There are 6 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Time for Another Party! Oskana|not Tedve|l Dabolnea! From: Padraic Brown 1b. Re: Time for Another Party! Oskana|not Tedve|l Dabolnea! From: C. Brickner 2a. Re: the Deep Structures of Language From: H. S. Teoh 2b. Re: the Deep Structures of Language From: Adnan Majid 2c. Re: the Deep Structures of Language From: Leonardo Castro 3. A directionality operator for word coining From: Daniel Bowman Messages ________________________________________________________________________ 1a. Re: Time for Another Party! Oskana|not Tedve|l Dabolnea! Posted by: "Padraic Brown" elemti...@yahoo.com Date: Thu Sep 19, 2013 7:18 am ((PDT)) >> If I add a diminutive suffix to the verb root, I can convey the idea of >> gently, >> easily, leisurely, partially, etc. Thus, “néða”, walk, can be changed to >> “néðla”, >> stroll. > >Actually, I like this idea a lot, especially since, like Senjecas, Moten >allows diminutive suffixes on verbs too (the diminutive suffix _-sin_ can >be used on both nouns and verbs, unlike _-mas_ and _-zes_ which can only be >used on nouns –or rather can only *result* in nouns–), as in for instance >_jeksi|n_: "to brush past" from _jeksaj_: "to touch, to hit". Neat. I've gotten my wife to do this in Waray-Waray a bit too. I'll say mahagcotcito for it's a bit chilly or pagtaktaktito or pagmartilito for tap. > So I decided >to shamelessly copy you and created the verb _jugzi|n_: "to stroll, to talk >a walk", Take a walk or actually talk a walk? ;) >diminutive of _jugejugej_: "to walk". They are also used >nominally: while _ugejuge_ can mean "stroll", it's usually more generic and >means "walk", while _ugzin_ is more specifically "stroll, leisurely walk". >You get inspired by me, and I get inspired back by you, the circle is >complete! :) Funny how these threads weave all throughout our experiences. When we say gusto mo pagsyadita, that's asking if you want to go for a stroll. Going for a walk, of course, is pagwawalk. Of course, all of these have some kind of Spanish diminutive: -tito, -cito and the like. Padraic >I love this list :P. >-- >Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets. > >http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/ >http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/ > > Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1b. Re: Time for Another Party! Oskana|not Tedve|l Dabolnea! Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com Date: Thu Sep 19, 2013 7:20 am ((PDT)) I love this list :P. -- Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets. _____________________________ My sentiments exactly! Charlie Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2a. Re: the Deep Structures of Language Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx Date: Thu Sep 19, 2013 4:06 pm ((PDT)) On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 12:07:59PM -0600, Logan Kearsley wrote: > On 18 September 2013 11:54, Paul Schleitwiler, FCM > <pjschleitwiler...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Interesting article. > > How to Understand the Deep Structures of Language > > Scientific American > > Joshua K. Hartshorne September 17, 2013 7:00 AM > > http://news.yahoo.com/understand-deep-structures-language-110000347.html > > Quote: "The researchers also asked people to describe in gestures an > event in which a girl kicked a boy. Since both boys and girls are > capable of kicking, it's very possible to be confused about who kicked > who. And now participants were much more likely to describe (in > gesture) the girl, then the kicking event, and then the boy -- that > is, they switched to an SVO order. This was true (with a few > complications which you can read about in the paper) whether the > participant was a native speaker of English (an SVO language) or a > native speaker of Korean or Japanese (SOV languages)." > > This raises the question: is there a language that switches between > SOV and SVO based on an animacy distinction? And if not, who's going > to make one? [...] Finally got around to reading this article today. Very interesting indeed! Speaking of animacy... I remember the first time I read about MRL languages and wondered how on earth the speakers would be able to make any sense of each other, since there is no way to tell who did something to whom. Then I read about animacy distinctions: if a clause contains two NPs, and one is animate and the other is not, then chances are the verb is performed by the animate NP, so neither NPs need to be marked for their roles, even when word order is free. Later on, I observed a similar phenomenon in Russian: although Russian nouns inflect for case, one thing I initially found puzzling was the fact that the nominative and accusative cases of many nouns have identical surface forms. Since Russian has free word order, I wondered how one would be able to tell which one is the subject and which the object if one couldn't tell between a nominative form and an accusative form! And then I remembered animacy: if one of the NPs is animate, then it is most likely the subject, and therefore the inanimate NP must be the object. So it didn't matter that, morphologically speaking, you couldn't distinguish whether inanimate the NP was nominative or accusative; animacy resolves the ambiguity. And sure enough, it was the inanimate nouns (masculine & neuter) that had identical forms for nominative and accusative. But when an *animate* NP was the object, then it took on a distinct accusative ending -- which is identical to the *genitive* ending! This makes sense since when both NPs in a transitive clause are animate, animacy can no longer distinguish between them, so some other kind of marking was necessary. Now, I'm no expert in Slavic historical linguistics, but I found it interesting that the animate accusative case has the same forms as the genitive case -- it almost seems as though there is no "native" accusative form at all (for masc/neut. nouns), but the genitive case is just being "borrowed" to serve as a distinct case from the default (nominative) when the clause has two animate NPs. Interestingly enough, the feminine nouns do have distinct nominative/accusative endings, and the accusative ending is not the same as the genitive. Why this odd difference from the masc/neut nouns? I don't really know, though I have my theories. T -- Fact is stranger than fiction. Messages in this topic (8) ________________________________________________________________________ 2b. Re: the Deep Structures of Language Posted by: "Adnan Majid" dsama...@gmail.com Date: Thu Sep 19, 2013 9:22 pm ((PDT)) That's a very cool observation T, That's very similar to Bengali, a SOV language which uses an object marker *only if the object is animate.* So one would say "Girl ball kick" vs "Girl boy-ke kick." Furthermore, Bengali allows for a certain amount of word order flexibility, so though it may sound a little odd, it would still be comprehensible to express these statements as OSV - "Ball girl kick" and "Boy-ke girl kick." There's no ambiguity in "Ball girl kick" because the girl's animacy is assumed. And take a look at the classic Indo-European languages, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. In each language more often than not, there is no difference between the neuter nominative and the neuter accusative! Maybe that's because neuter nouns happen to predominantly be inanimate ones. Adnan On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:05 PM, H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote: > On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 12:07:59PM -0600, Logan Kearsley wrote: > > On 18 September 2013 11:54, Paul Schleitwiler, FCM > > <pjschleitwiler...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Interesting article. > > > How to Understand the Deep Structures of Language > > > Scientific American > > > Joshua K. Hartshorne September 17, 2013 7:00 AM > > > > http://news.yahoo.com/understand-deep-structures-language-110000347.html > > > > Quote: "The researchers also asked people to describe in gestures an > > event in which a girl kicked a boy. Since both boys and girls are > > capable of kicking, it's very possible to be confused about who kicked > > who. And now participants were much more likely to describe (in > > gesture) the girl, then the kicking event, and then the boy -- that > > is, they switched to an SVO order. This was true (with a few > > complications which you can read about in the paper) whether the > > participant was a native speaker of English (an SVO language) or a > > native speaker of Korean or Japanese (SOV languages)." > > > > This raises the question: is there a language that switches between > > SOV and SVO based on an animacy distinction? And if not, who's going > > to make one? > [...] > > Finally got around to reading this article today. Very interesting > indeed! > > Speaking of animacy... I remember the first time I read about MRL > languages and wondered how on earth the speakers would be able to make > any sense of each other, since there is no way to tell who did something > to whom. Then I read about animacy distinctions: if a clause contains > two NPs, and one is animate and the other is not, then chances are the > verb is performed by the animate NP, so neither NPs need to be marked > for their roles, even when word order is free. > > Later on, I observed a similar phenomenon in Russian: although Russian > nouns inflect for case, one thing I initially found puzzling was the > fact that the nominative and accusative cases of many nouns have > identical surface forms. Since Russian has free word order, I wondered > how one would be able to tell which one is the subject and which the > object if one couldn't tell between a nominative form and an accusative > form! And then I remembered animacy: if one of the NPs is animate, then > it is most likely the subject, and therefore the inanimate NP must be > the object. So it didn't matter that, morphologically speaking, you > couldn't distinguish whether inanimate the NP was nominative or > accusative; animacy resolves the ambiguity. And sure enough, it was the > inanimate nouns (masculine & neuter) that had identical forms for > nominative and accusative. > > But when an *animate* NP was the object, then it took on a distinct > accusative ending -- which is identical to the *genitive* ending! This > makes sense since when both NPs in a transitive clause are animate, > animacy can no longer distinguish between them, so some other kind of > marking was necessary. Now, I'm no expert in Slavic historical > linguistics, but I found it interesting that the animate accusative case > has the same forms as the genitive case -- it almost seems as though > there is no "native" accusative form at all (for masc/neut. nouns), but > the genitive case is just being "borrowed" to serve as a distinct case > from the default (nominative) when the clause has two animate NPs. > > Interestingly enough, the feminine nouns do have distinct > nominative/accusative endings, and the accusative ending is not the same > as the genitive. Why this odd difference from the masc/neut nouns? I > don't really know, though I have my theories. > > > T > > -- > Fact is stranger than fiction. > Messages in this topic (8) ________________________________________________________________________ 2c. Re: the Deep Structures of Language Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 5:29 am ((PDT)) 2013/9/19 H. S. Teoh <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx>: > On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 12:07:59PM -0600, Logan Kearsley wrote: >> On 18 September 2013 11:54, Paul Schleitwiler, FCM >> <pjschleitwiler...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > Interesting article. >> > How to Understand the Deep Structures of Language >> > Scientific American >> > Joshua K. Hartshorne September 17, 2013 7:00 AM >> > http://news.yahoo.com/understand-deep-structures-language-110000347.html >> >> Quote: "The researchers also asked people to describe in gestures an >> event in which a girl kicked a boy. Since both boys and girls are >> capable of kicking, it's very possible to be confused about who kicked >> who. And now participants were much more likely to describe (in >> gesture) the girl, then the kicking event, and then the boy -- that >> is, they switched to an SVO order. This was true (with a few >> complications which you can read about in the paper) whether the >> participant was a native speaker of English (an SVO language) or a >> native speaker of Korean or Japanese (SOV languages)." I wonder if the choice for SVO order in this case is due to the real-life temporal order. Até mais! Leonardo Messages in this topic (8) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 3. A directionality operator for word coining Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" danny.c.bow...@gmail.com Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 5:47 am ((PDT)) Hi All, I recently had an idea - not sure what to call it because I initially conceptualized it in mathematical terms rather than linguistic - so maybe after I describe it someone can suggest a linguistic term. Suppose I have a word "sarhala" which means "to glow." In this case, the verb denotes the giving off of light (or, the outward movement of light from the object). Suppose I then added the prefix "ar" which reversed the implied directionality of the verb. So "ar-sarhala" would mean "to be illuminated" (the inward movement of light towards the object) Assuming we have a VSO word order: Sarhala at. "It glows" but Ar-sarhala at. "It is illuminated." and Ar-sarhala il at. "That thing [il] causes it to be illuminated." I.e. a light source [il] causes the object to become illuminated. This operation is not a simple transition from active to passive voice, I think, since it can also convert a more or less intransitive verb (glow) to a transitive verb (illuminate). I imagine this sort of construction could arise from an adposition denoting movement (perhaps "ar" originally meant "moving outward"). Do any of your conlangs have a similar construction? Any natlangs? I expect this construction is rather common, actually. Danny Messages in this topic (1) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> Your email settings: Digest Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------