There are 11 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Tripping over my own Tongues (was Re: Conlang Profanity)
From: Anthony Miles
1b. Re: Tripping over my own Tongues (was Re: Conlang Profanity)
From: Adam Walker
1c. Re: Tripping over my own Tongues (was Re: Conlang Profanity)
From: Adam Walker
2a. Vowel Contraction Question
From: Anthony Miles
2b. Re: Vowel Contraction Question
From: Roger Mills
2c. Re: Vowel Contraction Question
From: Alex Fink
2d. Re: Vowel Contraction Question
From: Eric Christopherson
3a. Re: Jul17 inflections
From: Alex Fink
3b. Re: Jul17 inflections
From: neo gu
4a. Re: How does singing interact with voiceless phonemes?
From: Alex Fink
5a. Re: Beautiful vowel diagrams using LaTeX
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Messages
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1a. Tripping over my own Tongues (was Re: Conlang Profanity)
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 11:36 am ((PDT))
>.> The worst thing one could say to a Siye-speaker is "Simukimsu!" This means
>> "(May you go) to the place where people don't speak Siye!" Or you could say
>> "Pe Siye epesipuyammu." "You are not able to speak Siye."
>>
>> The worst thing one could say to a Fortunatian-speaker is "a Lom!" (to
>> Rome!). Since the Fortunatians are Donatists, they regard Roman Catholics
>> as arch-heretics. I haven't developed their profanity, but I'm sure
>> religious swearwords are part of it.
>
>Interesting that you're swapping L's and R's too. Carrajina dose that
>some. Lezujidu = resurected. Actually, the R form, rezujidu, is preferred
>as more "correct," but the L form is used a lot and is used exclusively
>when referring to raisins soaked in wine, lezujidus.
>Adam
Xnena xarbt me! (Virgin preserve me!) That should read "A Raum!" Siye has [l],
but not [r]. Latin [l] and [r] in Fortunatian collapse into [r] (a general
rhotic, I'm not doing a tight transcription here). If you look at the
Fortunation non-Romance vocabulary on Frathwiki, there are a few words with /l/
[l], but that is a minority. It was an error, but then I decided that a few
random words might have /l/ by hypercorrection, and then the hypercorrected
forms would be reduced in number by random correction. And the Fortunatian for
"resurrected" is /resroct-/. /Naux querbrax di de resroctiaun/ = "We celebrate
the Day of Resurrection"
Messages in this topic (3)
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1b. Re: Tripping over my own Tongues (was Re: Conlang Profanity)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 12:15 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
> >.> The worst thing one could say to a Siye-speaker is "Simukimsu!" This
> means
> >> "(May you go) to the place where people don't speak Siye!" Or you could
> say
> >> "Pe Siye epesipuyammu." "You are not able to speak Siye."
> >>
> >> The worst thing one could say to a Fortunatian-speaker is "a Lom!" (to
> >> Rome!). Since the Fortunatians are Donatists, they regard Roman
> Catholics
> >> as arch-heretics. I haven't developed their profanity, but I'm sure
> >> religious swearwords are part of it.
> >
>
>
> >Interesting that you're swapping L's and R's too. Carrajina dose that
> >some. Lezujidu = resurected. Actually, the R form, rezujidu, is preferred
> >as more "correct," but the L form is used a lot and is used exclusively
> >when referring to raisins soaked in wine, lezujidus.
>
> >Adam
>
> Xnena xarbt me! (Virgin preserve me!) That should read "A Raum!" Siye has
> [l], but not [r]. Latin [l] and [r] in Fortunatian collapse into [r] (a
> general rhotic, I'm not doing a tight transcription here). If you look at
> the Fortunation non-Romance vocabulary on Frathwiki, there are a few words
> with /l/ [l], but that is a minority. It was an error, but then I decided
> that a few random words might have /l/ by hypercorrection, and then the
> hypercorrected forms would be reduced in number by random correction. And
> the Fortunatian for "resurrected" is /resroct-/. /Naux querbrax di de
> resroctiaun/ = "We celebrate the Day of Resurrection"
>
>
¡Salvas Virdjini mivi!
¡dil Romi!
Chelevramus dil dji djil rezujuni/lezujuni.
Adam
Messages in this topic (3)
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1c. Re: Tripping over my own Tongues (was Re: Conlang Profanity)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 12:16 pm ((PDT))
Ack! Error!
On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 2:15 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> ¡dil Romi!
>
>
>
Should be:
¡Dal Roma!
Adam
Messages in this topic (3)
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2a. Vowel Contraction Question
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 11:49 am ((PDT))
If there are three vowels in a row, what factors determine the direction of
collapse? I have a proto-conlang where the root /nali-/ can take the
instrumental suffix /-ni/. A daughter conlang drops all /n/s and /l/s,
producing the following declension
ERG/ABS ai-0
LOC aipa
INS aii
COM aiu
GEN naai (< maai)
ERG/ABS contracts to /e:/, LOC to /e:pa/, COM to /e:u/. But what about INS and
GEN? Are there particular factors that would induce them to contract to /e:i/
and /na:i/ rather than /ai:/ and /nae:/ or vice versa? Both stages of the
conlang are SOV, N ADJ, and absolutive, with no strong stress.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2b. Re: Vowel Contraction Question
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 3:51 pm ((PDT))
If your general rule is "contract the first two vowels of a sequence of 3" then
Ins. has to be ei, and Gen has to be na:i. Unless you make your rule only apply
to sequences of low+high V., in which case Ins. is still ei, but Gen will be
nae. I like na: i better.....
________________________________
From: Anthony Miles <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, August 1, 2013 2:49 PM
Subject: Vowel Contraction Question
If there are three vowels in a row, what factors determine the direction of
collapse? I have a proto-conlang where the root /nali-/ can take the
instrumental suffix /-ni/. A daughter conlang drops all /n/s and /l/s,
producing the following declension
ERG/ABS ai-0
LOC aipa
INS aii
COM aiu
GEN naai (< maai)
ERG/ABS contracts to /e:/, LOC to /e:pa/, COM to /e:u/. But what about INS and
GEN? Are there particular factors that would induce them to contract to /e:i/
and /na:i/ rather than /ai:/ and /nae:/ or vice versa? Both stages of the
conlang are SOV, N ADJ, and absolutive, with no strong stress.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2c. Re: Vowel Contraction Question
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 7:25 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 1 Aug 2013 14:49:04 -0400, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
>If there are three vowels in a row, what factors determine the direction of
>collapse? I have a proto-conlang where the root /nali-/ can take the
>instrumental suffix /-ni/. A daughter conlang drops all /n/s and /l/s,
>producing the following declension
>
>ERG/ABS ai-0
>LOC aipa
>INS aii
>COM aiu
>GEN naai (< maai)
>
>ERG/ABS contracts to /e:/, LOC to /e:pa/, COM to /e:u/. But what about INS and
>GEN? Are there particular factors that would induce them to contract to /e:i/
>and /na:i/ rather than /ai:/ and /nae:/ or vice versa? Both stages of the
>conlang are SOV, N ADJ, and absolutive, with no strong stress.
Paradigmatic pressures would favour the versions containing /e:/, since the
base is /e:/. I don't see anything in syntax proper that could make a
difference, unless it gets in through sandhi effects and then we'd need to know
what the adjoining words are likely to be.
Otherwise, I dunno, contractions of long sequences of vowels is something I
have trouble with too. I'm not familiar with any detailed natlang examples. I
infer, though, from your not specifying alternatives for the comitative that
/iu/ cannot contract. Which pairs of vowels are susceptible to contraction?
Looking at what the shapes of three-vowel sequences are where one or the other
of the pairs can't contract might suggest a good principle to generalise on.
Anyway, there is something that I find suspect about what you've already done,
and that's [m] > [n]! I've never seen an unconditional natlang example of
that, no more than I've seen an unconditional example of [p] > [t]. For
comparison I do know at least one case of [m] > [N] (in Saanich, as part of
elimination of a whole labial series), and at least two cases of [p] > [k]
(Saanich again, and Arapaho).
Pencek http://akana.conlang.org/wiki/Pencek has the same blemish, and Radius
couldn't point out precedent when I asked him about it then. Arguably so does
Tairezazh, unless there was something freaky going on with internal
syllabification at one point.
Alex
Messages in this topic (4)
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2d. Re: Vowel Contraction Question
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 9:33 pm ((PDT))
On Aug 1, 2013, at 9:25 PM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> Anyway, there is something that I find suspect about what you've already
> done, and that's [m] > [n]! I've never seen an unconditional natlang example
> of that, no more than I've seen an unconditional example of [p] > [t]. For
> comparison I do know at least one case of [m] > [N] (in Saanich, as part of
> elimination of a whole labial series), and at least two cases of [p] > [k]
> (Saanich again, and Arapaho).
I just assumed it was [m] > [N] as you said and then [N] > [n]. I was more
surprised by the loss of *initial* *n (loss of initial *l doesn't bother me as
much, but that might be unusual too).
Messages in this topic (4)
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3a. Re: Jul17 inflections
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 6:57 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, 27 Jul 2013 22:52:11 -0400, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>This version uses terminology.
Helpful for me too. I was also thrown for a loop by the -B1-C4-E8 notation,
but I feel like even symbolic names would've been okay for me if the names
weren't reused between series (e.g. digits for B, letters for C, dingbats for
E? Then you could also dispense with the literal 'B' 'C' 'E').
>In the latest sketch (Jul17), each noun or pronoun is paired with a verb and
>vice-versa. The noun or pronoun precedes the verb. Example:
>
>crumb-find cockroach-eat (inflections omitted)
How do you get around the limitations of a scheme like this with respect to
sentences in which the nouns and the verbs don't pair up one-to-one so easily?
If your example above serves for "a cockroach [found and] ate a crumb", and you
have
>meat-raw-PRS-SEC dog-eat-DIR-FUT-FAC
for "the dog will eat the meat raw", can you incorporate both resultative and
the "find" -- "the dog will find and eat the meat raw"? (Or is this always
pragmatically unsensible?) How about "The dog wants to eat the meat raw"?
As similar cases, what happens if one of the nominal arguments of the sentence
is a conjunction? Or if your "The woman has put the black cat in the house"
had said "the *tall* woman" or "the *large* black cat"? Or ...?
>Slot E combines a couple semantic categories.
[...]
>CTF contrafactual - identifies a contrafactual statement
What is CTF for, pragmatically?
>ATT attributive - also has 2 uses:
>* is used only if the verb has an implicit argument; it indicates that this
>word-pair modifies the following noun.
Does this mean that the following noun _is_ the implicit argument?
>* is used only if the verb lacks the implicit argument, including those with
>ANT, PAS, or RFX marked. It indicates that the verb modifies its own explicit
>argument.
I don't understand the above use.
>If FAC, CTF, or PQ is present:
[...]
>PRF depends on the verb:
>* if the verb is dynamic, the situation occurs at some unknown past time
>* if the verb is static, the situation occurs at some past time, whether
>known or not
>AOR the situation occurs at a known past time
Can static verbs take the aorist here?
I suppose the "known time" business has more or less the effects of a perfect,
but pinning the distinction on whether the time is known seems a little
pragmatically strange too: you don't get to focus on whether the dynamic
situation or its outcome is more germane, but the choice is automatic given
your knowledge of timings. I guess the situation is helped by the fuzziness in
what precision is meant by "known" (if I'm recounting a hearsay story and I
don't know what day it was supposed to have been, is the aorist truly out of
the question), but maybe that means some other description is nearer accurate.
>If IMP, JUS, or OPT is present:
>
>FUT the situation is ready to occur at some future time
>PRS the situation is occurring at some future time
>PRF the situation is complete by some future time
>AOR the situation occurs at some future time
Hm, even optatives are necessarily future? One can't speak of uncertain
nonfuture happenings that way ("if it rained last night, ...")?
If the future imperative etc. serves for "Get the brisket ready to roast", what
is simple indicative "the brisket is ready to roast"?
Alex
Messages in this topic (8)
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3b. Re: Jul17 inflections
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 9:04 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 1 Aug 2013 21:57:53 -0400, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Jul 2013 22:52:11 -0400, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>This version uses terminology.
>
>Helpful for me too. I was also thrown for a loop by the -B1-C4-E8 notation,
>but I feel like even symbolic names would've been okay for me if the names
>weren't reused between series (e.g. digits for B, letters for C, dingbats for
>E? Then you could also dispense with the literal 'B' 'C' 'E').
>
I didn't do that because I didn't think of it. BTW, I'm leaving out most
0-marked tags this time.
>>In the latest sketch (Jul17), each noun or pronoun is paired with a verb and
>>vice-versa. The noun or pronoun precedes the verb. Example:
>>
>>crumb-find cockroach-eat (inflections omitted)
>
>How do you get around the limitations of a scheme like this with respect to
>sentences in which the nouns and the verbs don't pair up one-to-one so easily?
> If your example above serves for "a cockroach [found and] ate a crumb", and
>you have
>>meat-raw-PRS-SEC dog-eat-DIR-FUT-FAC
>for "the dog will eat the meat raw", can you incorporate both resultative and
>the "find" -- "the dog will find and eat the meat raw"? (Or is this always
>pragmatically unsensible?) How about "The dog wants to eat the meat raw"?
>As similar cases, what happens if one of the nominal arguments of the sentence
>is a conjunction? Or if your "The woman has put the black cat in the house"
>had said "the *tall* woman" or "the *large* black cat"? Or ...?
>
If there's an extra noun, a dummy verb like "do" or "exist" can be used as its
verb part (cockroach-do-SEC crumb-eat-INV-FAC or crumb-exist-SEC
cockroach-eat-DIR-FAC). It there's an extra univalent noun modifier, the RP
pronoun is used as the noun part (RP-large RP-black cat-see-INV-FAC "I see the
large black cat.").
3rd person pronouns can be used. "The dog wants to eat the meat raw" is
meat-raw-SEC 3IS-eat-INV-OPT dog-want-DIR-FAC. "The dog will find and eat the
meat raw" is meat-raw-SEC dog-find-DIR-SEC 3AS-eat-DIR-FAC, I think.
>>Slot E combines a couple semantic categories.
>[...]
>>CTF contrafactual - identifies a contrafactual statement
>
>What is CTF for, pragmatically?
I'm not sure if I'm answering the right question, but CTF is used in
contrary-to-fact conditions and conclusions, as in, "If I were rich I would buy
a new house."
>>ATT attributive - also has 2 uses:
>>* is used only if the verb has an implicit argument; it indicates that this
>>word-pair modifies the following noun.
>
>Does this mean that the following noun _is_ the implicit argument?
Yes.
>>* is used only if the verb lacks the implicit argument, including those
>>with ANT, PAS, or RFX marked. It indicates that the verb modifies its own
>>explicit argument.
>
>I don't understand the above use.
This one's tricky. It applies to effectively univalent forms. Suppose you have
a sentence RP-raw meat-exist-SEC dog-eat-DIR-AOR-FAC "The dog ate the raw
meat." It can be replaced by meat-raw-ATT dog-eat-DIR-AOR-FAC. ATT is really 2
functions that happen to be marked the same; possibly I should use different
tags -- but I don't know what to call the univalent one.
>>If FAC, CTF, or PQ is present:
>[...]
>>PRF depends on the verb:
>>* if the verb is dynamic, the situation occurs at some unknown past time
>>* if the verb is static, the situation occurs at some past time, whether
>>known or not
>>AOR the situation occurs at a known past time
>
>Can static verbs take the aorist here?
No.
>I suppose the "known time" business has more or less the effects of a perfect,
Did you really mean "perfect" here?
> but pinning the distinction on whether the time is known seems a little
> pragmatically strange too: you don't get to focus on whether the dynamic
> situation or its outcome is more germane, but the choice is automatic given
> your knowledge of timings. I guess the situation is helped by the fuzziness
> in what precision is meant by "known" (if I'm recounting a hearsay story and
> I don't know what day it was supposed to have been, is the aorist truly out
> of the question), but maybe that means some other description is nearer
> accurate.
>
By "known", I meant that the speaker assumes that the addressee knows which
time is meant. The aorist would probably be used once a time reference is
established, even if the speaker doesn't know exactly when it happened.
>>If IMP, JUS, or OPT is present:
>>
>>FUT the situation is ready to occur at some future time
>>PRS the situation is occurring at some future time
>>PRF the situation is complete by some future time
>>AOR the situation occurs at some future time
>
>Hm, even optatives are necessarily future? One can't speak of uncertain
>nonfuture happenings that way ("if it rained last night, ...")?
>
Ordinary conditions use the factual form, because the conclusions are ordinary
statements using the factual form. The optative is used only in subordinate
clauses, as with "sing" in "I want her to sing." 3AS-sing-OPT want-DIR-FAC.
>If the future imperative etc. serves for "Get the brisket ready to roast",
>what is simple indicative "the brisket is ready to roast"?
>
I'm not sure how to translate "ready to roast", but it an explicit "ready"
(i.e. a separate word) would probably be used for clarity.
>
>Alex
I had to look through my paper notes; there may be errors in the examples.
Here's some additional material:
The aorist (or perfect if static) is normally used for the "imperfect":
crumb-exist-SEC cockroach-eat-DIR-FAC "The cockroach was eating the crumb"
(imperfective) or "The cockroach ate the crumb." (perfective) However, there's
another construction that can be used for the imperfect: crumb-exist-SEC
cockroach-eat-DIR-PRS-SUB remember-DIR-FAC, literally "I remember the cockroach
eating the crumb." Similarly, "predict" can be used as the auxiliary for the
future imperfective. Also, these auxiliaries can be used to construct the
pluperfect, future perfect, and past prospective.
Messages in this topic (8)
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4a. Re: How does singing interact with voiceless phonemes?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Thu Aug 1, 2013 8:20 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 25 Jul 2013 15:55:16 -0400, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
>Which then made me wonder: in languages where phonemes are distinguished
>by voicing, how do we recognize them in sung speech? Human singing
>necessarily involves voicing to create a tone. Do we simply perceive the
>phonemes that make sense in context (the way we don't thinking about the
>last sound in "dogs" being /z/), or are degrees of volume or similar
>features permitted to vary by singers to distinguish between phonemes?
Others have already answered "exactly the same way as we do it in speech", but
one basic fact that I think it's worth making totally explicit is that speech
also has tones. You know this: even English sentences have intonation, and
tonal languages exist. Yet we can recognise phonation in ordinary speech.
Singing is a red herring.
On the level of phonetics, the pitch (i.e. tone) of a speech sound is the
frequency with which the vocal cords are vibrating -- that is, the frequency of
the voicing. So, at the basic implementational level, voiceless sounds have
_no_ pitch, whereas voiced ones have a pitch, and thus they are distinguished.
Of course, the human perceptual system patches over the little pitchless gaps
when e.g. listening to a solo vocalist and extracting the melody. So the fact
that a good percentage of the speech stream is voiced is enough to carry the
song.
(Any sound that occurs during periods of non-voicing will just be noise which
is all smeared out in the frequency domain. Things like place of articulation
of voiceless stops, which are in significant terms silent in and of themselves,
are principally perceived by means of the frequency bending they cause to the
formants of nearby voiced sounds.)
In any given language there may well be other cues, e.g. English stop phonation
being mostly aspiration; and context will help; but that doesn't change the
basic form of the answer.
Alex
Messages in this topic (12)
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5a. Re: Beautiful vowel diagrams using LaTeX
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 2, 2013 1:13 am ((PDT))
On 31 July 2013 16:31, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Actually I started with gb4e first, but ran into a limitation in that it
> can't handle interlinears with more than 3 vertically-aligned lines, and
> it doesn't support interlinear preambles.
>
>
The first one is a hard limit, but I find it acceptable. Interlinears with
more than 3 aligned lines are evil.
As for interlinear preambles, gb4e handles them just fine: anything between
\ex and \gll(l) will be treated as a preamble, no need for a special tag.
Personally, I find Expex simply too clever for its own good. It's too
complicated and low-level (which it has to be, since it's TeX-based rather
than LaTeX-based), and demands too much fiddling to get nice results. And
then despite giving us nearly everything and the kitchen sink, it doesn't
even handle more than one level of example embedding! What's up with that?
Anyway, give me a nice LaTeX wrapper style around it and I might consider
using it. But as it is it doesn't separate the semantic from the
presentation issues enough.
I haven't tried referencing examples yet, but my main use case is
> interlinears with more than 3 aligned lines.
>
>
My only question here will be "why?". Even the Leipzig glossing rules never
go further than 2 aligned lines. Too many aligned lines gets confusing.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (10)
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