There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: TECH: SIL Toolbox - Markers
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
2a. Re: New toy conlang sketch
From: George Corley
2b. Re: New toy conlang sketch
From: Padraic Brown
2c. Re: New toy conlang sketch
From: BPJ
2d. Re: New toy conlang sketch
From: George Corley
2e. Re: New toy conlang sketch
From: BPJ
3a. Re: Arbitrarily long and complex compounds
From: And Rosta
Messages
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1a. Re: TECH: SIL Toolbox - Markers
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Jun 26, 2013 11:47 pm ((PDT))
On 3 June 2013 02:32, Zach Wellstood <zwellst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> liyaá' ri!
>
>
Hi everyone! Finally back from my holidays, and working up the e-mail
backlog right now :) . Let's start with the oldest posts :) .
> I'm just getting into Toolbox for my lexicon needs. The learning curve has
> been almost as bad as FontForge (for me, anyway).
Actually, Toolbox is quite a simple tool. A bit *too* simple in a way, in
that it means it gives the user so much freedom most people get lost
quickly.
> I finally modified
> the Dictionary
> Factory project
> <http://www-01.sil.org/computing/toolbox/techniques.htm>enough for my
> needs. I now have my lexicon structured this way:
>
> \lx Lexeme
> \ph Phonological Form
> \ps Part of Speech
> \de Definition
> \nt Notes
> \ec Roots
>
> Unfortunately, when I modified the original project, I didn't know what the
> \ec field was intended for, nor did I know that the MDF skips it when
> exporting to an RTF file. In the MDF export options, I've unchecked \ec on
> the "exclude from export" list, but it *still* will not show up in the
> exported RTF file.
The problem is that your lexeme entry structure is very un-MDF-like, which
is probably why it's not working the way you're expecting. I had the same
issue, which I solved by rearranging my entries to be more strictly
MDF-like. This solved all my export issues. An alternative is to create
your own export plugin, but that's way above my abilities.
> I've found out that if I can change it to \et
> (etymology) or \eg (etymological gloss), they will be included upon export,
> but whenever I try to change \ec to \eg I get an error message, "cannot
> merge markers."
>
> Does anyone know how I can merge markers or fix this so that my beloved \ec
> field will show up? The documentation is quite poor/outdated and I haven't
> found anything on google regarding this error or its solution.
>
>
If you just want to do a blanket \ec to \eg change, the easiest way is to
open the dictionary database in a text editor (it's a simple text file
anyway) and do a search-and-replace there. It'll work fine. In my case,
since I had to do more complicated changes, I ended up changing each entry
by hand. Luckily, Toolbox has enough copy-paste abilities that it was not
*too* painful :/.
> I've already tried modifying the source code of the MDF program to include
> it, but that hasn't gotten me very far.
>
>
It's an area I've left alone on purpose :) .
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (3)
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2a. Re: New toy conlang sketch
Posted by: "George Corley" gacor...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Jun 27, 2013 12:53 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 1:32 AM, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> \
> >> Even then, <ts'> might have been a better choice (I think it's been
> >> used in other schemes).
> >
> >I would go for that, except that the apostrophe is already overused for
> >too many things, so I'd like to avoid it if possible. But I'll keep
> ><ts'> in mind; at least for now, it looks to be a far better alternative
> >than <q>.
>
> Well, to me, the biggest (likely) problem with your use of <q> [ts)_h],
> that no-one's made explicit yet, is its relation to <ts> [ts)]. Having a
> letter for the aspirate when you just use a cluster for the simplex is
> really strange, though slightly less so if [+aspirated] is the unmarked
> member of the opposition, and significantly less so if /ts)_h/ is somehow
> one-of-a-kind in the inventory. Are there other aspirate vs. plain
> contrasts, and if so how do you romanise them?
I will clarify that I think <ts'> would be a good alternative FOR CHINESE,
as <sh> has another use in pinyin and <tsh> could easily come to use in
another way if the romanization were revised. In general, <tsh> could be a
good choice for /ts)_h/, depending on the phoneme inventory of the language
Messages in this topic (12)
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2b. Re: New toy conlang sketch
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu Jun 27, 2013 5:34 am ((PDT))
> From: H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>
>
> While the storm in the capitalization teacup blows over, I thought I'd
Interesting, the sort of weather we get around here...
> present some preliminary notes on a toy conlang that I've been doodling
> on and off recently.
>
> This isn't meant to be a "serious" conlang, so I'm purposely ignoring
> the unlikelihood of the fact that its speakers are whimsical
> stereotypical green alien beings that look like a ball with
> pincer-clawed arms and webbed feet with a single eye on a stalk that
> curves from their lower back above their body, and the fact that they
> ride in saucer-shaped spacecrafts with a hemispherical half-dome on top
> and retractable landing gear on the bottom.
Ah, yes, the glass domed space ship. Popular with so many different
races of space farer one must think that somewhere *out there* there
must be some ultra rich, ultra shady glass-domed-used-spaceshipmongery
that has cornered the market on intrastellar transport.
> In any case, here's the currently very scant lexicon:
>
> _ipf_ [Ipf]: eye.
> _ipfen_ [Ipf@n]: my eye.
> _mohipf_ [mo'?Ipf]: monster.
> _gruŋ_ [grUN] or [groUN]: arms.
> _gruŋgen_ ['grUNg@n] or [groUNg@n]: my arms.
> _tsapjak_ [ts)a'pjak]: feet/legs.
> _voluŋ_ [vO'lUN]: spaceship.
> _voluŋgen_ [vO'lUNg@n]: my spaceship.
> _qeŋ_ [ts)ʰEN]: glass. (Not 100% sure about spelling /ts)ʰ/ as _q_ yet,
> though.)
> _iqeŋ_ [I'ts)ʰEN]: glass dome.
>
> From this very scant corpus, one may draw the following conclusions:
> - The language has a /pf/ consonant cluster.
> - [ts)] may contrast with [ts)ʰ].
> - _-en_ appears to be a 1SG possessive suffix.
> - When _-en_ follows _ŋ_, a linking /g/ is inserted.
> - _h_ appears to represent the glottal stop.
> - _i-_ appears to be some kind of derivative prefix, perhaps describing
> a thing made from a particular material?
Hmm. If ipf is eye and iqeng is made from glass and i- is a derivational prefix,
then I'd suggest that pf is vitreous (or their planet's biological analogue)
making "eye" actually "made from vitreous".
Either that or "pf" is "eye" and "ipf" is "wonderful delicious delicacy made
from
eye"!
I might suggest that, when you find a few more words, that "eye-stalk-grabber"
is a term of the severest abuse!
> Furthermore, I have in my notes that _mohipf_ is the plural of "eye"
> (to a 1-eyed species, anything with multiple eyes is monstrous!).
Yep. I got that one right away! They might wonder what horrible things
the poly-eyed get up to with all those extra appendages...
The Ytuun of the World view things similarly, though from the opposite
side. They have two heads and it is the dual that is the presupposed and
unmarked normal. Plural is therefore three or five and above (four is
their dual) and they don't have a concept of "one". For them, what is
to us "one of something" is "half of a pair". So "one egg" becomes
"half a pair of eggs" just as the "single face" of a Daine or Man comes
out to "half a person".
Their philosophical counting scheme is therefore: none, half, normal,
three, two, many.
> Which
> implies that _mo(h)-_ is perhaps some kind of pluralizing prefix. Or
> maybe it's _mo-_ with a linking /?/ when preceding a vowel.
I like the latter, but that's just me!
Padraic
> I haven't worked out any syntax yet, though. And I don't have a name for
> the conlang yet. Any suggestions? :-P
>
>
> T
>
> --
> If creativity is stifled by rigid discipline, then it is not true creativity.
>
Messages in this topic (12)
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2c. Re: New toy conlang sketch
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Thu Jun 27, 2013 6:04 am ((PDT))
2013-06-27 08:32, Alex Fink skrev:
> On Wed, 26 Jun 2013 17:18:09 -0700, H. S. Teoh<hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
>
>> >On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 06:52:38PM -0500, George Corley
>> >wrote:
>
>>> >>Even then, <ts'> might have been a better choice (I think
>>> >>it's been used in other schemes).
>> >
>> >I would go for that, except that the apostrophe is already
>> >overused for too many things, so I'd like to avoid it if
>> >possible. But I'll keep <ts'> in mind; at least for now, it
>> >looks to be a far better alternative than <q>.
> Well, to me, the biggest (likely) problem with your use of <q>
> [ts)_h], that no-one's made explicit yet, is its relation to
> <ts> [ts)]. Having a letter for the aspirate when you just use
> a cluster for the simplex is really strange, though slightly
> less so if [+aspirated] is the unmarked member of the
> opposition, and significantly less so if/ts)_h/ is somehow one-of-a-
> kind in the inventory. Are there other aspirate vs. plain
> contrasts, and if so how do you romanise them?
>
>> >I was considering using/h/ as an aspiration marker, but then
>> >it's already being used for /?/, and besides, <tsh> suggests
>> >[tS)] more than [ts)ʰ].
> Eh, I don't much like the correspondence <sh> [S], so this
> wouldn't worry me personally.
>
I always kind of liked the solution used in a book on Tibetan
pronunciation I have. The author, a Tibetan scholar, also has
qualms about <tsh> suggesting [tʃ] so he uses /ts/ = <tz> and
/tsʰ/ = <ts> even though he otherwise uses Wylie
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wylie_transliteration>.
And I'd definitely use <q> (Maltese!) or even <'> for /ʔ/
since there likely is a /h/ in the lang if it has aspirates.
(Come to think of it: given the shapes of Hebrew <א> and <ע>
I can't help imagining a conlang which uses <x> /ʔ/ and <y> /ʕ/!)
/bpj
Messages in this topic (12)
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2d. Re: New toy conlang sketch
Posted by: "George Corley" gacor...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Jun 27, 2013 6:14 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 8:04 AM, BPJ <b...@melroch.se> wrote:
>
>
> And I'd definitely use <q> (Maltese!) or even <'> for /ʔ/
> since there likely is a /h/ in the lang if it has aspirates.
>
Is that true. I'm just curious, since for many Mandarin dialects, pinyin
<h> is /x/ and there is no /h/ (there are dialects with /h/, though).
Messages in this topic (12)
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2e. Re: New toy conlang sketch
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Thu Jun 27, 2013 6:48 am ((PDT))
2013-06-27 15:14, George Corley skrev:
> On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 8:04 AM, BPJ <b...@melroch.se> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> And I'd definitely use <q> (Maltese!) or even <'> for /ʔ/
>> since there likely is a /h/ in the lang if it has aspirates.
>>
>
> Is that true. I'm just curious, since for many Mandarin dialects, pinyin
> <h> is /x/ and there is no /h/ (there are dialects with /h/, though).
>
I did say "likely", not "doubtless"! There *are* languages
which have aspirated stops/affricates but no /h/ -- Lhasa
Tibetan is another one, which BTW also has /x/, and I don't
know to what extent /ɦ/ in New IndoAryan languages comes out
as [h], but I have seen many times stated that the vast majority
of languages with aspirates have /h/. Even so if Teoh's lang has
/x/ or /ɦ/ <h> would be a good choice for it, no?
Praetereo censeo sibilantes et affricatae mandarinae modo
Vasconice scribendae esse!
/bpj
Messages in this topic (12)
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3a. Re: Arbitrarily long and complex compounds
Posted by: "And Rosta" and.ro...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Jun 27, 2013 2:54 am ((PDT))
Did the Miller--Fink scheme of 2009, which I admired but never got my head
around, also involve four inflections? I dimly recall it had two.
On Jun 27, 2013 3:50 AM, "Herman Miller" <hmil...@prismnet.com> wrote:
> Here's a variation on an idea Alex Fink was talking about back in 2009
> ("Unambiguous prosody for trees"). The nice thing is that in the simple
> cases, it looks like something that might be found in a reasonable spoken
> language. I'll illustrate with names of birds from English.
>
> First, the simple part: adding adjectives to noun phrases. Adjectives get
> one inflection (a tone, suffix, or whatever), and the head of the noun
> phrase gets a different inflection. I'll label them as A and N. You can
> string any number of adjectives together, and they group with the noun one
> by one to make longer phrases.
>
> black-A bird-N
> (black bird)
> blackbird
>
> rusty-A black-A bird-N
> (rusty (black bird))
> Rusty Blackbird
>
> Japan-A green-A wood-A pecker-N
> (Japanese (green (wood-pecker)))
> Japanese Green Woodpecker
>
> Basically the phrase can be extended indefinitely by replacing N with the
> sequence A N. But what if you want to expand an A into a more complex
> sequence? You need a new kind of phrase which I'll call a "descriptive
> phrase". Start with a phrase like "red tail" (A N), then change the N to a
> new inflection, D. English does something like this in names like
> "Red-tailed Hawk", where the adjective "red" and the noun "tail" are
> combined to make a new adjective "red-tailed".
>
> red-A tail-D hawk-N
> ((red tail) hawk)
> Red-tailed Hawk
>
> red-A wing-D black-A bird-N
> ((red wing) (black bird))
> Red-winged Blackbird
>
> north-A rough-A wing-D swallow-N
> (north ((rough wing) swallow))
> Northern Rough-winged Swallow
>
> Note that in a sequence like A A D, only the last A combines with the D.
> Since A D reduces to A, A A D N is equivalent to A A N. If you want more
> than one A to combine with a D, you need another inflection, what I'll call
> the combining form (C). Imagine for instance that English doesn't have a
> word for "nape", but instead uses the phrase "neck-A back-N" for "back of
> the neck". So to make a compound adjective "red-naped" you'll need this
> construction:
>
> red-A neck-C back-D sap-A sucker-N
> ((red (neck back)) (sap sucker))
> Red-naped Sapsucker
>
> Note how "neck-A back-N" becomes "neck-C back-D" when used as the second
> part of a descriptive phrase.
>
> So far we've got:
>
> N -> A N
> A -> A D
> D -> C D
>
> Now here's the cool part. To expand a C, the left-hand side is inflected
> like a C, and the right-hand side is like an N.
>
> C -> C N
>
> I can't come up with an actual bird name that illustrates this, but here's
> the simplest case that requires this construction.
>
> A C N D N
> A (C N) D N = A C D N
> A ((C N) D) N = A D N
> (A ((C N) D)) N = A N
>
> Here's a few other examples to illustrate how it works.
>
> (A ((A ((C N) D)) N))
> ((A ((C (A N)) D)) N)
> ((A (C ((C N) D))) N)
> ((A ((C N) (C D))) N)
> ((A ((C N) D)) (A N))
> (((A ((C N) D)) D) N)
> ((A (((C N) N) D)) N)
> (((A D) ((C N) D)) N)
>
> So with just four relatively simple rules you can represent arbitrarily
> complex trees, and at least the first two or three of the rules look like
> something that might work in a reasonable spoken language.
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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