There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: Roger Mills
1b. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: Leonardo Castro
1c. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: R A Brown
1d. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: Leonardo Castro
1e. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1f. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: BPJ
1g. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1h. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: Matthew George
2a. Re: Spoken Indo-European
From: R A Brown
2b. Re: Spoken Indo-European
From: Andrew Jarrette
3a. Re: Gateway to conscripts (was: Intro to Conlanging by John McWhorte
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
4a. Spoken French Orthography (was Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
From: Matthew A. Gurevitch
4b. Re: Spoken French Orthography (was Re: "Re: Colloquial French resour
From: Leonardo Castro
5a. PIE short and long vowels (was Spoken Indo-European)
From: Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro
5b. Re: PIE short and long vowels (was Spoken Indo-European)
From: Matthew Boutilier
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 8:02 am ((PDT))
From: Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>
> Le 30 août 2013 17:07, "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets"
> - _Tu vois, ma femme elle en a toujours des bonnes idées_ ("You see, my
> wife always has good ideas", the subject and direct object are both marked
> on the verb, by _elle_ and en_ respectively, despite being present as full
> noun phrases in the sentence).
I was thinking about this and remember that, when I was studying
Spanish with an old course in CD-ROM, constructions like "a mí me
gustaría" were presented as "customary redundancy".
RM I'd tend to agree that the French ex. shows "customary reduncancy" (whatever
that is....:-) ), but as for your Span. ex., I've always been told that the "a
mi" is for emphasis, "_I_ would like to..."
Don't you think that it would be simpler to think about customary
redundancy than about polypersonal verbs in French too?
BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.
RM Couldn't that be emphatic too?
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 8:15 am ((PDT))
2013/10/1 Padraic Brown <elemti...@yahoo.com>:
> From: Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>
>
>
>>> Le 30 août 2013 17:07, "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets"
>>> - _Tu vois, ma femme elle en a toujours des bonnes idées_ ("You see, my
>>> wife always has good ideas", the subject and direct object are both marked
>>> on the verb, by _elle_ and en_ respectively, despite being present as full
>>> noun phrases in the sentence).
>>
>>I was thinking about this and remember that, when I was studying
>>Spanish with an old course in CD-ROM, constructions like "a mí me
>>gustaría" were presented as "customary redundancy".
>>
>>Don't you think that it would be simpler to think about customary
>>redundancy than about polypersonal verbs in French too?
>
>
> I don't know. To me "customary redundancy" sounds like the author or presenter
> simply doesn't want to be bothered getting into a highly interesting
> historical
> philological tangent and is just covering it up. It's a more grown up way of
> saying
> "because I said so (now don't ask any more questions)!" but the result is the
> same.
>
> Clearly, something is going in French and Spanish (and indeed English: you
> see,
> my wife, she always has good ideas) that is being glossed over. Dunnow about
> F&S, but for me, I'd take Christophe's original English example as plain,
> while
> the "customary redundancy" is actually some kind of marker of focus. He's sort
> of distancing himself from his wife, as if to say "my wife always has good
> ideas,
> while I can never keep two thoughts in a row in my own head".
Actually, I think that using a personal pronoun after the subject also
helps delimitate it, something that I also appreciate about Japanese
particles "ga" and "wa".
Compare
"The girl that I told you about that day we were in a car returned to
that house sold some months ago."
with
"The girl that I told you about that day we were in a car, SHE
returned to that house sold some months ago."
or
"The girl that I told you about that day we were in a car returned to
that house, SHE sold some months ago."
>From the POV of a student, it sounds simpler to think that they just
have the habit of adding an optional personal pronoun to resume the
sentence than that there are a lot of verbal inflections to do.
Ma femme ELLE-EN-A des bonnes idées.
M. Le Blanc IL-LEURS-DONNE un chien à ses petits enfants.
>
>
>>BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
>>composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
>>to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.
>
>
> Just curious: what's wrong with it?
The sentence "Ça c'est Paris!" would literally be "That it's Paris!"
with a redundant "it" (that's why I was corrected in my French class).
"Ça est Paris!" is "That's Paris!", but a Google search shows that
it's rarer.
>
> Padraic
>
>
>>Até mais!
>>
>>Leonardo
>>
>>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 11:14 am ((PDT))
On 01/10/2013 14:20, Padraic Brown wrote:
> From: Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com>
>
>>> Le 30 août 2013 17:07, "Christophe
>>> Grandsire-Koevoets" - _Tu vois, ma femme elle en a
>>> toujours des bonnes idées_ ("You see, my wife always
>>> has good ideas", the subject and direct object are
>>> both marked on the verb, by _elle_ and en_
>>> respectively, despite being present as full noun
>>> phrases in the sentence).
>>
>> I was thinking about this and remember that, when I was
>> studying Spanish with an old course in CD-ROM,
>> constructions like "a mí me gustaría" were presented as
>> "customary redundancy".
>>
>> Don't you think that it would be simpler to think about
>> customary redundancy than about polypersonal verbs in
>> French too?
Nope!
> I don't know. To me "customary redundancy" sounds like
> the author or presenter simply doesn't want to be
> bothered getting into a highly interesting historical
> philological tangent and is just covering it up.
Yes, indeed. Redundancies in language are commonplace; they
help to avoid ambiguity if there is "noise" in the
transmission (whether written or aural). To say that a
particularly feature is customary tells us nothing except
that it's usually done. It does not explain why, or under
what circumstances a particular feature occurs.
[snip]
>
> Clearly, something is going in French and Spanish (and
> indeed English: you see, my wife, she always has good
> ideas) that is being glossed over.
Yes, but beware: the English and French examples are _not_
similar. In English "My wife always has good idea" is not
marked, whereas "My wife - she always has good ideas" is
marked. But if I've understood Christophe correctly or,
indeed, observed _colloquial_ French correctly, "Ma femme
elle en a toujours des bonnes idées" is not marked - it's
normal.
> Dunnow about F&S, but for me, I'd take Christophe's
> original English example as plain, while the "customary
> redundancy" is actually some kind of marker of focus.
> He's sort of distancing himself from his wife, as if to
> say "my wife always has good ideas, while I can never
> keep two thoughts in a row in my own head".
In the English version, I agree. But in the French I
disagree, for the reason explained above. We have
remember, as Christophe has often reminded us, not to be
misled by the way French is written. "elle en a" is a
single phonological word and "elle" and "en" are more in the
nature of prefixes rather than proclitics. If I've
understood Christophe "elle en a" is a single polypersonal
verb form showing _agreement_ with the subject "ma femme"
and object "des bonnes idées."
To describe this as polypersonal explains what is going on;
to simply call it "customary redundancy" IMO does not and is
at best merely a cop-out.
==========================================================
On 01/10/2013 16:00, Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
>
> RM I'd tend to agree that the French ex. shows "customary
> reduncancy" (whatever that is....:-) ),
I would not - see above.
> but as for your Span. ex., I've always been told that
> the "a mi" is for emphasis, "_I_ would like to..."
Which, if correct (and I have no reason to suppose it is
not), then the Spanish feature is quite different from
French polypersonal verbs. This is all the more reason IMO
why simply labeling both as "customary redundancy" is not
only inadequate - it is misleading.
==========================================================
I leave it to Christophe to comment on "ça c'est ..." :)
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language
began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 12:02 pm ((PDT))
2013/10/1 R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com>:
>
> To describe this as polypersonal explains what is going on;
> to simply call it "customary redundancy" IMO does not and is
> at best merely a cop-out.
Just to make it clear, there was not the intention of giving
"customary redundancy" the status of a linguistic concept in the
Spanish course I once had. They simply said that they have the habit
of being redundant in certain Spanish expressions ("a mí me parece",
"a mí me encanta", "a nosotros también nos gusta", etc.).
Maybe the most important question is if we can affirm that the
polypersonal agreement is compulsory in spoken French. Is there an
*optional* polypersonal agreement in any language?
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 12:15 pm ((PDT))
On 1 October 2013 12:23, Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Le 30 août 2013 17:07, "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets"
> > - _Tu vois, ma femme elle en a toujours des bonnes idées_ ("You see, my
> > wife always has good ideas", the subject and direct object are both
> marked
> > on the verb, by _elle_ and en_ respectively, despite being present as
> full
> > noun phrases in the sentence).
>
> I was thinking about this and remember that, when I was studying
> Spanish with an old course in CD-ROM, constructions like "a mí me
> gustaría" were presented as "customary redundancy".
>
> Don't you think that it would be simpler to think about customary
> redundancy than about polypersonal verbs in French too?
>
>
Nope, for several reasons:
- The "a mí me gusta" example is restricted to "gustar" and a few similar
verbs. It's not present in other verbs. In Spoken French, polypersonal
agreement is *mandatory*, for all verbs. Why use a strange "customary
redundancy" explanation when it's much quicker and far closer to the facts
to say that it's polypersonal agreement?
- As others have indicated, don't be fooled by French writing. "Elle" in
"elle en a" is a prefix, not a clitic;
- "A mí me gusta", however customary it is, is still emphasising the
subject when compared to the simple "me gusta". There's no such emphasis in
"ma femme elle en a". It's pure agreement, no emphasis involved (to create
emphasis on the subject, one would add *another* "elle", this time a
separate subject pronoun, between the subject and the verb complex: "tu
vois, ma femme, elle, elle en a toujours...". Another way would be
intonation, and a third one fronting: "ma femme, tu vois, elle en a...");
- What kind of an "explanation" is "customary redundancy"? It explains
nothing! Why is it customary to add redundancy there? Why is it that in
Spoken French this "customary redundancy" is mandatory for all verbs? No,
this is a non-explanation, and thus unacceptable from my point of view.
> BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
> composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
> to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.
>
>
"Ça c'est" is correct Spoken French, but is considered a grammatical error
in Written French. So I'm not surprised that you got corrected. As for "ça
est", the reason you cannot find many examples of it is because "ça" is
*mandatorily* elided in front of "est". In other words, "c'est" is
*already* "ça est"!
On 1 October 2013 15:20, Padraic Brown <elemti...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I don't know. To me "customary redundancy" sounds like the author or
> presenter
> simply doesn't want to be bothered getting into a highly interesting
> historical
> philological tangent and is just covering it up. It's a more grown up way
> of saying
> "because I said so (now don't ask any more questions)!" but the result is
> the
> same.
>
>
Exactly. It's just a cop-out.
> Clearly, something is going in French and Spanish (and indeed English: you
> see,
> my wife, she always has good ideas) that is being glossed over. Dunnow
> about
> F&S, but for me, I'd take Christophe's original English example as plain,
> while
> the "customary redundancy" is actually some kind of marker of focus. He's
> sort
> of distancing himself from his wife, as if to say "my wife always has good
> ideas,
> while I can never keep two thoughts in a row in my own head".
>
>
And that's one of my points: in the French example, this form of focus is
absent. It's the plain form that I quoted. Focussed forms are possible, but
they involve changing that plain form to something else.
>
> >BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
> >composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
> >to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.
>
> Just curious: what's wrong with it?
>
>
"Ça est" must become "c'est". The elision is mandatory.
> RM I'd tend to agree that the French ex. shows "customary reduncancy"
> (whatever that is....:-) ), but as for your Span. ex., I've always been
> told that the "a mi" is for emphasis, "_I_ would like to..."
>
>
In fact it doesn't. It's just plain agreement. It might have started as a
form of redundancy, but it's not that way anymore.
>
> BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
> composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
> to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.
>
> RM Couldn't that be emphatic too?
>
No. To emphasise, you'd have to replace "ça" with "ceci" or "cela". "Ça
est" is just ungrammatical: as I wrote above the elision is mandatory.
On 1 October 2013 17:14, Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, I think that using a personal pronoun after the subject also
> helps delimitate it, something that I also appreciate about Japanese
> particles "ga" and "wa".
>
> Compare
>
> "The girl that I told you about that day we were in a car returned to
> that house sold some months ago."
>
> with
>
> "The girl that I told you about that day we were in a car, SHE
> returned to that house sold some months ago."
>
> or
>
> "The girl that I told you about that day we were in a car returned to
> that house, SHE sold some months ago."
>
> From the POV of a student, it sounds simpler to think that they just
> have the habit of adding an optional personal pronoun to resume the
> sentence than that there are a lot of verbal inflections to do.
>
> Ma femme ELLE-EN-A des bonnes idées.
> M. Le Blanc IL-LEURS-DONNE un chien à ses petits enfants.
>
>
The problem is that your explanation doesn't fit the facts. Also, there are
plenty of languages out there with polypersonal agreement and nobody ever
tries to incorrectly describe them because otherwise "there are a lot of
verbal inflections to do". Languages don't care if you find them difficult:
they just are.
> >
> >
> >>BTW, I have been already corrected for writing "ça c'est..." in a
> >>composition in a French as second language course, but it's much rarer
> >>to find "ça est..." in real-life texts.
> >
> >
> > Just curious: what's wrong with it?
>
> The sentence "Ça c'est Paris!" would literally be "That it's Paris!"
> with a redundant "it" (that's why I was corrected in my French class).
>
Actually, the redundancy is only true in Written French. In Spoken French,
it's perfectly acceptable and indeed more common than saying "c'est Paris".
> "Ça est Paris!" is "That's Paris!", but a Google search shows that
> it's rarer.
>
>
That's because it's ungrammatical. "C'est Paris" is the grammatical version.
On 1 October 2013 20:13, R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, indeed. Redundancies in language are commonplace; they
> help to avoid ambiguity if there is "noise" in the
> transmission (whether written or aural). To say that a
> particularly feature is customary tells us nothing except
> that it's usually done. It does not explain why, or under
> what circumstances a particular feature occurs.
>
>
Indeed. Also, it doesn't say anything about the nature of the constituents
of the "redundancy". My problem with this explanation is that it only works
if you deny the status of affixes to the so-called "subject and object
pronouns". I strongly resent that.
> [snip]
>
>
>> Clearly, something is going in French and Spanish (and
>> indeed English: you see, my wife, she always has good
>> ideas) that is being glossed over.
>>
>
> Yes, but beware: the English and French examples are _not_
> similar. In English "My wife always has good idea" is not
> marked, whereas "My wife - she always has good ideas" is
> marked. But if I've understood Christophe correctly or,
> indeed, observed _colloquial_ French correctly, "Ma femme
> elle en a toujours des bonnes idées" is not marked - it's
> normal.
>
>
Exactly. The correct translation of "ma femme elle en a toujours des bonnes
idées" is indeed simply "my wife always has good ideas". "My wife, she
always has good ideas" partly explains the structure of the French example,
but it incorrectly adds an emphasis that the French example lacks.
>
> Dunnow about F&S, but for me, I'd take Christophe's
>> original English example as plain, while the "customary
>> redundancy" is actually some kind of marker of focus.
>> He's sort of distancing himself from his wife, as if to
>> say "my wife always has good ideas, while I can never
>> keep two thoughts in a row in my own head".
>>
>
> In the English version, I agree. But in the French I
> disagree, for the reason explained above. We have
> remember, as Christophe has often reminded us, not to be
> misled by the way French is written. "elle en a" is a
> single phonological word and "elle" and "en" are more in the
> nature of prefixes rather than proclitics. If I've
> understood Christophe "elle en a" is a single polypersonal
> verb form showing _agreement_ with the subject "ma femme"
> and object "des bonnes idées."
>
>
Exactly.
> To describe this as polypersonal explains what is going on;
> to simply call it "customary redundancy" IMO does not and is
> at best merely a cop-out.
>
As I wrote above :).
>
> but as for your Span. ex., I've always been told that
>> the "a mi" is for emphasis, "_I_ would like to..."
>>
>
> Which, if correct (and I have no reason to suppose it is
> not), then the Spanish feature is quite different from
> French polypersonal verbs.
Yes. I also learned that the "a mí me gusta" form, while common, still put
more emphasis on the subject than the simple "me gusta".
On 1 October 2013 21:00, Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Just to make it clear, there was not the intention of giving
> "customary redundancy" the status of a linguistic concept in the
> Spanish course I once had. They simply said that they have the habit
> of being redundant in certain Spanish expressions ("a mí me parece",
> "a mí me encanta", "a nosotros también nos gusta", etc.).
>
>
Which is still different from the French case, as it happens only with a
*limited* number of verbs, all the verbs for which the *agent* is not in
its customary subject position.
> Maybe the most important question is if we can affirm that the
> polypersonal agreement is compulsory in spoken French. Is there an
> *optional* polypersonal agreement in any language?
>
As far as I can tell, it's compulsory. Cases where it seems to be lacking
are actually forms of code switching from Spoken French to Written French.
Don't forget that French is actually a diglossia: things can get murky in
those.
As for optional polypersonal agreement, I've heard of languages that mark
verbs for both subject and object (as agreement markers), but only when the
object is definite. With indefinite objects verbs get marked for subject
only. So not exactly "optional", but still something. I can't give you an
actual example but I'm pretty sure that I've read that correctly somewhere.
But even if you could give convincing evidence that polypersonal agreement
in French is merely optional, and that there's no other language in the
world with optional polypersonal agreement, that still doesn't mean that
the polypersonal agreement explanation could be dismissed. The fact that
the added things on verbs are affixes rather than separate words, and that
the forms with polypersonal agreement don't mark any special form of
emphasis as opposed to any forms without it, are enough to give weight to
the polypersonal agreement explanation.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1f. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 12:53 pm ((PDT))
2013-10-01 21:15, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets skrev:
> As for optional polypersonal agreement, I've heard of languages that mark
> verbs for both subject and object (as agreement markers), but only when the
> object is definite. With indefinite objects verbs get marked for subject
> only. So not exactly "optional", but still something. I can't give you an
> actual example but I'm pretty sure that I've read that correctly somewhere.
Now that's cool! I have to remember to steal that for some
conlang! ;-)
As for optional inflexion I daresay there is no such thing in any
langvuage, it just so happens that the grammar demands different
forms in different contexts which poor furriners have trouble
teasing out the rules for. If it's truly optional it's dying out
and people are code switching! An example is the possessive _-s_
in Swedish which went from a nominal inflexion to a phrase clitic
somewhen during the last 5 centuries. I daresay that in any
speakers natural grammar at any point it was either an inflexion
or a clitic. It only just so happened that both sets of speakers
coexisted for a longer or shorter time, and the written language
was conservative, so people were code switching.
And hey, you shouldn't be citing Spoken French in Written French
orthography!
/bpj
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1g. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 1:05 pm ((PDT))
On 1 October 2013 21:53, BPJ <b...@melroch.se> wrote:
> Now that's cool! I have to remember to steal that for some conlang! ;-)
>
>
Yeah, it's rather cool, and it's actually quite common in natlangs to mark
a definite object differently from an indefinite object (different cases,
as in Finnish's accusative vs. partitive, different verb marking, or even
weirder things, like a language I read about a week or two ago that only
allows serial verb constructions to have definite objects :P. So a single
verb can have an object, but it will always be indefinite. The only way to
give it a definite object is to turn it into a serial verb construction!).
> As for optional inflexion I daresay there is no such thing in any
> langvuage, it just so happens that the grammar demands different
> forms in different contexts which poor furriners have trouble
> teasing out the rules for. If it's truly optional it's dying out
> and people are code switching! An example is the possessive _-s_
> in Swedish which went from a nominal inflexion to a phrase clitic
> somewhen during the last 5 centuries. I daresay that in any
> speakers natural grammar at any point it was either an inflexion
> or a clitic. It only just so happened that both sets of speakers
> coexisted for a longer or shorter time, and the written language
> was conservative, so people were code switching.
>
>
I agree with this assessment. French also features some code switching, but
Spoken French is slowly winning (hopefully :P).
> And hey, you shouldn't be citing Spoken French in Written French
> orthography!
>
>
The problem is: what else could I use? I could use plain IPA, but that
would just confuse people even more, and I don't want to get into the hairy
details of Spoken French pronunciation. And Spoken French has no accepted
orthography, given that its very existence is denied by many French people,
including most grammarians themselves... Even attempts to render Spoken
French in writing as seen in books of all sorts fall always very short.
I am willing to use IPA, but be prepared to get very confused :P.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1h. Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "Matthew George" matt....@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 1:33 pm ((PDT))
If I had to guess, I'd say that people were limiting the length of their
clauses to lessen the load on memory. Information is 'chunked' in clauses,
I suspect.
Matt G.
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Spoken Indo-European
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 8:24 am ((PDT))
On 01/10/2013 02:18, Padraic Brown wrote:
>> this video is not available in my location, and I think
>> it will not be available in the location of other
>> members of this mailing list.
Nope - not available in this location either.
>> Is this the same spoken indo-european fables shown
>> here:
>> http://archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/1302-proto-indo-european-schleichers-fable
>>
>>
>>?
>
> Sounds about like the same voice. Some guy from Uni. of
> Kentucky.
Right - let's assume it is.
> You can find others on Youtube if you'd like to compare.
Not at the moment, thanks :)
It might be of academic interest, but there's no reason IMO
to suppose that any will have a more authentic pronunciation
than another.
===============================================================
On 01/10/2013 02:16, Padraic Brown wrote:
[snip]
> ...the fable was first written in 1868 and ónly júst nòw
> this guy comes along and reads it aloud for the very
> first time in the history of the universe?
>
> Sadly, this kind of inane sensationalism is all too
> typical of Yahoo Snews. I mean really?
Yep, a bit of a stupid claim, to put it mildly. And as for
the ridiculous claim "Language Spoken for First Time in
4,000-Plus Years" .......
words fail me.
I'm fairly that if some PIE-speaking of 4000 or so yeas ago
heard that video clip s/he wouldn't recognize the language ;)
We can get probably a fairly reasonable reconstruction of
Classical Latin; be even with all the evidence we have there
are some areas of doubt. There is no doubt in my mind that
if we were able to travel back in time, it would take us a
bit of of time to communicate readily with say Caesar,
Cicero or Vergil. Going back earlier to Classical Greece,
and the problem becomes much greater; I've no doubt a time
traveler, who knew Classical Greek, arriving in Athens in
the 5th century BC would not be readily understood nor would
s/he readily understand the language they heard.
To go back to the PIE of 4000 or so years presents even
greater problems. IMO it is highly unlikely that a modern
reconstruction will faithfully represent something last
heard 4000-plus years ago!
> "Here it is for the first time ever"?? Schleicher's
> Fable has been on Youtube for a couple years at least,
> read by several different folks and one even has a nice
> animation. I'm sure the author himself read it aloud a
> time or three during his career,
I'm darn sure he did, way back in 1868!
I remember coming across this some 60 years ago. I did read
it, tho even then I was aware that ideas about PIE had moved
on a bit.
> and quite probably all the authors of subsequent
> modifications read their versions as well.
Well, of course they did.
As Eric Powell writes: "Since there is considerable
disagreement among scholars about PIE, no one version can be
considered definitive." Of course they can't. The only way
to get a definitive version and really hear what PIE sounded
like is to discover the secret of time-travel ;)
"For the umpteenth time ever, hear a modern reconstruction
of what a language spoken 4000-plus years ago may have
possibly sounded like."
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language
began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Spoken Indo-European
Posted by: "Andrew Jarrette" anjarre...@yahoo.ca
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 2:20 pm ((PDT))
Yes, it's the same as the one you mention.
Andrew
________________________________
From: Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro <hcesarcas...@gmail.com>
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2013 9:05:02 PM
Subject: Re: Spoken Indo-European
Jarrette,
this video is not available in my location, and I think it will not be
available in the location of other members of this mailing list.
Is this the same spoken indo-european fables shown here:
http://archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/1302-proto-indo-european-schleichers-fable
?
On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 9:59 PM, Andrew Jarrette <anjarre...@yahoo.ca>wrote:
>
> http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/trending-language-spoken-first-time-070000096.html?vp=1
>
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Gateway to conscripts (was: Intro to Conlanging by John McWhorte
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" j_mach_w...@shared-files.de
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 9:45 am ((PDT))
On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:51:13 +0200, BPJ wrote:
>2013-09-29 20:32, J. 'Mach' Wust skrev:
>> Encountering shorthand systems in my late teens was a revelation
>> because it first showed me that there is something else than phonemic
>> writing.
>
>Actually it's perfectly possible for a shorthand system to be
>both phonemic and alphabetic.
Of course, a phonemic shorthand system is perfectly possible. It is
just that me personally, I have had my _Younger Futhark moment_, so
to say, when I met stenography.
>Melin's Swedish Shorthand which
>I've been using for almost 30 years is, and is cursive too. It
>has distinct and separate signs for all phonemes of Standard
>Swedish even for the phonemes /É/, /x/ and /Å/ which are written
>with digraphs in longhand orthography. It achieves an effective
>cursive rythm by assigning vowels to upwards or rightwards hair
>strokes and consonants with perpendiculars, except the four
>phonemes /r/, /l/, /n/, /s/ which are frequent in endings and
>clusters and are written with loops/dots. There are some signs
>for whole prefixes and suffixes, signs for consonant clusters
>(including sC and nC clusters) and various types of abbreviations
>are the rule, but it *is* perfectly possible to write
>phonemically without any of those.
Melin's Swedish Shorthand seems an unusual member of the Gabelsberger
shorthand systems family in having almost no contrast in stroke
thickness at all. The vowels' representation is different from the
Faulmann system that is used in the more modern German systems (like
Stolze-Schrey or deutsche Einheitskurzschrift) which operate with the
script's baseline (which can be kept, raised or lowered). It yields a
very similar overall aspect, though. I wonder whether Melin came up
with his system independently form the Faulman system.
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (26)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Spoken French Orthography (was Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
Posted by: "Matthew A. Gurevitch" mag122...@aol.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 3:39 pm ((PDT))
Dear Conlangers,
If there is no real orthography dedicated to spoken French, would people on
this list consider making one? I have very little knowledge of either Spoken or
Written French, so I cannot do so, but I do have a few suggestions for this.
First, I would suggest having it be reminiscent of the orthography for Written
French, such as keeping [ou] for /u/ and /w/. Also, it would need to reflect
the differences in grammar, maybe even leaving roots unchanged if that would
improve comprehensibility (I am not a formally trained linguist nor a a
Francophone, so I cannot say if I am making bad suggestions, but I feel that
this seems like it would be understandable with minimal description). I can't
wait to see what people come up with.
All my best,
Matthew Gurevitch
-----Original Message-----
From: BPJ <b...@melroch.se>
To: CONLANG <conl...@listserv.brown.edu>
Sent: Tue, Oct 1, 2013 2:53 pm
Subject: Re: "Re: Colloquial French resources"
2013-10-01 21:15, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets skrev:
> As for optional polypersonal agreement, I've heard of languages that mark
> verbs for both subject and object (as agreement markers), but only when the
> object is definite. With indefinite objects verbs get marked for subject
> only. So not exactly "optional", but still something. I can't give you an
> actual example but I'm pretty sure that I've read that correctly somewhere.
Now that's cool! I have to remember to steal that for some
conlang! ;-)
As for optional inflexion I daresay there is no such thing in any
langvuage, it just so happens that the grammar demands different
forms in different contexts which poor furriners have trouble
teasing out the rules for. If it's truly optional it's dying out
and people are code switching! An example is the possessive _-s_
in Swedish which went from a nominal inflexion to a phrase clitic
somewhen during the last 5 centuries. I daresay that in any
speakers natural grammar at any point it was either an inflexion
or a clitic. It only just so happened that both sets of speakers
coexisted for a longer or shorter time, and the written language
was conservative, so people were code switching.
And hey, you shouldn't be citing Spoken French in Written French
orthography!
/bpj
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: Spoken French Orthography (was Re: "Re: Colloquial French resour
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" leolucas1...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 5:00 pm ((PDT))
2013/10/1 Matthew A. Gurevitch <mag122...@aol.com>:
> Dear Conlangers,
>
> If there is no real orthography dedicated to spoken French,
If we are creating an orthography to Spoken French, wouldn't it be
better to find another dichotomy other than written vs. spoken, to
call these dialects? Colloquial vs. traditional, informal vs. formal,
modern vs. classical...
> would people on this list consider making one? I have very little knowledge
> of either Spoken or Written French, so I cannot do so, but I do have a few
> suggestions for this. First, I would suggest having it be reminiscent of the
> orthography for Written French, such as keeping [ou] for /u/ and /w/. Also,
> it would need to reflect the differences in grammar, maybe even leaving roots
> unchanged if that would improve comprehensibility (I am not a formally
> trained linguist nor a a Francophone, so I cannot say if I am making bad
> suggestions, but I feel that this seems like it would be understandable with
> minimal description). I can't wait to see what people come up with.
BTW, what happens when the sentence has both a direct an indirect object?
"Nicolas a donné un chien à ses enfants."
would be something like
"Nicolas il-le-leur-a donné un chien à ses enfants."
with all these prefixes mandatory?
I guess this is a job for Christophe G.-K.
>
> All my best,
> Matthew Gurevitch
>
>
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. PIE short and long vowels (was Spoken Indo-European)
Posted by: "Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro" hcesarcas...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 6:35 pm ((PDT))
Thricely Latin, Ancient Greek and Germanic languages have different heights
for vowels of different length, e.g. in Ancient Greek, Eta was probably
pronounced /E:/ and Epsilon /e/, analogously you have Omega as /O:/ and
omicron as /o/. On the other hand, Classical Latin and the Germanic
languages tend to use short vowels with more open pronunciation than the
long vowels, for instance /E/ vs. /e:/ and /O/ vs. /o:/ (and also /I/ vs.
/i:/ and /U/ vs. /u:/).
Is it so common for West IE languages to have this height distinction
between short and long vowels? What about the East IE languages? Is it
possible for PIE to have this distinction?
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: PIE short and long vowels (was Spoken Indo-European)
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" bvticvlar...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 1, 2013 6:40 pm ((PDT))
greek /e:/ (<ει>) reflects PIE short *e that was somehow lengthened
*after*the PIE period (generally as a result of the loss of a
following consonant)
... or also the output of the PIE diphthong *ei (hence the orthography).
the parallel with /o:/ (vs. /O:/ = <Ï>) is true as well. so, one cannot use
the greek evidence to argue for multiple non-high vowel heights in PIE.
and, when you lose /e:/ and /o:/, the "height difference" between Gk /e/ ~
/o/ and /E:/ ~ /O:/ may as well be sub-phomenic.
what is this germanic evidence you speak of?
matt
On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 8:33 PM, Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro <
hcesarcas...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thricely Latin, Ancient Greek and Germanic languages have different heights
> for vowels of different length, e.g. in Ancient Greek, Eta was probably
> pronounced /E:/ and Epsilon /e/, analogously you have Omega as /O:/ and
> omicron as /o/. On the other hand, Classical Latin and the Germanic
> languages tend to use short vowels with more open pronunciation than the
> long vowels, for instance /E/ vs. /e:/ and /O/ vs. /o:/ (and also /I/ vs.
> /i:/ and /U/ vs. /u:/).
>
>
> Is it so common for West IE languages to have this height distinction
> between short and long vowels? What about the East IE languages? Is it
> possible for PIE to have this distinction?
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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