power, whihc of course led to their being
found out and dealt with, sometimes harshly.
The priests never figured out how to increase or train the ability. That
changed when the Aliens arrive about 250 years ago. Some were very skilled
telepaths, esp. the " blue" people, who came from an oxygen-poor planet, and
barely used speech. They did know how to train and increase the ability, and
set about assessing as many Kash as they could, training them, and often
offering them posts in the Galactic Unity.
In the meantime, " medicine" had evolved from belief in malign spiritual
possession to an actual science, the " law" was codified and no longer
"revealed" , the "psychologists" evolved into something resembling
psychiatrists/therapists.
The Lañ-lañ are too small a population, also cohesive in the old days (though
not telepathic), and pretty firm in their beliefs about how they and the world
were created.
So that's why I think a Messiah figure is going to have to be a Gwr phenomenon,
since in early times they had an expanding empire, aristocracy, slavery, much
like the Romans here.
This has gone on long enough, so I'll sign off. Perhaps to be continued
later......
--- On Mon, 4/1/13, Padraic Brown <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Padraic Brown <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: New Year / Easter Greetings to All
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, April 1, 2013, 6:52 AM
--- On Sun, 3/31/13, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> > If you mean the actual Emissary of the P.M., and also someone who is
> > not otherwise bonkers, then you'd also have a straightforward task.
> > But you will have to decide how the psychic priests and others react
> > to this truth. How they deal with the real McCoy.
>
> To be honest, it isn't immediately obvious that a telepath
> would be able to determine whether someone is mentally ill.
I guess it would depend on the powers these telepaths have. Perhaps some,
like the famous werehound physicians of Angera, who can sniff out a whole
host of ordinary diseases, there might be a psychic equivalent of the
very powerful sniffer.
> I would suspect that, depending on how deep a telepath can probe into
> the subjects mind, it would probably be far easier to determine whether
> someone was deliberately lying than whether they believed something that
> was not true.
Could well be. This would at least weed out some of the baser charlatans.
> How would you even determine that their mental representation of the
> world is broken -- absent methods of analysis developed outside of your
> telepathic powers?
I'm sure the peoples in question have some ideas already formed as to
what is "right".
But I wasn't really getting at how they would deal with an honest nut-case
(I don't think it would necessarily take a psychically gifted seeker to
sort that out) so much as how they would handle the Real Deal when it does
come along...
Padraic
Messages in this topic (13)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5. Auxiliaries - want
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Mon Apr 1, 2013 4:50 pm ((PDT))
I'm working on auxiliary constructions for Mar27 in general and specifically to
express "want to". I have 2 constructions: one using a participle for the
content word when the subject of the auxiliary is the same as that of the
content verb and one using a subordinate clause. (Note: Mar27 is SV/OV.)
(1) Jaanik de 'eleffanto dadas 'ermolee. "John wants to see the elephant."
(2) Jaanik de 'eleffanto sertas suu 'ermolee. "John wants me to see the
elephant."
I'm thinking of creating suffixes to be used on the content verb instead of
using an auxiliary for one or both of the following:
(a) indicates that the desirer is the 1st person singular (2nd person in
questions)
(b) indicates that the desirer is the subject of the content verb.
Besides having to decide, one problem I have is terminology; I tried googling
desiderative and volitive, but could find no clear definitions. Comments are
desired.
Messages in this topic (1)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
