There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: Leonardo Castro
1.2. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: Jim Henry
1.3. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: G. van der Vegt
1.4. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: Jim Henry
1.5. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: Adam Mesha
1.6. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: Olivier Simon
1.7. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: George Corley
1.8. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: R A Brown
1.9. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
From: Leonardo Castro
2a. [THEORY] Language preservation and people agglomeration.
From: Leonardo Castro
2b. Re: [THEORY] Language preservation and people agglomeration.
From: George Corley
2c. Re: [THEORY] Language preservation and people agglomeration.
From: Adam Walker
2d. Re: Language preservation and people agglomeration.
From: Daniel Prohaska
3a. nominal (or adjectival) predicates: how do you form them?
From: Matthew Boutilier
3b. Re: nominal (or adjectival) predicates: how do you form them?
From: Adam Walker
Messages
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1.1. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 8:18 am ((PDT))
2013/6/5 Jörg Rhiemeier <[email protected]>:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Wednesday 05 June 2013 01:26:09 Leonardo Castro wrote:
>
>> 2013/6/4 Jim Henry <[email protected]>:
>> > On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:09 PM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>> >> Can a conlang be classified into the conventional natlang families?
>> >
>> > There's been some discussion of this here or on AUXLANG in the past.
>> > The consensus seems to be that "Indo-European" is a *genetic* term,
>> > and only languages *descended* from proto-IE are Indo-European in the
>> > strict sense. Conlangs, however much vocabulary they borrow from a
>> > given natlang or group of natlangs, aren't descended from it in the
>> > way natural daughter languages are.
>
> Yes. It was here, some time last year. "Indo-European" is
> defined by descent from a common ancestor through an unbroken
> continuity of speakers.
Don't Modern Hebrew and Sanskrit pose a problem to this definition?
> That way, conlangs can never be
> Indo-European. With diachronic conlangs such as Brithenig,
> which have a *fictional* diachronic development, one can at
> least say that they are *fictional* Indo-European languages,
> the same way, say, Sherlock Holmes is a fictional human being,
> but the qualification _fictional_ must never be omitted
> (except in *intrafictional* texts: if someone was to write
> _The Languages of Kemr_ from an Ill Bethisad-internal vantage
> point, that text would call Brithenig a "Romance language").
>
> But languages such as Esperanto that draw their vocabulary
> from various Indo-European languages are not even fictional
> IE languages. There is nothing "fictional" about Esperanto.
>
> Not even pidgins and creole languages based on IE languages
> are classified as Indo-European by mainstream linguists!
>
>> Interesting! I have heard some people arguing that families are
>> defined by syntax solely, but I think the idea of genetic term is
>> better.
>
> The notion of defining families "by syntax solely" is now
> considered fallacious. That is not a language *family* but
> a language *type*. The idea of defining Indo-European by
> syntactic features dates back to the late, unlamented
> Nikolai Marr and has always been considered pseudoscience
> in the free world. (Marr entertained a pseudo-Marxist
> stadial theory. According to that theory, primitive
> classless societies spoke agglutinating ergative languages,
> of which examples still survive in Basque and in Caucasian
> languages. The development of a class society would usher
> in a shift to fusional accusative language structures, and
> it was this what according to Marr defined Indo-European.
> Of course, this is utter bullshit, but it was the state
> doctrine in linguistics in the USSR from ca. 1930 to 1950,
> and western historical linguistics was forbidden.)
>
>> I remember Richard Dawkins saying something similar while
>> discussing alternative proposals of Biological Taxonomy...
>
> I don't know what Dawkins has said, but creationists define
> biological taxonomy in such ways, and I can guess how
> vitriolically Dawkins rejects this.
>
>> BTW, my new conlang have a lot of false cognates with natlangs:
>> "mont-" for "mount", "kiel-" for "language" (Finnish), "kamp" for
>> "field" and "huas-" for "house" (Quechua or English)...
>>
>> But all of them are just coincidences... ;-) Isn't there a language in
>> a distant planet that is exactly the same as English by pure
>> coincidence?
>
> Very unlikely, but not *impossible*.
>
>> > And just judging by resemblance to Indo-European languages, Esperanto
>> > is IE in vocabulary, and to a large extent in syntax, but arguably not
>> > so much in morphology.
>
> Yes. The morphology of Esperanto has little in common with
> Indo-European. It is agglutinating without even the slightest
> trace of ablaut, and only a few morphemes are vaguely similar
> to their IE counterparts. (In this regard, Esperanto is more
> like Uralic or Etruscan.)
>
> --
> ... 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 (28)
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1.2. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 9:45 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
> One of my profs. years ago referred to E-o as "Indo-European pidgin". That
> always struck me as about right :-)))))
I'm pretty sure the grammar of Esperanto is atypically complex for a pidgin.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (28)
________________________________________________________________________
1.3. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "G. van der Vegt" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 9:54 am ((PDT))
Indo-European Creole, then?
On 5 June 2013 18:45, Jim Henry <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Roger Mills <[email protected]> wrote:
>> One of my profs. years ago referred to E-o as "Indo-European pidgin". That
>> always struck me as about right :-)))))
>
> I'm pretty sure the grammar of Esperanto is atypically complex for a pidgin.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
> http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (28)
________________________________________________________________________
1.4. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 10:06 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 12:54 PM, G. van der Vegt <[email protected]> wrote:
> Indo-European Creole, then?
To the best of my (limited) knowledge, Esperanto resembles a creole
more than a pidgin, and probably more than a typical natlang. But it
seems to me that "pidgin" and "creole" are, like "conlang",
descriptions of *how a language comes to be*, not *what properties it
typically has*. Theoretically you might, somewhere in spacetime, find
a pidgin or creole that's more complex than the pidgins and creoles we
find here, or a natlang as simple and regular as the average creole or
even pidgin; and of course a conlang, if worked on long enough by
enough people, can be as simple or as complex as you like, or have any
other arbitrary set of properties.
Given its population of native speakers, Esperanto may even resemble a
creole more than the average conlang vis-a-vis its process of
development. But I'm not sure the native speakers of Esperanto have
been more influential than the great body of fluent second-language
speakers in the course of its history; probably less so. With the
transition from a pidgin to a creole, the native speaker influence
predominates heavily over the second-language speaker influence.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (28)
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1.5. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "Adam Mesha" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 11:45 am ((PDT))
2013/6/5 Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>
> > Yes. It was here, some time last year. "Indo-European" is
> > defined by descent from a common ancestor through an unbroken
> > continuity of speakers.
>
> Don't Modern Hebrew and Sanskrit pose a problem to this definition?
This is what I was about to bring up: is Israeli (Modern) Hebrew then a
Semitic language? It seems that there linguistics (sorry, I forget which
names, but I can ask someone if need be) who claim that it is not a Semitic
language, but a Slavic language, because its syntax and phraseology was
created by native speakers mostly of Yiddish and to a lesser extent Russian
and Polish, and Yiddish had already become pretty much completely Slavic in
linguistic character. By the way, I think however you classify the
linguistic features that those languages (Russian, Polish, Yiddish, Israeli
Hebrew) have in common, Esperanto also shares a lot of them.
--
Adam Mesha <[email protected]>
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. - Helen Keller
Messages in this topic (28)
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1.6. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "Olivier Simon" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 11:48 am ((PDT))
Bom dia / Sellamat !
IMO, Esperanto is not an Indo-European language, though its vocabulary comes,
for the biggest part, from Latin and/or French. The key point to determine
linguistic connections is grammar, morphology, not the vocabulary, which plays
at best a secondary role.
IE languages have two features which can be found among them, or at least
traced back to PIE, though the presently spoken language only displays a few
remnants of them.
- Some kind of vocal alteration; the best known is the "ablaut" as in English
"speak/spoke" or "foot/feet", but it can be found elsewhere as in French
"mourir/meurt". This shows that IE languages are flexional, while Esperanto is
only agglutinative; therefore it already doesn't satisfy the first prong of the
test.
- However not all flexional languages are IE. A second feature is that the
nominative and the accusative of the neutral gender are identical. At least,
the remnants of the former neutral gender display this feature; ex: English
it/it vs he/him, or French ça/ça vs il/le. On the contrary, Esp. has gxi /
gxin, or even tio/tion, kio/kion, etc.
I remember a conlang called Dingwa made with PIE (or Slavic roots); rather
convincing at first sight; however, it is quite a relexified PIE, as it shows
neither some kind of ablaut nor identity in nominative/accusative neutral.
On the contrary, Sambahsa (the auxlang I've invented), both displays verbal
ablaut (a regular system, and there is a semi-regular ablaut for the
substantivation of some adjectives) as well as identity of
nominative/accusative neutral (while masculine and feminine distinguish the
accusative and nominative forms).
Olivier
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/
Messages in this topic (28)
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1.7. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 12:07 pm ((PDT))
To be perfectly honest, I don't really see the theoretical importance of
deciding where Esperanto or Modern Hebrew really fit into modern language
families at all. We already *know* the origins of these languages, and it
is a very rare process that is unlikely to have occurred terribly often in
the past. Since historical linguistics theory is designed to serve the
purpose of determining historical relationships between languages and
reconstruction of more ancient forms, do they really need to classify
languages that do not evolve through normal language change?
On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 1:48 PM, Olivier Simon <[email protected]> wrote:
> Bom dia / Sellamat !
>
> IMO, Esperanto is not an Indo-European language, though its vocabulary
> comes, for the biggest part, from Latin and/or French. The key point to
> determine linguistic connections is grammar, morphology, not the
> vocabulary, which plays at best a secondary role.
> IE languages have two features which can be found among them, or at least
> traced back to PIE, though the presently spoken language only displays a
> few remnants of them.
> - Some kind of vocal alteration; the best known is the "ablaut" as in
> English "speak/spoke" or "foot/feet", but it can be found elsewhere as in
> French "mourir/meurt". This shows that IE languages are flexional, while
> Esperanto is only agglutinative; therefore it already doesn't satisfy the
> first prong of the test.
>
> - However not all flexional languages are IE. A second feature is that the
> nominative and the accusative of the neutral gender are identical. At
> least, the remnants of the former neutral gender display this feature; ex:
> English it/it vs he/him, or French ça/ça vs il/le. On the contrary, Esp.
> has gxi / gxin, or even tio/tion, kio/kion, etc.
>
> I remember a conlang called Dingwa made with PIE (or Slavic roots); rather
> convincing at first sight; however, it is quite a relexified PIE, as it
> shows neither some kind of ablaut nor identity in nominative/accusative
> neutral.
>
> On the contrary, Sambahsa (the auxlang I've invented), both displays
> verbal ablaut (a regular system, and there is a semi-regular ablaut for the
> substantivation of some adjectives) as well as identity of
> nominative/accusative neutral (while masculine and feminine distinguish the
> accusative and nominative forms).
>
> Olivier
> http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/
>
Messages in this topic (28)
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1.8. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 12:44 pm ((PDT))
On 05/06/2013 20:06, George Corley wrote:
> To be perfectly honest, I don't really see the
> theoretical importance of deciding where Esperanto or
> Modern Hebrew really fit into modern language families at
> all. We already *know* the origins of these languages,
Yep - and, as Jörg has reminded us, as regards conlangs and
language families, this was discussed on this list at some
length last year.
IIRC the general feeling was that it is not generally not
helpful to classify conlangs in natlang language families
and, indeed, it is fairly meaningless and can be misleading.
I really do not see why the same old
arguments have to be rehearsed again so soon.
There are odd exceptions, perhaps, like Brithenig. But IMO
even to classify that as IE without qualification is
misleading. It is a _fictional_ Romancelang.
But Zamenhof was not intending to produce a "fictional
natlang" (if you see what I mean), but a _real auxlang_. To
argue about whether E-o is IE or not is IMNHO to miss the
whole point of what E-o was meant to be.
[snip]
> Since historical linguistics theory is designed to serve
> the purpose of determining historical relationships
> between languages and reconstruction of more ancient
> forms, do they really need to classify languages that do
> not evolve through normal language change?
Well, no!
Otherwise we get into the barmy position of reconstructing
the protolanguage of Esperanto & Ido (clearly related) and
wonder if Novial belongs to the same IE sub-family or is it
the remnant of another? And how are Esperanto/Ido, Novial
and Idiom Neutral related - are they all descended from the
same protolanguage??
IMO the whole notion of classifying conlangs in natlang
language families is to miss the point both of what conlangs
are about and why historical linguistics theory classifies
languages in language families - that's not always easy.
For more information, look in the archives ;)
--
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 (28)
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1.9. Re: Is Esperanto Indo-European?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 2:16 pm ((PDT))
2013/6/5 R A Brown <[email protected]>:
>
> IMO the whole notion of classifying conlangs in natlang
> language families is to miss the point both of what conlangs
> are about and why historical linguistics theory classifies
> languages in language families - that's not always easy.
I guess that classification into language families also makes language
learning easier for us. When we start studying Romanian, we probably
think "well, I'm going to study another Romance language" and we keep
comparing everything with the other Romance languages we already know,
what helps memorization. We know the best place to save each new
language we study in our brains.
In this sense, knowing that a conlang is Indo-European makes us
automatically think "so, it's very probably non-tonal, its words may
have internal inflexions and it may have conjugations to express
different times".
Naturally, most people are neither conlangers nor linguists and will
study just one or two foreign language in their lives, so language
classification is probably completely irrelevant to them.
>
> For more information, look in the archives ;)
>
> --
> 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 (28)
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________________________________________________________________________
2a. [THEORY] Language preservation and people agglomeration.
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 8:31 am ((PDT))
I'm gradually accepting the idea that a language can only be preserved
if there are a large agglomeration of people that speak it. And also
that there's no way to help endangered languages but economically
developping these agglomerations, including by increasing their
population.
Any noticeable problems with this idea?
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (4)
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2b. Re: [THEORY] Language preservation and people agglomeration.
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 8:36 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
> I'm gradually accepting the idea that a language can only be preserved
> if there are a large agglomeration of people that speak it. And also
> that there's no way to help endangered languages but economically
> developping these agglomerations, including by increasing their
> population.
>
> Any noticeable problems with this idea?
>
>
What do you mean by "large agglomeration"? There isn't any distinct
population level at which we can definitively determine the endangerment
status of a language. In fact, people who study endangered languages
generally take generational transmission to be more important than absolute
population size. If children are not learning the language, it could die
very quickly.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2c. Re: [THEORY] Language preservation and people agglomeration.
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 9:57 am ((PDT))
Which is exactly why I am worried about Taiwanese even though it has
millions of speakers. Just FYI, the "Mother Tongue Movement" section in
the Wikipedia page is grossly misleading. I was teaching in a Taiwanese
high school at the time it says Taiwanese instruction was implemented in
the schools. Taiwanese education had been MANDATED by that time, but not a
stitch of anything had actually happened by the time I left. The
Legislative Yuan was still arguing about Romanization schemes and demanding
a single Romanization to be used for Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka and all the
various "Aboriginal" languages. Textbooks hadn't even been written, let
alone adopted or put into use.
Adam
On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:36 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]
> >wrote:
>
> > I'm gradually accepting the idea that a language can only be preserved
> > if there are a large agglomeration of people that speak it. And also
> > that there's no way to help endangered languages but economically
> > developping these agglomerations, including by increasing their
> > population.
> >
> > Any noticeable problems with this idea?
> >
> >
> What do you mean by "large agglomeration"? There isn't any distinct
> population level at which we can definitively determine the endangerment
> status of a language. In fact, people who study endangered languages
> generally take generational transmission to be more important than absolute
> population size. If children are not learning the language, it could die
> very quickly.
>
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: Language preservation and people agglomeration.
Posted by: "Daniel Prohaska" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 10:03 am ((PDT))
I think the question is rather whether a given language is passed on to the
next generation and whether it has a stable environment to be spoken in. "Large
agglomeration" is relative as such an agglomeration can consist of as few as
50-100 persons, if they live in a socio-economic environment where their
language is the main form of expression in every day life and all generations
speak it, then this is a viable language community. But of course, the smaller
(in numbers) the community the easier it is to tip the balance.
Dan
On Jun 5, 2013, at 5:36 PM, George Corley wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 5, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Leonardo Castro
> <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> I'm gradually accepting the idea that a language can only be preserved
>> if there are a large agglomeration of people that speak it. And also
>> that there's no way to help endangered languages but economically
>> developping these agglomerations, including by increasing their
>> population.
>>
>> Any noticeable problems with this idea?
>>
>>
> What do you mean by "large agglomeration"? There isn't any distinct
> population level at which we can definitively determine the endangerment
> status of a language. In fact, people who study endangered languages
> generally take generational transmission to be more important than absolute
> population size. If children are not learning the language, it could die
> very quickly.
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. nominal (or adjectival) predicates: how do you form them?
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 2:15 pm ((PDT))
i am interested in how your conlangs that put case endings on nouns make
nominal predicates (especially if you have a zero-copula!).
so, like, if you have to say "the X is a Y," "she is Z," do you have a
special way of doing that? even if your way is just to put the same case
ending on X and Y, and/or insert a word for "is," i'd still like to hear
about it, with examples.
this might not even be something that people have considered as an area for
innovation (well, especially if you have a nice word meaning "is").
but my incipient proto-lang does not have a word for "is" (well, it does,
but its usage is quite restricted, à la Turkish). rather, predicate nouns
are marked by the *absence* of the nominative ending. so:
aÌÏ-æn
man-NOM
'a/the man'
tuqaÌn-æn
swordsman-NOM
'a/the swordsman'
and you can do:
aÌÏ-æn tuqaÌn-Ø
man-NOM swordsman-PRED
'The man is a swordsman.'
similarly with question-words:
kæÊn-æn tɬin nis-Ø ?
name-NOM thou.GEN what?-PRED
'What is your name?' (using *nisæn 'what (kind)?')
but i think there are a lot of other possibilities, and i would like to
hear what you people have done, if this is something that you've given
attention to.
matt
Messages in this topic (2)
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3b. Re: nominal (or adjectival) predicates: how do you form them?
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Wed Jun 5, 2013 2:22 pm ((PDT))
Gravgaln uses the equative case for such constructions.
Adam
On 6/5/13, Matthew Boutilier <[email protected]> wrote:
> i am interested in how your conlangs that put case endings on nouns make
> nominal predicates (especially if you have a zero-copula!).
>
> so, like, if you have to say "the X is a Y," "she is Z," do you have a
> special way of doing that? even if your way is just to put the same case
> ending on X and Y, and/or insert a word for "is," i'd still like to hear
> about it, with examples.
>
> this might not even be something that people have considered as an area for
> innovation (well, especially if you have a nice word meaning "is").
>
> but my incipient proto-lang does not have a word for "is" (well, it does,
> but its usage is quite restricted, à la Turkish). rather, predicate nouns
> are marked by the *absence* of the nominative ending. so:
>
> aÌÏ-æn
> man-NOM
> 'a/the man'
>
> tuqaÌn-æn
> swordsman-NOM
> 'a/the swordsman'
>
> and you can do:
>
> aÌÏ-æn tuqaÌn-Ø
> man-NOM swordsman-PRED
> 'The man is a swordsman.'
>
> similarly with question-words:
>
> kæÊn-æn tɬin nis-Ø ?
> name-NOM thou.GEN what?-PRED
> 'What is your name?' (using *nisæn 'what (kind)?')
>
> but i think there are a lot of other possibilities, and i would like to
> hear what you people have done, if this is something that you've given
> attention to.
>
> matt
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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