There are 14 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: I am sure
From: Jonathan Frisch
1b. Re: I am sure
From: C. Brickner
1c. Re: I am sure
From: Alex Fink
1d. Re: I am sure
From: Jonathan Frisch
1e. Re: I am sure
From: Ralph DeCarli
1f. Re: I am sure
From: Jonathan Frisch
1g. Re: I am sure
From: Ph. D.
1h. Re: I am sure
From: C. Brickner
1i. Re: I am sure
From: Alex Fink
2a. Re: Colloquial French resources
From: Jonathan Beagley
2b. Re: Colloquial French resources
From: And Rosta
3a. Concision in your conlang vs your L1
From: Daniel Bowman
3b. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1
From: H. S. Teoh
3c. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1
From: MorphemeAddict
Messages
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1a. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "Jonathan Frisch" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 3:02 pm ((PDT))
Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand on
it's own as a complete sentence?
On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> "C. Brickner" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause following
>> "I am sure that..." If it's a noun clause, what is its function? And it
>> doesn't seem to be indirect discourse. Charlie
>>
>
> Aren't these called "complement clauses"?
>
> --Ph. D.
Messages in this topic (13)
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1b. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 3:26 pm ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand on
it's own as a complete sentence?
On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
_____________________________
That seems to be right. My problem in Senjecas is that I have no word for
"that" in this context. I could say "I am sure", then "He is going", but that
doesn't seem to show the relationship between the two sentences. I can't say
"Estoy seguro QUE el va(vaya?). Of course, in English we often drop the
"that": "I'm sure he's going".
Charlie
> "C. Brickner" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause following
>> "I am sure that..." If it's a noun clause, what is its function? And it
>> doesn't seem to be indirect discourse. Charlie
>>
>
> Aren't these called "complement clauses"?
>
> --Ph. D.
Messages in this topic (13)
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1c. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 3:34 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:26:31 -0400, C. Brickner <[email protected]>
wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand on
>it's own as a complete sentence?
>On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
>_____________________________
>
>That seems to be right. My problem in Senjecas is that I have no word for
>"that" in this context. I could say "I am sure", then "He is going", but that
>doesn't seem to show the relationship between the two sentences. I can't say
>"Estoy seguro QUE el va(vaya?). Of course, in English we often drop the
>"that": "I'm sure he's going".
I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs before
this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"?
Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps "be
sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older uses of
English "confide".)
Alex
Messages in this topic (13)
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1d. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "Jonathan Frisch" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 4:25 pm ((PDT))
Yes. Something even more complicated would be something in the form of: "I
am sure that ____ is ____.
Actually, I didn't realize this was related to Senjecas (Senjeca?
Senjecan?); my apologies. However, it seems that the replacement word
would be dependant on the content of the second part. Ex.: "I am sure of
the statement, 'there are no peas.'" or "I am sure the statement, 'there
are no peas,' is true.
Again, I am new to this, so please forgive, and correct, any mistakes on my
part.
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:26:31 -0400, C. Brickner <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
> >----- Original Message -----
> >Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand
> on
> >it's own as a complete sentence?
> >On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <[email protected]> wrote:
> >_____________________________
> >
> >That seems to be right. My problem in Senjecas is that I have no word
> for "that" in this context. I could say "I am sure", then "He is going",
> but that doesn't seem to show the relationship between the two sentences. I
> can't say "Estoy seguro QUE el va(vaya?). Of course, in English we often
> drop the "that": "I'm sure he's going".
>
> I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs
> before this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"?
>
> Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps
> "be sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older
> uses of English "confide".)
>
> Alex
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan Frisch
aka: floaty
[email protected]
[email protected]
1-850-346-7600
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Messages in this topic (13)
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1e. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "Ralph DeCarli" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 5:48 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:29:13 -0400
"C. Brickner" <[email protected]> wrote:
I may be way off in my terminology, but isn't "I am sure that..." an
independent(?) clause that quantifies the evidentiality? The rest of
the sentence is the actual sentence.
> Hi!
>
> I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause
> following "I am sure that..."
>
> If it's a noun clause, what is its function?
>
> And it doesn't seem to be indirect discourse.
>
> Charlie
ralph
--
[email protected] ==> Ralph L. De Carli
Have you heard of the new post-neo-modern art style?
They haven't decided what it looks like yet.
Messages in this topic (13)
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1f. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "Jonathan Frisch" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:01 pm ((PDT))
I think 'dependent clause' is more correct.
There is a certain amount of unsaid implications to all sentences. "I am
sure that [statement]" implies that there is faith in the validity of an
intermediary party, whereas "[statement]" implies that the speaker/writer
has evidence of the validity of the statement.
Two sentences can have the same meaning yet imply completely different
concepts, ideas, etc.
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Ralph DeCarli <[email protected]>wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:29:13 -0400
> "C. Brickner" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I may be way off in my terminology, but isn't "I am sure that..." an
> independent(?) clause that quantifies the evidentiality? The rest of
> the sentence is the actual sentence.
>
> > Hi!
> >
> > I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause
> > following "I am sure that..."
> >
> > If it's a noun clause, what is its function?
> >
> > And it doesn't seem to be indirect discourse.
> >
> > Charlie
>
> ralph
> --
> [email protected] ==> Ralph L. De Carli
>
> Have you heard of the new post-neo-modern art style?
> They haven't decided what it looks like yet.
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan Frisch
aka: floaty
[email protected]
[email protected]
1-850-346-7600
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Messages in this topic (13)
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1g. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "Ph. D." [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:45 pm ((PDT))
Allow me to quote R. M. W. Dixon from the book _Complementation_:
| In many languages, certain verbs -- notably "see", "hear", "know",
| "believe", "like", and often also "tell" and "want" -- can take a clause,
| instead of a noun phrase, as a core argument. This is called a
| complement clause. To quote examples from English, alongside
| "I believe [John's denial]", with the noun phrase "John's denial"
| as the object argument of "believe", we can have "I believe <that
| John did not do it>", where the complement clause "that John
| did not do it" is the object argument.
| . . . .
| A complement clause has the following basic properties:
| 1. It has the internal constituent structure of a clause.
| 2. It functions as a core argument of a higher clause
The book discusses how complement clauses are expressed
in a number of different languages. In skimming the book,
I see that those languages that do not use a connecting word,
seem to use a clitic on the end of the subject or verb in the
complement clause.
Consider Tariana, a language spoken in the Amazon region:
iya di-nawa-ka wa-ka-na.
rain 3S-pass-COMP 1P-see-PAST
We saw that the rain passed.
--Ph. D.
Jonathan Frisch wrote:
> I think 'dependent clause' is more correct.
>
> There is a certain amount of unsaid implications to all sentences. "I am
> sure that [statement]" implies that there is faith in the validity of an
> intermediary party, whereas "[statement]" implies that the speaker/writer
> has evidence of the validity of the statement.
> Two sentences can have the same meaning yet imply completely different
> concepts, ideas, etc.
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Ralph DeCarli <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:29:13 -0400
>> "C. Brickner" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> I may be way off in my terminology, but isn't "I am sure that..." an
>> independent(?) clause that quantifies the evidentiality? The rest of
>> the sentence is the actual sentence.
>>
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>> I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause
>>> following "I am sure that..."
>>>
>>> If it's a noun clause, what is its function?
>>>
>>> And it doesn't seem to be indirect discourse.
>>>
>>> Charlie
Messages in this topic (13)
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1h. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:08 pm ((PDT))
I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs before
this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"?
Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps "be
sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older uses of
English "confide".)
Alex
_________________________________
Is this not an example of indirect discourse? I think that he’s going. I said
that he’s going.
Senjecas uses the supine (-u) with a motive (accusative) subject: “mus num átu
meína”.
Charlie
Messages in this topic (13)
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1i. Re: I am sure
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 31, 2013 2:37 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 22:08:26 -0400, C. Brickner <[email protected]>
wrote:
>I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs before
>this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"?
>
>Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps "be
>sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older uses
>of English "confide".)
>
>Alex
>_________________________________
>
>Is this not an example of indirect discourse? I think that he’s going. I
>said that he’s going.
>Senjecas uses the supine (-u) with a motive (accusative) subject: “mus num átu
>meína”.
Alright. I suppose the question is, then, whether Senjecas considers the
complement of "be sure that" to be indirect discourse (this would not be
unreasonable), and whether the construction can be generalised to non-verbal
sentences.
I'd see this example _mus num átu meína_ as some kind of raising construction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_(linguistics) ,
with _num_ being given the accusative because at some level it's behaving as
the object of _meína_. So, does Senjecas have any adjectives that take nominal
arguments? (Perhaps like English "proud of X", "loyal to X", "good at X".) If
so, it would be at least somewhat parallel to use one of those structures here,
and cast "I am sure that he is going" in the pattern of "I am sure of him
go.SUPINE", where "him" takes whatever case arguments of adjectives do.
Alex
Messages in this topic (13)
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2a. Re: Colloquial French resources
Posted by: "Jonathan Beagley" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 4:20 pm ((PDT))
2013/8/30 And Rosta <[email protected]>
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, On 30/08/2013 18:59:
>
>> On 30 August 2013 17:38, Jonathan Beagley <[email protected]>**
>> wrote:
>>
>>> But again, as you've mentioned, I believe there is a strong belief
>>>
>>> that most Spoken French is simply "wrong". This is a sentiment I
>>> heard relatively frequently in my linguistics program, particularly
>>> from the syntax prof (Claude Muller).
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, prescriptivism is pretty strong in France (thank the
>> Academy
>> for that). But you'd think that linguists, of all people, would not fall
>> for it! What kind of a linguist can honestly think a form of language used
>> successfully by millions of people is "wrong"? What does it even mean?!
>>
>
> Therefore, my suspicion is that Jonathan misunderstood his professor.
>
I certainly did not misunderstand my professor. He made his point of view
quite clear, and other professors, particularly the semantics professor,
mentioned his point of view as being "absurd." Luckily, said syntax
professor retired this year. I should make clear that he didn't say that
all Spoken French was wrong, but he would not hesitate to "throw out"
certain examples if he deemed them to be agrammatical.
Muller has written a book on French syntax: the examples you will see there
are not based on any corpus but are merely created by Muller himself as
examples of "grammatical French."
As Christophe has mentioned, this kind of viewpoint is quite prevalent in
France, even in linguistics departments, although certain profs were
certainly not in agreement and expounded the use of corpus-based studies.
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, On 30/08/2013 16:07:
>
> I have yet to find a single good paper devoted to that phenomenon in
>> French. However, I've seen it mentioned in throwaway lines in linguistic
>> articles on more than one occasion, so I'd be surprised if no article
>> existed at all.
>>
>
> I don't know of a relevant article, but I too am familiar with the
> polypersonal analysis of French, through channels other than Conlang, so
> given that, and the facts of French, I presume that that analysis is pretty
> mainstream among typologically-minded syntacticians.
>
> --And.
>
Jonathan
Messages in this topic (17)
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2b. Re: Colloquial French resources
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 5:15 pm ((PDT))
Jonathan Beagley, On 31/08/2013 00:20:
> 2013/8/30 And Rosta <[email protected]>
>> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, On 30/08/2013 18:59:
>>> On 30 August 2013 17:38, Jonathan Beagley <[email protected]>**
>>> wrote:
>>>> But again, as you've mentioned, I believe there is a strong
>>>> belief that most Spoken French is simply "wrong". This is a
>>>> sentiment I heard relatively frequently in my linguistics
>>>> program, particularly from the syntax prof (Claude
>>>> Muller).
>>> Unfortunately, prescriptivism is pretty strong in France (thank
>>> the Academy for that). But you'd think that linguists, of all
>>> people, would not fall for it! What kind of a linguist can
>>> honestly think a form of language used successfully by millions
>>> of people is "wrong"? What does it even mean?!
>>
>> Therefore, my suspicion is that Jonathan misunderstood his professor.
>
> I certainly did not misunderstand my professor. He made his point of view
> quite clear, and other professors, particularly the semantics professor,
> mentioned his point of view as being "absurd." Luckily, said syntax
> professor retired this year. I should make clear that he didn't say that
> all Spoken French was wrong, but he would not hesitate to "throw out"
> certain examples if he deemed them to be agrammatical.
>
> Muller has written a book on French syntax: the examples you will see there
> are not based on any corpus but are merely created by Muller himself as
> examples of "grammatical French."
>
> As Christophe has mentioned, this kind of viewpoint is quite prevalent in
> France, even in linguistics departments, although certain profs were
> certainly not in agreement and expounded the use of corpus-based studies.
Because the view you attribute to your professor is so foolish, I still suspect
a misunderstanding, though not out of any obtuseness on your part; you say he
made his point of view quite clear, but did you have the opportunity to enter
into dialogue with him to ascertain whether it really was as foolish as it
seemed? The foolishness of the view you report lies not at all in eschewing
corpus data or inventing or throwing out data, but rather in conflating the
category of incontrovertibly "wrong" data, such as is produced by foreign
speakers (e.g. me when attempting to speak French), with the category of data
consistent with certain dialects of French but not with the dialect under study
(e.g. standard written French). I wonder if your professor would accept that
such a conflation is invalid, but, perhaps because his focus was on standard
written French, was lackadaisical about discriminating among data that was not
standard written French. Many's the syntax professor who is la
ckadais
ical in that way, saying "In [Language X] you can't say [Y]" when in fact they
mean only that you can't say [Y] in the dialect of [X] that's under study.
--And.
Messages in this topic (17)
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3a. Concision in your conlang vs your L1
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 8:16 pm ((PDT))
I recently retranslated Frank Herbert's Litany against Fear, and I was once
again struck by the fact that Angosey tends to be "wordier" than English. That
is, my words have more syllables, and it seems like I mark a lot of grammar as
prefixes and suffixes. I explain this at the end of my blog post as because
Angosey is solely written, and because it's only in written form I have
unconsciously made extra effort to make up for the fact that other contextual
clues (facial expression, tone of voice, etc) are entirely absent from my
experience of the language.
What are your experiences? For those who do not have a stated goal either way,
are your languages "wordier" (in the sense that it takes more glyphs, be they
Roman or otherwise) to convey the same meaning compared to your L1?
Danny
PS I have posted my translation of the Litany online:
http://glossarch.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/the-litany-against-fear-translated-into-angosey/
Messages in this topic (3)
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3b. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 11:01 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 11:16:57PM -0400, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> I recently retranslated Frank Herbert's Litany against Fear, and I was
> once again struck by the fact that Angosey tends to be "wordier" than
> English. That is, my words have more syllables, and it seems like I
> mark a lot of grammar as prefixes and suffixes. I explain this at the
> end of my blog post as because Angosey is solely written, and because
> it's only in written form I have unconsciously made extra effort to
> make up for the fact that other contextual clues (facial expression,
> tone of voice, etc) are entirely absent from my experience of the
> language.
>
> What are your experiences? For those who do not have a stated goal
> either way, are your languages "wordier" (in the sense that it takes
> more glyphs, be they Roman or otherwise) to convey the same meaning
> compared to your L1?
[...]
Well, my L1 is a Chinese dialect, so it's very concise in the sense that
many things are not marked, and most words are 1-2 syllables,
occasionally 3. In my conlangs, I didn't want to relex my L1, so I
decided not to follow this aspect of it. Nevertheless, each of my
conlangs have their own peculiarities when it comes to word length.
Ebisédian is mostly 2-3 syllable words, leaning on the side of 3 (they
do have an obsession with all things triple), with a smattering of
monosyllabic grammatical words and the occasional 4- or 5-syllable word
(mostly in compounds). There are some affixes, but most inflections are
via consonant lenition/fortition(?) and a kind of ablaut-like vowel
contour.
Tatari Faran, OTOH, is significantly more verbose. There is a mix of
many monosyllabic words and a good number of 3-4 syllable words, but due
to nature of the grammar, sentences are generally much longer. There are
case particles everywhere, and those finalizers do add up. The san faran
aren't particularly concerned about this, though. They are generally a
rather relaxed bunch of people who like to take the time to spin
elaborate yarns, and the extra verbiage suits them just fine. The
grammar is primarily modifier-last: case particles follow the noun, as
do postpositions, adverbs follow verbs, and finalizers follow everything
else. Tatari Faran has quite analytical tendencies, with a few bits of
inflection that show up in genitives and partitives, and in more complex
clauses.
My as-yet-unnamed alien conlang is a different beast altogether. Almost
from the get-go, it took on a life of its own, and refuses to be tamed
by ordinary patterns of grammar. What started out as vaguely SAE-like
quickly transmogrified into a monstrous bizarrity, where my
much-hoped-for verbs still refuse to materialize, being substituted by
nouns that behave, not as verbs, but as _half_ a verb, requiring other
nouns to fill in the remaining half. Then I discovered that it forms
possessives by agglutinating the possessor onto the noun on top of a
pronominal possessive affix, so thus far, except when number words are
involved, NPs are actually single words. So an NP like "the girl's
spaceship" comes out as:
voluŋgetfraht
[vO'lUNgET,frAxt]
voluŋ-et-fraht
spaceship-3SG.POSS-girl
The girl's spaceship (lit. spaceship-her-the_girl).
This then can be turned into a verb thus:
voluŋgetfrahtmi aiherlat.
[vO'lUNgETfrAxTmI ,ajxEr'lat]
voluŋ-et-fraht-mi aiherl-at.
spaceship-3SG.POSS-girl-V distant_skies-ABL
The girl flies on her spaceship from the distance.
So the words have agglutinative tendencies and are far longer than I've
ever experienced in my first two conlangs, yet the overall utterances
are more concise. The Tatari Faran equivalent of the above 2-word
sentence would need 2 words just for "girl", 1 verb, 3 words for "on her
spaceship", 2 words for "from the distance", and a finalizer, giving a
total of 9 words. (Sadly, I've forgotten enough Ebisédian that I don't
know how to estimate how many words would be needed, even in theory.)
There isn't enough grammar yet to say what the overall picture will look
like, but so far, it seems that even nouns can act as affixes, so this
conlang is quite heavy on the affixes. So the words tend to be lengthy,
but then there are fewer words. So I'm unsure how it would compare with
conciseness in my L1. Probably more verbose for the mundane everyday
utterances, but also encoding much more information, thus more compact.
T
--
The computer is only a tool. Unfortunately, so is the user. -- Armaphine, K5
Messages in this topic (3)
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3c. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 31, 2013 1:26 am ((PDT))
My languages basically follow two main principles: short words and
isolating structure. I haven't translated enough to know if they're wordier
than other languages I know, though.
stevo
On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 11:16 PM, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]>wrote:
> I recently retranslated Frank Herbert's Litany against Fear, and I was
> once again struck by the fact that Angosey tends to be "wordier" than
> English. That is, my words have more syllables, and it seems like I mark a
> lot of grammar as prefixes and suffixes. I explain this at the end of my
> blog post as because Angosey is solely written, and because it's only in
> written form I have unconsciously made extra effort to make up for the fact
> that other contextual clues (facial expression, tone of voice, etc) are
> entirely absent from my experience of the language.
>
> What are your experiences? For those who do not have a stated goal either
> way, are your languages "wordier" (in the sense that it takes more glyphs,
> be they Roman or otherwise) to convey the same meaning compared to your L1?
>
> Danny
>
> PS I have posted my translation of the Litany online:
> http://glossarch.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/the-litany-against-fear-translated-into-angosey/
>
Messages in this topic (3)
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