There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May-- Completed !!
From: Roger Mills
1b. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May-- Completed !!
From: Herman Miller
2a. Re: What has happened to the Conculture list?
From: Roger Mills
2b. Re: What has happened to the Conculture list?
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3a. Re: Teonaht grammar?
From: David McCann
4a. Re: "Ice age superlanguage" -- linguistics journalism at its finest
From: Matthew George
4b. Re: "Ice age superlanguage" -- linguistics journalism at its finest
From: Matthew Turnbull
4c. Re: "Ice age superlanguage" -- linguistics journalism at its finest
From: Matthew Turnbull
5a. Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants follow
From: Matthew George
5b. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
From: ÐеÑÑ ÐлаÑк
5c. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
From: R A Brown
5d. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
From: Matthew George
5e. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
From: Patrick Dunn
5f. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
From: And Rosta
6a. Re: the LCC5 relay is up
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
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1a. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May-- Completed !!
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 7:40 am ((PDT))
THESE ARE HILARIOUS !!!!!!!!!!! GREAT JOB, HERMAN !!!!
I think I prefer #1 and #3, but 2 is good too.
I might actually be able to sing along, as my singing voice is a little
micro-tonal at times ;-)))))
--- On Tue, 5/7/13, Herman Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Herman Miller <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May-- Completed !!
To: [email protected]
Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2013, 7:18 PM
On 5/6/2013 9:28 AM, Roger Mills wrote:
> --- On Sat, 5/4/13, Herman Miller<[email protected]> wrote:
> On 5/4/2013 3:32 PM, Roger Mills 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...
>
> Nice work getting it all to fit the melody. Let's see how far I can get in
> Jarda.
> ================================================
>
> The easy part was that the original has lots of monosyllables, or 2-syl that
> can easily be reduced to mono forms (compounds or reduplications....)
>
> Since the Gwr were, anciently, aggressively into things Octal, I suppose
> their music used an 8-tone scale (is that like the ancient Greek modes? no
> sharps or flats??). If you have time or inclination, Herman, it might be
> amusing to hear the melody recast into that sort of thing.....???
> =============================================
Well, I've got a few different versions, starting with the porcupine scale.
https://sites.google.com/site/teamouse/ludoq-porcupine.mp3?attredirects=0
As far as the melody goes, the most obvious difference is that the leading tone
(what would be G in the regular diatonic key of A-flat) is flat (more like a
G-flat than a G). It's actually in the key of H. There are equal-sized steps
from A-B, B-C, C-D, D-E, E-F, F-G, and G-H, and a smaller step from H-A. The
harmony has quite a few changes, most of which are related to the different
harmonic structure of the porcupine scale.
The next version is an 8-note equal scale with narrowed octaves, a kind of
optimized scale called "8dino" with equal steps of 148.13 cents each. Not a
very pleasant tuning, but there it is for comparison.
https://sites.google.com/site/teamouse/ludoq-8dino.mp3?attredirects=0
Then there's the diminished scale. It sounds like Danny Elfman got his hands on
it.
https://sites.google.com/site/teamouse/ludoq-diminished.mp3?attredirects=0
A couple of other scales that might be options: the harmonic series from 8 to
15, or a subharmonic scale (like a mirror image of the harmonic series). I'd
need to rewrite the whole thing to sound good in one of those scales, but I can
see those as being reasonable options for an 8-note scale. The harmonic series
comes up naturally when playing horns, and the subharmonic series from
equally-spaced frets on a stringed instrument.
> ÅudoÅ, tis-kjul sÅl-vaz-ni,
> Rudolph, ice-deer fire-nose-with
> (Jarda does technically have a word for "red", but it dates from before I
> decided that Jarda was a Sangari language, and Sangari don't see red as a
> color distinct from yellow. Besides, I like the idea of an ice deer with a
> fire nose.)
>
> ni-an vÅ vaz Åim-ê Åá¹a.
> have-PAST.IMPF he nose shine-ACT.PART very
>
> It should really be "nian vÅra (ergative) vaz Åimê Åá¹a", but that
> doesn't fit. The whole sentence would normally go "Nian ÅudoÅá¹a,
> tiskjulá¹a sÅlvazni, vaz Åimê Åá¹a".
>
> au sin nês-ki lô-á¹a vÅ
> and if see-SUBJ you-ERG it
>
> têz-ki lô-á¹a pa Åim vÅ
> say-SUBJ you-ERG that glow it
>
> Yes, unfortunately the word for "shine" and "glow" is the same in Jarda.
>
> kêb-an sjul tis-kjul-Åa klêd
> laugh-PAST.IMPF all ice-deer-ERG other
>
> It should technically be "kêban sjulnên" (with a classifier).
>
> au nÅ-vôn-an dü-á¹a vÅ
> and dis-honor-PAST.IMPF they-ERG him
>
> va-tên-an RudoÅ bá¹aá¹-vam
> not-allow-PAST.IMPF Rudolph luck-less
>
> zur büz á¹ix plin tis-kjul-i
> associate ever for game ice-deer-GEN
I might as well try to finish it.
ķê ju-Äôm Ärep-ni Åôm-vo
then one-CLASS fog-with night-LOC
têz-en Senta-á¹a
say-PAST.PF Santa-ERG
"RudoÅ, Åim Åá¹a lô-i vaz!
Rudolph, shine much you-GEN nose
jêð zÅ wöm lô-á¹a tis-xêb"
suggest that guide you-ERG ice-car
tôs-en sjul-nên tis-kjul-á¹a
love-PAST.PF all-CLASS ice-deer-ERG
zê sjês-an maÄ£is-ni sjul
while shout-PAST.IMPF delight-with
"ÅudoÅ, tis-kjul sÅl-vaz-ni,
Rudolph, ice-deer fire-nose-with
Åêá¹-ü lô-á¹a tÅl Åtên-a"
become-FUT.PF you-ERG part history-GEN
A Jarda speaker could do better, of course. My vocabulary is pretty limited,
and song lyrics are hard enough to translate into your native language.
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Translation: Christmas songs in May-- Completed !!
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 3:52 pm ((PDT))
On 5/8/2013 12:09 AM, James Kane wrote:
> Wow this is very well done! I especially like the porcupine scale
> one! What programme do you use to make this?
Most of the sounds are from Garritan World Instruments, except for the
celesta, which is from Garritan Personal Orchestra. (It uses Scala files
for tuning.)
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: What has happened to the Conculture list?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 8:04 am ((PDT))
something strange here. Jörg, on May 4 you sent a "Farewell" msg to that list
(a position that I hold de facto, though I still read a lot of it for amusement
value... :-) ), but I see that you have a new msg. posted today.
AFAICT Conculture is alive and
well........http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conculture/
Roger.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- On Wed, 5/8/13, Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>
Subject: What has happened to the Conculture list?
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 7:19 AM
Hallo conlangers!
Does anybody of you know what is wrong with the Conculture mailing
list? I attempted to subscribe yesterday but with no result, and
according to the archive, nothing has appeared on it since Sunday.
Is the list dead?
--
... 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 (4)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: What has happened to the Conculture list?
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 10:27 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wednesday 08 May 2013 17:04:27 Roger Mills wrote:
> something strange here. Jörg, on May 4 you sent a "Farewell" msg to that
> list (a position that I hold de facto, though I still read a lot of it for
> amusement value... :-) ), but I see that you have a new msg. posted today.
>
> AFAICT Conculture is alive and
> well........http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conculture/
Yes. It *seemed* to have some problem because I saw no new
messages, and my subscription request was pending, but
apparently, everything is fine, the moderator did not find
the time to approve of my subscription earlier, and the
list is going through a quiet phase. Nothing else.
--
... 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 (4)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Teonaht grammar?
Posted by: "David McCann" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 8:27 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 7 May 2013 12:41:07 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Does anyone know what happened to Sally Caves' online pages about
> Teonaht? None of the links that show up in Google work
But Duckduckgo reveals
http://web.archive.org/web/20060717052450/http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: "Ice age superlanguage" -- linguistics journalism at its finest
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 10:41 am ((PDT))
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
> The average person has no concept whatsoever what a monumentally
> difficult problem that is, and we
> may never have computers as smart as humans. On the other hand, we already
> have pocket calculators that are smarter than journalists.
>
*snicker*
We already have computers that can outperform humans at quite a few
cognitive tasks... and for the tasks where computers lag behind, consider
that not even the most powerful networks available can duplicate the sheer
parallel redundancy of the brain.
Systems that can do anything the human brain can do, or more, are pretty
inevitable as long as civilization doesn't collapse. I wouldn't care to
guess at the timetable, though.
Messages in this topic (22)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: "Ice age superlanguage" -- linguistics journalism at its finest
Posted by: "Matthew Turnbull" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 12:42 pm ((PDT))
Thanks for the link Roger!
First of all, I have to say I was relived that the authors make no claims
that anyone would be able to understand modern lexical items 15000 years
ago, since they were published in PNAS.
OK, so having now read the paper, the author does mention three main
sources of potential error in their data. (1) historical linguists may be
more likely to say two words are cognate, based solely on the fact that
they expect them to be (2) some words may be more likely to have similar
sounding phonetic representations, despite no underlying cognancy simply
because of some innate human preference to use simple words for frequently
used concepts, and a similar judgement of simplicity across time and space
and (3) there could have been borrowings. I feel like they address these
concerns fairly well, and would like to hear any arguments to the contrary.
They address them as such
(1) - they can't rule it out, but point out that several words that would
be expected to be cognate based on this hypothesis are not
(2) - if you exclude this kind of word (pronous and numbers) their argument
still stands up
(3) - they feel that borrowing is not able to account for such similarity
because the words having been borrowed would have still changes greatly
over time, and that such a borrowing is unlikely to have occurred late in
the evolutionary history of the languages because of their mutual
geographic isolation.
I think the greatest strength of this study is that the authors did not
seek out cognate words directly, but first attempted to narrow their search
to words that they determined would be good candidates based on their
theory of word half-life, that is to say that a word with a half-life of
4000 years is unlikely to be cognate between languages that split from one
another 15000 years ago, whereas a word with a half-life of 20000 years is
more likely to have remained cognate. They also claim to have been
conservative in identifying cognates by assuming no cognate when no data
was available, even if they thought it was likely.
This being said... their method identified "worm" as a highly conserved
lexical item, and they admit they have no idea what's up with that. Flow is
also suspect, but I guess could be important enough to not look at it too
hard.
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > The average person has no concept whatsoever what a monumentally
> > difficult problem that is, and we
> > may never have computers as smart as humans. On the other hand, we
> already
> > have pocket calculators that are smarter than journalists.
> >
>
> *snicker*
>
> We already have computers that can outperform humans at quite a few
> cognitive tasks... and for the tasks where computers lag behind, consider
> that not even the most powerful networks available can duplicate the sheer
> parallel redundancy of the brain.
>
> Systems that can do anything the human brain can do, or more, are pretty
> inevitable as long as civilization doesn't collapse. I wouldn't care to
> guess at the timetable, though.
>
Messages in this topic (22)
________________________________________________________________________
4c. Re: "Ice age superlanguage" -- linguistics journalism at its finest
Posted by: "Matthew Turnbull" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 12:50 pm ((PDT))
Oh, and I forgot to say, it also surprises me that they do not appear to
include an outgroup in their analysis. I don't think that's common practice
in linguistics, but it is in biology and the paper and authors appear to be
using methods based in biology much deeper than they are based in
linguistics. For example, they could have included a proto-language
ancestral to Australian languages, where they would expect to find no
cognates because the language is not related to the others in the group.
-Matt
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:42 PM, Matthew Turnbull <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks for the link Roger!
>
> First of all, I have to say I was relived that the authors make no claims
> that anyone would be able to understand modern lexical items 15000 years
> ago, since they were published in PNAS.
>
> OK, so having now read the paper, the author does mention three main
> sources of potential error in their data. (1) historical linguists may be
> more likely to say two words are cognate, based solely on the fact that
> they expect them to be (2) some words may be more likely to have similar
> sounding phonetic representations, despite no underlying cognancy simply
> because of some innate human preference to use simple words for frequently
> used concepts, and a similar judgement of simplicity across time and space
> and (3) there could have been borrowings. I feel like they address these
> concerns fairly well, and would like to hear any arguments to the contrary.
> They address them as such
> (1) - they can't rule it out, but point out that several words that would
> be expected to be cognate based on this hypothesis are not
> (2) - if you exclude this kind of word (pronous and numbers) their
> argument still stands up
> (3) - they feel that borrowing is not able to account for such similarity
> because the words having been borrowed would have still changes greatly
> over time, and that such a borrowing is unlikely to have occurred late in
> the evolutionary history of the languages because of their mutual
> geographic isolation.
>
> I think the greatest strength of this study is that the authors did not
> seek out cognate words directly, but first attempted to narrow their search
> to words that they determined would be good candidates based on their
> theory of word half-life, that is to say that a word with a half-life of
> 4000 years is unlikely to be cognate between languages that split from one
> another 15000 years ago, whereas a word with a half-life of 20000 years is
> more likely to have remained cognate. They also claim to have been
> conservative in identifying cognates by assuming no cognate when no data
> was available, even if they thought it was likely.
>
> This being said... their method identified "worm" as a highly conserved
> lexical item, and they admit they have no idea what's up with that. Flow is
> also suspect, but I guess could be important enough to not look at it too
> hard.
>
>
> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:41 PM, Matthew George <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 2:54 PM, Gary Shannon <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > The average person has no concept whatsoever what a monumentally
>> > difficult problem that is, and we
>> > may never have computers as smart as humans. On the other hand, we
>> already
>> > have pocket calculators that are smarter than journalists.
>> >
>>
>> *snicker*
>>
>> We already have computers that can outperform humans at quite a few
>> cognitive tasks... and for the tasks where computers lag behind, consider
>> that not even the most powerful networks available can duplicate the sheer
>> parallel redundancy of the brain.
>>
>> Systems that can do anything the human brain can do, or more, are pretty
>> inevitable as long as civilization doesn't collapse. I wouldn't care to
>> guess at the timetable, though.
>>
>
>
Messages in this topic (22)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants follow
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 12:13 pm ((PDT))
I'm a *very* amateur conlanger with no academic background in linguistics
at all, and very limited foreign language experience. So while I've been
able to cope with many of the unfamiliar sounds on the IPA chart, there a
lot that aren't found in English that I can't quite figure out.
Sometimes I can find sound samples online... but I haven't gotten much out
of them. Mostly they sound like the sorts of consonant clusters I've
encountered in English to me - probably because I'm sorting them into
conceptual categories instead of perceiving the actual sounds.
I've been considering adding various retroflex sounds to a conlang I'm
working on, but I don't quite understand how they're supposed to sound.
The Norwegian examples I've found for, say, the retroflex nasal, sound an
awful lot like 'rn', in say 'yarn'. Reading up on how the sounds are
physically made and trying to reproduce them gives pretty much the same
result. I have no idea if I'm doing it right or not.
Any suggestions?
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (6)
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5b. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
Posted by: "ÐеÑÑ ÐлаÑк" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 1:48 pm ((PDT))
On Wednesday, 08 May 2013 15:13:35 you wrote:
> I'm a *very* amateur conlanger with no academic background in linguistics
> at all, and very limited foreign language experience. So while I've been
> able to cope with many of the unfamiliar sounds on the IPA chart, there a
> lot that aren't found in English that I can't quite figure out.
>
> Sometimes I can find sound samples online... but I haven't gotten much out
> of them. Mostly they sound like the sorts of consonant clusters I've
> encountered in English to me - probably because I'm sorting them into
> conceptual categories instead of perceiving the actual sounds.
Have you tried http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/ ? It has samples of
all
the sounds symbolized in the IPA. Also, once you a couple of sounds that you
like the sound of, if you're still having problems producing them, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet, which has a
chart with links to descriptions of each sound, including their production.
To answer your question (how are retroflex consonants different from
consonants followed by "r"), the difference is that the tongue is rolled back
when producing the sound. The description of a retroflex nasal /ɳ/ is close,
but there is a difference between /jaɹn/ ("yarn") and /jaɳ/. Try others, like
/Ê/, and it will be readily obious that the sound is more than just /ɹs/.
:Peter
Messages in this topic (6)
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5c. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 2:17 pm ((PDT))
On 08/05/2013 21:48, ÐеÑÑ ÐлаÑк wrote:
[snip]
> To answer your question (how are retroflex consonants
> different from consonants followed by "r"), the
> difference is that the tongue is rolled back when
> producing the sound.
Quite right - at the same time as producing sound. Try
finding samples of English spoken by people from the Indian
sub-continent; they habitually use retroflex plosives for
the alveolar plosives of British & American English. It is
quite a distinctive sound.
--
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 (6)
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5d. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 2:58 pm ((PDT))
Thank you very much for that link! Those charts are incredibly helpful.
I admit I still have great difficulty hearing many of the sounds;
particularly the alveolar and retroflex approximants. I'll keep at it.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (6)
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5e. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 5:09 pm ((PDT))
I am a great fan of Catford's book on phonology, which gives step-by-step
directions for positioning your mouthmeat to produce every possible speech
sound.
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:58 PM, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thank you very much for that link! Those charts are incredibly helpful.
>
> I admit I still have great difficulty hearing many of the sounds;
> particularly the alveolar and retroflex approximants. I'll keep at it.
>
> Matt G.
>
--
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 (6)
________________________________________________________________________
5f. Re: Retroflex consonants - how are they different from consonants fo
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 5:24 pm ((PDT))
Patrick Dunn, On 09/05/2013 01:09:
> I am a great fan of Catford's book on phonology,
Catford never wrote a book on phonology, and even if he had it would not be
relevant to this thread. He did, however, write a superb book on phonetics,
_Fundamental problems in phonetics_ and an excellent textbook, _A practical
introduction to phonetics_.
--And.
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Re: the LCC5 relay is up
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed May 8, 2013 6:25 pm ((PDT))
--- On Tue, 5/7/13, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
> Over on the relay list, relay 20 is still sloooooowly grinding its way
> to an end. I think someone proposed going ahead and starting relay
> 21, but there was resistance to the idea of starting it before relay
> 20 finishes. If relay 20 doesn't finish in another month or two,
> though, I think we should reconsider it.
A *month* or *two*!?
Wow. Isn't this the relay that started last fall or something?
Padraic
> Jim Henry
Messages in this topic (13)
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