There are 5 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Chat: LSA Linguistic Institute
From: Ph. D.
2a. Re: conditioned vowel breaking
From: neo gu
2b. Re: conditioned vowel breaking
From: Alex Fink
2c. Re: conditioned vowel breaking
From: neo gu
3.1. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Messages
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1a. Re: Chat: LSA Linguistic Institute
Posted by: "Ph. D." p...@phillipdriscoll.com
Date: Mon Jul 1, 2013 8:44 pm ((PDT))
On 6/28/2013 11:56 AM, Darin Arrick wrote:
> I'm at the Linguistic Society of America's Linguistic Institute in Ann Arbor,
> Michigan, until July 19. Is anyone else here? I'd love to get together and
> chat about conlangs and linguistics.
>
> Also, I'll be giving a presentation about conlangs on Monday, July 1, at
> 5:30PM, at the University of Michigan. It should be fun to talk about this to
> a room full of linguists from all over the world. :)
I went to Darin's talk about conlangs. Darin gave a great talk about the
origins of conlanging as well as examples of several conlangs, and also
talked a bit about how conlangs can be useful in a linguistics setting.
The talk was enthusiastically received by the audience of about forty
people.
--Ph. D.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2a. Re: conditioned vowel breaking
Posted by: "neo gu" qiihos...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jul 1, 2013 10:31 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 21:47:18 -0400, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 15:27:50 -0400, neo gu <qiihos...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>In the latest version (Jun26), I'm using a scheme where stressed vowels in
>>the protolanguage are diphthongized according to the vowel in the next
>>syllable, e.g. "ku.pA > "kuA.pA (Diphthongs can also arise from suffixing).
>>The diphthongs are then reduced to simple vowels, with an on-glide in some
>>cases. There are a bunch of subsequent sound changes, such as deletion of
>>unstressed originally simple vowels in some circumstances. Suffixes already
>>present in the protolanguage may shift the stress prior to diphthongization.
>>
>What is final apostrophe? (Unreleased?)
p', t', k' are ejective. Although I suppose they could be aspirated instead.
>>I'm concerned that the diphthongization is unnatural and/or that the
>>resulting stem differences are too major.
>
>The diphthongisation is probably fine, as long as there was no phonemic
>palatalisation or labialisation or whatnot on consonants at that stage. A
>very similar thing, e.g., happened in Northern Vanuatu (Alexandre François,
>_Unraveling the History of the Vowels of Seventeen Northern Vanuatu
>Languages_).
>
I'm not sure I understand the provision. There _is_ a change of *k, *g, *x > c,
J\, C / __ (*i, *E).
> Indeed, your balance between retention of final vowels and reduction of the
> diphthong contrasts also strikes me as reasonable, i.e. so that the resulting
> system isn't too lossy but also retains a sensible number of minimal pairs.
>
>It's interesting that final *iu survive but final *EA fall, since normally
>high vowels are weaker. But I suppose this actually makes perfect sense if
>one imagines old final *iu left the preceding consonants strongly palatalised
>/ labialised respectively in the diphthongisation process, and then one had
>something like
>CA CE Ci Cu >
>CA CE C_ji C_wu >
>C@ C@ C_j@ C_w@ >
>C C Ci Cu.
>
>... But, wait, that's not the whole story of the development, is it? In
>particular the difference between /"jubu/ and /"mjun/ doesn't look explainable
>on the grounds of vowels alone, so the consonants must have some role here...
>
The vowel-deletion depends on the adjacent consonants, although I considered
deleting only the high vowels. I'm still not certain about final vowel deletion.
>As for the stem differences, well, if the change leading to them was
>realistic, then a fortiori the outcome is realistic ... for a limited time.
>But I do suspect that analogy would quickly start acting on these and
>smoothing out a few things in the system.
>
>At a guess, actives will be more frequent than passives for most verbs, so (in
>such verbs) one's likely to begin to see remodelling of the passive to make it
>more predictable from the active. The single pair which screams at me
>strongestly for this treatment is the last one. If I'm right to think that
>the active shows [kw] < earlier [pw], so that there would be lots of /"CwV/ ~
>/Cu"/ verbs including even /"kwV/ ~ /ku"/ plus a couple weirdoes doing /"kwV/
>~ /pu"/, then I wouldn't expect that /p/ to hold out long, > /ku"tSar/. The
>consonant alternations in lines 1 and 4 would probably (at a guess without
>seeing the inventory) be less immediately susceptible to this: if /dz/ is
>purely a secondary consonant then there's no "unmutated" pattern for it to
>fall in with, so it's more interpretable; as for line 1 I suppose the
>prospective development is passive /i"bor/, but how compelling this is depends
>on how permitted V-initial verb stems are.
>
>The vowel alternations I suspect would remain tolerated for a longer time,
>partly because this seems to be the case crosslinguistically. But for
>instance, in the first syllable, the patterns active /jV/ > passive /i/,
>active /wV/ > passive /u/ seem to remain readable enough and so may survive
>awhile, whereas any active nonhigh vowel can turn into either passive /a/ or
>/e/ and so that's likely to start re-sorting first. In the appended syllable,
>again, the patterns active /i/ > passive /jor/, active /u/ > passive /or/ are
>readable, whereas when the active is closed by a consonant predicting is
>harder again, and so etc.
>
All those make sense. Some of the consonant changes are very "recent" such as
lj > j (the <l> might even be retained by the orthography). And pw > kw follows
earlier kw > k, if that's not too far off.
>Of course, if there are other forms in the paradigm with yet different
>alternants that suggest different modes of simplification, all my predictions
>above may be nonsense.
>
>Alex
I didn't expect so thorough an analysis; otherwise, I would have included more
information.
I've added some forms here (the apostrophe after a vowel is a glottal stop):
Active - Passive - Imperative - Passive of Causative
"ju.bu - li"bor - "ju.bu' - li.bu"dor
"tak' - te"kar - "ta.ka' - te.ka"dor
"gaS - ga"Sar - "ga.Se' - ga.Se"dor
"dzi.mi - du"mjor - "dzi.mi' - du.mi"dor
"fes - fa"Sor - "fe.si' - fa.si"dor
"bjaSt' - biS"tar - "bjaS.ta' - biS.ta"dor
"mjun - mi"nor - "mju.nu' - min"dor
"kwetS - pu"tSar - "kwe.tSe' - pu.tSe"dor
Messages in this topic (5)
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2b. Re: conditioned vowel breaking
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Jul 1, 2013 10:49 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 23:54:08 -0400, neo gu <qiihos...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 21:47:18 -0400, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>What is final apostrophe? (Unreleased?)
>
>p', t', k' are ejective. Although I suppose they could be aspirated instead.
Was there a historical final glottal stop there, or do you just have a rule
that final voiceless stops become ejective? The latter is at least a little
funny, since there's not much reason for lifting the glottis to arise
spontaneously at end of utterance, though I guess they could be fairly weak
ejectives.
>>>I'm concerned that the diphthongization is unnatural and/or that the
>>>resulting stem differences are too major.
>>
>>The diphthongisation is probably fine, as long as there was no phonemic
>>palatalisation or labialisation or whatnot on consonants at that stage. A
>>very similar thing, e.g., happened in Northern Vanuatu (Alexandre François,
>>_Unraveling the History of the Vowels of Seventeen Northern Vanuatu
>>Languages_).
>>
>I'm not sure I understand the provision. There _is_ a change of *k, *g, *x >
>c, J\, C / __ (*i, *E).
That's fine, indeed likely, if it's totally conditioned like that. All I was
thinking of is that if your protolanguage had a contrast of, say, /EkA/ vs.
/Ek_jA/, it's implausible that the anticipatory repositioning of the tongue
body needed to get this to develop to [EAkA] would interfere with maintaining
the contrast between earlier /k/ and /k_j/.
>All those make sense. Some of the consonant changes are very "recent" such as
>lj > j (the <l> might even be retained by the orthography). And pw > kw
>follows earlier kw > k, if that's not too far off.
Hah, I have little idea what spelling pronunciation effects would do here. My
general impression is that HERE
I'm not sure in what sense you worry that kw > k might be "too far off". It
would throw in some /"kV/ ~ /ku"/ alternations, but maybe those aren't
completely foreign in light of the /"Co/ ~ /Cu"/ alternations you already get
from *uA, and the general pattern (before regularisation) that active /"Ce/
and /"Ca/ and /"Co/ mostly all have the same set of inherited passive options;
they'd probably be reformed along the same lines.
>I didn't expect so thorough an analysis; otherwise, I would have included more
>information.
>I've added some forms here (the apostrophe after a vowel is a glottal stop):
>
>Active - Passive - Imperative - Passive of Causative
>"ju.bu - li"bor - "ju.bu' - li.bu"dor
>"tak' - te"kar - "ta.ka' - te.ka"dor
>"gaS - ga"Sar - "ga.Se' - ga.Se"dor
>"dzi.mi - du"mjor - "dzi.mi' - du.mi"dor
>"fes - fa"Sor - "fe.si' - fa.si"dor
>"bjaSt' - biS"tar - "bjaS.ta' - biS.ta"dor
>"mjun - mi"nor - "mju.nu' - min"dor
>"kwetS - pu"tSar - "kwe.tSe' - pu.tSe"dor
So the imperatives are just the actives with the possibly deleted final vowel
added back (plus a constant [?], that part's easy). This is the first place
where the old final /a/ : /e/ distinction is showing up (unless it can ever be
retained in the active?) but other than that its formation seems
straightforward; the correlation between the vowel added here and the one added
in the passive would be easy to retain, however else the whole issue of final
vowels sorts out.
Ditto for the passives of the causative, pretty much, except that unless the
loss of the vowel in /min"dor/ can be construed as a surface morphophonemic
rule it's likely that this vowel will be resupplied (unless the passive of the
causative is a highly used category or unless this is a highly used form of
this particular verb, tolerant of a little irregularity like that).
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
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2c. Re: conditioned vowel breaking
Posted by: "neo gu" qiihos...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Jul 2, 2013 7:10 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 2 Jul 2013 00:49:22 -0400, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 23:54:08 -0400, neo gu <qiihos...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 21:47:18 -0400, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>What is final apostrophe? (Unreleased?)
>>
>>p', t', k' are ejective. Although I suppose they could be aspirated instead.
>
>Was there a historical final glottal stop there, or do you just have a rule
>that final voiceless stops become ejective? The latter is at least a little
>funny, since there's not much reason for lifting the glottis to arise
>spontaneously at end of utterance, though I guess they could be fairly weak
>ejectives.
>
It seems natural to me (the stops also become ejective before most consonants,
after vowel deletion). The sequence voiceless stop + glottal stop can occur
elsewhere (between vowels).
>>All those make sense. Some of the consonant changes are very "recent" such as
>>lj > j (the <l> might even be retained by the orthography). And pw > kw
>>follows earlier kw > k, if that's not too far off.
>
>I'm not sure in what sense you worry that kw > k might be "too far off". It
>would throw in some /"kV/ ~ /ku"/ alternations, but maybe those aren't
>completely foreign in light of the /"Co/ ~ /Cu"/ alternations you already get
>from *uA, and the general pattern (before regularisation) that active /"Ce/
>and /"Ca/ and /"Co/ mostly all have the same set of inherited passive options;
>they'd probably be reformed along the same lines.
>
>>I didn't expect so thorough an analysis; otherwise, I would have included
>>more information.
>>I've added some forms here (the apostrophe after a vowel is a glottal stop):
>>
>>Active - Passive - Imperative - Passive of Causative
>>"ju.bu - li"bor - "ju.bu' - li.bu"dor
>>"tak' - te"kar - "ta.ka' - te.ka"dor
>>"gaS - ga"Sar - "ga.Se' - ga.Se"dor
>>"dzi.mi - du"mjor - "dzi.mi' - du.mi"dor
>>"fes - fa"Sor - "fe.si' - fa.si"dor
>>"bjaSt' - biS"tar - "bjaS.ta' - biS.ta"dor
>>"mjun - mi"nor - "mju.nu' - min"dor
>>"kwetS - pu"tSar - "kwe.tSe' - pu.tSe"dor
>
>So the imperatives are just the actives with the possibly deleted final vowel
>added back (plus a constant [?], that part's easy). This is the first place
>where the old final /a/ : /e/ distinction is showing up (unless it can ever be
>retained in the active?)
>
Yes, after b, d, g, and dZ.
> but other than that its formation seems straightforward; the correlation
> between the vowel added here and the one added in the passive would be easy
> to retain, however else the whole issue of final vowels sorts out.
>Ditto for the passives of the causative, pretty much, except that unless the
>loss of the vowel in /min"dor/ can be construed as a surface morphophonemic
>rule it's likely that this vowel will be resupplied (unless the passive of the
>causative is a highly used category or unless this is a highly used form of
>this particular verb, tolerant of a little irregularity like that).
>
>Alex
A surface rule is what I had in mind. I don't think the passive of the
causative will be highly used.
Messages in this topic (5)
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3.1. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Jul 2, 2013 12:36 am ((PDT))
With this post, I finally do away with my backlog and am back on track :P .
On 16 June 2013 15:43, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhieme...@web.de> wrote:
> 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.
>
>
I just realised that it is exactly what Japanese does! Predicate
constructions in Japanese always confused me, but now I understand why!
As a quick primer, in Japanese both the subject and the object of a verb
are marked by a particle (_ga_ for the subject, and _o_ for the object.
Both can be overwritten by the topic marker _wa_, though). However, nominal
predicates (which in Japanese are mostly nouns and some adjectives) do not
take either. Instead, they appear naked, and are only followed by the
copula (which can be omitted, at least in women's familiar speech
patterns). For instance, the simple sentence "Takuto is a man" becomes in
Japanese: _Takuto wa otoko da_, with _da_ being the familiar copula (it
becomes _desu_ in polite speech, or can be omitted).
So basically that's what's happening here: the nominal predicate takes the
base form, which in Japanese happens to be neither the subject nor the
object form, but the stem alone.
>
> 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.
>
>
I wonder whether something similar might be happening in Moten, which would
explain why "to be" is treated as a normal transitive verb in that language
(and thus takes predicates in the accusative case). It's true that the
nominative is actually semantically marked in Moten (although it is
morphologically the base form): when the subject of a transitive verb is in
the nominative case, it indicates volition, i.e. that the subject does
whatever is indicated by the verb willingly and on purpose. To mark
non-volition, one has to put the subject in the instrumental. This is true
even of "to be", which with a nominative subject indicates that the subject
is willingly "being" something or someone.
Things get a bit more complicated quite quickly though:
- this pattern (which I call the "split nominative") only exists for
transitive verbs. Intransitive verbs take a nominative subject whether
there is volition or not involved.
- this pattern only works well for animate concepts. For inanimates,
volition is not an option, and according to the rule above that should mean
that an inanimate subject of a transitive verb should always be in the
instrumental. And indeed, in high registers of the language the only known
native speaker of Moten does just that. But in more familiar registers, he
tends to slip and use the nominative instead, even though there cannot be
any volition involved. It's a syllable shorter after all, and as long as
context makes clear that the subject is inanimate (it's a semantic feature
in Moten, not a syntactic one), there's no confusion possible.
I'm still not quite sure what to make of this pattern, but that's how Moten
works. It looks a bit like this "nominative-absolutive" pattern, except
with a split for volition, and with the nominative case being the least
marked morphologically.
> >
> > Yes, but, as I observed above, you cannot promote John to
> > the subject of an equivalent passive: *John is been by him!
>
> Indeed not!
>
>
Moten has no passive voice, so this issue is moot here.
On 17 June 2013 19:49, H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> Yeah, this is one of the neat things about Russian: in verbs of being
> *not* in the present tense, the predicate is in the instrumental case:
>
> Я бы-л врач-ом.
> 1SG.NOM be-PAST.SG.MASC doctor-INSTR
> I was a doctor.
>
> The instrumental also occurs with verbs of becoming:
>
> Он ста-л врач-ом.
> He.NOM become-PAST.SG.MASC doctor-INSTR
> He became a doctor.
>
> It is ungrammatical to use the nominative or accusative in these cases.
> It seems to me that the instrumental case here is being used in a
> stative sense, or a transition into a state, as opposed to a mere simple
> direct object.
>
>
Japanese is similar here. The verb "to become" in Japanese (_naru_) is
actually intransitive, and what you become takes the particle _ni_, which
indicates various things like location (at), destination (to) but also the
person to whom something is given (to). In Japanese you become *to*
something, emphasising the process rather than the final state.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (31)
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