There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: No = zero ?
From: Herman Miller
1b. Re: No = zero ?
From: Leonardo Castro
1c. Re: No = zero ?
From: C. Brickner
1d. Re: No = zero ?
From: George Corley
1e. Re: No = zero ?
From: Douglas Koller
1f. Re: No = zero ?
From: BPJ
2. Morpheme Classification
From: neo gu
Messages
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1a. Re: No = zero ?
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [email protected]
Date: Fri May 17, 2013 7:07 pm ((PDT))
On 5/17/2013 4:05 PM, Leonardo Castro wrote:
> While developing a new conlang, I came to the question of whether or
> not the words "no" and "zero" can be the same word (when "zero" is not
> refering to the number per se) or if there are subtle logical
> distinctions between these concepts.
Tirelat uses the same word "muh" for "zero" and "no" when used with
countable nouns. (Which makes me think that I must have had a different
word in mind for "no" with uncountable nouns, but I don't know what it
is. I'll have to make a new one.)
Messages in this topic (16)
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1b. Re: No = zero ?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Fri May 17, 2013 7:18 pm ((PDT))
2013/5/17 Harald S. <[email protected]>:
> Hello everybody! :-)
>
> Delurking after about ten years of only reading the conlang list, I want to
> point out the interesting fact that in German (as has already been mentioned
> in this thread) "Null" is the word for zero but actually comes from Latin
> where "nullus/nulla/nullum" means no one or nothing, respectively. The
> Catholic church liked to say about itself: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus -
> Outside of the church (there is) no salvation. But, having the german meaning
> of "zero" in mind, it could also be interpreted as: Outside of the church
> there are zero salvations.
>
> So, I guess, if you search for a natlang precedent of merging "zero" and "no
> one/none", you may find it in Latin.
I suspected that and I have even considered the "nul-" stem for
zero/negative (now I'm tending towards "hal"), but I know little Latin
and didn't know the difference between "nullus", "nihil" and others.
Right now, I have googled for it: apparently, "nul-" is "no" and
"nihil" is "nothing".
BTW, I started thinking about it after I realized that I created a
system to distinguish between the numbers "digits" and the quantities
they represent by using specific suffixes. Then, I noted that I could
put numbers and numbers together in the same class:
halau / halai / halou: zero (=no), zeroth, 0
kunau / kunai / kunou : one, first, 1
titau / titiu / titou : two, second, 2
pekau / pekiu / pekou : few, one of the first ones, "digit few"
kopau / kopiu / kopou : all, last (=final), "digit all"
etc.
>
> Cheers,
> Harald
Messages in this topic (16)
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1c. Re: No = zero ?
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Fri May 17, 2013 7:35 pm ((PDT))
I don’t understand the rationale of using the contemporary meaning of a German
word to translate a third-century Latin phrase. ‘Nullus’ is not translated as
zero. Since the concept of zero was unknown to the Romans, that translation
was not used by them. And, as far as I know, it is not used that way by the
modern Catholic Church. At least, the word is not given that translation in
the Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin.
One can’t merge ‘zero’ and ‘none’ in a Latin word when one of the concepts
didn’t exist in Latin.
Charlie
----- Original Message -----
Hello everybody! :-)
Delurking after about ten years of only reading the conlang list, I want to
point out the interesting fact that in German (as has already been mentioned in
this thread) "Null" is the word for zero but actually comes from Latin where
"nullus/nulla/nullum" means no one or nothing, respectively. The Catholic
church liked to say about itself: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus - Outside of the
church (there is) no salvation. But, having the german meaning of "zero" in
mind, it could also be interpreted as: Outside of the church there are zero
salvations.
So, I guess, if you search for a natlang precedent of merging "zero" and "no
one/none", you may find it in Latin.
Cheers,
Harald
Messages in this topic (16)
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1d. Re: No = zero ?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Fri May 17, 2013 8:00 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 9:35 PM, C. Brickner <[email protected]>wrote:
> I don�t understand the rationale of using the contemporary meaning of a
> German word to translate a third-century Latin phrase. �Nullus� is not
> translated as zero. Since the concept of zero was unknown to the Romans,
> that translation was not used by them. And, as far as I know, it is not
> used that way by the modern Catholic Church. At least, the word is not
> given that translation in the Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin.
>
> One can�t merge �zero� and �none� in a Latin word when one of the concepts
> didn�t exist in Latin.
>
But, does "zero" always have to mean the mathematical concept of zero. I
would argue that "zero" used as a quantifier could very well have the same
meaning as quantifier "no". The Romans did not have the concept of zero as
it is used in place-value numeral systems, but I really don't think that
quantifier "zero" has that meaning tied up in it.
Messages in this topic (16)
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1e. Re: No = zero ?
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" [email protected]
Date: Fri May 17, 2013 9:11 pm ((PDT))
> Date: Fri, 17 May 2013 17:29:53 -0300
> From: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: No = zero ?
> To: [email protected]
> 2013/5/17 Mechthild Czapp [email protected]:
> > Der Film endet um 0 Uhr.
> > The film ends at zero o'clock. (not really commonly said, in English, but
> > in German, Null Uhr (literally: zero hour) does not sound as wonky).
> > *The film ends at no o'clock.
> Good point!
> Thinking of the Aztec ordinal zero ("zeroth") used to time counting, I
> think that "zero o'clock" could be interpreted as "no hour passed since
> the start of the day".
> > Does this make sense?
To that end, Géarthnuns has the ordinal word "vlézöfíb" (I believe I've
mentioned this in list antiquity). It covers things that are perceived as
falling between zero and one on a mental number line. The "first century" is
"kashadsömöths vlézöfíth", which means in Géarthnuns, *now* is the"twentieth
century", lining up with it's being *20*13, and making Yours Truly a lot
happier (who cares if no one else uses it? having the years of the
"*eighteenth* century" all start with "17-" used to drive me utterly daft). So
newborns are in their vlézöfíth year and midnight to one is the vlézöfín hour.
Too, what Europeans would call the ground, rez-de-chaussée floor is the
vlézöfík floor and anything before a written Chapter or Article One would be
the vlézöfík chapter/article. Since it deals conceptually with a space
*between* points on a line and not the points themselves, I've never thought of
it in terms of "zero-eth", though I suppose it could be glossed that way
(albeit "vlézö-" has no connection to "zero"). In the lexicon, it's glossed as
"first", "preliminary", and "introductory". Ordinals and cardinals walk in
apparent harmony in the Lao Kou universe and all is well with the world :)
Kou
Messages in this topic (16)
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1f. Re: No = zero ?
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Sat May 18, 2013 1:08 am ((PDT))
2013-05-17 22:36, Elyse M Grasso skrev:
> Some (mostly historical?) dialects of English use nought (nothing)
> as equivalent to zero. The game Americans call tic-tac-toe is
> noughts and crosses in Britain.
>
> Oddly, 'ought' which should be the opposite of 'nought', is (or
> was) also used for zero. I have never heard it used for any
> function except dates: "the year of ought six"
In general I think 'nothing' is more more often, and more
sensibly, associated with 'zero' than the mere negation is. Many
European languages derive their word for 'zero' from the Latin
word for 'none'. Sanskrit uses _śūnyam_ 'empty, void' for 'zero'
as a 'value', but the digit is _bindu_ 'dot', which is just what
it looks like in the Indic scripts. So I'd advise you to use
'none/nothing/void' for 'zero' if you don't want a dedicated word
for it, if only to avoid strange ambiguities.
/bpj
Messages in this topic (16)
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2. Morpheme Classification
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Fri May 17, 2013 9:48 pm ((PDT))
SSM3 is coming along. What's not coming along very well is a coherent
grammatical description. For example, I have several prefixes described as
cases, which is how they sometimes act.
do- genitive with o initial: afroqo odocko (Nom-dog Mod-Gen-boy) "the boy's dog"
fe- allative with i initial: ifentiba (Sec-All-house) "to the house"
But these can also be used with the e initial:
afroqo edocko. (Nom-dog Vrb-belong_to-boy) "The dog belongs to the boy."
uvi efentiba. (Erg-1S Vrb-go_to-house) "I'm going to the house."
Temporal conjunctions are another example. Conjunctions appear as prefixes to
the head of the subordinate clause, following the initial.
te- "after":
amriya evalse itelba ajhona.
(Nom-Mary Vrb-Pst-dance Sec-after-sing Nom-John)
"Mary danced after John sang."
But te- is also the indefinite relative past tense prefix:
etelba ajhona.
(Vrb-IRP-sing Nom-John)
"John has sung."
Messages in this topic (1)
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