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There are 21 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Go and come
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: !Kung phoneme inventory.
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: TECH: just a few questions
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Translation: Thoughts on a still night
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Translation: Thoughts on a still night
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. in Pinyin?
From: Jean-Franois Colson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: in Pinyin?
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Constructive linguistics
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Babel Text in Ayeri (With sound file!)
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: CONCULTURE: some Old Albic calendar and mythology stuff
From: Jrg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Stack-based syntax (was: affixes)
From: Jrg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: CONCULTURE: some Old Albic calendar and mythology stuff
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Constructive linguistics
From: Jrg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Fwd: Translation: Thoughts on a still night
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. CHAT This may amuse...
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Fwd: Translation: Thoughts on a still night
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Constructive linguistics
From: Jim Grossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: stress
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Constructive linguistics
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Constructive linguistics
From: Jim Grossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Constructive linguistics
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 11:55:29 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Go and come
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 07:00:31 +0000, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The verb survives into modern Greek, but with only two stems:
> /erx- /'present stem' with middle voice endings.
> /erT- / 'aorist stem' with active voice endings.
Perhaps more precisely, /erT- / ~ /elT- /, with the form with /r/
being a more formal register and the one with /l/ more colloquial.
> In modern Greek "go" is /p'jeno/ "I go"
/pi'jeno/ (you seem to have dropped an /i/?)
> (no infinitive in M. Greek) with aorist /'pija/ "I went".
Well, I'd say /'piGa/, since |g| before back vowels is [G]. Though you
could write it as /pigeno/, /piga/, since it's the same phoneme
TTBOMK, but I wouldn't use /j/ as the symbol for that single phoneme.
There's also /'pao/ for "to go". I'm not sure on what basis speakers
select between /pa-/ and /pigen-/ in the present. The future is always
/(Ta) 'pao/, though.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 13:01:35 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: !Kung phoneme inventory.
Hi!
Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>...
> affricated click [=s]
What? How's that pronounced? I'd expect an affricate at the velum
for an affricated click: /=kx/ or something. How can the
affricate/fricative be homorganic with the primary place of
articulation of the click??
**Henrik
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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 23:09:47 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: just a few questions
On 21 Feb 2005, at 9.12 pm, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 17:31:59 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I know you are able to send more than five messages per day:
>
> Is this "you" the second person singular pronoun, referring to Henrik?
> Or is it the "generic you" meaning "one, someone, anyone, all of us"?
>
> At first I thought you meant meaning #2, but you probably meant #1
> instead.
If it had've meant the second, it would've been 'you're'. At least
to/by me, 'you are' can only be used if one element or the other is
stressed, otherwise it sounds too much like 'you were'. (It could of
course have the same meaning with 'you're', in fact that's what I first
wrote, but I changed my mind and thought I'd make it clearer by adding
stress.) In any case, it obviously can't be generic, because we *can't*
send more than five, only the list owners can.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 4
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:53:31 +0900
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Translation: Thoughts on a still night
"Thoughts on a still night" is a poem by a great Chinese poet Li Bai:
http://www.chinese-poems.com/lb4.html
So, here's my translation to Haran Lamim:
* In romanization of native orthography
joyongin mabhe niegim
jacar uhen grabin ladi cibinde / hathe ranin sengeira niegynta
rimiar lydbe grabin ladar boko / rimiar gusbe bijar gyrynta
* In Hangul!
조용인 맙허 녀김
자차르 우헌 그라빈 라디 치빈더 / 핱허 `라닌 성에라 녀근타
`리먀르 륻베 그라빈 라다르 보코 / `리먀르 굿베 비자르
그른타
* In X-SAMPA
[dz2joNin map@ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
dzatsar [EMAIL PROTECTED] grabin ladi tSibind@ hathe raJin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
rimjar l1dbe grabin ladar boko rimjar gusve bidzar g1r1nta]
* Orthography note
In addition to
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0502b&L=conlang&F=&S=&P=10862
- I before vowel is [j].
- Y between vowel is also [j], but also affects preceding vowel. For example,
Underlying [oio] becomes [2jo].
- [j] still palatalizes preceding consonant.
- [h] unvoices preceding consonant
- [s] turns next consonant to fricative, if possible.
In Hangul, ` is to indicate that initial ㄹ is [r], not [l]. Elsewhere,
[r] is writeen ㄹ and
[l] is written ㄹㄹ. Ambiguity: -r and -ry is written same: 르. ㅡ is an
epenthetic vowel
in Korean.
* In too-much-literal translation
Quiet night's thoughts
Above sleepplace shines brightened moon / Thinking it is earth fallen frost
Lifting head I see brightened moon / Dropping head I long for home
* Interlinear
joyong-in mab-he nieg-im
quiet.ADJ night.LOC think.NOM
ja-car u-he-n grab-in lad-i cib-inde
sleep.PLACE above.LOC.TOPIC bright.ADJ moon.SUBJ shine.WHILE
hat-he ran-in senge-ra nieg-y-n-ta
earth.LOC fall.ADJ frost.CALL think.SEP.1P.END
rimi-ar lyd-be grab-in lad-ar bo-ko
head.OBJ lift.BY bright.ADJ moon.OBJ see.CONT
rimi-ar gus-ve bij-ar gyr-y-n-ta
head.OBJ drop.BY home.OBJ long.SEP.1P.END
Seo Sanghyeon
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Message: 5
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:59:46 +0900
From: Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Translation: Thoughts on a still night
Shoot, lots of [EMAIL PROTECTED] and ei[e] confusion... This shows that I still
associate letter
"e" with [e] too strongly.
I wrote:
> `리먀르 륻베 그라빈 라다르 보코 / `리먀르 굿베 비자르
> 그른타
Should be `리먀르 륻버 그라빈 라다르 보코 / `리먀르 굿버
비자르 그른타
> dzatsar [EMAIL PROTECTED] grabin ladi tSibind@ hathe raJin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[hathe] should be [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> rimjar l1dbe grabin ladar boko rimjar gusve bidzar g1r1nta]
[l1dbe] and [gusve] should be [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> hat-he ran-in senge-ra nieg-y-n-ta
> earth.LOC fall.ADJ frost.CALL think.SEP.1P.END
"senge" should be "sengei" as in the above.
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Message: 6
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 14:22:34 +0100
From: Jean-Franois Colson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: in Pinyin?
Hi all
On
http://www.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?lang=zh_r+Chinese&script=romanization
I read that the letter E with circumflex is used in Pinyin.
Is that a mistake?
If that's true, what's its use?
JF
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Message: 7
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:08:17 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: in Pinyin?
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 14:22:34 +0100, Jean-Franois Colson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On
> http://www.eki.ee/letter/chardata.cgi?lang=zh_r+Chinese&script=romanization
> I read that the letter E with circumflex is used in Pinyin.
> Is that a mistake?
> If that's true, what's its use?
I believe it's used for the "e" sound in "ye" (as opposed to the "e"
sound in "ke, le, ne").
In Zhuyin Fuhao ("Bopomofo"), those two sounds have separate letters
(and "ye" is written "i" + "", while e.g. "ke" is written "k" + "e"),
and I believe that "" is used as the name of that letter, though I
think it occurs only in the syllables "ye" and "yue" and not by itself
(whereas "e" does occur on its own).
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 8
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 10:53:11 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Constructive linguistics
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Grossmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Hello!
>
> I don't see the artlang becoming the subject of an academic discipline any
> time soon either.
Wow! What is this post in response to? Did I miss or delete something?
> As others have pointed out, conlangs are probably irrelevant to academic
> linguistics.
Weeks ago? I was nomail, then.
> FWIU (from what I understand), they aren't useful in testing
> the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis.
So what? Isn't that a little over-rated?
FWIU, despite the fact that some conlangs
> violate alleged linguistic universals, conlangs have yet to confront
> linguists with phenomena that are as interesting as a) grammatical
> structures found in natural languages or b) hypothetical nonce-grammars
> that
> could be generated using sophisticated mathematics/computer models.
True. They are of interest to scholars in other domains, though.
Philosophy for one thing. Psychology for another.
> As for the humanities, I think that artngs stand at odds with the aims of
> traditional literature, which generally aspires to express the most
> individual outlooks in ways that make them interesting to a larger
> population. In the process of conlanging, facts that are already
> interesting to a large population (everyone from professional linguists to
> weekend language-trivia buffs) are used in the service of an almost purely
> private endeavor.
How do you explain, then, Rasula and McCaffrey's _Imagining Language_? Or
the popularity of Eco's _Search for the Perfect Language_? Or Tolkien as
literature, including some of his Elvish songs? True, those enthusiasts are
in a definite minority, I'll grant you that, but they are there.
> Witness our own list. We share information that, in one way or another,
> is
> helpful to the individual conlanger. We share information about natlangs,
> linguistic theory, whether or not something has already been done in a
> conlang, and solutions to problems that arise in conlanging.
> We help conlangers do their thing.
>
> What we don't do is acquire significant expertise in each other's
> conlangs.
> There's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather have some help in building my
> own conlang than spend two years learning to speak and read and write in
> someone else's. So would a lot of other people.
That's because one of the profiles of a conlanger is that he works in
isolation, basically. What interests him is the production of his OWN
unique conlang. That's also because of the very nature of this art: it
cannot be easily acquired. Composers learn and play the compositions of
other composers. Artists go to galleries and look at other artists' work.
Writers read other writers' novels. But acquiring a language takes a lot
longer. It's a pity that our brains are not wired for rapid learning of a
language (I know a few people who are exceptions, though), but the best
remedy for that is total immersion. So conlanging in its present condition
makes that impossible: how are we to acquire another artist's invented
language when there are a) relatively few soundbytes--I could count on a
hand and a half the conlangers who post .mp3 samples on their pages, and
even that isn't enough; b) no global environment to practice it in,
including other speakers of the language?
In an Internet future, I imagine a much better technical environment.
Perhaps virtual reality, the ability to create virtual persons that will
converse with you, take you through an invented city, introduce you to the
activities there, correct your mistakes.
Imagining getting to design something like that through Dreamweaver Virtual
Plus!
> All I'm saying is that it's hard to imagine an academic study of
> conlanging
> as literature when even the practitioners of conlanging know only their
> own
> conlangs and don't seem to need opinions about the tendencies, virtues,
> and
> values embodied across conlangs.
Again, I'm interested in the source of this post. Conlanging as literature,
now?
> In fairness to artlangers who do have literary aspirations, artlang poetry
> and prose has, IMO, more to recommended it than so-called "language
> poetry"
> which, AFAIK, isn't written in any language.
Including, among many things, the weird phenomenon of Zaum. And of course,
any musical presentation of a conlang, such as Urban Trad and Ekova. There,
of course, the music is what speaks to the auditor.
More than this, perhaps the
> *act* of inventing an artlang could be seen as a kind of performance art;
> an artistic assertion of individuality, a refusal to be swallowed up by
> the
> world at large.
> Personally, I've always thought of conlanging as a craft, like scrimshaw.
> Or model railroad building, as Jeff Henning suggested?
>
> I like the model railroad analogy to a point--but it has one defect. A
> model railroad mimics, as much as possible, that thing that it's a model
> of.
> The topography can be purely imaginary, and the route unnaturally short,
> but
> otherwise, the more realistic the model train set, the more esteemed it
> is.
True. Or the miniature house. I've seen miniatures that amazed me: the one
I liked best was a miniature Green and Green house, with details so minute
that it knocked my eyes out of my head: the water stain in the little retro
sink, for instance. The little black and white hexagonal tiles in the
bathroom, one of them missing. The persian rug in the study. The worn
carpet on the stairs.
> There isn't any tradition that constrains conlanging in this way.
What about Tolkien, though? He seemed very constrained, compared to what
you speak of below. And there are a host of conlangs devoted to this kind
of realistic restraint. Ill Bethisad?
> Hence our discussion about putting tenses on nouns instead of verbs.
> Hence
> the fact that a conlang is not considered less worthy if it lacks the kind
> of irregular forms typically found in natural languages. Hence attempts
> to
> design conlangs with more cases or conjugations than one finds in any
> natural language.
An analogy in the art world would be fantasy art, perhaps, or surrealism.
> Yes, with enough knowledge of real languages, we can strive to write a
> conlang reference grammar that could pass for the reference grammar of an
> obscure dialect or the recently discovered descendent of some dead
> language.
> We can do that, but we don't have to.
Having to do it seems irrelevant, though. What do you mean? (This seems to
be a reference to something I missed)
> Yes, with enough knowledge of the current linguistics literature, we can
> strive to create a unique language whose reference grammar could,
> nonetheless, pass as the reference grammar for a natural human language.
> We can do that, but we don't have to.
Again, what do you mean by "we don't have to"? Are you speaking of art vs.
scholarship?
> If model railroad building were more like conlanging,
SOME conlanging...
> the signs could be
> replaced with scary idols, the station could look like a psychedelic
> seashell, the ties on the tracks could be colorful little things with
> runes
> painted on them, and the trains could be wheeled ovoids and/or polyhedrons
> adorned with feathers, fur, scales, or miniature roofing shingles, along
> with the occasional eyes and antennae. Or the set could look more
> realistic, but that would be up to the model builder.
Hmmm. All very intriguing remarks, Jim. I'm put in mind of _Robot_, an
animated film yet to come out which already has a book on it at Borders. It
imagines a world of robots, where everything is made of metal, but imitates
natural cities, and natural landscapes, and of course human beings.
Everything is slightly retro; everything has a machine orientation, and yet
it is strangely beautiful and endlessly intriguing.
Or even better: Dark City, by Alex Proyas. Here is a city afloat in space,
but invented by aliens. It is meant to imitate a real human city, but it is
cartoonish and nightmarish, and for some reason fascinating to me. Nothing
quite fits: the cars, the telephones, the automats, are all from various
decades, and it is eternally night. Roads won't get you to Shell Beach.
I've often mused that a conlang is a little like this: it is incomplete in
the way this city is; it is invented in the way this city is; and it is
always under a false and magical kind of construction: buildings suddenly
torque up out of the ground and everything is shifted, the people's memories
redesigned to think that the world is the same as it was.
My own conculture is meant to imitate human cities, and yet I deliberately
try to make it exotic. I want people who visit it to feel as though they
are in something foreign, and I want my constructed language to give them
the same sense of having met with foreigners. And yet, like Dark City, it
imitates familiar things.
I imagine that the Elvish languages and worlds of Tolkien had the same
effect on people who first met them. I don't think conlanging as an art is
dead, YET... it may become so common to us that we think it is. But we are
immersed in it.
Sally/Sarah
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Message: 9
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 17:31:19 +0100
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Babel Text in Ayeri (With sound file!)
Hey!
On Sunday 20 February 2005 17:45 +0100, Christian Thalmann
wrote:
> When tracking the MP3 with the PDF text, I noticed the
> surprising penultimate stress on those long words in -ea,
> which I'm tempted to parse as antepenultimate as in
> Quenya. The Elvenness is palpable, though there's a
> distinct taste of Polynesian to it. :)
Oh, Quenya does that, too? I didn't know that. I didn't even
intend "Elvenness". I just wanted to have something that is
quite pleasing. The _-ea_ ["ea] at the end of words is the
locative ending. When a locative object is triggered, this
ending is drawn in front of the word, being currently
pronounced [jA], also in compound with the relative pronoun
_s-_.
> (Note: Seeing how the long words split up into morphemes
> helps a lot, and also clarifies why the -ea words have to
> be stressed on that e. ;o)
It's two syllables.
> I like all those /j/s, though. Again, an Elven touch.
This is because the 3rd person animate pronoun is basically
_-iyV(t/n)_. The "V" stands for a variable vowel that is
attached to a 3rd person. In the plural, a _-t_ is added to
this when there is something following, and _-n_ is added
if nothing follows, since words cannot end in [t]. As I
said, I didn't intend so very much Elvishness.
On Monday 21 February 2005 00:32 +0100, Roger Mills wrote:
> Very nice, and very fluently spoken. To my unpracticed
> ear, it sounds far more "South Indian" than "Southeast
> Asian= Indonesian or Philippine"-- possibly because you
> are speaking so fast... Is there any way you could slow
> it down?
O:-) Maybe taking the file and run it through some kind of
filter to make it slower? I've tried that earlier, but it
kind of screwd up the recording because there was this
aweful high whistling noise you also have when a music mp3
is encoded with a too low bitrate. At least something in
that direction.
However, I have uploaded the file under the same name again,
but with the speed 10% decreased. The filter I used made
the pitch keeping the same, so my voice isn't distorted
either. The result is astonishingly good, without all the
noise I mentioned. Well, that noise refers to this old
version of Goldwave I mentioned (v4.02 from 1998).
> As a Sixth Former I was called upon once to read the
> Lesson in Chapel, and during the rehearsal the instructor
> kept telling me "Slow down, slow down!!"
Teachers tell me this everytime I read somthing out. It's
especially the case with poems.
> Now I'm getting fired up, finally, to do some Kash
> recordings. I guess I'll have to translate Babel, perhaps
> as an inclusion in a Kash "Intro. to Alien Religions",
> with commentary to explain _God_.
Actually, I haven't done work on that. I simply set that
"nahang" means "person of high rank", i.e. "lord".
Carsten
--
Edatamanon le matahanar benenoea ena 15-A7-58-11-2-6-2A ena
Curan Tertanyan.
http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri
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Message: 10
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 20:45:40 +0100
From: Jrg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CONCULTURE: some Old Albic calendar and mythology stuff
Hallo!
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:34:36 -0800,
bob thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Comments? Undeserved praise?
>
>
> No offence meant, but it seems a little...Tolkien-ey
Yes, I am aware of that. The whole thing owes quite a bit to the
Silmarillion, though this is mostly due to taking over the
Judaeo-Christian model of a single god with ranks of angels below
him, including Lucifer/Morgoth's rebellion.
Greetings,
Jrg.
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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:12:56 +0100
From: Jrg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Stack-based syntax (was: affixes)
Hallo!
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 19:09:57 +0000,
Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Saturday, February 19, 2005, at 11:01 , # 1 wrote:
>
> > [adjectives in a stack-based language]
>
> Three points here:
> - the category 'adjective' is by no means universal. As Trask says of
> adjectives "A lexical category, or a lexical item belonging to this
> category, found in many, though not all, languages...."
> - you are lumping together into one category groups of words which are
> trated differently in some languages.
> - in any case, I would consider many of these items (certainly descriptive
> adjectives) to be bound to their noun by a binary operator, say: beauty,
> city, REL = a city [which is] beautiful/ a beautiful city.
>
> I am strongly of the opinion that if one is going to construct a truly
> stack-based syntax one simply has to think in terms quite different from
> traditional western 'parts of speech'.
Maybe. Fith still has nouns and verbs, though. But at least,
adjectives and adverbs are one and the same in Fith. The difference
is merely what is on top the stack, an NP or a clause.
> > Articles would also work that way to tell the definiteness of the noun
>
> _Many_ languages do not have articles. I believe in fact the majority do
> not. So I think one needs to ask whether they would figure at all.
Yep. I think Fith has articles, though, which are indeed unary
operators.
> > Case marks would act that way with a single noun
>
> Surely not! Is not the whole point of case markings that they show how the
> noun/pronoun _relates_ to some other part of the sentence (usually the
> verb). As I see it, the the case markings are binary operators.
Yes. Case markers in Fith are binary operators: they take the NP
on top of the stack and the item (phrase or clause) below it, and
knit them together.
> > And the intransitive verbs also because they only affect one noun
>
> I do not see how a lexical category like verb should act as an operator.
> Isn't it something more like: singing, John, NOM = John is singing?
It is a question of semantics. In Fith, verbs are indeed operators.
Intransitive verbs are unary operators, transitive verbs are binary
operators. Perhaps more "part-of-speech" thinking involved here
than there should be.
> > Other operators will simply link two arguments in different ways like
> > conjonctions and other in more sophisticated ways like transitive verbs.
>
> I would see a transitive verb more like: (John NOM (loving ACC Jennifer))
> which in postifix (stack-based) form would be: John, loving, Jennifer, ACC,
> NOM.
Yes, that's more elegant. Keeping content words and operators nicely
apart.
> [...]
>
> > On Sunday, February 20, 2005, at 03:56 , # 1 wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > Isn't exactly as an SOV, postpositionnal, noun-adj language?
>
> IMO no - not exactly. Certainly such a language might be a good place to
> start.
A stack-based language is not only "not exactly" an "SOV,
postpositional,
noun-adj language", it is *not at all*. It lies wholly outside the
range of human language structures. A simple clause in a stack-based
language may perhaps look like one in an SOV, postpositional, noun-adj
language (as a simple clause in Fith indeed looks like), but that
resemblance is merely superficial, because the clause is parsed in an
utterly different way from *any* human language.
> [snip]
> > As I see it, a LIFO grammar is only a complicated way to explain a grammar
> > that is explainable in traditional way?
>
> No. A language with a truly stack-based syntax would not IMO be easily
> explained in terms of traditional western grammar.
Certainly not. Because it works in a way no human language works.
> >
> > A sentence like:
> >
> > dog the big cat your small love = the big dog loves your small cat
>
> But this doesn't clearly separate lexical items and operators. This would
> imply, for example, that 'love' is a combination of lexical item and
> operator. IMO in a truly stack-based system, lexical items and operators
> should be kept distincr.
That would at least be more elegant. However, in Fith, verbs are
operators as well as lexical items, as in the example sentence above.
> [...]
>
> > But it could also be a LIFO sentence with "the", "your", "big", and
> > "small"
> > being simple operators
>
> IMO neither 'big' nor 'small' can be _simple_ operators. They are surely
> lexical items and need an operator to link them to some other lexical item.
As with verbs, Fith's "modifiers" (which perform as adjectives or
adverbs, depending what's beneath them on the stack) are both lexemes
and operators.
> [...]
>
> I too know very little about Fith, except that the name was inspired by
> the programming language called FORTH which uses 'Reversed Polish' or
> post-fix notation.
Yes.
> If I was challenged to produce a language stack-based syntax, I would
> certainly use a model that confined itsel to binary operators with, maybe,
> a few unary operators. It occurs to me that Lin's "cements" are indeed
> binary operators. It even has order of precedence in that 'internal
> cements' bind more closely than 'external cements'. Indeed Lin could
> easily be transformed into a stack-based system, e.g. u_f+h --> ufh+_
> (You see the bird).
>
> IIRC the operators in Tom Breton's AllNoun are binary. Um - I had better
> look out my notes.
>
> IMO with a stack-based syntax, lexical items are literals and operators
> make explicit how the literals relate to one another.
Yes, that would be indeed much more elegant than Jeffrey's Fith.
Greetings,
Jrg.
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Message: 12
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:11:54 -0500
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CONCULTURE: some Old Albic calendar and mythology stuff
On Feb 21, 2005, at 2:45 PM, Jrg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
> On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:34:36 -0800,
> bob thornton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Comments? Undeserved praise?
>> No offence meant, but it seems a little...Tolkien-ey
> Yes, I am aware of that. The whole thing owes quite a bit to the
> Silmarillion, though this is mostly due to taking over the
> Judaeo-Christian model of a single god with ranks of angels below
> him, including Lucifer/Morgoth's rebellion.
> Greetings,
> Jrg.
Just a little point of information - there isn't really anything
"Judaeo-" about that cosmological system. Unless you leave out the
Lucifer/Morgoth's rebellion part, and just say "model of a single god[,
possibly] with ranks of angels below him".
-Stephen (Steg)
"i solemnly swear that i am up to no good!"
~ harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban
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Message: 13
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:29:54 +0100
From: Jrg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Constructive linguistics
Hallo!
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 22:23:41 -0800,
Jim Grossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I don't see the artlang becoming the subject of an academic discipline any
> time soon either.
Nor do I; the academic world today is too obsessed with "applicability"
to leave much room for such Castalian pursuits.
> As others have pointed out, conlangs are probably irrelevant to academic
> linguistics. FWIU (from what I understand), they aren't useful in testing
> the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis.
Few linguists give a damn on that hypothesis today, I think.
> [...]
>
> Personally, I've always thought of conlanging as a craft, like scrimshaw.
> Or model railroad building, as Jeff Henning suggested?
>
> I like the model railroad analogy to a point--but it has one defect.
Well, *all* analogies only capture certain aspects of the matter
described while failing in others.
> A
> model railroad mimics, as much as possible, that thing that it's a model of.
> The topography can be purely imaginary, and the route unnaturally short, but
> otherwise, the more realistic the model train set, the more esteemed it is.
>
> There isn't any tradition that constrains conlanging in this way.
There is. It is called the "naturalist school", as epitomized by
the languages of J.R.R. Tolkien or, closer to the present, the
Ill Bethisad and League of Lost Languages shared-world projects.
It is only less dominant than its counterpart in model railroading.
> If model railroad building were more like conlanging, the signs could be
> replaced with scary idols, the station could look like a psychedelic
> seashell, the ties on the tracks could be colorful little things with runes
> painted on them, and the trains could be wheeled ovoids and/or polyhedrons
> adorned with feathers, fur, scales, or miniature roofing shingles, along
> with the occasional eyes and antennae. Or the set could look more
> realistic, but that would be up to the model builder.
Yes. Some conlangs are built to resemble human natlangs, others not.
And while there are rather few model railroaders who build psychedelic
fantasy model railroads like the one you describe, there is a sizeable
faction of "techy" model railroaders who are interested solely in the
mechanics and electronics and don't care about crafting a realistic
landscape for their model railroad. These could be compared to
people like And Rosta or Henrik Theiling.
Greetings,
Jrg.
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Message: 14
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 20:27:13 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: Translation: Thoughts on a still night
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"Thoughts on a still night" is a poem by a great Chinese poet Li Bai:
http://www.chinese-poems.com/lb4.html
So, here's my translation to Haran Lamim:
* In romanization of native orthography
joyongin mabhe niegim
jacar uhen grabin ladi cibinde / hathe ranin sengeira niegynta
rimiar lydbe grabin ladar boko / rimiar gusbe bijar gyrynta
* In Hangul!
조용인 맙허 녀김
자차르 우헌 그라빈 라"" 치빈" / 핱허 `라닌 성
라 녀근타
`리먀르 륻베 그라빈 라다르 보" / `리먀르 굿베
비자르 그른타
* In X-SAMPA
[dz2joNin map@ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
dzatsar [EMAIL PROTECTED] grabin ladi tSibind@ hathe raJin [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
rimjar l1dbe grabin ladar boko rimjar gusve bidzar g1r1nta]
* Orthography note
In addition to http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?
A2=ind0502b&L=conlang&F=&S=&P=10862
- I before vowel is [j].
- Y between vowel is also [j], but also affects preceding vowel. For
example,
Underlying [oio] becomes [2jo].
- [j] still palatalizes preceding consonant.
- [h] unvoices preceding consonant
- [s] turns next consonant to fricative, if possible.
In Hangul, ` is to indicate that initial ㄹ is [r], not [l].
Elsewhere,
[r] is writeen ㄹ and
[l] is written ㄹㄹ. Ambiguity: -r and -ry is written same: 르.
is an
epenthetic vowel
in Korean.
* In too-much-literal translation
Quiet night's thoughts
Above sleepplace shines brightened moon / Thinking it is earth fallen
frost
Lifting head I see brightened moon / Dropping head I long for home
* Interlinear
joyong-in mab-he nieg-im
quiet.ADJ night.LOC think.NOM
ja-car u-he-n grab-in lad-i cib-inde
sleep.PLACE above.LOC.TOPIC bright.ADJ moon.SUBJ shine.WHILE
hat-he ran-in senge-ra nieg-y-n-ta
earth.LOC fall.ADJ frost.CALL think.SEP.1P.END
rimi-ar lyd-be grab-in lad-ar bo-ko
head.OBJ lift.BY bright.ADJ moon.OBJ see.CONT
rimi-ar gus-ve bij-ar gyr-y-n-ta
head.OBJ drop.BY home.OBJ long.SEP.1P.END
Seo Sanghyeon
--- End forwarded message ---
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Message: 15
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:17:43 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: CHAT This may amuse...
http://www.sps.edu/commoninc/pushpage/st_pauls_pushpage3.asp?send_id=28ec5141-7094-424f-bf48-70432bebd6aa&volume_id=1506&user_id=&mode=view&news_id=146585
eek. all one line, of course.
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Message: 16
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 22:00:40 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: Translation: Thoughts on a still night
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Sanghyeon Seo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"Thoughts on a still night" is a poem by a great Chinese poet Li Bai:
http://www.chinese-poems.com/lb4.html
My apologies for the previous posting. Hit the wrong key and you're
a dead man!!
Thanks for that wonderful site. I have long wanted some word-for-
word translations of Chinese texts. Those poems should last me a
long
time.
Here is my translation in Senyecan:
mos yos nta ten lxnen lxvi nelca
my bed-GEN.SG before the moon-NOM.SG bright-ADV it-shines-PRES.IMPERF.
nom ses rtes va rgom sa mumna
it-ACC.SG the earth-GEN.SG on frost-ACC.SG be-INF I-think-PRES.IMPERF.
sem clpem muvra; sem lcem lxnem muva
the head-ACC.SG I-raise-PRES.IMPERF; the bright moon-ACC.SG. I-
look.at-PRES.IMPERF
sem clpem mugva; tom nmom mumna
the head-ACC.SG I-lower-PRES.IMPERF; the home-ACC.SG I-think.of-
PRES.IMPERF
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 17
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 14:48:30 -0800
From: Jim Grossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Constructive linguistics
Hello!
Thanks, Joerg, for the corrections and an informative post.
Wouldn't it be neat if lots of people on this list posted names and
descriptions of their "school" (style, preferences, aims...) of conlanging?
It wouldn't result in the immediate founding of an academic department, but
it would be very interesting IMO.
Jim
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Message: 18
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 17:15:49 -0600
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: stress
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> #1 wrote:
> > I'm now trying to find a good way to create the stress for my
> > conlang. But I'd want it to be natural AND regular
>
> Maybe Tom Wier can help me out on the details, but in my opinion,
> the one and only thing optimality theory (OT) is good for is creating
> regular, interesting stress systems.
I'd say this is somewhat of an exaggeration. Basically, from
the perspective of classical generative phonology of the late
1960s and 70s, when you have a conspiracy of rules operating
across the lexicon, you don't have many tools at your disposal
to work with. That's why in the late 70s and and 80s, people
started to introduce constraints on rule ontogeny. Thus, although
a language might have four or five completely different repair
strategies for achieving an optimal syllable structure, if you
have a constraint in the grammar, then, the story goes, you're
capturing the generalization in some sort of formal device.
The problem was that it wasn't obvious how constraints themselves
came about (aside from purely functional reasons). The real
break of OT away from this tradition is in getting rid of
rule formalisms entirely: you simply have a constraint hierarchy
and a GEN function that map the input to and from the output
through potential output candidates.
> [Note: I don't mean that Tom should back
> me up on my opinion, but that I'm far removed from OT, and certainly
> don't want to look at it again, so what I'm about to explain might not
> be right.]
Well... I don't like OT much either, but for separate reasons.
Namely: even if you can reduce the candidate set to N^2 candidates
(where N is the number of constraints), as has recently been proven,
there's no reason at all to assume that this has some sort of
psychological reality. That is, if you take the psychological-reality
predictions of particular theories seriously, it just won't work, even
as a kind of algorithm whose output goes immediately into some kind of
memory storage system.
> According to OT, all stress systems are regular. If there's what
> looks like an irregularity in the language, it should fall out
> from ranked constraints, even if there's only one exception.
This is the ideal, yes, but I wouldn't say that most prosodic
phonologists think that you can eliminate underlying specification
of stress from all languages. This is particularly problematic for
stress-systems that arise from tonal systems, as in some Bantu
languages; I would think that tones are actually underlyingly
specified in most tonal languages. There is at least one dissertation
I can think of off the top of my head that deals with this issue:
John Alderete's, entitled _Morphologically Governed Accent in Optimality
Theory_, which mostly concerns Cupeno (Uto-Aztecan), but also some
Japanese and Russian data.
(For all who are interested, they will be able to find that dissertation
on the Rutgers Optimality Archive. If they have problems, I can upload
it to my website for downloading.)
Anyways, otherwise it was a pretty good synopsis of how OT views the
world.
==========================================================================
Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637
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Message: 19
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 18:22:17 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Constructive linguistics
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Grossmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Hello!
>
> Thanks, Joerg, for the corrections and an informative post.
>
> Wouldn't it be neat if lots of people on this list posted names and
> descriptions of their "school" (style, preferences, aims...) of
> conlanging?
>
> It wouldn't result in the immediate founding of an academic department,
> but
> it would be very interesting IMO.
>
> Jim
Shall I trot out my "Lunatic Survey" yet again, Jim? Maybe we're in need of
it, since so many of you are new since 1998 and 2000. :)
Sally
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Message: 20
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:44:23 -0800
From: Jim Grossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Constructive linguistics
Thanks, Dave, for your comments regarding models that can be used for what
they model and the question of why conlangs can have features that natural
languages never have.
1. I would be cautious about assuming mutual irrelevance between the
questions about the specification of grammatical rules and the question of
why natural languages don't have features that are easy to create in
conlangs.
Theoretically, the more scientific grammars for natural languages could be
written, the more generalizations could be made about the constraints on
natural languages, which in turn would prompt more theoretical models of
natural language. If one or more of the latter could explain the
constraints on natural languages--say, in terms of cognitive or evolutionary
factors--you'd have at least a provisional answer to the question of why we
can do things in conlangs that are never done in natural languages, right?
Practically, what with the disappearence of so many languages, and the fact
that so many varieties of language have yet to be studied, and the fact that
more missionaries than academic linguists learn newly documented languages,
I'm not implying anything about the likelihood of success or failure in the
theoretical quest I've described. Just that the questions mentioned above
might be related after all.
What is missing, I suppose, from the theoretical program is a good survey of
non-natural features found in invented languages. I don't know that the
survey would be crucial, but wouldn't it be helpful in eliminating any
confusion between possible natural languages and possible languages?
2. Your point about the widespread practice of reading each other's
grammars
for features is *very* well taken. I was way off base, there. We do read
each other's works, but we read them more like cookbooks than assembly
instructions, checking around for features we find interesting and
inspiring. I should do more of this.
I'm working on a language and wanted to do something creative with deletion.
Low and behold, I created mandatory deletion of any NP within a compound or
complex sentence that was identical to the subject of the first and/or
matrix clause. Well, I put that device aside when I found out that Matt
Pearson's Tokana contained a very similar device called "topic deletion."
AFAIK, no conlanger claims a copyright on an isolated feature, but I still
let the idea go because I wanted
to do something different.
What I wound up with was a language that doesn't allow much deletion at all,
but has two kinds of third person pronoun:
a) one third person subject pronoun with one invariant form, whose use is
mandatory where "topic deletion" used to be, and....
b) a whole bunch of third person non-subject pronouns, each having a
different implicit number and semantic class.
Someone probably already thought of that one too, if it isn't an ANLDTEW.
But I'll stick with it anyway.
Jim
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Message: 21
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:01:51 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Constructive linguistics
----- Original Message -----
From: "David J. Peterson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Jim wrote:
>
> <<
> I don't see the artlang becoming the subject of an academic discipline
> any
> time soon either.
> >>
>
> I don't either, but that has more to do with the sociology of academia,
> which is, it seems to me, not too different from the sociology of a
> child's
> playground with not enough balls and jumpropes to go around.
>
> Linguistics could never even entertain the thought of allowing
> conlinguistics
> into the field because it's small and not as respected as it should be.
> I'm
> sure that biologists and physicists still smirk at linguistics calling
> itself a
> science. Those who divvy up funding do, as well. Given that state of
> affairs, could linguistics allow something so "pointless and trivial" as
> conlanging to become a viable part of the field? No more than model
> train building could be a viable part of an urban planning department.
I'm wondering if your sense of linguistics as a field, David, conflicts with
my sense of linguistics as a field--which to me has many branches that share
roots with anthropology, pragmatics, philosophy, and history.
> Jim wrote:
>
> <<
> As for the humanities, I think that artngs stand at odds with the aims
> of
> traditional literature, which generally aspires to express the most
> individual outlooks in ways that make them interesting to a larger
> population.
> >>
>
> That's an odd summation. I wonder how many writers (serious writers)
> wrote so that everyone would read what they wrote. That's easy to
> believe in today's world, but not in the days of Milton and Spenser.
Actually, I think that divide is very strong in modern and contemporary
literature. Look at James Joyce. Could he have done what he did in
Finnegans Wake in the 1600s? I rub shoulders constantly with writers in my
department who look down on "genre" writing, considered easy to grasp, dull,
bad, and caters to the masses and who elevate "literary writing" because it
is complex, difficult, obscure, caters to the intellectual few, and takes
narrative and rhetorical risks (which genre writing is assumed not to do,
being convention bound and "intelligible.").
> No, I don't agree with that at all--not even with the "generally" in
> there.
Ditto.
> Jim wrote:
>
> <<
> What we don't do is acquire significant expertise in each other's
> conlangs.
> There's nothing wrong with that. I'd rather have some help in building
> my
> own conlang than spend two years learning to speak and read and write in
> someone else's. So would a lot of other people.
> >>
>
> That's because the method of expression for a conlang is *not* a TY
> manual.
Exactly.
> What we show are on webpages. We show nominal and verbal paradigms;
> phonologies; syntactic structures; short texts. This is our medium.
> Now
> ask the question: How many conlangers look at the phonologies of other
> conlangs? How many go through texts with interlinears? How many
> look at noun declensions and verb paradigms?
Good point! What seems interesting is that an invented language is admired
by other language inventors for design purposes--not for usage purposes.
Scrutiny is certainly there. (Should've thought of that in my previous
post.):)
I know I do. I look at a
> *lot*. I remember a lot, too. I know without going to a webpage that I
> like the look and feel of Ea Luna; that I like the intricacy of
> Skerre's verbal
> system; that the sentence structure of amman iar, though not usual,
> strikes me as quite natural. I could go on. So, no, we don't learn
> others'
> languages; that's not the point. The point is this: Through language,
> one
> communicates. One can communicate in a straight-forward manner; one
> can communicate in a flowery manner. One can communicate using no
> nouns; one can communicate using no verbs. One can communicate
> using a maximum or minimum of specificity. The question is *how*.
Well, starting with the Internet, for one thing. That's something I've
always stressed. Our conlangs have intelligibility to each other because of
this particular medium. But I digress.
> THAT is what's interesting. Given an infinity of experience, I find it
> interesting to see what particular aspects of, say, an action a language
> decides to focus on. For example, one thing that no natural language
> would ever encode on a verb is the color of a speaker's shirt. But a
> language *could*. I find that interesting.
Indeed! And is that a linguistic point or a philosophical one?
In fact, I find it more
> interesting
> than a stupid computer which can correctly predict why "We saw Sally's
> pictures of ourselves" is grammatical, whereas "Sally's pictures of
> ourselves
> are interesting" is not. That, I find to be incredibly uninteresting,
> and
> utterly pointless. Yet THIS is what people study!? THIS is what tax
> dollars
> get spent on!? I'd rather see a department of model train building.
LAUGHING OUT LOUD! All good points, David!
> Jim wrote:
>
> <<
> Personally, I've always thought of conlanging as a craft, like
> scrimshaw.
> Or model railroad building, as Jeff Henning suggested?
> >>
>
> I've always thought this was not a very good analogy for many reasons.
> A short list:
>
> (1) Model trains, as Jim points out, are intended to necessarily be
> realistic.
> Conlangs need not be.
Agreed.
> (2) Realism aside, the goal of a model train maker is to make the train
> and landscape look *exactly* like an actual landscape and an actual
> train.
Or a close proximation.
> This is not the goal of a conlanger. Even if a conlanger wanted a
> conlang
> that looked and felt like Latin, they would never design Latin. That
> would be pointless and not at all fun. Yet, this is the goal of the
> model
> train maker--only to do so in a smaller size. This doesn't carryover to
> conlanging.
Right. There are spatial issues to consider, here, as well. What makes a
miniature charming is that it is miniature. An exact miniature replica of a
Green and Green mansion is charming. What would be the point, though, of an
exact full-sized replica of a Green and Green mansion except to live in it?
or use it as a film set? Invented languages don't take up space in that
way, or employ mimesis in that way. You can't make an *exact* miniature of
Latin, for instance. So the metaphor is faulty.
If it did, then a good conlang would look *exactly* like
> Latin, to a T, only with fewer words, and maybe not as many affixes.
Gee, that was hidden by the window, and just now popped up as I wrote. You
and I think alike! Except that my sense of "exact" excludes even the
reduction of vocabulary and affixes.
We've talked before about the ludicrous fantasy of the "exact" map: one that
is the size of the land it maps. Wasn't that Borges who came up with that?
> (3) No matter how good a model train is, a human can get on a model
> train and ride it.
Did you mean a human *can't* get on a model train? I'm assuming you mean
the really little ones, as opposed to the little trains you ride around in
at theme parks. :)
Interesting stuff about Zamenhoff snipped.
> (4) The main point of making a model train is imitation. The main
> of creating a language is creation. Even if one is trying to make a
> language that looks/feels like another specific language, the goal
> is still creation, because imitation would be too easy, since you could
> simply copy the real language word for word. You can't do that
> with a train.
Well... you do it with a car below.
> If you want to stick with a transportational metaphor, a far better
> analogy would be trick cars. Ever seen a shown on MTV called
> Pimp My Ride? My cousin was actually on it. He bought some
> junky old VW bus (that had no vin number, by the way, and had
> never been registered), and MTV had a crew take it to a custom
> shop in LA and they "tricked it out", so to speak. They painted
> it, added a motorized surfboard rack, a plasma TV with a Playstation,
> a blender (for some reason), a dryer (for clothes), a sofa, and a
> little switch which caused a little sign on the side of his car to pop
> out which says "CHILL". The car still drives, though (unless the
> battery dies, which happens frequently), and that is its purpose.
> That's what language creation is like. And here, they just refurbished
> the car, so this would be kind of like creating a euroclone. What
> about creating a solar powered car? A car with three wheels? A car
> with sixteen switches? A two-storied car? A car that was a gigantic
> wheel? Now this is getting more into what conlanging is like.
> And you know what? Sometimes these fancy cars don't get good
> mileage. Sometimes they can't move three feet. So it is with
> created language.
Twinky reference swallowed, but with definite pleasure.
> Back to the point about conlinguistics in academia, conlanging *does*
> have something to tell linguistics, but maybe not as much, given
> the main empirical questions of the field. At the same time, though,
> linguistics does have a few things to tell conlanging, but not as
> much as I think one would assume. Linguistics is the study of
> languages, not language. Many linguists know a lot about sounds,
> semantics, morphology, etc., but they don't know a lot about
> language, in my experience.
Or, rather, they sometimes don't learn foreign languages to speak them.
This is why I find attending a language
> class much more useful and fulfilling than attending a linguistics
> class, most of the time. You learn more by doing. And that's
> what language creation is, like it or not: Doing language.
> Languaging. For this reason, if language creation were ever to
> enter into academia, I think it should be its own department.
Amen! :)
Could
> that ever happen? Maybe if a conlanger wins the lottery and
> were so inclined. What are the odds on that, math people...?
I buy a ticket every week! :-\
Sally
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