There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: R A Brown
1b. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2. A trilingual video in gjâ-zym-byn, English, and Sandic
From: Jim Henry
3a. Re: adposition cases
From: Jyri Lehtinen
4a. writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Rich Harrison
4b. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: C. Brickner
4c. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Larry Sulky
4d. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Ph. D.
4e. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: MorphemeAddict
4f. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: MorphemeAddict
4g. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Jim Henry
4h. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Padraic Brown
4i. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: MorphemeAddict
4j. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: H. S. Teoh
4k. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Zach Wellstood
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:01 am ((PDT))
On 16/06/2013 07:08, Alex Fink wrote:
[snip]
> As for Esperanto, the smart money is that it avoids the
> accusative in copular clauses because Greek and Latin
> did,
... and also because his native Polish does - as does
Russian & German - all languages that he had some
familiarity with.
> not because Zamenhof put a lot of thought into thematic
> relations or anything.
I don't suppose so for one moment. He was surely simply
(and sensibly IMO) following the practice of the languages
he knew.
--
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 (9)
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1b. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:43 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Sunday 16 June 2013 08:31:31 R A Brown wrote:
> On 16/06/2013 00:07, James Kane wrote:
> > Hi all
>
> [snip]
>
> >> For both of these constructions, it's simply
> >> verb-subject-direct.object
> >
> > Is there some inherent reason that this is a weird way
> > to do it?
>
> Well, yes, there is. This has been debated before on this
> list. The complement of the copula (if a language uses a
> verb as copula) is not the same as the direct object. In IE
> languages the direct object can _always_ become the subject
> of a passive verb, e.g.
> The cat chased the mouse --> The mouse was chased [by the cat].
>
> (A few, like English, can also promote the indirect object
> to become the subject of a passive; but that is unusual.)
>
> You cannot promote the predicate of the copula in the same, e.g.
> John is a teacher --> *A teacher is been [by John].
>
> The latter is simply not possible.
Yes. A copula complement simply is not a direct object, and
this is the reason why IE languages (and many other languages)
do not put it in the accusative case. Instead, the complement
appears in the "base form", which in IE languages is the
nominative.
> > Looking around other natlangs, it seems most of them
> > leave the predicate-y part in the nominative, and so does
> > Esperanto, which I always found counter-intuitive as the
> > rest of the language is very strict in marking the
> > accusative.
>
> On the contrary, I find the Esperanto treatment exactly what
> I expect from the IE context in which the language was
> created
Yes.
> (OTOH I find nominative after a preposition weird -
> but that's another story).
Indeed. Prepositions governing the nominative are uncommon
in languages with case systems.
>
> But not all natlangs use nominative; classical Arabic uses
> its accusative.
So does my conlang Proto-Alpianic, which has shifted from an
active-stative to an accusative alignment in its prehistory
and retained some case marking quirks from its past.
What regards Arabic, one can argue that the accusative is
actually the least marked case, and the nominative a marked
one. This pattern (often called "nominative-absolutive")
seems to be common in languages of the Afrasian family.
> But that does not automatically make it a
> direct object. Just as IE languages with cases use the
> nominative for both the subject of a verb and the complement
> of the copula, so a language may use its accusative for both
> the direct object and the complement of a copula (or,
> indeed, some other case for the complement). There is,
> indeed, no reason why the complement cannot have its own
> distinctive case.
In Old Albic, a fluid-S active-stative language, the subject
of a copular sentence is in the objective case, not the agentive
case, because it is not an agent. The complement, as for now,
is also in the objective case, though I am considering changing
this, but I have no idea which other case would fit better; in
a way, the objective case *is* the least marked case in Old
Albic (even if in animate nouns, it is formed with a suffix
added to the agentive), and I think the structure of copular
sentences will stand the way it is now.
> > The explanation was always that they were equal, and
> > neither was doing anything to the other; but my natural
> > instinct (my L1 is English) is that, in something like
> > 'he is John', John comes after the verb and thus is a
> > direct object.
>
> Yes, but, as I observed above, you cannot promote John to
> the subject of an equivalent passive: *John is been by him!
Indeed not!
> =============================================================
>
> On 16/06/2013 03:17, Rich Harrison wrote:
> > Probably going off on a tangent here, but does it help
> > to eliminate the copula?
>
> I don't think that is going off at a tangent. I think it is
> helpful to realize that the copula is _not_ necessarily a
> verb. That, in itself, should make one stop and realize
> that something other than SVO is going on here.
>
> For zero copula, see:
> http://wals.info/chapter/120
>
> For other ways of expressing the complement:
> http://wals.info/chapter/119
Yes. The question whether the copula can be deleted does not
necessarily have a bearing on which case the predicate noun
appears in. (In IE, zero copulas seem to be a Balto-Slavic
peculiarity.)
--
... 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 (9)
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2. A trilingual video in gjâ-zym-byn, English, and Sandic
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 7:49 am ((PDT))
Aaron Wood (known as bornforwater on IRC and some other fora) and I
made a short video in gjâ-zym-byn, English, and Sandic.
http://wytn-awake.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-video-in-gja-zym-byn-english-and.html
It wasn't planned much in advance, and there are a few mistakes, both
in the gzb and Sandic speech and in the off-the-cuff English
translations thereof. For instance, {pwÄ-Äa} should have been
{pÄw-Äa}. The transcript accurately represents what we actually said
in the video, though.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (1)
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3a. Re: adposition cases
Posted by: "Jyri Lehtinen" lehtinen.j...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:48 pm ((PDT))
>
> If you couldn't get to the link I posted, just googling "Hungarian
> postpositions" should suffice. As one example:
>
> mellett - next to, beside
> mellé - (to) beside
> mellÅl - from beside
>
> They follow their nouns (postpositions, quelle surprise -- a ház mellett -
> next to the house), but you can also glom possessive suffixes onto these
> where English would use a pronoun:
>
> mellettem - beside me
> mellém - (to) beside me
> mellÅlem - from beside me
>
> I don't know what the indigenous term for these is (névutók?), but
> English, they just calls 'em postpositions.
>
> Kou
>
I'm adding a bit more data to this cause I just recently bumped again to a
table comparing reflexes of the Proto Finno-Ugric nominal/postposition root
*al- "under (side)" in a number of modern daughter languages (with some of
my own editing):
North Saami
vuolláj "to under"
vuolde "at/from under"
vuoli "via under"
stem = vuol(l)-
Finnish
alle "to under"
alla "at under"
alta "from under"
ali(tse) "via under"
stem = al-
Erzya Mordvin
alov "to under"
alo "at under"
aldo "from under"
alga "via under"
stem = al-
Udmurt
ule "to under"
ulïn "at under"
ulïŠ"from under"
uleti "via under"
stem = ul-
Mansi (Upper Konda dialect)
jalpöälÉn "to under"
jalpöält "at under"
jalpöälnÉl "from under"
stem = jal- + pöäl "side" (cf. Fi pieli id.)
Hungarian
alá "to under"
alatt "at under"
alól "from under"
stem = al-
This shows that using originally case inflected nominals as adpositions and
retaining partial case paradigms for them is universal in Uralic. There is
a point though in not being completely certain about calling all of these
true cases since many of them have irregular forms or reflect older
paradigms that are unproductive or used in different functions in the
modern languages, for example the whole Hungarian paradigm. On the other
hand you see here both that there are some very stable adposition roots and
also that the whole idea of inflected adpositions is stable in Uralic with
no signs of dying out. I'm pretty certain that in addition to this kind of
defective case paradigms all of the languages also allow inflecting the
postpositions by person using the possessive suffixes.
A huge amount of Uralic adpositions, including those that don't have any
case like inflection, are pretty transparently inflected nouns and often
the base noun still exists in the language. The double function of these
roots often results in interesting quirks in the case paradigms when the
adpositions use a fossil paradigm while the corresponding nouns always
inflect according to the modern reworked and regular paradigm. Another
interesting point is that at least in Finnic a lot of these adpositions
often appear as completely independent adverbs. As a result the lines
between adpositions and nouns and on the other hand adpositions and adverbs
are rather blurred.
For the original question about the case of the object of the adpositions,
genitive is indeed very logical with adpositions like this and is attested
in Uralic. On the other hand, a large number of the languages just use
nominative with the adpositions and in Finnic you get the interesting split
of postpositions using (preferring) genitive and prepositions partitive.
-Jyri
Messages in this topic (13)
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4a. writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Rich Harrison" r...@harrison.net
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 5:10 pm ((PDT))
I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters. Vorlin,
for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC only used
uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems to be mostly
lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with that?
Any others avoiding traditional capitalization?
Messages in this topic (11)
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4b. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 5:15 pm ((PDT))
Senjecas is unicameral, using only the lower case. I figure that, since there
are no capital letters in the various Senjecan scripts, why use them in
transliterations into the Latin alphabet?
Charlie
----- Original Message -----
I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters. Vorlin,
for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC only used
uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems to be mostly
lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with that?
Any others avoiding traditional capitalization?
Messages in this topic (11)
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4c. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" larrysu...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 5:27 pm ((PDT))
All my conlangs -- Konya, Lume, Elomi, and Qakwan, use capitalisation only
on proper names.
On 16 June 2013 20:10, Rich Harrison <r...@harrison.net> wrote:
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
> latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
> Vorlin, for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC
> only used uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems
> to be mostly lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with
> that?
>
> Any others avoiding traditional capitalization?
>
--
*Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day I
can hear her breathing. -- Arundhati Roy*
Messages in this topic (11)
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4d. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Ph. D." p...@phillipdriscoll.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 5:42 pm ((PDT))
Rich Harrison wrote:
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
> latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
> Vorlin, for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC
> only used uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems
> to be mostly lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with that?
>
> Any others avoiding traditional capitalization?
The auxlang Suma is written in all lowercase, even the first letter of a
sentence. The only exception is non-assimulated foreign words and place
names which are written in all capitals.
--Ph. D.
Messages in this topic (11)
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4e. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:04 pm ((PDT))
Klingon has no case, but the letters D H I Q S look capital.
stevo
On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Rich Harrison <r...@harrison.net> wrote:
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
> latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
> Vorlin, for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC
> only used uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems
> to be mostly lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with
> that?
>
> Any others avoiding traditional capitalization?
>
Messages in this topic (11)
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4f. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:08 pm ((PDT))
All translit systems into Roman/Latin from non-case writing systems could
qualify, but most simply adopt an English or European standard.
Lojban can use capitalization to mark non-standard (i.e., non-penultimate)
stress (either vowel or whole syllable0 although it seems to be losing
ground to accent marks for the same purpose.
stevo
On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Rich Harrison <r...@harrison.net> wrote:
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
> latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
> Vorlin, for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC
> only used uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems
> to be mostly lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with
> that?
>
> Any others avoiding traditional capitalization?
>
Messages in this topic (11)
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4g. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:15 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Rich Harrison <r...@harrison.net> wrote:
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
> latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
> Vorlin, for
Toki Pona uses all lower case. If I recall correctly, Ceqli isn't
case sensitive, but Rex May is kind of inconsistent about whether he
capitalizes the first letter of a sentence.
My gjâ-zym-byn doesn't use case distinctions in its ASCII or Unicode
orthographies, though some of the Unicode representations of gzb
letters *look* like accented capital letters.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
Messages in this topic (11)
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4h. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 6:58 pm ((PDT))
--- Rich Harrison <r...@harrison.net> wrote:
Â
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
> latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
> Vorlin,
> for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC only used
> uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems to be
> mostly
> lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with that?
>
> Any others avoiding traditional capitalization
What counts as "traditional" capitalisation? English? German? French? Mandarin?
In the World, there have been no printing presses that utilise movable type
since
the 1360s or so --- that whole incident with the horrible Thing from the Outer
Void that popped through a severely thaumically weakened printed book and
ate the crown prince of Auntimoany rather put a damper on the whole printed
book idea in the Eastlands. Ever since, people who wanted books have had to
go about it the old fashioned way of hiring a scrivener to copy out the desired
work. Contrary to what one might think, books are actually fairly common in
most lands of the World. There are usually a large number of larger or smaller
firms of scriveners in any good sized city. In the Uttermost West, they
generally
rely on slaves to do the work under a master scriptor; in the Eastlands, the
scriveners have a guild. All this said, since there are no movable type printing
presses, there can be no "upper" or "lower case" letters. ;))) In modern times,
printing is making a comeback, in the form of presses that use whole plate
blocks rather than movable type. These are very expensive on account of the
plates having to be cast in bronze and then tweaked. There are also a couple
experimental press devices that involve the use of high-speed imps dipping
tiny brushes into pots of ink and dabbing same onto a piece of paper held
within a moving framework. Whole gangs of the little blighters are strapped into
a daisy-shaped wheel which is spun about its axis and simultaneously drawn
side to side across the paper. Print quality is very low when compared to either
hand written or plate printed works, but the result is acceptable for certain
everyday applications. Especially if you don't the occasional splotch of dried
imp vomit on your paper...
Generally speaking, when some kind of Emphasis is desired or if one wishes
to Draw the reader's Attention to a matter, one uses fancy letters in roughly
the same way we'd use upper case or italics. These are just normal letters that
are written with more curlicues or extra height ascenders, you see. A few
letters
in some alphabets have multiple forms, and one of these will generally be used
only initially (or finally) and the other will be used in other positions.
Avantimannish
for example has an initial S and also a medial & final S.
Most languages of the World, when written, often at a minimum have some kind
of decorative capital or initial letter at the beginning of a section or
paragraph,
but no capitalisation as we know and love it.
Loucarian has no separate capital letters, but will sometimes use a taller
letter to
indicate a personal or place name: "ine logia âcas al IC al mourante; icamet
coudeyto
inesser, al Ioudas Thomas ziccucceto inesser; quisverver descoubrere al
entertretationem dine logia, quismet, al thanatas nan eiotangere adis ican..."
Talarian uses a bizarre combination of syllabaries, alphabetic letters,
cuneiform
and hash-mark ideograms to write itself, none of which can be capitalised.
Rumelian, when written on paper, uses a kind of flowing letter script (kind of
like our italic), reserving its "capital letters" (i.e., the letters that
actually look
like our CAPTIAL letters) for inscriptions in stone.
Avantimannish uses two sets of runes, one for writing on stone or engraving in
wood or metal and another for writing (or printing) on paper. Neither have
distinct capital letters, but Avantimannish does come closest to English in the
way it uses its fancy, emphatic letters. Although there are no strict rules for
their use, it is typical to "capitalise" the first letter of a paragraph, the
first
letter of a name (person, place, season or other unit of time or space), any
word that one feels should be emphasised while reading, or indeed any just
about any random word at all that a writer happens to capitalise.
To answer your question as regards how *I* transliterate these languages'
customs, I tend to use capital letters in the same places *they* would use
whatever schemes to effect emphasis. So, when writing Avantimannish,
I'd capitalise names and seasons and random words. When writing Loucarian,
I'd only capitalise the occasional name. When writing Talarian, I don't
generally
capitalise at all.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (11)
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4i. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 8:32 pm ((PDT))
Toki Pona uses caps for name adjectives, at least some of the time.
stevo
On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 9:15 PM, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Rich Harrison <r...@harrison.net> wrote:
> > I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use
> the latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
> Vorlin, for
>
> Toki Pona uses all lower case. If I recall correctly, Ceqli isn't
> case sensitive, but Rex May is kind of inconsistent about whether he
> capitalizes the first letter of a sentence.
>
> My gjâ-zym-byn doesn't use case distinctions in its ASCII or Unicode
> orthographies, though some of the Unicode representations of gzb
> letters *look* like accented capital letters.
>
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
> http://www.jimhenrymedicaltrust.org
>
Messages in this topic (11)
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4j. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 9:33 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 08:10:56PM -0400, Rich Harrison wrote:
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use
> the latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case
> letters. Vorlin, for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper
> nouns. Sona IIRC only used uppercase letters for non-assimilated
> foreign words. Lojban seems to be mostly lower-case but some syllables
> are uppercase, what's up with that?
>
> Any others avoiding traditional capitalization?
I don't know what "traditional capitalization" is, but the romanization
of Tatari Faran uses only lowercase letters. No capital letters are used
anywhere, not even at the beginning of sentences or with proper nouns.
(Note that this pertains to the *romanization* of TF; the native writing
system is non-Latin.)
Ebisédian romanization doesn't use capitalizations either, but does have
some letters that look like capitals (or small-caps) for the sake of
representing all 39 consonants with a single letter. (Again this only
pertains to the romanization. Ebisédian native writing has what may
arguably be called a 4-way letter casing system: not merely upper/lower
case, but word-medial case, word-final case, sentence-final case, and
paragraph-final case. Thus, "uppercasing" happens at the *end* of words,
sentences, and paragraphs, rather than at the beginning, like in
Latin-derived alphabets.)
As far as conlangs go, I've always found the capitalization of proper
nouns a bit ... artificial. I mean, in speech, you don't pronounce
capital letters differently, so for a conlang romanization it seems
incongruous to arbitrarily introduce such a distinction where there is
none in the source language. E.g. in TF, the word _fia_ is a well-known
feminine proper noun, and it can't mean anything else, so on its own, it
already conveys everything a native speaker perceives when they hear the
sound [fja]; capitalization is thus redundant, and indeed, one may
argue, an obfuscation, since it suggests that there's a distinction
between *_Fia_ and _fia_ but there is none.
T
--
Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it! -- Mark Twain
Messages in this topic (11)
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4k. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Zach Wellstood" zwellst...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Jun 16, 2013 11:06 pm ((PDT))
Absolutely all of Åaá siri is written in a lowercase romanization because
for some reason I found that including uppercase letters is extremely
aesthetically displeasing.
Zach
--- Rich Harrison <r...@harrison.net> wrote:
> I would like to put together a list of conlangs and natlangs that use the
> latin/roman alphabet entirely or almost entirely in lower-case letters.
Vorlin,
> for example, uses uppercase letters only on proper nouns. Sona IIRC only
used
> uppercase letters for non-assimilated foreign words. Lojban seems to be
mostly
> lower-case but some syllables are uppercase, what's up with that?
>
> Any others avoiding traditional capitalization
What counts as "traditional" capitalisation? English? German? French?
Mandarin?
In the World, there have been no printing presses that utilise movable type
since
the 1360s or so --- that whole incident with the horrible Thing from the
Outer
Void that popped through a severely thaumically weakened printed book and
ate the crown prince of Auntimoany rather put a damper on the whole printed
book idea in the Eastlands. Ever since, people who wanted books have had to
go about it the old fashioned way of hiring a scrivener to copy out the
desired
work. Contrary to what one might think, books are actually fairly common in
most lands of the World. There are usually a large number of larger or
smaller
firms of scriveners in any good sized city. In the Uttermost West, they
generally
rely on slaves to do the work under a master scriptor; in the Eastlands, the
scriveners have a guild. All this said, since there are no movable type
printing
presses, there can be no "upper" or "lower case" letters. ;))) In modern
times,
printing is making a comeback, in the form of presses that use whole plate
blocks rather than movable type. These are very expensive on account of the
plates having to be cast in bronze and then tweaked. There are also a couple
experimental press devices that involve the use of high-speed imps dipping
tiny brushes into pots of ink and dabbing same onto a piece of paper held
within a moving framework. Whole gangs of the little blighters are strapped
into
a daisy-shaped wheel which is spun about its axis and simultaneously drawn
side to side across the paper. Print quality is very low when compared to
either
hand written or plate printed works, but the result is acceptable for
certain
everyday applications. Especially if you don't the occasional splotch of
dried
imp vomit on your paper...
Generally speaking, when some kind of Emphasis is desired or if one wishes
to Draw the reader's Attention to a matter, one uses fancy letters in
roughly
the same way we'd use upper case or italics. These are just normal letters
that
are written with more curlicues or extra height ascenders, you see. A few
letters
in some alphabets have multiple forms, and one of these will generally be
used
only initially (or finally) and the other will be used in other positions.
Avantimannish
for example has an initial S and also a medial & final S.
Most languages of the World, when written, often at a minimum have some kind
of decorative capital or initial letter at the beginning of a section or
paragraph,
but no capitalisation as we know and love it.
Loucarian has no separate capital letters, but will sometimes use a taller
letter to
indicate a personal or place name: "ine logia âcas al IC al mourante;
icamet coudeyto
inesser, al Ioudas Thomas ziccucceto inesser; quisverver descoubrere al
entertretationem dine logia, quismet, al thanatas nan eiotangere adis
ican..."
Talarian uses a bizarre combination of syllabaries, alphabetic letters,
cuneiform
and hash-mark ideograms to write itself, none of which can be capitalised.
Rumelian, when written on paper, uses a kind of flowing letter script (kind
of
like our italic), reserving its "capital letters" (i.e., the letters that
actually look
like our CAPTIAL letters) for inscriptions in stone.
Avantimannish uses two sets of runes, one for writing on stone or engraving
in
wood or metal and another for writing (or printing) on paper. Neither have
distinct capital letters, but Avantimannish does come closest to English in
the
way it uses its fancy, emphatic letters. Although there are no strict rules
for
their use, it is typical to "capitalise" the first letter of a paragraph,
the first
letter of a name (person, place, season or other unit of time or space), any
word that one feels should be emphasised while reading, or indeed any just
about any random word at all that a writer happens to capitalise.
To answer your question as regards how *I* transliterate these languages'
customs, I tend to use capital letters in the same places *they* would use
whatever schemes to effect emphasis. So, when writing Avantimannish,
I'd capitalise names and seasons and random words. When writing Loucarian,
I'd only capitalise the occasional name. When writing Talarian, I don't
generally
capitalise at all.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (11)
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