There are 11 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: A directionality operator for word coining
From: Scotto Hlad
1b. Re: A directionality operator for word coining
From: Alex Fink
1c. Re: A directionality operator for word coining
From: Matthew George
2a. Re: the Deep Structures of Language
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2b. Re: the Deep Structures of Language
From: C. Brickner
2c. Re: the Deep Structures of Language
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3a. Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
From: Matthew George
3b. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
From: Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews
3c. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
From: Mechthild Czapp
3d. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
From: Padraic Brown
3e. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
From: Roger Mills
Messages
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1a. Re: A directionality operator for word coining
Posted by: "Scotto Hlad" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 7:16 am ((PDT))
"It is illuminated." appears to be middle voice to me.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Bowman" <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, 20 September, 2013 6:47:15 AM
Subject: A directionality operator for word coining
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 (4)
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1b. Re: A directionality operator for word coining
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:50 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 20 Sep 2013 08:47:15 -0400, Daniel Bowman <[email protected]>
wrote:
>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)
What are some other cases in which it's used, and what 'directionality' do
other verbs metaphorically have?
For instance, your suggested etymology:
>I imagine this sort of construction could arise from an adposition denoting
>movement (perhaps "ar" originally meant "moving outward").
makes me imagine you see most unmarked verbs as moving inwards, and that
wouldn't've been my first guess. (The most empathisable participant of a
transitive, and thus the likely center of metaphoric directionality, is usually
the agent; physical exertions of the agent typically start at their own
location and proceed out till they affect the patient; so the likely default
directionality would be out -- or so I would've supposed.)
>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'm not sure you can attribute the change in transitivity to the "direction
reversal": the derived sense could've just been intransitive 'be (externally)
lit'. Of course, it could just be a feature of the Angosey affix that it also
may change transitivity.
>Do any of your conlangs have a similar construction? Any natlangs?
>I expect this construction is rather common, actually.
I dunno. By analogy with the way there don't seem to be Tatari Faran-style
case systems in the wild, it's maybe less likely than it initially appeals as.
And even if your operator is not just a voice operation, it's close enough to
one that, were it to appear in a real natlang (with inevitable frozen
semantically peculiar uses), it may not be clear to a documenter than
"directionality reversal" was at the core of it, and not some kind of voice
function. There are a great number of derivational operations in natlangs
that, in grammars, end up just being called "stativiser" or "transitiviser" or
something equally vague. Some of them might well be close to your operation!
But in my estimation this vagueness reflects something about semantic space
here: abstractions of argument roles across different kinds of predicate just
cannot be crisply defined enough for these operations not to go a little mushy.
So I wouldn't guess you'd find a clèan example.
Alex
Messages in this topic (4)
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1c. Re: A directionality operator for word coining
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 11:09 am ((PDT))
A few (hopefully) intelligent questions:
Shouldn't the translation of *sarhala* be 'to illuminate' rather than 'to
glow'? Glowing doesn't imply or require an object (in English), but
illuminating does - a thing does not illuminate without something to be
illuminated.
Are non-object-oriented verbs even permitted?
What happens if the *ar-* prefix is attached to verbs that aren't
object-oriented? Particularly the verb for 'to be' or 'to exist', if one
exists in this hypothetical language system. It would seem to require a
very different way of conceptualizing and talking about existence than
occurs in the languages I'm familiar with, although not so unfamiliar in
philosophical circles.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (4)
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2a. Re: the Deep Structures of Language
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 8:32 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Friday 20 September 2013 06:18:18 Adnan Majid wrote:
> 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."
Spanish is the same:
La muchacha vide la pelota.
La muchacha vide al muchacho. (al = a el)
(I changed the verb because _pisar_ 'to kick' marks its object
with a preposition.)
Both languages go parallel in that the animate object marker
is in origin a dative marker (Bengali -ke is from PIE *kWoi,
the dative of the interrogative pronoun; in Spanish, _a_
still functions as a dative marker).
> 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.
Yes. The nominative and accusative case are *always* the same
in neuter nouns, not just "more often than not".
AFMCL, Old Albic is similar. Animate nouns have an agentive case
marked zero and an objective case marked -m. (The reason for
these idiosyncratic case names is that the whole system follows
an active/stative alignment.) Inanimate nouns have a zero-marked
objective and no agentive.
My personal hypothesis is that the IE system with the above
mentioned peculiarity evolved from something similar to the Old
Albic system (Old Albic is meant to represent a conservative
language that branched off Pre-PIE before the latter shifted
from active-stative to accusative among other profound changes
to its structure.)
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (11)
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2b. Re: the Deep Structures of Language
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 12:56 pm ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
Hallo conlangers!
Spanish is the same:
La muchacha vide la pelota.
La muchacha vide al muchacho. (al = a el)
________________________________________________
Are you trying to say "The girl sees the boy"? I don't know a Spanish verb
"vid-". Of course, it's not my L1.
If so, that should be:
La muchacha ve la pelota.
La muchacha ve al muchacho. (al = a el)
Charlie
Messages in this topic (11)
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2c. Re: the Deep Structures of Language
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 1:20 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Friday 20 September 2013 21:56:29 C. Brickner wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> Spanish is the same:
>
> La muchacha vide la pelota.
> La muchacha vide al muchacho. (al = a el)
> ________________________________________________
>
> Are you trying to say "The girl sees the boy"? I don't know a Spanish verb
> "vid-". Of course, it's not my L1. If so, that should be:
>
> La muchacha ve la pelota.
> La muchacha ve al muchacho. (al = a el)
Thank you for your correction.
> Charlie
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (11)
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3a. Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
Posted by: "Matthew George" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:57 am ((PDT))
It was a little surprising to me to realize how common onomatopoeia is in
English, and it seems in many other natural languages, although the
relationship between word and sound isn't always obvious to non-native
speakers. (I found a list of representations of animal sounds in various
languages to be quite bemusing.)
Do you make an effort to include onomatopoeia in your conlangs? If it's a
language for an alien species with different perceptions, do you try to
create accordingly?
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (5)
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3b. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
Posted by: "Nicole Valicia Thompson-Andrews" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 11:44 am ((PDT))
Since my creatures are part insect, I'm thinking that device
could be used.
Mellissa Green
@GreenNovelist
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Matthew George
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 1:57 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
It was a little surprising to me to realize how common onomatopoeia is in
English, and it seems in many other natural languages, although the
relationship between word and sound isn't always obvious to non-native
speakers. (I found a list of representations of animal sounds in various
languages to be quite bemusing.)
Do you make an effort to include onomatopoeia in your conlangs? If it's a
language for an alien species with different perceptions, do you try to
create accordingly?
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (5)
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3c. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
Posted by: "Mechthild Czapp" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 1:35 pm ((PDT))
Yeah, Rejistanian uses a lot onomatopoeia, like 'ukuku for "to type" (on a
typewriter or keyboard), or 'sxa for "to whisper"
Am 20.09.2013 um 18:56 schrieb Matthew George <[email protected]>:
> It was a little surprising to me to realize how common onomatopoeia is in
> English, and it seems in many other natural languages, although the
> relationship between word and sound isn't always obvious to non-native
> speakers. (I found a list of representations of animal sounds in various
> languages to be quite bemusing.)
>
> Do you make an effort to include onomatopoeia in your conlangs? If it's a
> language for an alien species with different perceptions, do you try to
> create accordingly?
>
> Matt G.
Messages in this topic (5)
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3d. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 4:23 pm ((PDT))
> Am 20.09.2013 um 18:56 schrieb Matthew George <[email protected]>:
>
>> Do you make an effort to include onomatopoeia in your conlangs? If it's a
>> language for
>> an alien species with different perceptions, do you try to create
>> accordingly?
>
> Yeah, Rejistanian uses a lot onomatopoeia, like 'ukuku for "to
> type" (on a typewriter or keyboard), or 'sxa for "to whisper"
As far as I can tell, onomatopoeia is a common phenomenon in World languages as
well.
Avantimannish has, for example, cgigga-cgoggen, to dance or bounce about. One
of my
favorite snippets of old story is this line: "For sange
scuggabuubbascuggabuubba that maytagge..."
and the washing machine chanted 'choogabooba-choogabooba'... There is a curious
word,
murih-morih which emulates the bleak north wind "hwat murnen of wenten ande
douwthe",
that soughs of winter and death.
Among the Daine, the word harcain means "to bark", for them evocative of the
dog's
characteristic sound, and harcu is himself. Dampadampacu is a rabbit â the
"thumper". In
Westmarche, wiozwang means "to piss".
In Erronian, tinvo is to make a lament, and seems likely to derive ultimately
from the word tii,
the name of a cry of agony. Some also connect susano, to sleep, with zuzo, the
sound of breath
being drawn in and exhaled.
In (Old) Mentolatian, slekener meant slap or whack something. The word is now
slednan.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (5)
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3e. Re: Onomatopoeia - do you make use of it?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Fri Sep 20, 2013 9:22 pm ((PDT))
> Am 20.09.2013 um 18:56 schrieb Matthew George <[email protected]>:
>
>> Do you make an effort to include onomatopoeia in your conlangs? If it's a
>> language for
>> an alien species with different perceptions, do you try to create
>> accordingly?
>
> Yeah, Rejistanian uses a lot onomatopoeia, like 'ukuku for "to
> type" (on a typewriter or keyboard), or 'sxa for "to whisper"
=============================================
Lots of it in Kash. Just to start-- teka refers to clicking sounds; andeka is a
(typewriter/computer) keyboard; teka can also be used for '... o'clock'
Others--
hiri (~ redup.) whirring noise (high pitch); huru (~ redup) id. lower pitch
kirik creaky noises
krak sound of s.t. breaking
kratup to fall on one's back (prob. < tup bounce. NB tupatúp slang/humorous for
sexual intercourse))
krek crackly things; kreki a cookie/cracker
krici squeaking sounds
krongo grunt
kruñ growl
çeñ sound of cymbals (ç = [S])
çusu rustling sounds (some fabrics, dry leaves)
cak, cik, cek, cuk, cok imit. of the sounds made by the various saurians; cak
is generik, cik, cek are high pitched/smaller species, cuk cok are
lower pitch, larger species (The saurians of Cindu range in size from
little household geckos to (avg.) Komodo dragon, (rarer), size of a big horse
coco sound of sucking at the breast
ñuñuñ to mutter, grumble
sit scratching; asit a line
tam drum, drumming; tum, tom lower pitch or louder
fup fart
prup ~purúp sound of bubbling, pouring liquid out of a container.
pruprup sound of stomach gas
eñe ~eñeñ the bleating sound made by lopas (sheep/goat analogue); as vb, yeñe
to bleat, also, to wheedle insistently, like child who wants something
badly.
Also some near-onomat. forms e.g.
yamen to call out, to summon > yambren to shout, yayambren ~yayap to scream
and others....
Messages in this topic (5)
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