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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Workshops Review #01, 2005
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Starting a Conlang-OT group? (was Re: Workshops Review #01, 2005)
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. ANNOUNCE: New Lord of Instrumentality
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: A Franco-Turkic a posteriori language
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: A Franco-Turkic a posteriori language
From: kcasada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl Sjok) [long]
From: kcasada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. OT: Semitic number games [Was:Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl Sjok)]
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: OT: Semitic number games [Was:Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl
Sjok)]
From: kcasada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Language comparison
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. ADMIN: The torch passes
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: tonal language
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl Sjok) [long]
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: P- and Q-Celtic (was Re: Reasonable sound changes.)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Silindion - Present Tense
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: McGuffey Readers and Their Editions...
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: McGuffey Readers and Their Editions...
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. what does -il- do?
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. introduction to Ut Aw Gyu:ll
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: what does -il- do?
From: Matt Arriola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: what does -il- do?
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: what does -il- do?
From: Mike Ellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: what does -il- do?
From: "Elyse M. Grasso" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: what does -il- do (when it exists)
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: what does -il- do?
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Silindion - Present Tense
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 11:27:52 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Workshops Review #01, 2005
Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >...
> > Unfortunately I had no time to see what is happening in a hispanophone
> > "ideolengua" list ( http://espanol.groups.yahoo.com/group/ideolengua/ );
>
> I did not follow everything, since reading Spanish takes me some
> effort,
Hi Henrik,
thank you for adding this information. I'm not fluent in Spanish either,
therefore I had gone nomail in that list, but now for the Reviews
completeness, I resumed my subscription.
> but I remember there was some discussion about Catalan
> dialects and naming (Valencian ~ Catalan)
Hehe. This is the eternal topic for conversation and quarrels there, a kind
of YAEPT...
-- Yitzik
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:05:33 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Starting a Conlang-OT group? (was Re: Workshops Review #01, 2005)
Hi,
I've been thinking for two days about this issue, and I feel like I have to
agree with Henrik.
> But let's first try to behave before thinking about splitting again.
> I think the last few days where much better already than, say, the
> week before that. Most probably due to some shock that valuable
> people are about to be leaving.
We can wait for a while. As we say in Russian, "It's never too late to shut
the door with a loud noise". May ppl be more attentive and mark the msgs
with OT tag.
I also agree with Paul Bennett
> We
> can and should strive to return the list culture to what it was in those
> days.
Btw, is it you who is the Lord of Instrumentality now? Don't forget to use
your Strange Powers!
-- Yitzik, a CONLANG-L member since December 2001
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:48:20 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ANNOUNCE: New Lord of Instrumentality
Hi!
Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>...
> Btw, is it you who is the Lord of Instrumentality now? Don't forget to use
> your Strange Powers!
>...
Indeed, John has passed the sceptre to me yesterday. I wanted to wait
for his formal blessing before saying anything, but now that you ask,
it seems to be a good opportunity for some short words.
I will definitely use my newly acquired Strange Powers if necessary! :-)
My primary goals will be a good atmosphere and the integrity of the
list, and since much of the latest complaints were about flamewars, I
will probably be a bit sensitive and nervous about these and force
them offlist if necessary. They are indeed totally unnecessary here.
Further, off-topic messages should be properly marked as such. It is
important to know how, here's a short introduction again: there are
four special topics:
CHAT, OT, THEORY, USAGE
The most important one to be consistent about seems to be OT due to
the heavy traffic. For the list server to classify the message
correctly, put the appropriate category at the beginning of the
subject line *followed by a colon* (and not otherwise decorated).
Then the message can be filtered by others, after configuring their
account (e.g. via the web interface) accordingly.
You can and should change the topic marker in replies, too.
Please try to keep the off-topic stuff at a standable limit.
Further, we have an important 'no cross, no crown' rule an this list,
i.e., no comments on religion or politics. They *will* make people
angry, so flamewars are inevitable with such topics, so strictly keep
them off-list.
I will try my best to make this list enjoyable.
That's it for now. Thanks for your attention and enjoy conlang(ing)!
**Henrik
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:02:52 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: A Franco-Turkic a posteriori language
Ray Brown scripsit:
> On Sunday, January 9, 2005, at 09:18 , Isaac Penzev wrote:
>
> > I think borrowing vowel harmony is highly improbable.
>
> Why? It certainly happened in Greek dialects (probably now all extinct -
> but surviving till early 20th cent.) spoken in Anatolia.
Oho! I didn't know this. All I knew that in most lgs spoken in ex-USSR, v.h.
seems to be a dying phonetic law and doesn't show up in recent borrowings.
Nor I ever heard about dialects in contact with Turkic, Mongolian or
Mordovian lgs to import v.h.
> I understand Geoff's Franco-Turkic language will be situated in an area
> where Turkish is still spoken. The actual Greek examples show that it is
> very likely vowel harmony would have been borrowed.
So, as we see, it may happen. If the lg structure permits. But mostly I
would agree with Bob Thornton who wrote:
<<Most languages that have vowel harmony tend to lose it when exposed to
languages that do not.>>
> The silencing of final consonants, which became typical of later French,
> would not then have happened.
Agreed.
> That would have had profound influence on
> the use of articles. Indeed, we find a significant reduction in the use of
> the definite article in the Greek dialects, with the article being
> confined in many cases simply to definite direct objects.
Agreed.
> There would
> certainly have been no impetus to develop the partitive article of modern
> French.
Agreed.
> We also find some influence in syntax - genitive constructions on the
> Turkish model.
If you mean idafas, yes. It may be something like *père son champ "father's
field".
Interesting. I thought about exactly the same developments you mentioned.
As for case distinctions Doug Dee mentioned in the msg about his Frankish
project:
> 1. It retains the neat case system of OF, which had a lot on nouns that
> declined like ths:
>
> Nom. sg. = li voisins
> Obl. sg. = le voisin
> Nom. pl. = li voisin
> Obl. pl. = les voisins,
, I strongly doubt it could remain intact.
> I think your
> suggestion of "basically Old French with substantial Turkic influences" is
> more likely.
Surely! See the example of Farsi: it remained essentially Persian, though up
to 50% of its wocabulary is borrowed from Arabic.
Truly yours,
-- Yitzik
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 07:53:18 -0600
From: kcasada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: A Franco-Turkic a posteriori language
Somebody may have already mentioned this, but an interesting parallel case
might be the Spanish-Arabic contact situation in the Iberian Peninsula during
the Middle Ages--not only did Spanish inherit a significant amount of
vocabulary from Arabic, but there was some borrowing of syntax/morphology as
well, especially in regard to verb forms. Specifically, in modern Spanish
verbs must agree with their subjects in number. In modern formal Arabic, verbs
must agree in gender, but number agreement is obligatory ONLY if the suibject
preceeds the verb. Otherwise the verb remains singular, no matter whether the
subject is singular or plural.
If you go far enough back (to the Poem of the Cid, for example) you can see
Spanish using this Arabic rule, i.e. in sentences where the verb precedes the
subject, the verb may be singular even if the subject is plural.
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 08:26:16 -0600
From: kcasada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl Sjok) [long]
Ray,
I am told by them that know better (being BAD at decimals myself) that a
number such as 9.54 would be written 9,54 (except that the comma is
"backwards") and read "nine fasilah four and fifty" where "fasilah" is the
word for the backwards comma. I then asked whether a person could actually say
something closer to "fifty-four hundredths," and was told that you COULD say
"fasilah four and fifty from a hundred" but "Nobody ever does that."
Go figure. I love this language.
Krista
>And how is the decimal point handled in real Arabic notation?
>
>Ray
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 17:23:01 +0200
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: OT: Semitic number games [Was:Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl Sjok)]
> On Monday, January 10, 2005, at 05:45 , kcasada wrote:
>
> > Hi, my name's Krista Casada; I'm new to this list, and find it
> > fascinating.
>
Hi, Krista and welcome.
[Snip Ray's explanation of numerals in Arabic]
Ray's explanation is accurate as I understand it. It's interesting to
compare how Arabic manages this challenge (writing left-to-right
numerals in right-to-left text) as compared to Hebrew. Although both
languages essentially write the integers from left to right, Arabic is
more "Orthodox" about it than Hebrew. For example, in writing
abbreviated date forms, Arabic writes (assuming it is May 22nd 2005):
2005/5/22
I.e. each of the units "22", "5" and "2005" are written from left to
right, but the three units are ordered from right to left.
Whereas Hebrew writes:
22/5/2005
I.e. the whole sequence is treated as a chunk of numbers and ordered
from left to right.
(Both Hebrew and Arabic follow the European/British order of day - month
- year rather than the American month - day - year).
When writing the years of someone's birth and death, Arabic follows the
same principle, i.e. as one progresses through the Arabic text, reading
from the right of course, one reads ...
Naim Khouri lived 1955 - 2005...
In Hebrew that is also the formal or high status form, and editors will
correct to it, but again you often find such dates ordered as an entire
left to right chunk inside the text.
> > And would somebody please explain to me why we have to
> > use masculine numbers with feminine nouns (and vice versa)
> in Arabic?
> > Please, please, please??? :)
Gender polarity occurs in Hebrew as well as Arabic. Moreover, there are
complex rules in both languages regarding the form of the noun that
follows these pesky numbers. In Arabic, for example, the noun may be
singular or plural and in the accusative or dative case. And in
colloquial Arabic, while most of the gender polarity has vanished, the
old polarized forms live on with a few words that very often occur next
to numbers (days, months). As for why - there are very long theories
about that but I do not believe there is really an accepted explanation.
I lent out my Arabic grammar that discusses this so I can't give the
references.
> Curiouser and curiouser :)
Right!
> And how is the decimal point handled in real Arabic notation?
Krista's explanation matches my experience (and I have also never heard
anyone say "four and fifty from a hundred"). I would just add that
fasilah is the regular word for the regular comma in Arabic, which is
indeed "backwards" compared to the Latin comma. Again, [modern] Hebrew
occupies a middle position, with a "regular" Latin-sized and orientated
comma. In Hebrew it used to be common to see the comma used instead of
the period in fractions. Now you see it sometimes in prices on signs in
shops and market stalls but rarely in print and never in anything
official or scientific.
Shaul
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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 11:08:43 -0600
From: kcasada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Semitic number games [Was:Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl
Sjok)]
Yes, sorry. I wasn't being specific enough, since in formal written Arabic the
gender switching only occurs from 3 to 10, generally.
Krista
>Gender polarity occurs in Hebrew as well as Arabic. Moreover, there are
>complex rules in both languages regarding the form of the noun that
>follows these pesky numbers. In Arabic, for example, the noun may be
>singular or plural and in the accusative or dative case. And in
>colloquial Arabic, while most of the gender polarity has vanished, the
>old polarized forms live on with a few words that very often occur next
>to numbers (days, months). As for why - there are very long theories
>about that but I do not believe there is really an accepted explanation.
>I lent out my Arabic grammar that discusses this so I can't give the
>references.
>
>Shaul
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Message: 9
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:29:20 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language comparison
Quoting Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
[snip]
> English has so much redundancy, in fact, that
> something in the neighborhood of 1.3 bits per
> character, on average, it all it takes to encode
> typical English text.
You'd have to multiply that with the average number of letters per phoneme
(which is gonna be noticeably hight than one for English) to get the bits per
phoneme count. And that's still only considering the information necessary to
get the phonemic sequence across; speech also encodes information in intonation
(which should be well-known to every long-time resident of a mailinglist; the
clues telling you "this is sarcasm" tend not to get transmitted!).
Andreas
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Message: 10
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:30:16 -0500
From: John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ADMIN: The torch passes
Henrik Theiling has volunteered to assume the Lordship of the Instrumentality
of Conlang, for which he has my gratitude. From now on, if the list gets
held, or if the Cross and Crown start acting up, or if you're not getting
your email, contact him at theiling at absint dot com.
My very best regards and wishes to all of you.
--
John Cowan [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com
"If he has seen farther than others,
it is because he is standing on a stack of dwarves."
--Mike Champion, describing Tim Berners-Lee (adapted)
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Message: 11
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:39:50 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: tonal language
On Tuesday, January 11, 2005, at 01:35 , H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 07:45:18AM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
> [...]
>> They are also _diachronically_ unanalyzable, two-syllable words. There
>> are
>> a handful of such words, such as:
> [...]
>> bo1li "grass"
>
> Surely you mean "glass"?
OOPS!! Yes, I did.
>
> [...]
>> They are not and never have been - they are all monomorphemic disyllabic
>> words. They were borrowed at a very early date and the origin of most is
>> either not known or is hypothetical.
>
> Were they borrowed, or were they actually indigenous words that have
> always been disyllabic?
Who knows? I think it is certain tha some, for example Pu2sa4 (Bodhisattva)
, are borrowings, but - as I said - the origin of many of these words are
either unknown or hypothetical.
>> It is only the traditional written language that adopted the fiction
>> of treating them as two 'quasi-morphemes' , each with the same
>> meaning :)
> [...]
>
> Yeah, Chinese writing has the tendency to push the hypothetical ideal
> of one syllable per word a tad too far.
Yep.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 12
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:40:52 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Numbers in Qthen|gai (and in Tyl Sjok) [long]
On Monday, January 10, 2005, at 08:10 , Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 06:54:37PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
>> I wasn't thinking just of year dates. We would say of a place that it was
>> thirteen hundred (and) sixty four feet above see level; IME it is unusual
>> to use the form 'one thousand, three hundred (and) sixty four feet'. But
>> I
>> think 'twenty three hundred (and) thirty five' is rather less likely than
>> 'two thousand, three hundred (and) thirty five'.
>
> I disagree. I would say "we're twenty-three hundred feet up" as readily
> as I would say "we're thirteen hundred feet up". But the inclusion of
> the word "hundred" makes *both* examples different from year numbers;
I think we will find usage varies across the whole wide anglophone areas.
The point is that we do not have a single 'neat' way of handling numbers
from 1000 to 9999 - usage various on context and, almost certainly,
dialect and idiolect.
I think I will leave it at that, before this turns into yet another
English dialect thread ;)
===============================================
On Monday, January 10, 2005, at 05:40 , Henrik Theiling wrote:
[snip]
> As I now know that some natlangs really reverse the whole digit
> stream, I might try to optimise my system further (optimising = coming
> closer to my internal ideal, whatever that is :-)).
It appears I was mistaken about this - half-remembering things and knowing
that in Arabic the number strings are written from lowest to highest in
the direction of reading.
Maybe, there should another 'Universal' to add to Greenberg's list :)
"While in numbers from 11 to 99, a language may express the units may be
before the tens or after the tens or allow both positions, the higher
powers of 10 (i.e. 100, 1000, 10000 etc) are always expressed from highest
to lowest before the tens & unit combination."
In fact, making a Universal is a sure way of making it certain there will
be an exception :-)
(Is there any Greenberg Universal for which there is not some natlang
exception?)
====================================================
I've been thinking about this again:
On Saturday, January 8, 2005, at 09:56 , Henrik Theiling wrote:
[snip]
> In Chinese, Korean and Japanese, however, the major structuring
> uses *four* digits instead of *three* in English. So there is
> a word for 10 (shi), 100 (bai), 1000 (quan), 10000 (wan), and then
> 100000 is encoded as '10 10000' (shi wan). And 1 million
> is '100 10000' (bai wan).
>
In ancient Greek there is a word for 10 (deka), 100 (hekaton), 1000
(khilia), 10000 (myria), and then
100000 is encoded as '10 10000' (dekakis myria '10 times 10000'). And 1
million is '100 10000' (hekatontakis myria '100 times 10000).
Note:
- deka and hekaton are indeclinable.
- khilia and myria are both declinable adjective, agreeing with the nouns
they qualify; I have given the neuter forms.
- instead of _dekakis myria_ and _hekatontakis myria_ one could have _deka
myriades_ (10 myriads) and _hekaton myriades_ (100 myriads) followed by
the noun in the genitive plural.
> Therefore, it is quite hard to translate large numbers from
> Chinese to English and vice versa.
I cannot help feeling it is a pity our western systems are based on the
Latin practice and not the ancient Greek practice. But Latinate 'thousand
based' system is now enshrined in the SI metric prefixes.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 13
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:40:38 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: P- and Q-Celtic (was Re: Reasonable sound changes.)
On Monday, January 10, 2005, at 08:01 , Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:19:55 +0100,
> Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> BTW, I've always wondered why there is P and Q-Celtic. So
>> it's because on the Isle, people changed /k_w/ -> /p/ and
>> on the continent they didn't?
>
> The geographical distribution of P- and Q-Celtic is different.
> They shifted /k_w/ to /p/ in Britain and Gaul, but not in Ireland
> and on the Iberian peninsula.
Yes, the /k_w/ is the older form inherited form inherited from PIE. The
shift /k_w/ --> /p/ happened in the central area, leaving the outlying
areas unaffected. We find similar things happening in the Italic dialects
which is one of the factors that have led some to postulate a Celt0-Italic
group.
> The Scots Gaels, who also speak a
> Q-Celtic language, immigrated from Ireland in early Medieval times.
Very early - 6th cent, I believe - the same sort of time the various
Germanic waves of settlers were moving in to the south.
>
> A feature that seems indeed to be confined to the British Isles
> (with the exception of Brittany, which was settled by British Celts)
> are initial mutations, which are found in both Goidelic (insular
> Q-Celtic, i.e. Irish, Manx and Scots Gaelic) and Brittonic
> (insular P-Celtic, i.e. Welsh, Cornish and Breton), but not in
> Celtiberian (continental Q-Celtic) or Gaulish (continental P-Celtic).
Absolutely! This feature which some seem to regard as quintessentially
'Celtic' developed only in Ireland and Britain; also, tho there are
superficial similarities, the Gaelic and Brittonic systems of initial
mutations are different.
> VSO word order is also an insular phenomenon, it seems.
> Why that? It just happened. Blame the Elves ;-)
Possibly - but it is more often the Semites who get blamed, leading to all
sorts of wild theories :)
I have seen it postulated that the 'Insular Celtic' languages developed
from a creole that evolved in the Cornish peninsular as the result of
trade contacts between Phoenician traders to the 'Tin Islands'. I am not
sure how Old Irish would fit into such a theory.
Others have suggested a substrate population that was related to the
modern Berbers and migrated up through western Europe in the age of the
megalith builders (who were certainly pre-Celtic).
Who knows?
Just to add to the fun, other features common to Insular Celtic and the
Semitic langs are:
- all nouns are either masculine or fem. (common also to romance langs)
- adjectives follow the noun (a few excptions in Celtic langs - and
Romance :)
- definite article only
- prepositions are conjugated
- common way of expressing genitive, thus:
Arabic: beet ir raagil (double vowels indicate long vowel)
Welsh: ty'r dyn
house the man = the man's house
Perhaps after all the elves are indeed to blame ;-)
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 14
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:38:19 -0800
From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Silindion - Present Tense
On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 02:28:49PM -0800, Elliott Lash wrote:
> The present tense in Silindion is divided into an
> Athematic and Thematic conjugation. The Thematic
> conjugation is formed by adding a thematic present
> tense vowel to the root, followed by the endings. The
> thematic tese vowel is mostly determined by the root
> vowel, although, there are some exceptions.
>
>
> So, if the root vowel is "a" then the thematic vowel
> will be "a". If it is "e", then the thematic vowel is
> "e", etc. For the most part this rule is followed,
> except for the following cases:
[...]
Very nice. This system reminds me of Classical Greek verb
conjugations.
[...]
> Finally, if a root is dysallibic (having two
> syllables) then the 2nd vowel determines the thematic
> vowel: namben- "to get engaged" > namben-e-
>
> The personal endings are:
> 1s -si 1p -na
> 2s -l? 2p -nta
> 3s <described below> 3p -nto
> 3dual/(HS 3p) -nt?
>
> Present Tense of <namben->
> nambenesi nambenena
> nambenel? nambenenta
> namben?n nambenento/nambenent?
Cool, I like the sound of these conjugations. :-)
[...]
> Athematic presents do not have a thematic vowel for 1
> of 2 reasons.
>
> 1) The root is a vowel stem: -ya, -a, -e, -u, -i, -o
> 2) The root is a root accented consonant stem.
>
> For these roots, the personal endings are added
> directly to the root final vowel or consonant. In the
> case of vowel stem roots, there's no problem, but in
> the case of consonant stem roots, some changes must
> take place.
This system sounds very much like Classical Greek, too. (Or is it a
more general phenomenon across inflecting natlangs? The only
significantly inflected natlang I know is Classical Greek. :-P)
[...]
> The ending for the 3rd singular is either -n, or -r.
> Originally this must have distinguished certain types
> of transitive verbs from certain types of intransitive
> verbs, although the difference between the two is
> largely lexical at the present stage of Silindion. The
> -r ending is still largely reserved for many
> intransitive verbs, although not all intransitives
> will take the -r ending and some transitives will have
> it.
Nice historical detail.
[...]
> I appologize for the length of this, but I hope you
> enjoyed it :)
[...]
Most certainly did! Thanks for sharing.
T
--
Only boring people get bored. -- JM
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Message: 15
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 20:27:23 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and Their Editions...
Pipian wrote:
> After looking on the net for various copies of the McGuffey Readers
> digitized, and finding no less than three different versions of the
> first reader
Thank you for this information. Now it makes clear the question Pascal asked
about a different version he found on the web. It would be also good to know
what version is the most popular among conlangers ;) At least, we see the
verb "to mcguffey (a project)" added into conlangers' jargon -- see it in
one of Paul Bennett's latest messages!
-- Yitzik
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Message: 16
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:39:12 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and Their Editions...
----- Original Message -----
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Pipian wrote:
>
> > After looking on the net for various copies of the McGuffey Readers
> > digitized, and finding no less than three different versions of the
> > first reader
>
> Thank you for this information. Now it makes clear the question
> Pascal asked
> about a different version he found on the web. It would be also
> good to know
> what version is the most popular among conlangers ;) At least, we
> see the
> verb "to mcguffey (a project)" added into conlangers' jargon --
> see it in
> one of Paul Bennett's latest messages!
Heh. Like many around here, I verb nouns[*]. It didn't strike me that I was
causing logogenesis. It's a good term, though, with reflection. The language in
question is still without a name any less provisional than "My McGuffey
Project", although the main text file containing my notes[**] is called "island
lang.txt", for reasons best known only to the subsection of the collective
consciousness that took control after I hit "Save As".
Paul
[*]I also get upset when others verb nouns in ways I find inappropriate, and
alter the numeration settings of nouns (i.e. between count and mass -- "Our
department uses a lot of process"). I suspect there are a set of optimality
criteria that would be hard to describe.
[**]I was specifically careful to create an orthography that could be typed
without resorting to jiggery-pokery. That's probably a first, although I have
made the Thagojian romanisation Latin-1 compliant, which is somewhat of a
relief on my brain.
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Message: 17
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:07:13 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: what does -il- do?
I was thinking again (no no, don't run YET)....and became curious as to
what matter of modifier (if that's the right word) -il- is.
For example...
"The wood is heavy."
"The forest is heavily wooded."
one does not (that I know of) say "the forest is heavy-wooded" or "the wood
is heavily"...so I thought to ask: what is the -il- that so affects some
words? *curious*
thanks.
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Message: 18
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:20:15 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: introduction to Ut Aw Gyu:ll
[note: this is only half of my report on this language -- the other half
(containing mostly interlinears) is in a journal that is currently in the
mail; I beg your patience in that regard...but please, feel free to comment
on this half as well].
The people of Chatal Huyuk lived in Central Anatolia -- the modern Republic
of Turkey -- and are internationally famous as the makers of the world's
first landscape painting (a city sited near an erupting volcano). Since the
ruins of Chatal Huyuk and related sites were first discovered, the people
who built those places had all either died out, or been assimilated into the
successive cultures in the region -- though, in the 19th Century [AD], the
Lutheran pastor E.G.Himmings wrote in his journal about coming across a
translation of Plato, claiming that, of the Egyptians Plato kept company
with, a few drew images of leopards and vultures in a style that was not
Egyptian. [though the alledged translation of Plato has not re-surfaced
since Himming's time, Himming's own journal has since been published by his
granddaughter: 'Work Among the Turks of Konya, and Pilgramages to Palestine
and the House of Mary the Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ', published 1901,
reprinted 1903 and 1913].
I myself was on vacation some time ago, exploring the Spice Bazaar in
Istanbul, Turkey, where I met Sophie Atoglu, a Turk who, it turns out,
shares my interest in languages. And that was my introduction to Ut Aw
Gyu:ll, the language of - or the successor of the language of - Chatal
Huyuk.
Speakers of this language {purportedly related to the pre-Hittite Nesa} use
the names and naming titles of the peoples they live amongst. Similarly,
aside from the ancient funerary practices, their religious lives are
identical to that of their neighbors.
The language has nearly stopped evolving, as it is only used in funerary
recitings.
Special letters in the language:
There are a few letters with either umlauts or ^ over the vowels. As a
kindness both to myself and those with computers incapable of reading those
letters in email, I am putting the umlauts immediately after the vowel they
accompany (ie, e: ), and the ^ immediately preceeding its vowel.
The ^ draws the vowel into a long sound -- much like the difference between
the names ^Ali & Ali.
" is a glottal stop. This is a rare occurance in-so-far as I have seen thus
far, but it may be a relic from earlier in Ut Aw Gyu:ll's history.
The _ is not a letter or a sound...it is simply my shorthand way of ensuring
that the reader understands that there is indeed a space between two words.
I offer it only as a way to help, not to slight any of you.
There is an element in the grammar that I can best describe as an "Inherent"
For example, the following is drawn (not quoted) from a funerary
recitation:
aw_'os = to be / be
aw_^at = to stand / stand
aw_at = to be attentive / attentive
aw_^atk^a = to watch / watch
aw_'otk^a = to keep / keep
The /w/ is not strong; it flickers, half-heard because it is only
half-spoken; less than a second it exists for, then the succeeding word.
If Ut Aw Gyu:ll ever had a written language, that script has not accompanied
it through the millenia. Speakers of Ut Aw Gyu:ll speculate upon what
manner of glyph or cuneiform their ancestors used.
Speakers of Ut Aw Gyu:ll, such as Sophie Atoglu, insist to me that their
language contains no borrowings from the _U:bdayt"a_ -- the "recent
peoples" {a catch-all term applying to the Urartians, the Mongols, and every
Anatolian group between}. As difficult as that sounds, it may, in fact, be
possible, owing to the restricted useage of this language.
Owing to its use only during mortuary events, Ut Aw Gyu:ll has not changed
as much as, for example, Hebrew has over the same span of years. Indeed, in
his 12th Century [AD] mention of the language, Ibn-Ali remarked that "the
speech seems to defy the laws which govern the changes which happen to
languages as they are eroded by the burdens of existance" [T. Ibn-Ali, 1122
AD, 'Languages Of Pre-Islamic Peoples: an Account Compiled For King
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Message: 19
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:52:35 -0500
From: Matt Arriola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: what does -il- do?
I'm guessing the i- is just added to the regular adverbial -ly suffix
to make it easier to say, considering it's unstressed
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:07:13 +0200, Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I was thinking again (no no, don't run YET)....and became curious as to
> what matter of modifier (if that's the right word) -il- is.
>
> For example...
> "The wood is heavy."
> "The forest is heavily wooded."
>
> one does not (that I know of) say "the forest is heavy-wooded" or "the wood
> is heavily"...so I thought to ask: what is the -il- that so affects some
> words? *curious*
>
> thanks.
>
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Message: 20
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 21:01:30 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: what does -il- do?
Quoting Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I was thinking again (no no, don't run YET)....and became curious as to
> what matter of modifier (if that's the right word) -il- is.
>
> For example...
> "The wood is heavy."
> "The forest is heavily wooded."
>
> one does not (that I know of) say "the forest is heavy-wooded" or "the wood
> is heavily"...so I thought to ask: what is the -il- that so affects some
> words? *curious*
There's no actual -il- infix present; what we're seen is an orthographic
convention whereby final -y when preceded by a consonant turns to -i- when an
ending beginning in a consonant is added. Thus we get _heavily_ for what would
be **_heavyly_, which in turn, of course, is simply the adjective _heavy_ plus
the regular adverb-former _-ly_.
Andreas
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Message: 21
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 15:03:05 -0500
From: Mike Ellis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: what does -il- do?
Rodlox wrote:
> I was thinking again (no no, don't run YET)....and became curious as to
>what matter of modifier (if that's the right word) -il- is.
>
> For example...
>"The wood is heavy."
>"The forest is heavily wooded."
>
> one does not (that I know of) say "the forest is heavy-wooded" or "the wood
>is heavily"...so I thought to ask: what is the -il- that so affects some
>words? *curious*
There isn't one. That's "heavy" plus "-ly". It's just a spelling thing that
turns the final y into an i in this case: *heavyly -> heavily. Same thing
with happy -> happily, or angry -> angrily.
M
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Message: 22
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 15:05:55 -0500
From: "Elyse M. Grasso" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: what does -il- do?
On Tuesday 11 January 2005 03:07 pm, Rodlox wrote:
> I was thinking again (no no, don't run YET)....and became curious as to
> what matter of modifier (if that's the right word) -il- is.
>
> For example...
> "The wood is heavy."
> "The forest is heavily wooded."
>
> one does not (that I know of) say "the forest is heavy-wooded" or "the wood
> is heavily"...so I thought to ask: what is the -il- that so affects some
> words? *curious*
>
> thanks.
>
It isn't an '-il-', it's an ordinary "-ly", making things into an adverb. The
"y" on "heavy" gets written as an "i" when it moves into the middle of the
word, as is traditional for any "y" following a consonant, at the end of an
English word that acquires an affix. (Try -- Tries, Tried, merry -- merrily
versus eye --eyes, prey preys preyed).
--
Elyse Grasso
The World of Cherani Station
www.data-raptors.com/cherani/index.html
Cherani Tradespeech
www.data-raptors.com/cherani/tradespeech.html
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Message: 23
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:45:40 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: what does -il- do (when it exists)
----- Original Message -----
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: what does -il- do?
> Quoting Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
> > I was thinking again (no no, don't run YET)....and became curious as to
> > what matter of modifier (if that's the right word) -il- is.
> >
> > For example...
> > "The wood is heavy."
> > "The forest is heavily wooded."
> >
> > one does not (that I know of) say "the forest is heavy-wooded" or "the
wood
> > is heavily"...so I thought to ask: what is the -il- that so affects some
> > words? *curious*
>
> There's no actual -il- infix present;
oh.
*I looks properly embarassed*
are there any languages which would have infixes?
> what we're seen is an orthographic
> convention whereby final -y when preceded by a consonant turns to -i- when
an
> ending beginning in a consonant is added. Thus we get _heavily_ for what
would
> be **_heavyly_, which in turn, of course, is simply the adjective _heavy_
plus
> the regular adverb-former _-ly_.
>
> Andreas
>
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Message: 24
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:15:41 -0800
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: what does -il- do?
I sent this to the wrong place by accident.
The morphemes of "heavily" are:
heavy-ly
when a "y" is found in this position, it is spelled
"i"
hence: heavi-ly
it's just part of the root word, and has no seperate
function.
Sometimes, the "y" is an adjective formant:
scare > scare-y (spelled: scary) > scary-ly (spelled:
scarily), same spelling rule.
~Elliott
--- Matt Arriola <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm guessing the i- is just added to the regular
> adverbial -ly suffix
> to make it easier to say, considering it's
> unstressed
>
> On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:07:13 +0200, Rodlox
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I was thinking again (no no, don't run
> YET)....and became curious as to
> > what matter of modifier (if that's the right word)
> -il- is.
> >
> > For example...
> > "The wood is heavy."
> > "The forest is heavily wooded."
> >
> > one does not (that I know of) say "the forest is
> heavy-wooded" or "the wood
> > is heavily"...so I thought to ask: what is the
> -il- that so affects some
> > words? *curious*
> >
> > thanks.
> >
>
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Message: 25
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 12:38:13 -0800
From: Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Silindion - Present Tense
--- "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
~~~~
SNIPPING A LARGE PORTION
> > Athematic presents do not have a thematic vowel
> for 1
> > of 2 reasons.
> >
> > 1) The root is a vowel stem: -ya, -a, -e, -u, -i,
> -o
> > 2) The root is a root accented consonant stem.
> >
> > For these roots, the personal endings are added
> > directly to the root final vowel or consonant. In
> the
> > case of vowel stem roots, there's no problem, but
> in
> > the case of consonant stem roots, some changes
> must
> > take place.
>
> This system sounds very much like Classical Greek,
> too. (Or is it a
> more general phenomenon across inflecting natlangs?
> The only
> significantly inflected natlang I know is Classical
> Greek. :-P)
~~~ Yes, I've been influence by Greek, although the
Athematic/Thematic idea is from Indo European in
general. I stole a lot from Sanskrit and Latin and
Greek and ...although not IE, Finnish. All of these
have helped form the Silindion verbal system.
> > The ending for the 3rd singular is either -n, or
> -r.
> > Originally this must have distinguished certain
> types
> > of transitive verbs from certain types of
> intransitive
> > verbs, although the difference between the two is
> > largely lexical at the present stage of Silindion.
> The
> > -r ending is still largely reserved for many
> > intransitive verbs, although not all intransitives
> > will take the -r ending and some transitives will
> have
> > it.
>
> Nice historical detail.
It's both historical detail and me covering my tracks.
I have no idea what I was thinking when I originally
started the -r/-n contrast, almost 7 years ago. Most
of the time the -r is on intransitives whose agent is
either non-volitional, or is in some way affected by
the action. But occasionally, that's not the case at
all. And sometimes, groups which seem like they should
be uniform, aren't.
Example: fil "come" fil-i- "present-thematic"
ya "go" ya- "present-athematic"
fil-i-n "he/she comes"
ya-r "he/she goes"
I dont know why this is anymore! But I daren't change
it, I like it so much.
~Elliott
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