------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
In low income neighborhoods, 84% do not own computers.
At Network for Good, help bridge the Digital Divide!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/EA3HyD/3MnJAA/79vVAA/GSaulB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: ANNOUNCE: My new conlang S11
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Swearing in other cultures (was Langmaker.com and...)
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: ANNOUNCE: My new conlang S11
From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: ANNOUNCE: My new conlang S11
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. [NATLANG] Moro Configurationality
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 16:25:22 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sally Caves wrote:
>> Ah, but that's so dull! We're all of us natlangers, too. None of us
>> DON'T
>> speak a natural language. The point was to put us in a special category,
(self-correction... that should be "DOESN'T)
Joe:
> Well, we are in a special category. 'Conlangers'. 'Natlangers' is
> simply the natural opposition to that.
There's nothing "natural" or even "simple" or logical about that opposition.
We all speak natural languages, just like the nonlangers/soolers, or what
have you do. It's not as though we don't speak natural languages. It's an
addition, actually; not an opposition, as we are included among the
natlangers, in the way that poets are included among all writers.
Bryan Parry wrote:
> How about "Clangers".
OOH! Starting back in her chair. Are you referring to the (I think fairly
recent) psychiatric term "clanging," an employment of language based on
phonic connections rather than semantic ones--common example: "what do you
think of history?" "It's a mystery"--and often considered pathological if
that is one's only way of speaking or making connections? "Tell me about
your dream about the horse?" "I wouldn't endorse it." Where does that term
come from? "Clang, Clang, Clang went the trolley..." When I first read
about it, I was startled at its "phonic" connection to "conlangers." Not
that that means anything.
As for Sean's remark, this is just light-hearted, ludic, and whimsical, and
shouldn't be taken too seriously. What we do has already been established
as unusual, but part of all game-playing, I think; something that the
Ludicrous Survey reveals. We're not putting ourselves above anybody...
heck. Some nonlanger can come along and say "well I've just built the first
affordable and workable fuel-cell engine." What would such an engineer call
non-engineers?
The point IS to be ludicrous, within reason, which comes from L. ludus,
which means "play," "game." And in that sense we are totally normal, since
everybody plays.
Sally--whose vote is for "nonlangers" too. :)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 21:41:02 +0000
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers
Sally Caves wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>> Sally Caves wrote:
>>
>>> Ah, but that's so dull! We're all of us natlangers, too. None of us
>>> DON'T
>>> speak a natural language. The point was to put us in a special
>>> category,
>>
> (self-correction... that should be "DOESN'T)
Should it? That seems strange to me. I think you were right the first time.
I was just playing with the Natlang-Conlang distinction. Since a
Natlang is the opposite of a Conlang, a Natlanger should be the opposite
of a Conlanger. I wasn't being scientific, just facetious.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 22:45:26 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: My new conlang S11
Hi!
"H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 03:21:26AM +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> >...
> > Only my first conlang Fukhian had three core arguments, and I think
> > that was more a similarity I copied from langs I know than thinking
> > about it. In the next two major projects Tyl Sjok and Qthyn|gai, I
> > also started with three core cases, but instead of keeping them, I
> > dropped them in order to keep the number of grammar rules and ordering
> > constraints low.
>
> What kind of ordering constraints were you considering?
In Tyl Sjok, I wanted to have an isolating grammar that works by order
of the constituents. I decided that the 'verb' should separate
subject and objects and I chose SVO order. If I had had a third
argument, the problem would have been that two noun phrases would have
been next to each other and I feared that this would be hard to
understand, especially since 'noun noun' is a valid phrase and the
language is pro-drop, so I decided to have serial verb constructions
instead.
Eventually, however, I re-analysed the grammar and found that there
was only one open word class and that ordering was by control alone.
I reanalised the parse tree
(agent verb patient)
as
(agent (verb patient))
thus the agent has control over the verb and patient and and the verb
has control over the patient. To get to only one word class, this
became
(controller (controller controlled))
\__controlled_________/
Strange system, actually. There is only one grammar rule in Tyl Sjok
now (disregarding the particles that can optionally make the structure
unambiguous) and most of the documentation is my understanding and
interpretation of that rule. It reminded me of Ancient Chinese: the
grammar rules seem vague and most of the time when you try to describe
them, it's actually more like a very long interpretation instead of a
concise description. :-)
>...
> > neither globally, nor for each verb. I personally find the Lojban
> > argument system rather unsatisfactory.
>
> I've not looked at Lojban in detail, but from what I understand, it
> quite resembles many programming languages in the sense that functions
> (verbs) have a fixed number of arguments that are expected to be
> passed in a fixed order.
Yes, the basic order is
predicate arg_1 arg_2 ... arg_n.
You can drop trailing args without notification, but when dropping
arg_n when you want to mention arg_(n+i), i>=1, you need a special
SKIP particle.
>...
> A truly verbless lang should not need such circumlocutions.
I'm also not satisfied with these.
> One idea that just occurred to me is to use directional affixes on
> nouns (vaguely similar to Ebisédian), e.g.:
>
> I kick you --> my_foot you-TOWARDS
> You speak to me --> your_words me-TOWARDS
> The dog runs away --> dog here-FROM
> I leave the house --> I house-FROM
> I look at him --> my_eyes him-TOWARDS
Ha!:-) That looks like Fukhian! :-) By inspiration from Finnish, I had
three spatial cases (for 'at', 'from' and 'to') and from Russian I
stole that the copula could be dropped. You arrive at *exactly* the
same structure above (including word order!), and at least for the
motion verbs, the translation is very similar. Fukhian does have
verbs for 'to kick', though, (and uses them) so most sentences would
have a much more literal sense:
My food goes/comes to you.
My words go/come to your.
The dog goes away from here.
I go away from the house. ('out of' would be: 'away from the
interior of the house')
My eyes to/come to him.
>...
> Hmm, this is starting to look vaguely similar to your system. :-)
Adpositions and verbs are very similar anyway, yes, especially in SVC
languages like Chinese (yong = 'use' or 'with', gei = 'give' or 'to',
dao = 'arrive' or 'towards', etc.) That was one inspiration. :-)
BTW, I just love structures like 'hen3 you3 yong4' = '(it's) very
useful', lit. 'very has use', since this shows how vague word class
distinctions can be. :-)
> ... Every action is rationalized in terms of this model.
So that did work for all verbs?
>...
> Other verbs can be similarly rationalized. So far, I haven't come
> across any verb that doesn't fit into the model in some way.
>...
Really? Hmm, how do you translate:
'I cook water.'
What's the origin? Is this transfer of energy? :-)
'I am tired.'
This is a state, so what concept moves?
>...
> > Maybe it felt like Afrikaans, which has these great negation
> > complements which I copied into Da Mätz se Basa. :-))) Only for
> > each verb, not for negation.
>
> Does Afrikaans have something similar to the Tatari Faran complements?
> How do the negation complements work?
Quite simple: at the end of a negative clause, you have a final
repeated 'nie' = 'not'.
Positive:
Dit werk so.
This works so
'This works this way.'
Negative:
Dit werk nie so nie.
This works not so 'not'
'This doesn't work this way.'
Recently, we discussed some examples here when I was trying to figure
out how *exactly* the structure was.
>...
> > BTW, the evidence markers serves a second purpose in this lang: it
> > marks the start of a sub-clause, otherwise some maybe bad ambiguity
> > could arise. But with evidence as start marker and relative
> > particle at the end, it's properly bracketed.
>
> Wait, so the evidence markers always begin a sub-clause? So where is
> the matching relative particle for "JIT" in your example sentence
> "John JIT LU Mary MAT KHAN NI" ?
They mark the beginning of *any* clause, so also of the top-level
clause. In an embedded clause, this can be used to determine which is
the first noun.
>From your other posting:
> On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 03:57:09AM +0100, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> [...]
> > avoid this reference to roles. A role is simply defined by its verb.
> > There is no generic agent, there is someone who asks. There is no
> > generic patient, but only someone who is hit, etc.
> [...]
> I like this. But how would you translate something like "what are you
> doing today"? Or, "who did what?" Or, "what did he do to her?" Since
> there would not be a generic agent.
Hmm, good point! I'll have to be careful about generic verbs.
I did not want to say that the concept of a patient is *semantically*
lacking in the language. Only it's lacking in the hard-wired guts of
the grammar (e.g. no specific case-marking for the 'agent' role). And
it should be lacking at every level of the grammar, so that's why I
want to avoid regular derivation processes.
But just like in English, you could identify the entity in a sentence
that is the affected, the causer, the means, the location, etc., and
you could analytically talk about that, thus there will probably be
verbs that specify generic roles. So you could ask for these roles.
And as in English, there will be words for asking for verbs. :-)
The generalisation that has to take place is the same as in answering
'I will *eat*.' to '*What* will you *do*?' in English ('do' is the
generic action, 'eat' is the specific action.)
A generic 'do' will not have two arguments, that's correct, so there
is no direct equivalent of 'to do'. But unary 'to do' will exist,
e.g. expressing a generic 'undertaking', etc. And some other verb
would be 'to be affected by', 'to be an event', 'to be an action' etc.
Let's see the examples:
'what are you doing today'
-> 'Do' probably means 'to undertake' here, so the basic structure
would be something like:
'which INTERROG be-event you undertake this-day happen?'
lit. 'Which event will you be undertaking happening today?'
'who did what'
-> 'which INTERROG PAST-happen?'
-> 'which INTERROG PAST-undertake which be-action?'
**Henrik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 09:57:15 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Swearing in other cultures (was Langmaker.com and...)
On 4 Mar 2005, at 3.33 am, Joe wrote:
> Tristan McLeay wrote:
>>
>> I've heard 'your mum' used as an offensive insult on more than one
>> occasion, usually from the mouths of (east) Asians, normally
>> Vietnamese
>> I think. I originally interpreted it as being abbreviated from the
>> non-offensive insults like 'Your mum's so fat, she got a parking
>> ticket
>> while waiting to cross the road!', but the degree to which it offends
>> suggested it probably came from something from their culture. The
>> Chinese did have a strong influence over the Vietnamese in the past,
>> so
>> it seems even more likely.
>
>
> No, it's quite common in Britain too. Though not as an insult, but as
> an ironic non-witty riposte.
>
> ie.
> "What's the answer to this?"
> "[EMAIL PROTECTED] mum"
No, that's quite different. I would interpret that as an ironic,
non-witty riposte. On the other hand, the aggression in 'Your mum'
["jo: "mam] as the response is quite obvious.
--
Tristan.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 18:01:53 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sally Caves wrote:
>>>> None of us DON'T
>>>> speak a natural language. The point was to put us in a special
>>>> category,
>>>
>> (self-correction... that should be "DOESN'T)
>
>
> Should it? That seems strange to me. I think you were right the first
> time.
Oh, what do I know? :) I assumed "none" was singular, as is "any"; but I
looked at USAGE in the AHD and it says either the singular or the plural can
follow. Damn prescriptions.
> I was just playing with the Natlang-Conlang distinction. Since a
> Natlang is the opposite of a Conlang,
well... and mind you, I'm being obnoxious and ornery here, unlike my true
sweet self; I just had/have problems with "opposite" in this case. But
again, what do I know?
a Natlanger should be the opposite
> of a Conlanger. I wasn't being scientific, just facetious.
Facetiousness greatly respected!
S.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 23:19:28 -0000
From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: My new conlang S11
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The word order is
>
> noun verb noun verb ... noun verb.
Ah, just like Oro Mpaa. I'm afraid I can't take the credit for
that idea, though, since I stole it from yet another conlang...
was it bac? I don't remember. Anyway, check out the grammar
section of Oro Mpaa someday:
www.cinga.ch/langmaking/orompaa.html
As for your idea to have three separate verbs for "to ask", "to
be asked (a question)" and "to be asked (from someone)", that
seems a bit like semantic overkill. I suspect your speakers
would very quickly end up generalizing one verb (e.g. "to be
asked (a question)") for generic dative use, and you'd get a
dative case or preposition instead of the auxiliary verb.
On the other hand, if "lu 1 ni 2 pa 3" or whatever mean
"1 asks 2 of 3" and "lu 1 go 2 se 3" are "1 gives birth to
2 seeded by 3", you can distribute the morphological
distinctness needed for lexical diversity onto all three
components, allowing the single components to be short and
(by themselves) ambiguous. One could re-analyze this
structure as a verb INTO which the arguments are infixed.
-- Christian Thalmann
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 7
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 00:33:42 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: My new conlang S11
Hi!
Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > The word order is
> >
> > noun verb noun verb ... noun verb.
>
> Ah, just like Oro Mpaa. I'm afraid I can't take the credit for
> that idea, though, since I stole it from yet another conlang...
Seems like *the* solution then! :-))
> was it bac? I don't remember. Anyway, check out the grammar
> section of Oro Mpaa someday:
>
> www.cinga.ch/langmaking/orompaa.html
Hmm? But you state in 5.2:
* SVO: Transitive clause. The first noun phrase acts as the subject,
the second one as the object.
...
* Ttou cel heite. {man see tree} "The man sees the tree."
But S11 will not have transitive clauses.
As for the SVC constructions -- they are borrowed from natlangs.
I myself encountered them first in Mandarin Chinese.
> As for your idea to have three separate verbs for "to ask", "to
> be asked (a question)" and "to be asked (from someone)", that
> seems a bit like semantic overkill. I suspect your speakers
> would very quickly end up generalizing one verb (e.g. "to be
> asked (a question)") for generic dative use, and you'd get a
> dative case or preposition instead of the auxiliary verb.
Something like that, yes. I'll construct it to be more specific than
'dative', though, so that I'd get 'addressed' as a verb or something.
> On the other hand, if "lu 1 ni 2 pa 3" or whatever mean
> "1 asks 2 of 3" and "lu 1 go 2 se 3" are "1 gives birth to
> 2 seeded by 3", you can distribute the morphological
> distinctness needed for lexical diversity onto all three
> components, allowing the single components to be short and
> (by themselves) ambiguous. One could re-analyze this
> structure as a verb INTO which the arguments are infixed.
Hehe. :-))) But I want unary verbs! :-)
The precise way of planning what the verbs mean are indeed not fixed
yet, and I expect to make a lot of investigation in natlangs, so this
is all very interesting input for me! :-)
**Henrik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 8
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 19:12:39 EST
From: David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [NATLANG] Moro Configurationality
Hi, this is David Peterson (sorry for using a different e-mail address).
I'm here with our Moro speaker, and my girlfriend is eliciting right now.
She's getting adverb placement, and we've come across some really bizarre
facts that I'm trying to wrap my head around. Any help would be much
appreciated.
Imagine a sentence like the following (throughout, CL. means "noun class
whatever"):
(1) Damala Dassa ereka
/CL.-camel CL.-eat-PAST yesterday/
"The camel ate yesterday."
You can get the following additional orders:
(2a) Damala ereka Dassa.
(2b) ereka Damala Dassa.
This isn't unusual. Now here's some stuff that is.
First, you can't get the adverb inside an NP, or inside
a noun and its case suffix (obviously, but I wanted to
prove it was a case suffix):
(3a) ej Damala = "every camel"
(3b) *ej ereka Damala Dassa = "every camel ate yesterday"
(4a) Damalano = "inside the camel"
(4b) *Damala ereka ano Dassa = "he ate inside the camel yesterday"
But now here are some odd facts.
If you wanted to have a white camel, the usual way
seems to be to say it like this:
(5) Damala iDi [EMAIL PROTECTED] /CL.-camel CL.-this CL.-white/ "(this) white
camel"
You can say it without the /iDi/, but it seems most
natural to include it. Now here are some distributional facts:
(6a) Damala ereka iDi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dassa = "The white camel ate yesterday"
(6b) *Damala iDi ereka [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dassa = "The white camel ate yesterday"
Thus, there are two possibilities:
(1) We misanalyzed NP's and /iDi/ before. /iDi/ is not a postnominal
modifier, but a pre-nominal modifier. /[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ is not an adjective,
but a noun meaning "white one". Thus, the phrase /Damala iDi [EMAIL
PROTECTED]/
means "The camel, this white one".
(2) Moro is *slightly* non-configurational, such that an NP can have things
stuck inside it--but only in certain places.
Neither of these stories make sense--the first because we're really sure that
/iDi/ is a postnominal modifier (because, say, */iDi Damala/ is
ungrammatical),
and the second because, well, nonconfigurationality doesn't make sense.
Another possibility is that /iDi [EMAIL PROTECTED]/ is a relative clause.
This is the
theory I like best. Because if /iDi [EMAIL PROTECTED]/ *is* a relative
clause, it
should
be able to move around (even though it wouldn't in English), and you
shouldn't be able to put a matrix clause adverb within the relative clause,
or else it would only apply to the relative clause.
Anyone who has any ideas about language: Does this make sense?
-David
[This message contained attachments]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
