There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Phonetic Transcription
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
1b. Re: Phonetic Transcription
From: H. S. Teoh
1c. Re: Phonetic Transcription
From: Patrick Dunn
1d. Re: Phonetic Transcription
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
1e. Re: Phonetic Transcription
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
1f. Re: Phonetic Transcription
From: Sam Stutter
1g. Re: Phonetic Transcription
From: Patrick Dunn
2a. Re: Numbers for Janko
From: C. Brickner
2b. Re: Numbers for Janko
From: Cosman246
3a. Re: Distribution of phonemes in lexicon
From: Alex Fink
3b. Re: Distribution of phonemes in lexicon
From: Alex Fink
4a. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May
From: Adam Walker
4b. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May
From: Krista D. Casada
5a. 50 Shades of Poet
From: Scott Hamilton
5b. Re: 50 Shades of Poet
From: Daniel Bowman
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Phonetic Transcription
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 8:52 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Thursday 02 May 2013 07:02:30 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:48:01PM -0700, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
wrote:
> > I'm not sure either. Yemorans have a complex vocal system, and there
> > are speaking hairs and a vocal . Maybe they have a glottal stop. Given
> > that Yemorans can't eat and talk at the same time, they have two
> > mouths. The mouths don't open at the same time. The outer and inner
> > mouths aren't visible at the same time. There are also three breathing
> > forms, normal, conversational, and eating.
>
> Wow. Sounds like you may need to invent your own system, if the native
> speakers of your language have such fundamental differences in their
> vocal apparatus.
Obviously. If the Yemoran vocal tract is so different from ours
(as would be expected from what little we know about their anatomy)
and produces a different set of sounds than humans, IPA is not
really much of use - some homebrew transcription system will be
necessary. But first Nicole must come up with a good idea of what
the Yemoran vocal tract is like, lest she once again gets entangled
in inconsistencies.
Many science fiction authors goof their alien languages that way.
When I read Alan Dean Foster's Humanx novels, I was perplexed by
this: he described the language of the vaguely insect-like Thranx
as consisting of "clicks and whistles", yet gave names of Thranx
such as _Ryozenzuzex_ which did not at all sound like that. (The
species name _Thranx_ itself is a case of this, too.)
> Though you probably still want to use some kind of
> adaptation of IPA for the sake of the rest of us, so that we have some
> kind of reference point to go on.
Depends on to which degree such an adaptation is practical; it
may indeed rather be misleading than insightful. It makes no
sense mapping alien sounds to IPA symbols that show no natural
relationship to the alien sounds; I'd prefer an abstract
transcription of the alien sounds over an attempt to squeeze
them into an anthropocentric procrustean bed.
--
... 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 (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Phonetic Transcription
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 9:58 am ((PDT))
On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 05:51:51PM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Thursday 02 May 2013 07:02:30 H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> > On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:48:01PM -0700, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
> wrote:
> > > I'm not sure either. Yemorans have a complex vocal system, and
> > > there are speaking hairs and a vocal . Maybe they have a glottal
> > > stop. Given that Yemorans can't eat and talk at the same time,
> > > they have two mouths. The mouths don't open at the same time. The
> > > outer and inner mouths aren't visible at the same time. There are
> > > also three breathing forms, normal, conversational, and eating.
> >
> > Wow. Sounds like you may need to invent your own system, if the
> > native speakers of your language have such fundamental differences
> > in their vocal apparatus.
>
> Obviously. If the Yemoran vocal tract is so different from ours (as
> would be expected from what little we know about their anatomy) and
> produces a different set of sounds than humans, IPA is not really much
> of use - some homebrew transcription system will be necessary. But
> first Nicole must come up with a good idea of what the Yemoran vocal
> tract is like, lest she once again gets entangled in inconsistencies.
True.
> Many science fiction authors goof their alien languages that way.
> When I read Alan Dean Foster's Humanx novels, I was perplexed by this:
> he described the language of the vaguely insect-like Thranx as
> consisting of "clicks and whistles", yet gave names of Thranx such as
> _Ryozenzuzex_ which did not at all sound like that. (The species name
> _Thranx_ itself is a case of this, too.)
Maybe those vowels are voiceless? Which would approximate some kind of
whistling sounds with various colors. ;-)
> > Though you probably still want to use some kind of adaptation of IPA
> > for the sake of the rest of us, so that we have some kind of
> > reference point to go on.
>
> Depends on to which degree such an adaptation is practical; it
> may indeed rather be misleading than insightful. It makes no
> sense mapping alien sounds to IPA symbols that show no natural
> relationship to the alien sounds; I'd prefer an abstract
> transcription of the alien sounds over an attempt to squeeze
> them into an anthropocentric procrustean bed.
[...]
I suppose. Though that depends on whether Nicole already has some mental
idea of what the language sounds like. Just because the process of
speech production is different doesn't necessarily mean the aural
qualities (as perceived by a human, anyway) wouldn't approximate human
speech sounds, in which case it might be somewhat useful to use IPA
adaptations to represent such sounds. But from her description, these
aliens seem sufficiently different that the sound quality of their
speech would be drastically different from ours, so it's probably best
to invent a dedicated notation for them.
The underlying principles of IPA can still be used, of course.
Parameters such as point-of-articulation, opening/closing of various
parts of the vocal tract, the position and shape of the tongue (or
tongues or analogous organ(s)) would still be applicable.
Speaking of which, I discovered just yesterday that birds don't have a
larynx, but a syrinx, which is located where the trachea forks into the
lungs, thus giving the possibility of producing multiple simultaneous
sounds. Has anybody explored this feature in an avian conlang?
T
--
MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Phonetic Transcription
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 10:41 am ((PDT))
IIRC, one of Nicole's design goals is inventing a plausible language for a
novel. In that case, inventing a transcription system for her Yemoran
language could be a very bad idea indeed. If I, an avid reader of science
fiction, picked up a novel with names in it like &*#(&#(897, I would
quickly put it back on the shelf and back away from it. That's assuming an
editor would greenlight it for publication, which I would think extremely
unlikely.
In fact, I'm still not sure with that design goal that the language needs
to be fleshed out very much. I would be quite happy to see something like
"Jim shook hands -- or hand and talon -- with the Yemoran ambassador, whose
name sounded something like Yaak, but with the weird scratchy whistles and
hums that Jim could barely hear, let alone distinguish, mixed in." Cool, I
would think: the Yemorans are weird, and Jim is just making do with the
closest approximation he can find, which is conveniently something I can
pronounce quite nicely in my head. Now I shall read on, and enjoy the
plot, rather than get bogged down in linguistic theory.
Inventing a language for a novel is not automatically an aesthetic bonus,
unless that language plays a very, very important part in the book: if, for
example, Jim were a xenolinguist and the plot involved him trying to
decipher a Yemoran cookbook.
Otherwise, avoid linguistic howlers and otherwise just offer an airy wave
of the hand.
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 11:56 AM, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 05:51:51PM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> >
> > On Thursday 02 May 2013 07:02:30 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, May 01, 2013 at 11:48:01PM -0700, Nicole Valicia
> Thompson-Andrews
> > wrote:
> > > > I'm not sure either. Yemorans have a complex vocal system, and
> > > > there are speaking hairs and a vocal . Maybe they have a glottal
> > > > stop. Given that Yemorans can't eat and talk at the same time,
> > > > they have two mouths. The mouths don't open at the same time. The
> > > > outer and inner mouths aren't visible at the same time. There are
> > > > also three breathing forms, normal, conversational, and eating.
> > >
> > > Wow. Sounds like you may need to invent your own system, if the
> > > native speakers of your language have such fundamental differences
> > > in their vocal apparatus.
> >
> > Obviously. If the Yemoran vocal tract is so different from ours (as
> > would be expected from what little we know about their anatomy) and
> > produces a different set of sounds than humans, IPA is not really much
> > of use - some homebrew transcription system will be necessary. But
> > first Nicole must come up with a good idea of what the Yemoran vocal
> > tract is like, lest she once again gets entangled in inconsistencies.
>
> True.
>
>
> > Many science fiction authors goof their alien languages that way.
> > When I read Alan Dean Foster's Humanx novels, I was perplexed by this:
> > he described the language of the vaguely insect-like Thranx as
> > consisting of "clicks and whistles", yet gave names of Thranx such as
> > _Ryozenzuzex_ which did not at all sound like that. (The species name
> > _Thranx_ itself is a case of this, too.)
>
> Maybe those vowels are voiceless? Which would approximate some kind of
> whistling sounds with various colors. ;-)
>
>
> > > Though you probably still want to use some kind of adaptation of IPA
> > > for the sake of the rest of us, so that we have some kind of
> > > reference point to go on.
> >
> > Depends on to which degree such an adaptation is practical; it
> > may indeed rather be misleading than insightful. It makes no
> > sense mapping alien sounds to IPA symbols that show no natural
> > relationship to the alien sounds; I'd prefer an abstract
> > transcription of the alien sounds over an attempt to squeeze
> > them into an anthropocentric procrustean bed.
> [...]
>
> I suppose. Though that depends on whether Nicole already has some mental
> idea of what the language sounds like. Just because the process of
> speech production is different doesn't necessarily mean the aural
> qualities (as perceived by a human, anyway) wouldn't approximate human
> speech sounds, in which case it might be somewhat useful to use IPA
> adaptations to represent such sounds. But from her description, these
> aliens seem sufficiently different that the sound quality of their
> speech would be drastically different from ours, so it's probably best
> to invent a dedicated notation for them.
>
> The underlying principles of IPA can still be used, of course.
> Parameters such as point-of-articulation, opening/closing of various
> parts of the vocal tract, the position and shape of the tongue (or
> tongues or analogous organ(s)) would still be applicable.
>
> Speaking of which, I discovered just yesterday that birds don't have a
> larynx, but a syrinx, which is located where the trachea forks into the
> lungs, thus giving the possibility of producing multiple simultaneous
> sounds. Has anybody explored this feature in an avian conlang?
>
>
> T
>
> --
> MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash, If Not, The Operating System Hangs
>
--
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 (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Phonetic Transcription
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 1:36 pm ((PDT))
Thanks. You're probably right about he glottal stop not existing. There is
also something similar to the alveolar ridge. That's why I mentioned some
places of articulation can be used, such as dental and labial and bilabial,
I think lingolabial also. I actually took notes as I added and subtracted
items. I imagine Yemorans would sit staring if they saw us eating and
talking simultaneously.
Mellissa Green
@GreenNovelist
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Padraic Brown
Sent: Thursday, May 2, 2013 7:37 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Phonetic Transcription
--- On Thu, 5/2/13, Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews <[email protected]>
wrote:
> I'm not sure either. Yemorans have a complex vocal system, and there are
> speaking hairs and a vocal . Maybe they have a glottal stop.
Probably not -- that's an artifact of a human-like vocal apparatus. It
requires the speaker having the ability to close the glottiis. Yemorans
might have a similar sounding phoneme, though.
> Given that Yemorans can't eat and talk at the same time, they have two
> mouths. The mouths don't open at the same time. The outer and inner
> mouths aren't visible at the same time.
Weird and womderful!
> There are also three breathing forms, normal, conversational, and
> eating.
I think these roughly correspond to how we breathe when resting, talking
and eating.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: Phonetic Transcription
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 2:08 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Thursday 02 May 2013 18:56:48 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 05:51:51PM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> > [...]
> > Many science fiction authors goof their alien languages that way.
> > When I read Alan Dean Foster's Humanx novels, I was perplexed by this:
> > he described the language of the vaguely insect-like Thranx as
> > consisting of "clicks and whistles", yet gave names of Thranx such as
> > _Ryozenzuzex_ which did not at all sound like that. (The species name
> > _Thranx_ itself is a case of this, too.)
>
> Maybe those vowels are voiceless? Which would approximate some kind of
> whistling sounds with various colors. ;-)
Yes, the human-pronounceable Thranx names may just be such
approximations.
> > > Though you probably still want to use some kind of adaptation of IPA
> > > for the sake of the rest of us, so that we have some kind of
> > > reference point to go on.
> >
> > Depends on to which degree such an adaptation is practical; it
> > may indeed rather be misleading than insightful. It makes no
> > sense mapping alien sounds to IPA symbols that show no natural
> > relationship to the alien sounds; I'd prefer an abstract
> > transcription of the alien sounds over an attempt to squeeze
> > them into an anthropocentric procrustean bed.
>
> [...]
>
> I suppose. Though that depends on whether Nicole already has some mental
> idea of what the language sounds like.
She did talk about a monstrous phoneme inventory a few days
ago (some 200 consonants and also quite a few vowels).
> Just because the process of
> speech production is different doesn't necessarily mean the aural
> qualities (as perceived by a human, anyway) wouldn't approximate human
> speech sounds, in which case it might be somewhat useful to use IPA
> adaptations to represent such sounds.
True. From an acoustic standpoint, it is just a matter of
formants and such stuff, no matter what they are produced with.
> But from her description, these
> aliens seem sufficiently different that the sound quality of their
> speech would be drastically different from ours, so it's probably best
> to invent a dedicated notation for them.
As Patrick Dunn has remarked (see below), this may not work well
in a novel.
> The underlying principles of IPA can still be used, of course.
> Parameters such as point-of-articulation, opening/closing of various
> parts of the vocal tract, the position and shape of the tongue (or
> tongues or analogous organ(s)) would still be applicable.
Yes.
> Speaking of which, I discovered just yesterday that birds don't have a
> larynx, but a syrinx, which is located where the trachea forks into the
> lungs, thus giving the possibility of producing multiple simultaneous
> sounds. Has anybody explored this feature in an avian conlang?
I haven't seen any yet, but it would be an idea.
On Thursday 02 May 2013 19:41:19 Patrick Dunn wrote:
> IIRC, one of Nicole's design goals is inventing a plausible language for a
> novel. In that case, inventing a transcription system for her Yemoran
> language could be a very bad idea indeed. If I, an avid reader of science
> fiction, picked up a novel with names in it like &*#(&#(897, I would
> quickly put it back on the shelf and back away from it. That's assuming an
> editor would greenlight it for publication, which I would think extremely
> unlikely.
Sure. A transcription that looks like an explosion in a
typesetting shop is not a good idea to have in a novel.
Readers want names they can remember in order to follow the
plot. (Though an alphanumeric designation such as R2-D2 can
still be catchy.)
> In fact, I'm still not sure with that design goal that the language needs
> to be fleshed out very much. I would be quite happy to see something like
> "Jim shook hands -- or hand and talon -- with the Yemoran ambassador, whose
> name sounded something like Yaak, but with the weird scratchy whistles and
> hums that Jim could barely hear, let alone distinguish, mixed in." Cool, I
> would think: the Yemorans are weird, and Jim is just making do with the
> closest approximation he can find, which is conveniently something I can
> pronounce quite nicely in my head. Now I shall read on, and enjoy the
> plot, rather than get bogged down in linguistic theory.
Indeed, that is a good way of handling this in the text to be
published. A more detailed transcription could be used in the
author's working notes, though; but in the novel, the Yemoran
could indeed go by the name Yaak, as the human characters hear
it in the plot.
> Inventing a language for a novel is not automatically an aesthetic bonus,
> unless that language plays a very, very important part in the book: if, for
> example, Jim were a xenolinguist and the plot involved him trying to
> decipher a Yemoran cookbook.
Yes. Most science fiction and fantasy novels work well without
detailed conlangs. You usually do not need more than a consistent
naming scheme. Of course, if you write a novel in which the
language itself plays an important role, you may want to expend
more attention on it, but still, you can write such a novel
without presenting a conlang - see for instance _Babel-17_ by
Samuel Delany, which is about a linguist deciphering an unknown
language and uncovering a conspiracy in which that language plays
an important role, but *no* samples of the language ever occur in
the text!
> Otherwise, avoid linguistic howlers and otherwise just offer an airy wave
> of the hand.
Right. Most readers won't care about the innards of the alien
language any more than about the fuel economics of the starship
engines ;)
--
... 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 (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1f. Re: Phonetic Transcription
Posted by: "Sam Stutter" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 3:43 pm ((PDT))
The issue is that, even if you produce a home-grown IPA replacement, what does
each symbol actually mean? The grapheme /a/ relates to a particular set of
features which can be identified in a sound which is recorded from human
speech. If you zoom in sufficiently on a sound in audio-analysing software you
can literally see the features which make a sound /a/ (or whatever).
If you have a language with sounds not replicable by humans, what does each
symbol actually mean if it does not relate to something measurable? You may as
well be using graphemes arbitrarily since they don't mean anything.
Given that you won't be associating each grapheme with a particular sound and
the limits of the speech capabilities of your alien species aren't clear or
analysable, there is nothing you can particularly do with a language except
break it down into some analytical or logical system (such as Lexical
Functional Grammar or similar nonsense).
Let's say you have a word for "cat" and in your language you write it as G A V.
Since we don't know how G A V is pronounced, the letters G A V don't actually
mean anything. As such, there's not really much use writing anything other that
the word "cat", or, at least, some sort of analytical function like
"cat-noun-singular" which explains how your language handles that particular
noun grammatically and syntactically.
All I'm saying is that, unless you can accurately associate particular letters
with specific patterns (of sound) then there's no point having a phonological
transcription of your language nor, in fact, any record of a lexicon (given
that your language will be a natural speech-primary tongue).
In the end, you'll need accurate reference material to sounds you have recorded
or can easily reproduce, which would fill vast textbooks with wave diagrams and
the like.
Or, alternatively, just say of a character "his voice was like a thousand drunk
geckos running through treacle" and gloss the actual information the character
is saying. It's a story - nobody reads a story for scientifically accurate
field linguistics. Well, except for a few of us on the list, but you know what
I mean.
In short, fudge the phonology and ignore the details... or start studying very
advanced audiology, entomology, wave physics and experimental phonology/speech
synthesis.
On 2 May 2013, at 1008 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Thursday 02 May 2013 18:56:48 H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
>> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 05:51:51PM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>>> Hallo conlangers!
>>> [...]
>>> Many science fiction authors goof their alien languages that way.
>>> When I read Alan Dean Foster's Humanx novels, I was perplexed by this:
>>> he described the language of the vaguely insect-like Thranx as
>>> consisting of "clicks and whistles", yet gave names of Thranx such as
>>> _Ryozenzuzex_ which did not at all sound like that. (The species name
>>> _Thranx_ itself is a case of this, too.)
>>
>> Maybe those vowels are voiceless? Which would approximate some kind of
>> whistling sounds with various colors. ;-)
>
> Yes, the human-pronounceable Thranx names may just be such
> approximations.
>
>>>> Though you probably still want to use some kind of adaptation of IPA
>>>> for the sake of the rest of us, so that we have some kind of
>>>> reference point to go on.
>>>
>>> Depends on to which degree such an adaptation is practical; it
>>> may indeed rather be misleading than insightful. It makes no
>>> sense mapping alien sounds to IPA symbols that show no natural
>>> relationship to the alien sounds; I'd prefer an abstract
>>> transcription of the alien sounds over an attempt to squeeze
>>> them into an anthropocentric procrustean bed.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> I suppose. Though that depends on whether Nicole already has some mental
>> idea of what the language sounds like.
>
> She did talk about a monstrous phoneme inventory a few days
> ago (some 200 consonants and also quite a few vowels).
>
>> Just because the process of
>> speech production is different doesn't necessarily mean the aural
>> qualities (as perceived by a human, anyway) wouldn't approximate human
>> speech sounds, in which case it might be somewhat useful to use IPA
>> adaptations to represent such sounds.
>
> True. From an acoustic standpoint, it is just a matter of
> formants and such stuff, no matter what they are produced with.
>
>> But from her description, these
>> aliens seem sufficiently different that the sound quality of their
>> speech would be drastically different from ours, so it's probably best
>> to invent a dedicated notation for them.
>
> As Patrick Dunn has remarked (see below), this may not work well
> in a novel.
>
>> The underlying principles of IPA can still be used, of course.
>> Parameters such as point-of-articulation, opening/closing of various
>> parts of the vocal tract, the position and shape of the tongue (or
>> tongues or analogous organ(s)) would still be applicable.
>
> Yes.
>
>> Speaking of which, I discovered just yesterday that birds don't have a
>> larynx, but a syrinx, which is located where the trachea forks into the
>> lungs, thus giving the possibility of producing multiple simultaneous
>> sounds. Has anybody explored this feature in an avian conlang?
>
> I haven't seen any yet, but it would be an idea.
>
> On Thursday 02 May 2013 19:41:19 Patrick Dunn wrote:
>
>> IIRC, one of Nicole's design goals is inventing a plausible language for a
>> novel. In that case, inventing a transcription system for her Yemoran
>> language could be a very bad idea indeed. If I, an avid reader of science
>> fiction, picked up a novel with names in it like &*#(&#(897, I would
>> quickly put it back on the shelf and back away from it. That's assuming an
>> editor would greenlight it for publication, which I would think extremely
>> unlikely.
>
> Sure. A transcription that looks like an explosion in a
> typesetting shop is not a good idea to have in a novel.
> Readers want names they can remember in order to follow the
> plot. (Though an alphanumeric designation such as R2-D2 can
> still be catchy.)
>
>> In fact, I'm still not sure with that design goal that the language needs
>> to be fleshed out very much. I would be quite happy to see something like
>> "Jim shook hands -- or hand and talon -- with the Yemoran ambassador, whose
>> name sounded something like Yaak, but with the weird scratchy whistles and
>> hums that Jim could barely hear, let alone distinguish, mixed in." Cool, I
>> would think: the Yemorans are weird, and Jim is just making do with the
>> closest approximation he can find, which is conveniently something I can
>> pronounce quite nicely in my head. Now I shall read on, and enjoy the
>> plot, rather than get bogged down in linguistic theory.
>
> Indeed, that is a good way of handling this in the text to be
> published. A more detailed transcription could be used in the
> author's working notes, though; but in the novel, the Yemoran
> could indeed go by the name Yaak, as the human characters hear
> it in the plot.
>
>> Inventing a language for a novel is not automatically an aesthetic bonus,
>> unless that language plays a very, very important part in the book: if, for
>> example, Jim were a xenolinguist and the plot involved him trying to
>> decipher a Yemoran cookbook.
>
> Yes. Most science fiction and fantasy novels work well without
> detailed conlangs. You usually do not need more than a consistent
> naming scheme. Of course, if you write a novel in which the
> language itself plays an important role, you may want to expend
> more attention on it, but still, you can write such a novel
> without presenting a conlang - see for instance _Babel-17_ by
> Samuel Delany, which is about a linguist deciphering an unknown
> language and uncovering a conspiracy in which that language plays
> an important role, but *no* samples of the language ever occur in
> the text!
>
>> Otherwise, avoid linguistic howlers and otherwise just offer an airy wave
>> of the hand.
>
> Right. Most readers won't care about the innards of the alien
> language any more than about the fuel economics of the starship
> engines ;)
>
> --
> ... 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 (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1g. Re: Phonetic Transcription
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 4:55 pm ((PDT))
Well, it occurs to me that, no matter how alien their mouths, they're still
making *sounds*, and sounds have a limited number of acoustic features. If
we can draw a spectrogram of their sounds, we can find analogous
spectrograms among human speech -- I'd think. But then again . . .
One way to test this would be to run some animal sounds through Praat and
draw some spectrograms, then associate those 'grams with similar speech
sound 'grams.
Of course, when we do that we find that, for example, a cow mooing has four
formants, at about 450Hz, 1866Hz, 2920Hz, and 4620Hz, while a recording of
me saying "moo" [mu:] apparently has four formants at 330Hz, 900Hz, 2500Hz,
3275Hz -- which clearly shows . . . um.
Which clearly shows . . .
Which . . . clearly shows . . . that I have finished grading finals and
need to find something to do with the rest of my day other than running
animal sounds through Praat.
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 5:43 PM, Sam Stutter <[email protected]> wrote:
> The issue is that, even if you produce a home-grown IPA replacement, what
> does each symbol actually mean? The grapheme /a/ relates to a particular
> set of features which can be identified in a sound which is recorded from
> human speech. If you zoom in sufficiently on a sound in audio-analysing
> software you can literally see the features which make a sound /a/ (or
> whatever).
>
> If you have a language with sounds not replicable by humans, what does
> each symbol actually mean if it does not relate to something measurable?
> You may as well be using graphemes arbitrarily since they don't mean
> anything.
>
> Given that you won't be associating each grapheme with a particular sound
> and the limits of the speech capabilities of your alien species aren't
> clear or analysable, there is nothing you can particularly do with a
> language except break it down into some analytical or logical system (such
> as Lexical Functional Grammar or similar nonsense).
>
> Let's say you have a word for "cat" and in your language you write it as G
> A V. Since we don't know how G A V is pronounced, the letters G A V don't
> actually mean anything. As such, there's not really much use writing
> anything other that the word "cat", or, at least, some sort of analytical
> function like "cat-noun-singular" which explains how your language handles
> that particular noun grammatically and syntactically.
>
> All I'm saying is that, unless you can accurately associate particular
> letters with specific patterns (of sound) then there's no point having a
> phonological transcription of your language nor, in fact, any record of a
> lexicon (given that your language will be a natural speech-primary tongue).
>
> In the end, you'll need accurate reference material to sounds you have
> recorded or can easily reproduce, which would fill vast textbooks with wave
> diagrams and the like.
>
> Or, alternatively, just say of a character "his voice was like a thousand
> drunk geckos running through treacle" and gloss the actual information the
> character is saying. It's a story - nobody reads a story for scientifically
> accurate field linguistics. Well, except for a few of us on the list, but
> you know what I mean.
>
> In short, fudge the phonology and ignore the details... or start studying
> very advanced audiology, entomology, wave physics and experimental
> phonology/speech synthesis.
>
> On 2 May 2013, at 1008 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Hallo conlangers!
> >
> > On Thursday 02 May 2013 18:56:48 H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 05:51:51PM +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> >>> Hallo conlangers!
> >>> [...]
> >>> Many science fiction authors goof their alien languages that way.
> >>> When I read Alan Dean Foster's Humanx novels, I was perplexed by this:
> >>> he described the language of the vaguely insect-like Thranx as
> >>> consisting of "clicks and whistles", yet gave names of Thranx such as
> >>> _Ryozenzuzex_ which did not at all sound like that. (The species name
> >>> _Thranx_ itself is a case of this, too.)
> >>
> >> Maybe those vowels are voiceless? Which would approximate some kind of
> >> whistling sounds with various colors. ;-)
> >
> > Yes, the human-pronounceable Thranx names may just be such
> > approximations.
> >
> >>>> Though you probably still want to use some kind of adaptation of IPA
> >>>> for the sake of the rest of us, so that we have some kind of
> >>>> reference point to go on.
> >>>
> >>> Depends on to which degree such an adaptation is practical; it
> >>> may indeed rather be misleading than insightful. It makes no
> >>> sense mapping alien sounds to IPA symbols that show no natural
> >>> relationship to the alien sounds; I'd prefer an abstract
> >>> transcription of the alien sounds over an attempt to squeeze
> >>> them into an anthropocentric procrustean bed.
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> I suppose. Though that depends on whether Nicole already has some mental
> >> idea of what the language sounds like.
> >
> > She did talk about a monstrous phoneme inventory a few days
> > ago (some 200 consonants and also quite a few vowels).
> >
> >> Just because the process of
> >> speech production is different doesn't necessarily mean the aural
> >> qualities (as perceived by a human, anyway) wouldn't approximate human
> >> speech sounds, in which case it might be somewhat useful to use IPA
> >> adaptations to represent such sounds.
> >
> > True. From an acoustic standpoint, it is just a matter of
> > formants and such stuff, no matter what they are produced with.
> >
> >> But from her description, these
> >> aliens seem sufficiently different that the sound quality of their
> >> speech would be drastically different from ours, so it's probably best
> >> to invent a dedicated notation for them.
> >
> > As Patrick Dunn has remarked (see below), this may not work well
> > in a novel.
> >
> >> The underlying principles of IPA can still be used, of course.
> >> Parameters such as point-of-articulation, opening/closing of various
> >> parts of the vocal tract, the position and shape of the tongue (or
> >> tongues or analogous organ(s)) would still be applicable.
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> >> Speaking of which, I discovered just yesterday that birds don't have a
> >> larynx, but a syrinx, which is located where the trachea forks into the
> >> lungs, thus giving the possibility of producing multiple simultaneous
> >> sounds. Has anybody explored this feature in an avian conlang?
> >
> > I haven't seen any yet, but it would be an idea.
> >
> > On Thursday 02 May 2013 19:41:19 Patrick Dunn wrote:
> >
> >> IIRC, one of Nicole's design goals is inventing a plausible language
> for a
> >> novel. In that case, inventing a transcription system for her Yemoran
> >> language could be a very bad idea indeed. If I, an avid reader of
> science
> >> fiction, picked up a novel with names in it like &*#(&#(897, I would
> >> quickly put it back on the shelf and back away from it. That's
> assuming an
> >> editor would greenlight it for publication, which I would think
> extremely
> >> unlikely.
> >
> > Sure. A transcription that looks like an explosion in a
> > typesetting shop is not a good idea to have in a novel.
> > Readers want names they can remember in order to follow the
> > plot. (Though an alphanumeric designation such as R2-D2 can
> > still be catchy.)
> >
> >> In fact, I'm still not sure with that design goal that the language
> needs
> >> to be fleshed out very much. I would be quite happy to see something
> like
> >> "Jim shook hands -- or hand and talon -- with the Yemoran ambassador,
> whose
> >> name sounded something like Yaak, but with the weird scratchy whistles
> and
> >> hums that Jim could barely hear, let alone distinguish, mixed in."
> Cool, I
> >> would think: the Yemorans are weird, and Jim is just making do with the
> >> closest approximation he can find, which is conveniently something I can
> >> pronounce quite nicely in my head. Now I shall read on, and enjoy the
> >> plot, rather than get bogged down in linguistic theory.
> >
> > Indeed, that is a good way of handling this in the text to be
> > published. A more detailed transcription could be used in the
> > author's working notes, though; but in the novel, the Yemoran
> > could indeed go by the name Yaak, as the human characters hear
> > it in the plot.
> >
> >> Inventing a language for a novel is not automatically an aesthetic
> bonus,
> >> unless that language plays a very, very important part in the book: if,
> for
> >> example, Jim were a xenolinguist and the plot involved him trying to
> >> decipher a Yemoran cookbook.
> >
> > Yes. Most science fiction and fantasy novels work well without
> > detailed conlangs. You usually do not need more than a consistent
> > naming scheme. Of course, if you write a novel in which the
> > language itself plays an important role, you may want to expend
> > more attention on it, but still, you can write such a novel
> > without presenting a conlang - see for instance _Babel-17_ by
> > Samuel Delany, which is about a linguist deciphering an unknown
> > language and uncovering a conspiracy in which that language plays
> > an important role, but *no* samples of the language ever occur in
> > the text!
> >
> >> Otherwise, avoid linguistic howlers and otherwise just offer an airy
> wave
> >> of the hand.
> >
> > Right. Most readers won't care about the innards of the alien
> > language any more than about the fuel economics of the starship
> > engines ;)
> >
> > --
> > ... 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
>
--
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 (25)
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2a. Re: Numbers for Janko
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 9:24 am ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
For my conlang-in-progress Reconstructed Ṫirdonic (a dot indicates
aspiration, where it was impossible to put, I replaced it with an
apostrophe):
=================
I use an overdot in Senjecas to indicate voicelessness of the approximants.
I don't care for the <Ch> digraph. Two of them are already composed: <á¹> and
<á¹>. There is an <l> with an underdot (ḷ) and an <l> with a middle dot
(Å). I could compose my own <l> with an overdot. I donât like these, so I
use <Å>. Thus I have to compose only one: <ÈÌ>.
Why don't you use an underdot instead of an apostrophe when an overdot is not
possible? Unless youâre using that diacritic for something else.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (6)
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2b. Re: Numbers for Janko
Posted by: "Cosman246" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 9:55 am ((PDT))
Well, it's because I normally use LaTeX with a bunch of extensions, where
an overdot *is* possible with k (using a bunch of functions), but I
couldn't just copy-paste, so an apostrophe was my ad-hoc solution for email
-Yash Tulsyan
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 9:24 AM, C. Brickner <[email protected]>wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> For my conlang-in-progress Reconstructed Ṫirdonic (a dot indicates
> aspiration, where it was impossible to put, I replaced it with an
> apostrophe):
> =================
>
> I use an overdot in Senjecas to indicate voicelessness of the
> approximants. I don't care for the <Ch> digraph. Two of them are
> already composed: <á¹> and <á¹>. There is an <l> with an underdot (ḷ)
> and an
> <l> with a middle dot (Å). I could compose my own <l> with an overdot. I
> donât like these, so I use <Å>. Thus I have to compose only one: <ÈÌ>.
>
> Why don't you use an underdot instead of an apostrophe when an overdot is
> not possible? Unless youâre using that diacritic for something else.
>
> Charlie
>
Messages in this topic (6)
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3a. Re: Distribution of phonemes in lexicon
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 10:46 am ((PDT))
On Wed, 1 May 2013 23:19:00 -0700, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
>Recently, while trying to decide what kind of writing system Tatari
>Faran should have, I went through the entire lexicon and catalogued all
>attested syllables. The idea is that instead of arbitrarily flipping a
>coin for the type of writing system to adopt, I should look for patterns
>in the currently-attested syllables and see if they suggest what kind of
>system the san faran would have invented.
>
>TF has a rather simple syllabic structure: all words are of the form
>(CV(N))*(F) where C = any consonant, N is a nasal (/m/ or /n/), and F is
>the smaller set of allowable final consonants. V is any vowel or glide.
>So this makes cataloguing rather simple, if a bit tedious.
But NF# is not licit, right?
>And sure enough, some interesting trends arose! The most prominent
>"discovery" is that the most frequent syllables are of the form Ca, Ci,
>Cu, that is, a consonant paired with an apical vowel. Ce and Cai are
>less frequent, but comparable (though the distribution varies greatly
>depending on C). /o/ (which is [O]) is in fact extremely rare as far as
>occurrences in words are concerned, though it crops up in the neuter
>case particles that in any non-trivial text would occur everywhere (IOW
>it rarely occurs in words, but the few words containing it are very
>frequent).
This makes me imagine that /o/ is of recent origin in TF, with its instances in
/ko so no/ being something like a reduction of *u in (certain) unstressed
positions, or maybe of *au or *ua if there're too many nonreducing *u for that
to be comfortable. (Maybe pre-TF had not just /kei ?ei/ > /ki?ei/ etc. but
/kau ?ei/ > /kO?ei/, and in the latter cases the reduced allomorph generalised.)
How is /o/ distributed in words otherwise?
>There are also some interesting distribution asymmetries: /ai/ following
>a glottal stop has a lower frequency than /u/, but following /n/ it is
>almost as common as /i/, and following /t/ it is *more* common than /i/.
You said /-itai/ was a verbalising suffix, IIRC. Controlled for its
occurrences, is /tai/ still more common than /ti/?
>In any case, this distribution suggests that TF's native writing system
>should be a kind of abugida-like system, in which Ca, Ci, and Cu have
>dedicated glyphs, and Ce, Cai, Co, and others should use diacritics to
>modify Ca, Ci, or Cu. The writing will be vertical, so there will be
>left-diacritics (dextrocritics) and right-diacritics (aristocritics --
>technically "aristerocritics" but that's too ... bureaucratic :-P).
Aw, if it were me I'd avoid arbitrary manglings and keep _aristero-_. And
_dextro-_ is only a Latin form, isn't it? Greek had _dexios_.
>Currently, I'm thinking something like:
>
>- Caa = Ca + length_mark
>- Ce = Ca + e-diacritic
>- Cei = Ca + e-diacritic + length_mark (/ei/ is considered to be long /e/)
>- Cii = Ci + length mark
>- Co = Ca + o-diacritic
>- Cue = Cu + ue-diacritic (/ue/ = [M])
>- Cuu = Cu + length mark
Building on Roger's idea, you wouldn't have to have a separate diacritic for
each of the /e/, /o/, and /ue/ elements; the diacritics could double up. For
instance, you could have a "make more i-like" diacritic which on Ca gives Ce,
and on Cu gives Cue. That leaves just Co unaccounted for; but since you said
Co is marginal, it may well do something funny.
>- Cau = Ca + w-aristocritic (since /au/ is pronounced [ao] or [aw])
>- Cua = Ca + w-dextrocritic (since /ua/ is pronounced [wa])
>- Cui = Cu + i-aristocritic (/ui/ = [uj])
>- Ciu = Cu + i-dextrocritic (/iu/ = [ju])
>- Cai = Ca + i-aristocritic (/ai/ = [aj])
>- Cia = Ca + i-dextrocritic (/ia/ = [ja])
>
>Syllable-final /m/ and /n/ will have their own diacritics as well,
>perhaps the same glyph as dextrocritic for /m/ and aristocritic for /n/.
I too think this is a false symmetry. /m/ is not to /n/ as preceding is to
following.
Do /m/ and /n/ *contrast* word-internally, or do internal nasals always
assimilate to the following consonant? In the latter case, the more
parsimonious phonemic analysis, and thus the more parsimonious writing system,
would make them the same.
On Thu, 2 May 2013 08:20:16 -0700, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Thu, May 02, 2013 at 06:59:52AM -0700, Roger Mills wrote:
>> OK on those; but: how common is "ue" [M], is it phonemic?? Not worth
>> having its own diacritic???
>
>Yes, [M] is phonemic. It's not particularly common, but does occur in
>certain common words like _asuen_ [?asMn] "younger brother", _kuen_
>[kMn] "tree", etc..
Does it correlate with the position before /n/ in general, like in these two
cases?
>> Maybe for the iu, ia, ua 's you should consider a
>> "palatalize/labialize" modification of some sort to the C character?
>> That's what I did in the Gwr system.
>
>Yeah, the w-critics and i-critics could become ligatures of some sort,
>perhaps.
Eh, they could, but it seems less in the spirit of the TF phonology to do that.
(For Gwr the case is probably different.)
>> If you haven't already, you might take a look at my Gwr writing
>> system, which is not dissimilar.
>> http://cinduworld.tripod.com/prelim_gwr.htm Go to _section 3_ (The
>> writing system) which has a link to the pdf.
>
>I like your idea of having final consonants represent VC instead of CV!
>I think I'll st... adopt that idea. ;) So a final syllable like _kan_
>would be written as _ka_ + _an_. The vowels have to match, as a
>convention. In the case of modified vowels, as in _kuen_, the vowel
>diacritic could sit between the two glyphs rather than clearly belonging
>to one.
Well, how then to write actual final vowels which agree with the previous one?
Would /kana#/ also be written _ka na_, like /kan#/? Nothing wrong with such an
ambiguity, of course, it's just something to bear in mind.
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
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3b. Re: Distribution of phonemes in lexicon
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 11:34 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 2 May 2013 13:46:16 -0400, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>>Currently, I'm thinking something like:
>>
>>- Caa = Ca + length_mark
>>- Ce = Ca + e-diacritic
>>- Cei = Ca + e-diacritic + length_mark (/ei/ is considered to be long /e/)
>>- Cii = Ci + length mark
>>- Co = Ca + o-diacritic
>>- Cue = Cu + ue-diacritic (/ue/ = [M])
>>- Cuu = Cu + length mark
>
>Building on Roger's idea, you wouldn't have to have a separate diacritic for
>each of the /e/, /o/, and /ue/ elements; the diacritics could double up. For
>instance, you could have a "make more i-like" diacritic which on Ca gives Ce,
>and on Cu gives Cue. That leaves just Co unaccounted for; but since you said
>Co is marginal, it may well do something funny.
Actually, hey, you know what would be a beautifully tidy and symmetric system?
Allow not just aristerocritics and dexiocritics but _endocritics_, meaning "the
nucleic vowel's quality is coloured by this one". Thus
>>- Cau = Ca + w-aristocritic (since /au/ is pronounced [ao] or [aw])
>>- Cua = Ca + w-dextrocritic (since /ua/ is pronounced [wa])
Co = Ca + w-endocritic
>>- Cui = Cu + i-aristocritic (/ui/ = [uj])
>>- Ciu = Cu + i-dextrocritic (/iu/ = [ju])
Cue = Cu + i-endocritic
>>- Cai = Ca + i-aristocritic (/ai/ = [aj])
>>- Cia = Ca + i-dextrocritic (/ia/ = [ja])
Ce = Ca + i-endocritic
The distributional symmetry is *perfect*! Ca can occur with i- and u-critics
in all positions; Cu can occur with i-critics in app positions, but u- in none;
Ci can't occur with i- or u-critics in any position.
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
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4a. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 11:51 am ((PDT))
Wow. You're as bad as me.
Adam
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> A bit of whimsy. Don't know why this was going thru my head this morning:
>
>
> Gwr.
>
> lu-H doq-L o-H trang-M how-F leN-M dr-L
> ki-L ye-M hing-hing-M how-F
>
> Lu-do? that red-nose (k.o. animal)
> to him very-shiny nose...
>
> More to come.....
>
Messages in this topic (3)
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4b. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May
Posted by: "Krista D. Casada" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 1:11 pm ((PDT))
I like it.
________________________________________
From: Constructed Languages List [[email protected]] on behalf of Adam
Walker [[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2013 1:51 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May
Wow. You're as bad as me.
Adam
On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 10:17 AM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> A bit of whimsy. Don't know why this was going thru my head this morning:
>
>
> Gwr.
>
> lu-H doq-L o-H trang-M how-F leN-M dr-L
> ki-L ye-M hing-hing-M how-F
>
> Lu-do? that red-nose (k.o. animal)
> to him very-shiny nose...
>
> More to come.....
>
Messages in this topic (3)
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5a. 50 Shades of Poet
Posted by: "Scott Hamilton" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 2:26 pm ((PDT))
So, it's my birthday, and I'm working on something as a present for
myself. I'd like to collect terms that gloss to something like 'poet',
'word smith' or (dare I say) 'cunning linguist' in as many conlangs as
possible. Would you y'all be willing to tell me about how that would
come out in your various conlangs? I'd love to see etymologies if you
have them too. If you have special orthographies, I'd love to see that
as well.
Thank you!
Scott
(apologizes to those who have seen this cross-posted elsewhere)
Messages in this topic (2)
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5b. Re: 50 Shades of Poet
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Thu May 2, 2013 4:44 pm ((PDT))
In Angosey:
Al lenaya tha reyethya
"The creator of words"
The word "al" denotes the emotive noun class (people and emotions).
"lenaya" is the verb "create" with the emotive suffix "aya" - this means
that the speaker is invested in what she or he is saying
"tha" is the abstract noun class
"reyethya" is words (unknown number)
Best,
Danny
2013/5/2 Scott Hamilton <[email protected]>
> So, it's my birthday, and I'm working on something as a present for
> myself. I'd like to collect terms that gloss to something like 'poet',
> 'word smith' or (dare I say) 'cunning linguist' in as many conlangs as
> possible. Would you y'all be willing to tell me about how that would
> come out in your various conlangs? I'd love to see etymologies if you
> have them too. If you have special orthographies, I'd love to see that
> as well.
>
> Thank you!
> Scott
> (apologizes to those who have seen this cross-posted elsewhere)
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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