There are 14 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Conscripts and computers
From: Casey Borders
1b. Re: Conscripts and computers
From: George Marques de Jesus
1c. Re: Conscripts and computers
From: BPJ
2a. two online conlanging tools from Jan Strasser
From: Alex Fink
2b. Re: two online conlanging tools from Jan Strasser
From: Daniel Bowman
3a. Re: Too simple to be derived?
From: MorphemeAddict
3b. Re: Too simple to be derived?
From: Padraic Brown
3c. Re: Too simple to be derived?
From: Padraic Brown
4a. Re: Possible case system
From: Jyri Lehtinen
4b. Re: Possible case system
From: Adam Walker
5a. Re: THEORY: False false cognates.
From: Muke Tever
6a. Grammatical complexity
From: Adam Walker
6b. Re: Grammatical complexity
From: Wm Annis
6c. Re: Grammatical complexity
From: Adam Walker
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Conscripts and computers
Posted by: "Casey Borders" [email protected]
Date: Mon May 20, 2013 9:08 pm ((PDT))
Can you post more about your combination scheme?
On May 21, 2013 12:05 AM, "George Marques de Jesus" <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Well, it's not different of the way I thought it should work, I'm not so
> bad in guessing, at least.
>
> But now I don't know *how* to create such slots and permutations with the
> font, so the word processor would understand and prettify everything. I
> will dive into FontForge and see what I can do.
>
> George Marques
> http://georgemarques.com.br
>
>
> 2013/5/21 Casey Borders <[email protected]>
>
> > My thought is that you wouldn't need every combination you just need each
> > letter in each permutation. So you need to look at how you're forming
> your
> > blocks and find out how many different slots you have and make a version
> of
> > each letter that fits into each slot. Then, when you type, it would be
> > something like :
> >
> > Upper Left B
> > Upper Right R
> > Middle A
> > Lower D
> >
> > Then the space character could move you on to the next block. Depending
> on
> > the complexity of your combination system it could still be quite a few
> > permutations but you should be able to get away with less than 35K.
> > On May 20, 2013 11:30 PM, "George Marques de Jesus" <
> > [email protected]>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I'm finally trying to develop a conscript. I liked the way Hangul
> works,
> > so
> > > I thought to do something with the same idea: an alphabet that groups
> > > letters into syllables. I sketched some letters in the paper, but then
> I
> > > realized I had no idea how to use them in the computer. I know plenty
> > about
> > > computers, as a hobbyist programmer, though only almost nothing about
> > > fonts.
> > >
> > > I searched to see how Hangul fonts are designed, because I think nobody
> > > goes creating 11k glyphs for a font (well, maybe someone does, but
> > besides
> > > the time it'd take, that'd use some good extra space in the hard drive
> > and
> > > RAM). So I wanted to know how they combine to look pretty as they do,
> > but I
> > > found nothing about it (TBH I do found something here:
> > > http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/hangulot/shaping.htm only
> > it
> > > didn't help me much)
> > >
> > > If my math is good, I have over 35k possibilities for syllables (35490
> to
> > > be exact), so I'm not going to make glyph for everything (I'll probably
> > > even *use* all combinations).
> > >
> > > And my questions are: are there any resources about how Hangul font are
> > > designed? Are there any specific software that can build something
> > similar
> > > to it (specially a free one)? Is this even possible to do (considering
> > that
> > > I have over 3 times more possibilities than Hangul and somewhat
> different
> > > way of combining)? Should I give up and stick with pencil and paper?
> > >
> > > George Marques
> > > http://georgemarques.com.br
> > >
> >
>
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Conscripts and computers
Posted by: "George Marques de Jesus" [email protected]
Date: Mon May 20, 2013 9:44 pm ((PDT))
Let me try to describe it.
The syllable structure is CV(V)C. The final consonant has 5 possibilities,
including a "null consonant".
Vowels might be short or long. The long version are represented with an
extra horizontal line and the next vowel (if any) sits in the top of that
line.
The initial consonants are squared glyphs (although not always box-like)
with one vowel slot "inside" and another "outside", but the slots are
always side by side in the same height. The final consonants are horizontal
and placed under the group, covering whole width.
Hope I made myself clear.
George Marques
http://georgemarques.com.br
2013/5/21 Casey Borders <[email protected]>
> Can you post more about your combination scheme?
> On May 21, 2013 12:05 AM, "George Marques de Jesus" <
> [email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> > Well, it's not different of the way I thought it should work, I'm not so
> > bad in guessing, at least.
> >
> > But now I don't know *how* to create such slots and permutations with the
> > font, so the word processor would understand and prettify everything. I
> > will dive into FontForge and see what I can do.
> >
> > George Marques
> > http://georgemarques.com.br
> >
> >
> > 2013/5/21 Casey Borders <[email protected]>
> >
> > > My thought is that you wouldn't need every combination you just need
> each
> > > letter in each permutation. So you need to look at how you're forming
> > your
> > > blocks and find out how many different slots you have and make a
> version
> > of
> > > each letter that fits into each slot. Then, when you type, it would be
> > > something like :
> > >
> > > Upper Left B
> > > Upper Right R
> > > Middle A
> > > Lower D
> > >
> > > Then the space character could move you on to the next block.
> Depending
> > on
> > > the complexity of your combination system it could still be quite a few
> > > permutations but you should be able to get away with less than 35K.
> > > On May 20, 2013 11:30 PM, "George Marques de Jesus" <
> > > [email protected]>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > I'm finally trying to develop a conscript. I liked the way Hangul
> > works,
> > > so
> > > > I thought to do something with the same idea: an alphabet that groups
> > > > letters into syllables. I sketched some letters in the paper, but
> then
> > I
> > > > realized I had no idea how to use them in the computer. I know plenty
> > > about
> > > > computers, as a hobbyist programmer, though only almost nothing about
> > > > fonts.
> > > >
> > > > I searched to see how Hangul fonts are designed, because I think
> nobody
> > > > goes creating 11k glyphs for a font (well, maybe someone does, but
> > > besides
> > > > the time it'd take, that'd use some good extra space in the hard
> drive
> > > and
> > > > RAM). So I wanted to know how they combine to look pretty as they do,
> > > but I
> > > > found nothing about it (TBH I do found something here:
> > > > http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/hangulot/shaping.htmonly
> > > it
> > > > didn't help me much)
> > > >
> > > > If my math is good, I have over 35k possibilities for syllables
> (35490
> > to
> > > > be exact), so I'm not going to make glyph for everything (I'll
> probably
> > > > even *use* all combinations).
> > > >
> > > > And my questions are: are there any resources about how Hangul font
> are
> > > > designed? Are there any specific software that can build something
> > > similar
> > > > to it (specially a free one)? Is this even possible to do
> (considering
> > > that
> > > > I have over 3 times more possibilities than Hangul and somewhat
> > different
> > > > way of combining)? Should I give up and stick with pencil and paper?
> > > >
> > > > George Marques
> > > > http://georgemarques.com.br
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Conscripts and computers
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 5:19 am ((PDT))
Sounds like you could be helped by Graphite!
<http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=projects&item_id=graphite_home>
When I did a conscript with context-sensitive variants a longish
time ago I did a font with characters for each permutation much
likehow Tibetan script works in Unicode, but left the process
of chosing how to map a sequence of Latin 'transliteration'
charaters to conscript font glyphs to a separate transliteration
script. Depending on how much you want to be able to type WYSIWYG
in your conscript that may be the easier approach. I've been
working on a script which generates lookup tables for simple
substring matching and mapping with some limited context
sensitivity for some time. It just doesn't want to become
urgent enough for me to finish it due to my crappy fontmaking
skills...
/bpj
2013-05-21 06:05, George Marques de Jesus skrev:
> Well, it's not different of the way I thought it should work, I'm not so
> bad in guessing, at least.
>
> But now I don't know *how* to create such slots and permutations with the
> font, so the word processor would understand and prettify everything. I
> will dive into FontForge and see what I can do.
>
> George Marques
> http://georgemarques.com.br
>
>
> 2013/5/21 Casey Borders <[email protected]>
>
>> My thought is that you wouldn't need every combination you just need each
>> letter in each permutation. So you need to look at how you're forming your
>> blocks and find out how many different slots you have and make a version of
>> each letter that fits into each slot. Then, when you type, it would be
>> something like :
>>
>> Upper Left B
>> Upper Right R
>> Middle A
>> Lower D
>>
>> Then the space character could move you on to the next block. Depending on
>> the complexity of your combination system it could still be quite a few
>> permutations but you should be able to get away with less than 35K.
>> On May 20, 2013 11:30 PM, "George Marques de Jesus" <
>> [email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm finally trying to develop a conscript. I liked the way Hangul works,
>> so
>>> I thought to do something with the same idea: an alphabet that groups
>>> letters into syllables. I sketched some letters in the paper, but then I
>>> realized I had no idea how to use them in the computer. I know plenty
>> about
>>> computers, as a hobbyist programmer, though only almost nothing about
>>> fonts.
>>>
>>> I searched to see how Hangul fonts are designed, because I think nobody
>>> goes creating 11k glyphs for a font (well, maybe someone does, but
>> besides
>>> the time it'd take, that'd use some good extra space in the hard drive
>> and
>>> RAM). So I wanted to know how they combine to look pretty as they do,
>> but I
>>> found nothing about it (TBH I do found something here:
>>> http://www.microsoft.com/typography/otfntdev/hangulot/shaping.htm only
>> it
>>> didn't help me much)
>>>
>>> If my math is good, I have over 35k possibilities for syllables (35490 to
>>> be exact), so I'm not going to make glyph for everything (I'll probably
>>> even *use* all combinations).
>>>
>>> And my questions are: are there any resources about how Hangul font are
>>> designed? Are there any specific software that can build something
>> similar
>>> to it (specially a free one)? Is this even possible to do (considering
>> that
>>> I have over 3 times more possibilities than Hangul and somewhat different
>>> way of combining)? Should I give up and stick with pencil and paper?
>>>
>>> George Marques
>>> http://georgemarques.com.br
>>>
>>
>
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. two online conlanging tools from Jan Strasser
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Mon May 20, 2013 9:13 pm ((PDT))
http://audmanh.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/two-tools-for-conlangers/
Derivizer: produce random derived forms from a list of bases and a
list of affixal derivational operations, to stimulate
derived-lexicon-building
Frequentizer: compute relative frequencies of the vowels and
consonants given a passage of text (like we were talking about here
recently); allows for transcriptional complications, like digraphs
etc.
Alex
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: two online conlanging tools from Jan Strasser
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 4:46 am ((PDT))
Thank you for passing this on - I'm very excited to have a look!
2013/5/21 Alex Fink <[email protected]>
> http://audmanh.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/two-tools-for-conlangers/
> Derivizer: produce random derived forms from a list of bases and a
> list of affixal derivational operations, to stimulate
> derived-lexicon-building
> Frequentizer: compute relative frequencies of the vowels and
> consonants given a passage of text (like we were talking about here
> recently); allows for transcriptional complications, like digraphs
> etc.
>
> Alex
>
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Too simple to be derived?
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Mon May 20, 2013 9:14 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 11:48 AM, David McCann <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Sun, 19 May 2013 21:10:06 -0300
> Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > A problem in forming the opposite with a preffix is that sometimes
> > "opposite" seems to be subjective or multiple. What's the opposite of
> > "boring" -- "interesting", "exciting", "fun", "funny" or "not boring"?
> > For some people, the opposite of "sweet" is "salty", but it could be
> > also "bitter", "acid" (and what to do with "alkaline"?) or
> > "savourless"...
>
> What Zamenhoff was missing was the logical difference between
> contraries and contradictories. Contraries are the opposite ends of a
> scale, like black and white, big and small.
Black vs white is a different kind of opposite than big vs small.
Black and white are the two endpoints of a continuum of gray with extremes
at each end: binary.
Big and small aren't both endpoints, only small is, with the extreme of
zero: relative.
There are also mnemonic opposites like desert and oasis.
Esperanto treats all of them the same, if it treats them at all.
stevo
In natural languages they
> are normally expressed by separate terms. Contradictories are terms
> which divide the scale between them, like coloured and colourless, and
> these are generally derivatives. Esperanto's malrapida confuses "slow"
> and "not fast".
>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: Too simple to be derived?
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 5:29 am ((PDT))
--- On Tue, 5/21/13, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
> > What Zamenhoff was missing was the logical difference between
> > contraries and contradictories. Contraries are the opposite ends of a
> > scale, like black and white, big and small.
>
> Black vs white is a different kind of opposite than big vs small.
> Black and white are the two endpoints of a continuum of gray with
> extremes at each end: binary.
> Big and small aren't both endpoints, only small is, with the extreme of
> zero: relative.
I'm not so sure "zero" is even a terminus on this scale. All you have to
do is the old "half that size" trick to make the "small" end of the
continuum infinite. Anyway, zero is a quantity, not a size, so it's not
really a proper opposite. Zero's opposite would be any non-zero number,
the opposition being "some quantity vs no quantity".
> There are also mnemonic opposites like desert and oasis.
> Esperanto treats all of them the same, if it treats them at
> all.
Padraic
>
> stevo
>
> In natural languages they
> > are normally expressed by separate terms.
> Contradictories are terms
> > which divide the scale between them, like coloured and
> colourless, and
> > these are generally derivatives. Esperanto's malrapida
> confuses "slow"
> > and "not fast".
> >
>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: Too simple to be derived?
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 5:41 am ((PDT))
--- On Mon, 5/20/13, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
> BTW, a professor of mine once said that Brazilians would promptly
> answer "sweet" to the question "What's the opposite of salty?" while
> Americans (she had already lived in the USA) would think that this is
> a nonsense question. Here I have the opportunity to know if this is
> true.
I think it's nonsensical only for that fact that these don't really have
"opposites", just shades of more or less. So an opposite of salty is "not
quite so salty", while another might be "not really very salty at all".
(In the same way, "white" really isn't THE opposite of "black". There's
just less and less black, until eventually you run out of grey.)
> She attributed this to the Brazilian culinary where every food is
> usually either very salty or very sweet.
Interesting. I think of Flavortown as a balance between the various basic
tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, savory, etc). Pure salt is pure salt, pure
sugar is pure sugar. A good chocolate coated salty pretzel is pretty close
to heaven. Sort of like an RGB grid, only for food.
> She also pointed out that water from rivers is referred to as "sweet
> water" in Brazil, as opposed to "salty water", but, googling for it, now
> I see that this expression is used is English as well.
Yes, though perhaps not as common as "fresh water".
> Leonardo
Padraic
Messages in this topic (17)
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________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: Possible case system
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 1:06 am ((PDT))
> Although I'm not sure what's happening with the Fifth grade teacher.
>
Seems like
fifth grade teacher-ACC-POSS is tired
= [a teacher of the fifth grade]-ACC is tired
(using here nominative/accusative for ak/ev). I'm not sure how common it is
to mark possession with a case
on the possessed noun. According to Wikipedia the possessed case is
attested (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessive). A more typical way to
mark possession on the possessed noun is to use possessive affixes, i.e. to
inflect the noun according to the person and typically number of the
possessor. You can have this system loose the first and second persons, by
indicating possession by them always with juxtaposition of pronouns, as
well as any number marking it has. This way you'll end up with a system
where the possessum of either third person or non pronoun possessors is
indicated with a "case" that's used alongside the "proper" cases.
If you want complete symmetry with regards to possessors, it's not too out
of place to have the possessed case to generalise also to the first and
second person possessors. You might have a problem with this last step
though, if you are aiming for naturalism. That's because it would make the
possessed noun jump up in grammatical complexity and possession by speech
act participants is so common that it's hardly the first place to have
grammatical analogising. But if you are just aiming to get a nice system,
then scrap that last bit.
-Jyri
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: Possible case system
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 7:06 am ((PDT))
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 3:06 AM, Jyri Lehtinen <[email protected]>wrote:
> > Although I'm not sure what's happening with the Fifth grade teacher.
> >
>
> Seems like
>
> fifth grade teacher-ACC-POSS is tired
> = [a teacher of the fifth grade]-ACC is tired
>
> (using here nominative/accusative for ak/ev). I'm not sure how common it is
> to mark possession with a case
> on the possessed noun. According to Wikipedia the possessed case is
> attested (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessive). A more typical way to
> mark possession on the possessed noun is to use possessive affixes, i.e. to
> inflect the noun according to the person and typically number of the
> possessor. You can have this system loose the first and second persons, by
> indicating possession by them always with juxtaposition of pronouns, as
> well as any number marking it has. This way you'll end up with a system
> where the possessum of either third person or non pronoun possessors is
> indicated with a "case" that's used alongside the "proper" cases.
>
> If you want complete symmetry with regards to possessors, it's not too out
> of place to have the possessed case to generalise also to the first and
> second person possessors. You might have a problem with this last step
> though, if you are aiming for naturalism. That's because it would make the
> possessed noun jump up in grammatical complexity and possession by speech
> act participants is so common that it's hardly the first place to have
> grammatical analogising. But if you are just aiming to get a nice system,
> then scrap that last bit.
>
> -Jyri
>
thanks for the interesting info and valuable critique. One problem with
this for Gravgaln is the fact that the pronouns don't mark person, but
caste. Person is marked solely on the verb, so between the two, pronoun
and verb, you get information on both person and caste of those involved in
the conversation.
Adam
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Re: THEORY: False false cognates.
Posted by: "Muke Tever" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 5:56 am ((PDT))
On Mon, 20 May 2013 11:08:13 -0600, Matthew Boutilier
<[email protected]> wrote:
> i don't think the general public of any country/culture has a solid grasp
> of what cognates are.
Might just be a shibboleth of some kind - the set of words are a terminus
technicus among linguists but in non-technical use still have their other
senses.
(Of course, this may not hold for the discussions of false cognates in
other languages, but if the term used for false cognates is a true cognate
of |false cognate| it's likely it does.)
So "false cognate" in linguist-speak is:
false cognate
not_actually related_by_descent
but among non-linguists different (more default?) senses of the words are
used:
false cognate
deceptively_formed thing_similar_in_nature
A similar shibboleth is |passive voice| whose words' non-technical senses
cause it to be used to mean "weak language", slightly informed by the
original term to indicate a general sense of language avoiding agency.
This one gives certain people conniptions.
*Muke!
--
frath.net
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Grammatical complexity
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 7:14 am ((PDT))
How common is it for a language to have both a powerful verbal morphology
AND robust case marking? I have just started looking at cases for
Gravgaln, and realized that many of the cases I have been looking at will
supply very similar (though not, perhaps, identical) information as is
already supplied in the verbal morphology. Are there languages that supply
detailed information about the directionality of an action in the verb
(I-was-walk-ing-away-going.up.with.difficulty) AND make use of cases like
allative, illative, lative, perlative, vialis etc.?
Adam
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: Grammatical complexity
Posted by: "Wm Annis" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 7:23 am ((PDT))
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:14 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> How common is it for a language to have both a powerful verbal morphology
> AND robust case marking?
One way to think about this question is the distinction between
head-marking (lots of argument marking on the verb) and dependent-
marking (lots of argument stuff on the noun phrase) languages. What
you're describing is close to "double-marking." It's not particularly
common, but it's not unheard of, either:
http://wals.info/chapter/25
Note especially the last category in the WALS map, "inconsistent
marking." Purity of marking seems the unusual situation, no matter
which one it is.
--
wm
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
6c. Re: Grammatical complexity
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Tue May 21, 2013 7:42 am ((PDT))
On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Wm Annis <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:14 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> > How common is it for a language to have both a powerful verbal morphology
> > AND robust case marking?
>
> One way to think about this question is the distinction between
> head-marking (lots of argument marking on the verb) and dependent-
> marking (lots of argument stuff on the noun phrase) languages. What
> you're describing is close to "double-marking." It's not particularly
> common, but it's not unheard of, either:
>
> http://wals.info/chapter/25
>
> Note especially the last category in the WALS map, "inconsistent
> marking." Purity of marking seems the unusual situation, no matter
> which one it is.
>
> --
> wm
>
Ok, that doesn't fully solve my internal quandary, but it does provide
useful info for further ponderment. Thanks.
Adam
Messages in this topic (3)
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