There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: How to gloss euphonic mutations?
From: Roger Mills
1b. Re: How to gloss euphonic mutations?
From: H. S. Teoh
2a. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
From: David McCann
2b. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
From: Alex Fink
2c. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
From: Herman Miller
2d. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
From: Jim Henry
3a. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
From: R A Brown
3b. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
From: H. S. Teoh
3c. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
From: Patrick Dunn
3d. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
3e. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
3f. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
From: Padraic Brown
4a. Re: A Question on Suffixaufnahme Agreement
From: David McCann
5a. conditional sentences
From: neo gu
5b. Re: conditional sentences
From: Douglas Koller
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: How to gloss euphonic mutations?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 7:38 am ((PDT))
--- On Fri, 4/26/13, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
I'm trying to settle on a consistent glossing scheme for Tatari Faran
interlinears. In TF, certain sequences of sounds are considered
"unpleasant", and will mutate in order to preserve euphony (in the ears
of native speakers, anyway, not necessarily corresponding to a
foreigner's sense of aesthetics). This usually happens across
word
boundaries, for example:
huna + na -> hunan da
asusu + sei -> asusei
==============================
Does this happen in every such case? I.e. ...VnV + na > ...Vnda, or ...VsV+sei
> ....ssei > ...sei?? Then it's a case of final-V deletion and -CC- sandhi,
> IMO, but I'm not sure how Leipzig handles that. Maybe:
huna + na
2Pl + RCPMASC
hun + na
hunda
This is not dissimilar to sandhi phenomena in Kash, e.g.
karun + mi
lord 1SgPoss
karumbi 'my lord' (i.e. like Engl. "m'lord")
Or
rum + fasan
CAUS hot
rupasan
to heat s.t.
Or (more like your exs since there's deletion involved:)
yurun + nahan
PLACE EAT
yur + nahan
yundrahan
restaurant
(in ththe first case rum- behaves exceptionally, which I won't go into here.
The point is that you can't have *rundraka because of a phonological constraint
against 2 /r/s in successive syllables.) Note--
añ + raka
NOML big
andraka
bigness, size
Final nasals in compounds and derivs. always assimilate to the following C
--with exceptions-- e.g.
karun + ni
Lord 3sPOSS
karuñi
his lord(ship)
this is because regular *karundi would be identical to karundi < /karun + ti/
(2s Poss).
=================================================
How does one gloss such phonological mutations? The first case is
especially troublesome, because _hunan_ on its own is a genitive of the
pronoun _huna_, but in this case, it's merely a disguised form of its
unmodified stem. So, should it be glossed as:
hunan da
huna na
2PL RCP.MASC
or as:
hunan da
huna- n_da
2PL RCP.MASC
?
According to the Leipzig glossing conventions, the second line should be
a morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown; how should the base morphemes _huna_
and _na_ be indicated, and how should they align with the
orthographic
text?
============================
So apparently the orthographic text
should come last. Personally, I think it should come first since that's
the form the reader is trying to analyze. Mais que sais-je?
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: How to gloss euphonic mutations?
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 10:22 am ((PDT))
On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 07:38:22AM -0700, Roger Mills wrote:
> --- On Fri, 4/26/13, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm trying to settle on a consistent glossing scheme for Tatari Faran
> interlinears. In TF, certain sequences of sounds are considered
> "unpleasant", and will mutate in order to preserve euphony (in the
> ears of native speakers, anyway, not necessarily corresponding to a
> foreigner's sense of aesthetics). This usually happens across word
> boundaries, for example:
>
> huna + na -> hunan da
> asusu + sei -> asusei
> ==============================
> Does this happen in every such case? I.e. ...VnV + na > ...Vnda, or
> ...VsV+sei
> > ....ssei > ...sei??
In the former case, yes:
VnV + na > Vn da
However, Vn + na is unchanged:
tun + na > tun na
So the process seems quite specific to -VnV.
In the second case, the rule is actually:
sVsV + sei > sVsei
Though whether it's a _rule_ is debatable, since currently there's only
one word that fits the rule, _asusu_. Nevertheless, there is a similar
rule with the subordinative verbal suffix -as:
arap + -as > arapas
akaisu + -as > akaisatas
In this case, one may formulate the rule sV + -as > satas.
> > Then it's a case of final-V deletion and -CC- sandhi, IMO, but I'm
> > not sure how Leipzig handles that. Maybe:
>
> huna + na
> 2Pl + RCPMASC
> hun + na
> hunda
The rule doesn't apply in the second case, actually. _hun + na_ would
still just be _hun na_. Only when a vowel follows the final _n_ does the
rule take effect. It's also specific to the case clitics _na_, _nei_,
and _no_; so you have:
huu na hena naritai muin
1SG RCP:MASC and cheer_up FIN
And I cheered up.
rather than:
*huu na henan daritai muin.
OTOH, you have:
karen hunan da tsuni tinka aba ira.
karen huna na tsuni tinka aba ira.
shoe 2PL RCP:MASC find conifer under FIN
Your(pl) shoes were found under the conifer.
> This is not dissimilar to sandhi phenomena in Kash, e.g.
> karun + mi
> lord 1SgPoss
> karumbi 'my lord' (i.e. like Engl. "m'lord")
Nice! It sounds similar to the kind of euphony rules TF has. :)
> Or
> rum + fasan
> CAUS hot
> rupasan
> to heat s.t.
>
> Or (more like your exs since there's deletion involved:)
> yurun + nahan
> PLACE EAT
> yur + nahan
> yundrahan
> restaurant
>
> (in ththe first case rum- behaves exceptionally, which I won't go into
> here. The point is that you can't have *rundraka because of a
> phonological constraint against 2 /r/s in successive syllables.)
Interesting! I like the sound of the sandhis. Maybe I should make more
euphony rules in TF. :) Besides the VnV + na > Vn da rule, there's also
the contraction of _ei_ into a short vowel when it occurs in two
adjacent monosyllabic words:
sei + ei > si'ei
mei + sei > misei
mei + sei + ei > mei si'ei
In the third case, _mei_ doesn't contract because the contraction
between _sei_ and _ei_ already eliminated the long vowel _ei_ from being
adjacent to _mei_, so there no longer a need to contract.
> Note--
>
> añ + raka
> NOML big
> andraka
> bigness, size
>
> Final nasals in compounds and derivs. always assimilate to the
> following C --with exceptions-- e.g.
>
> karun + ni
> Lord 3sPOSS
> karuñi
> his lord(ship)
>
> this is because regular *karundi would be identical to karundi <
> /karun + ti/ (2s Poss).
Interesting. I've also tried to avoid the most egregious cases of
homophony in TF, but decided that it's permissible when it happens
between a genitive form and a case particle, for example:
huna + na > hunan da
2PL RCP:MASC
karen huna-n + na > karen hunan da
shoe 2PL-GEN RCP:MASC
In the first case, the surface form _hunan da_ is analysed as _huna +
na_, whereas in the second case, the isomorph _hunan da_ is analysed as
_hunan + na_.
(Incidentally, this means that the rule is actually more complex than
I've stated earlier; it's actually both of:
VnV + na > Vn da
nVn + na > nVn da
Vowel deletion happens in the first case, not the second, but in both
cases _na_ shifts to _da_.)
Not all such cases are ambiguous, though; with words like _pasanan_,
another rule kicks in when forming the genitive:
pasanan + -an > pasanaran
town -GEN
So the surface forms of "town + na" is quite distinct from "town-GEN +
na":
pasanan + na > pasanan da
town RCP:MASC
san pasanaran + na > san pasanaran na
san pasanan-an + na > san pasanaran na
person town-GEN RCP:MASC
> =================================================
>
> How does one gloss such phonological mutations? The first case is
> especially troublesome, because _hunan_ on its own is a genitive of
> the pronoun _huna_, but in this case, it's merely a disguised form of
> its unmodified stem. So, should it be glossed as:
>
> hunan da
> huna na
> 2PL RCP.MASC
>
> or as:
>
> hunan da
> huna- n_da
> 2PL RCP.MASC
>
> ?
>
> According to the Leipzig glossing conventions, the second line should be
> a morpheme-by-morpheme breakdown; how should the base morphemes _huna_
> and _na_ be indicated, and how should they align with the orthographic
> text?
> ============================
> So apparently the orthographic text should come last. Personally, I
> think it should come first since that's the form the reader is trying
> to analyze. Mais que sais-je?
Hmm. According to:
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php
under Rule 2, 2nd para, it states that one may add another line at the
beginning containing the unmodified text. In my understanding, the last
line should be the free (English) translation? So something like this:
hunan da tsuni jibin ipasanaran ka ira
huna na tsuni jibin i-pasanan-an ka ira
2PL RCP:MASC find child PART-town-PART ORG:MASC FIN
You(pl) were found by the city boy.
(The circumfix i-...-an is an appositive, so _jibin ipasanaran_ is "city
boy" as opposed to _jibin pasanaran (GEN)_ "boy of (a particular)
city".)
Or did I misunderstand the rules?
T
--
Give me some fresh salted fish, please.
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:32 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:08:10 -0600
Serafín Finrij <[email protected]> wrote:
> User Nortaneous on the ZBB asked if anybody knew anything about
> naturalistic textual frequencies of phonemes. He was concerned that
> his 5 most common phonemes comprised 50% of occurring consonants, the
> most common one taking 14% by itself, while the most common vowels
> comprised 38% of vowel occurrences.
This is what one would expect. An approximate formula for the
frequency of phonemes is the Gusein-Zadeâlaw:
Fr = (log(n+1) - log(r)) / n
where Fráµ£ is the frequency of the sound ranked r and n is the total
number of phonemes. So for 14 consonants, the commonest would have a
frequency of 19%; for 28, it would be 12%. A rough check on material in
suitable languages gave 20% and 13% respectively.
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:35 am ((PDT))
On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:39:19 -0400, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 12:08 AM, Serafín Finrij <[email protected]> wrote:
>> I figured I would share this with you guys, for you could find the
>> frequencies interesting and perhaps useful.
>
>I just did an updated phoneme frequency count on my electronic corpus
>(the frequency count on my website dates from 2010). The top nine
>phonemes including the top five consonants are:
>
> 6.34726% 11571 a
> 5.75209% 10486 m
> 4.89964% 8932 j
> 4.89251% 8919 â
> 4.50798% 8218 i
> 4.39772% 8017 r
> 4.29514% 7830 Ä
> 4.18543% 7630 n
> 4.08834% 7453 l
>
>The top two vowels add to about 11.33% of text, while the top five
>consonants add to 27.83% -- pretty different from English and Udi.
Well, except that the English and Udi figures reported were the proportion of
all _vowels_ in text accounted for by the top two vowels, not the proportion of
_all_ text, and ditto the top five consonants. So the comparable figures would
be, I dunno, probably thrice 11.33% and about 1.5 times 27.83%, which is much
more comparable.
AFMCL I always thought Pjaukra running text had way too much /r/, so I was
interested to run my own figures; but then I realised my biggest sample of
Pjaukra running text was not on this laptop (I suppose it's on a CD in a box
somewhere).
Alex
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 1:07 pm ((PDT))
On 4/27/2013 9:39 AM, Jim Henry wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 12:08 AM, Serafín Finrij<[email protected]> wrote:
>> I figured I would share this with you guys, for you could find the
>> frequencies interesting and perhaps useful.
>
> I just did an updated phoneme frequency count on my electronic corpus
> (the frequency count on my website dates from 2010). The top nine
> phonemes including the top five consonants are:
>
> 6.34726% 11571 a
> 5.75209% 10486 m
> 4.89964% 8932 j
> 4.89251% 8919 â
> 4.50798% 8218 i
> 4.39772% 8017 r
> 4.29514% 7830 Ä
> 4.18543% 7630 n
> 4.08834% 7453 l
>
> The top two vowels add to about 11.33% of text, while the top five
> consonants add to 27.83% -- pretty different from English and Udi.
I think you're looking at the total of all phonemes, but Serafín's
figures are looking at the vowels and consonants separately.
I took a sample of Tirelat text and found that the 5 most common
consonants (n, j, k, m, t) add up to 44.2 percent of all consonants in
the text, which is right in line with the figures from English and Udi.
But the two most common vowels (a, i) account for 58.4 percent of all
vowels in the text!
It's a little surprising at first that /j/ turns out to be one of the
most common consonants in Tirelat, but it occurs in the first person
singular prefixes, plural articles, and the conditional verb suffix.
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: Phoneme textual frequency
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 4:11 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:39:19 -0400, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
>>The top two vowels add to about 11.33% of text, while the top five
>>consonants add to 27.83% -- pretty different from English and Udi.
> Well, except that the English and Udi figures reported were the proportion of
> all _vowels_ in text accounted for by the top two vowels, not the proportion
> of _all_ text, and ditto the top five consonants. So the comparable figures
> would be, I dunno, probably thrice 11.33% and about 1.5 times 27.83%, which
> is much more comparable.
Okay, I re-checked after separating the vowel and consonant
frequencies into separate tables, and I get 27.23% for the top two
vowels, and 39.72% for the top five consonants. Overall vowels
account for 41.27% of text and consonants for 58.72%. (I also
realized I didn't identify what conlang I was talking about in my
earlier post; it's gjâ-zym-byn, in case it wasn't obvious, the only
conlang for which I have a sizeable corpus.)
---
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:58 am ((PDT))
On 27/04/2013 14:09, Jim Henry wrote:
[snip]
>> I heard that we use to have the Ampersand in our
>> alphabet, how would that have worked? Consonat, vowel?
Neither - it represented a whole syllable.
> Wikipedia says:
>
>>> Also, it was common practice to add at the end of
>>> the alphabet the "&" sign as if it were the 27th
>>> letter, pronounced and. As a result, the recitation
>>> of the alphabet would end in "X, Y, Z and per se
>>> and". This last phrase was routinely slurred to
>>> "ampersand" and the term crept into common English
>>> usage by around 1837.
Yep.
> So yes, it used to be a traditional part of the
> alphabet, though an anomalous one (representing a whole
> word, not a single sound).
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand
>
> As far as I know it's always represented the word "and"
> in English. It originally was an abbreviation for "et"
> in medieval Latin orthography, and was adopted into
> English
Yep - but it was and still is used also in &c. (et cetera)
where the ampersand denotes the initial 'et'.
It is used in Dutton's Speedwords where, however, it is
always pronounced 'and'. It occurs only in:
& /and/ = "and"
&e /'ande:/ = "also"
--
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 (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 9:05 am ((PDT))
On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 08:57:54AM -0500, Patrick Dunn wrote:
[...]
> If you're going to have a culture conquered by another culture
> speaking a different language, you might look at the transition from
> Old English to Middle English to see how that works out in one case.
> But you're probably not going to want to borrow your third person
> plural pronoun from a *third* language just because English did: that
> was weird.
[...]
Really, English got its 3PL pronoun from a third language? Which one
would that be?
One thing that has always struck me as very odd is the fact that IE
pronouns seem to be all over the map. Are there any references that
explain exactly where they came from and why?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but when I see things like Russian
_его_ (3SG acc.) vs. Greek _á¼Î³Ï_ (1SG nom.), or English _me_ (1SG acc.)
vs. Russian _мÑ_ (1PL nom.), it makes me wonder if they're cognates, and
if so, why such drastic differences in meaning? Or why in Greek various
cognates of _αá½Ïο_ (reflexive pron., IIRC) came to be used as 3rd person
pronouns (like _á¼Î±Ï
Ïο_, etc.)? While, at the same time, other things
like English _thee_ and Russian _ÑÑ_, or Russian _-(е/и)Ñе_ vs. Greek
_-εÏε_ appear to have survived the ravages of time mostly untouched.
Are these merely superficial coincidences, or signs of something really
weird going on with IE pronominal systems?
T
--
Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we
would behave very differently from those who now hold it---when, in
truth, in order to get power we would have to become very much like
them. -- Unknown
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 9:13 am ((PDT))
"they" was borrowed from Old Norse. The original Old English third person
plural pronoun was "hie." The third person pronoun system in the
nominative in OE was:
he -- he
heo -- she
hie -- they
"she" comes from the demonstrative feminine "seo," IIRC. And "they" comes
from Old Norse.
Pronouns tend to be *fairly* stable and not be borrowed, but it does
happen. Heh. Obviously.
--Patrick
On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 11:03 AM, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 08:57:54AM -0500, Patrick Dunn wrote:
> [...]
> > If you're going to have a culture conquered by another culture
> > speaking a different language, you might look at the transition from
> > Old English to Middle English to see how that works out in one case.
> > But you're probably not going to want to borrow your third person
> > plural pronoun from a *third* language just because English did: that
> > was weird.
> [...]
>
> Really, English got its 3PL pronoun from a third language? Which one
> would that be?
>
> One thing that has always struck me as very odd is the fact that IE
> pronouns seem to be all over the map. Are there any references that
> explain exactly where they came from and why?
>
> Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but when I see things like Russian
> _его_ (3SG acc.) vs. Greek _á¼Î³Ï_ (1SG nom.), or English _me_ (1SG acc.)
> vs. Russian _мÑ_ (1PL nom.), it makes me wonder if they're cognates, and
> if so, why such drastic differences in meaning? Or why in Greek various
> cognates of _αá½Ïο_ (reflexive pron., IIRC) came to be used as 3rd person
> pronouns (like _á¼Î±Ï
Ïο_, etc.)? While, at the same time, other things
> like English _thee_ and Russian _ÑÑ_, or Russian _-(е/и)Ñе_ vs. Greek
> _-εÏε_ appear to have survived the ravages of time mostly untouched.
>
> Are these merely superficial coincidences, or signs of something really
> weird going on with IE pronominal systems?
>
>
> T
>
> --
> Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we
> would behave very differently from those who now hold it---when, in
> truth, in order to get power we would have to become very much like
> them. -- Unknown
>
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 2:12 pm ((PDT))
Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Matthew Turnbull
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2013 4:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Conlangs and English Language History
Well basically any symbol can be used to represent any sound. It might
throw people reading your stuff off, but not for very long before they got
used to it. I would go with it if you want to.
On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Do any of your conlangs use concepts from English language history?
>
> Also, can accent marks be used as letters, such the Star? I heard that we
> use to have the Ampersand in our alphabet, how would that have worked?
> Consonat, vowel?
>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 2:16 pm ((PDT))
Ah.'
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Patrick Dunn
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2013 6:58 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Conlangs and English Language History
There's nothing that says that your language has to have an alphabet at
all, of course. There are other ways to write languages.
As far as using concepts from English language history, sure -- but it's
worth keeping in mind that some of those historical events are rather
weird. If you're going to have a culture conquered by another culture
speaking a different language, you might look at the transition from Old
English to Middle English to see how that works out in one case. But
you're probably not going to want to borrow your third person plural
pronoun from a *third* language just because English did: that was weird.
On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 3:30 AM, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <
[email protected]> wrote:
> Do any of your conlangs use concepts from English language history?
>
> Also, can accent marks be used as letters, such the Star? I heard that we
> use to have the Ampersand in our alphabet, how would that have worked?
> Consonat, vowel?
>
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr
_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3f. Re: Conlangs and English Language History
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 7:51 pm ((PDT))
--- On Sat, 4/27/13, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>Also, it was common practice to add at the end of
> the alphabet the "&" sign as if it were the 27th letter,
> pronounced and. As a result, the recitation of the alphabet
> would end in "X, Y, Z and per se and". This last phrase was
> routinely slurred to "ampersand" and the term crept into
> common English usage by around 1837.
> <<
>
> So yes, it used to be a traditional part of the alphabet,
> though an
> anomalous one (representing a whole word, not a single
> sound).
The trend continues, of course, where we use various synbols to
represent whole words or syllables. "4" has long been used to stand in
for the preposition. With the vast increase in text messenging and so
forth, we find "2" for "to", "8" for "ate", "u" for "you", "m" for "I am",
"r" for "are" and all sorts of other ligatures: ur, ru, cu; and of course
all those acronymy things that could be seen as something like ideograms
or even whole-sentence-o-grams.
We've used punctuatio marks to replace letters in comics for ages, though
I don't think the replacements were ever standardised. "A$$" is common
enough, and serves to defeat naughty word censors. This practice is
becoming standard online in order to defeat anti-spam software
> As far as I know it's always represented the word "and" in
> English.
Just as # represented the word "pound", and @ represented "at (the rate
of)"; though now both have expanded meanings in the digital media age.
> It originally was an abbreviation for "et" in medieval
> Latin
> orthography, and was adopted into English and French and
> perhaps other
> languages to represent native conjunctions with the same
> meaning.
>
> My gjâ-zym-byn has a number of morphograms and logograms in
> its
> orthography in addition to its letters. Whether you
> consider them
> part of the "alphabet" is a nitpicky bit of terminology;
Sure. I don't generally count them, but this doesn't mean the Natives
won't as well!
> they're part
> of the writing system, anyway, along with the punctuation
> marks and
> the diacritics. Perhaps in the strict sense the
> "alphabet" should
> refer to the subset of the writing system consisting only of
> signs
> roughly representing a phoneme, in contrast to whatever
> signs the
> writing system might have for syllables, whole words,
> stress, tone,
> intonation breaks, pauses, etc.
Yes.
Padraic
> Jim Henry
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: A Question on Suffixaufnahme Agreement
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 9:02 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 26 Apr 2013 22:34:32 -0400
Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
> This is the order I took for Siye from my reading on Sumerian, and I
> do mean directly from the grammar description:
> NP â N Adj Gen Relative-Clause Possessive Numeral Case
A real example would be
é Å¡eÅ¡ lugal-ak-ak-a
house brother king-GEN-GEN-LOC
in the house of the kingâs brother
> 3.AN-3.AN-eat.PFV-PL-have.resolved.to-DIR.UP-PFV-POS.REALIS-POSS-DU-PN-COM
So you're transferring the suffixes to the verb? I don't think that
happens in natural languages.
> bird white-PN-COM mountain-POSS-DU-PN-COM
Why COM twice? I'd expect something like (Sumerian's separating GEN from
other cases is unusual)
bird white all mountain-DU-GEN-COM
Sumerian would use bird-bird for 'all the birds'.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. conditional sentences
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 1:25 pm ((PDT))
I just figured out how to handle conditional sentences in Apr21. There's no
specific word for "if"; instead, one of the conjunctions for time (TMP), cause
or reason (BEC), or circumstances (CIR) is used. The conclusion appears before
the condition and is preceded by either the conditional particle (CON) or the
contrafactual particle (CTF).
CON PN Mary dance TMP PN John sing. "If John sang, Mary danced
(simultaneously)."
CTF PN Mary dance CIR PN John sing. "If John had sung, Mary would've danced."
The particles are also useful in satisfactive-result sentences (I don't know
the accepted term). Here, the condition is usually omitted.
PN John heavy SAT-DEG CON DEF chair break.
"John is heavy enough for the chair to break."
PN John heavy SAT-DEG CTF DEF chair break.
"John is so heavy, the chair would've broken."
The unconditional version is possible here:
PN John heavy SAT-DEG DEF chair break.
"John is so heavy, the chair broke."
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: conditional sentences
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Sat Apr 27, 2013 6:09 pm ((PDT))
> Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2013 16:25:46 -0400
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: conditional sentences
> To: [email protected]
> I just figured out how to handle conditional sentences in Apr21. There's no
> specific word for "if"; instead, one of the conjunctions for time (TMP),
> cause or reason (BEC), or circumstances (CIR) is used. The conclusion appears
> before the condition and is preceded by either the conditional particle (CON)
> or the contrafactual particle (CTF).
À la géarthnunsaise, the conclusion invokes -- wait for it -- the conclusive
form of the verb. In your examples below, the former would be straight
conclusive (akin to your CON); in the latter an irrealis marker, analysed as an
adverb (akin to you CTF), pops up in the apodosis.
> CON PN Mary dance TMP PN John sing. "If John sang, Mary danced
> (simultaneously)."
> CTF PN Mary dance CIR PN John sing. "If John had sung, Mary would've danced."
> The particles are also useful in satisfactive-result sentences (I don't know
> the accepted term). Here, the condition is usually omitted.
> PN John heavy SAT-DEG CON DEF chair break.
> "John is heavy enough for the chair to break."
> PN John heavy SAT-DEG CTF DEF chair break.
> "John is so heavy, the chair would've broken."
> The unconditional version is possible here:
> PN John heavy SAT-DEG DEF chair break.
> "John is so heavy, the chair broke."
All three of these, even the third, would have chair breakage in the conclusive.
Kou
Messages in this topic (2)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
