There are 14 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: I am sure From: Jonathan Frisch 1b. Re: I am sure From: C. Brickner 1c. Re: I am sure From: Alex Fink 1d. Re: I am sure From: Jonathan Frisch 1e. Re: I am sure From: Ralph DeCarli 1f. Re: I am sure From: Jonathan Frisch 1g. Re: I am sure From: Ph. D. 1h. Re: I am sure From: C. Brickner 1i. Re: I am sure From: Alex Fink 2a. Re: Colloquial French resources From: Jonathan Beagley 2b. Re: Colloquial French resources From: And Rosta 3a. Concision in your conlang vs your L1 From: Daniel Bowman 3b. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1 From: H. S. Teoh 3c. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1 From: MorphemeAddict Messages ________________________________________________________________________ 1a. Re: I am sure Posted by: "Jonathan Frisch" 90.jdegr...@gmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 3:02 pm ((PDT)) Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand on it's own as a complete sentence? On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <p...@phillipdriscoll.com> wrote: > "C. Brickner" <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: > >> >> I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause following >> "I am sure that..." If it's a noun clause, what is its function? And it >> doesn't seem to be indirect discourse. Charlie >> > > Aren't these called "complement clauses"? > > --Ph. D. Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1b. Re: I am sure Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 3:26 pm ((PDT)) ----- Original Message ----- Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand on it's own as a complete sentence? On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <p...@phillipdriscoll.com> wrote: _____________________________ That seems to be right. My problem in Senjecas is that I have no word for "that" in this context. I could say "I am sure", then "He is going", but that doesn't seem to show the relationship between the two sentences. I can't say "Estoy seguro QUE el va(vaya?). Of course, in English we often drop the "that": "I'm sure he's going". Charlie > "C. Brickner" <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: > >> >> I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause following >> "I am sure that..." If it's a noun clause, what is its function? And it >> doesn't seem to be indirect discourse. Charlie >> > > Aren't these called "complement clauses"? > > --Ph. D. Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1c. Re: I am sure Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 3:34 pm ((PDT)) On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:26:31 -0400, C. Brickner <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: >----- Original Message ----- >Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand on >it's own as a complete sentence? >On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <p...@phillipdriscoll.com> wrote: >_____________________________ > >That seems to be right. My problem in Senjecas is that I have no word for >"that" in this context. I could say "I am sure", then "He is going", but that >doesn't seem to show the relationship between the two sentences. I can't say >"Estoy seguro QUE el va(vaya?). Of course, in English we often drop the >"that": "I'm sure he's going". I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs before this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"? Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps "be sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older uses of English "confide".) Alex Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1d. Re: I am sure Posted by: "Jonathan Frisch" 90.jdegr...@gmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 4:25 pm ((PDT)) Yes. Something even more complicated would be something in the form of: "I am sure that ____ is ____. Actually, I didn't realize this was related to Senjecas (Senjeca? Senjecan?); my apologies. However, it seems that the replacement word would be dependant on the content of the second part. Ex.: "I am sure of the statement, 'there are no peas.'" or "I am sure the statement, 'there are no peas,' is true. Again, I am new to this, so please forgive, and correct, any mistakes on my part. On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 5:34 PM, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 18:26:31 -0400, C. Brickner < > tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: > > >----- Original Message ----- > >Shouldn't the second part of "I am sure that..." always be able to stand > on > >it's own as a complete sentence? > >On Aug 30, 2013 4:48 PM, <p...@phillipdriscoll.com> wrote: > >_____________________________ > > > >That seems to be right. My problem in Senjecas is that I have no word > for "that" in this context. I could say "I am sure", then "He is going", > but that doesn't seem to show the relationship between the two sentences. I > can't say "Estoy seguro QUE el va(vaya?). Of course, in English we often > drop the "that": "I'm sure he's going". > > I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs > before this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"? > > Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps > "be sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older > uses of English "confide".) > > Alex > -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jonathan Frisch aka: floaty 90.jdegr...@gmail.com martianrebi...@live.com 1-850-346-7600 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1e. Re: I am sure Posted by: "Ralph DeCarli" omniv...@sysmatrix.net Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 5:48 pm ((PDT)) On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:29:13 -0400 "C. Brickner" <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: I may be way off in my terminology, but isn't "I am sure that..." an independent(?) clause that quantifies the evidentiality? The rest of the sentence is the actual sentence. > Hi! > > I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause > following "I am sure that..." > > If it's a noun clause, what is its function? > > And it doesn't seem to be indirect discourse. > > Charlie ralph -- omniv...@sysmatrix.net ==> Ralph L. De Carli Have you heard of the new post-neo-modern art style? They haven't decided what it looks like yet. Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1f. Re: I am sure Posted by: "Jonathan Frisch" 90.jdegr...@gmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:01 pm ((PDT)) I think 'dependent clause' is more correct. There is a certain amount of unsaid implications to all sentences. "I am sure that [statement]" implies that there is faith in the validity of an intermediary party, whereas "[statement]" implies that the speaker/writer has evidence of the validity of the statement. Two sentences can have the same meaning yet imply completely different concepts, ideas, etc. On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Ralph DeCarli <omniv...@sysmatrix.net>wrote: > On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:29:13 -0400 > "C. Brickner" <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: > > I may be way off in my terminology, but isn't "I am sure that..." an > independent(?) clause that quantifies the evidentiality? The rest of > the sentence is the actual sentence. > > > Hi! > > > > I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause > > following "I am sure that..." > > > > If it's a noun clause, what is its function? > > > > And it doesn't seem to be indirect discourse. > > > > Charlie > > ralph > -- > omniv...@sysmatrix.net ==> Ralph L. De Carli > > Have you heard of the new post-neo-modern art style? > They haven't decided what it looks like yet. > -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jonathan Frisch aka: floaty 90.jdegr...@gmail.com martianrebi...@live.com 1-850-346-7600 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1g. Re: I am sure Posted by: "Ph. D." p...@phillipdriscoll.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:45 pm ((PDT)) Allow me to quote R. M. W. Dixon from the book _Complementation_: | In many languages, certain verbs -- notably "see", "hear", "know", | "believe", "like", and often also "tell" and "want" -- can take a clause, | instead of a noun phrase, as a core argument. This is called a | complement clause. To quote examples from English, alongside | "I believe [John's denial]", with the noun phrase "John's denial" | as the object argument of "believe", we can have "I believe <that | John did not do it>", where the complement clause "that John | did not do it" is the object argument. | . . . . | A complement clause has the following basic properties: | 1. It has the internal constituent structure of a clause. | 2. It functions as a core argument of a higher clause The book discusses how complement clauses are expressed in a number of different languages. In skimming the book, I see that those languages that do not use a connecting word, seem to use a clitic on the end of the subject or verb in the complement clause. Consider Tariana, a language spoken in the Amazon region: iya di-nawa-ka wa-ka-na. rain 3S-pass-COMP 1P-see-PAST We saw that the rain passed. --Ph. D. Jonathan Frisch wrote: > I think 'dependent clause' is more correct. > > There is a certain amount of unsaid implications to all sentences. "I am > sure that [statement]" implies that there is faith in the validity of an > intermediary party, whereas "[statement]" implies that the speaker/writer > has evidence of the validity of the statement. > Two sentences can have the same meaning yet imply completely different > concepts, ideas, etc. > > > On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Ralph DeCarli <omniv...@sysmatrix.net>wrote: > >> On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:29:13 -0400 >> "C. Brickner" <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: >> >> I may be way off in my terminology, but isn't "I am sure that..." an >> independent(?) clause that quantifies the evidentiality? The rest of >> the sentence is the actual sentence. >> >>> Hi! >>> >>> I'm having trouble figuring out the function of the noun clause >>> following "I am sure that..." >>> >>> If it's a noun clause, what is its function? >>> >>> And it doesn't seem to be indirect discourse. >>> >>> Charlie Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1h. Re: I am sure Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:08 pm ((PDT)) I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs before this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"? Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps "be sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older uses of English "confide".) Alex _________________________________ Is this not an example of indirect discourse? I think that he’s going. I said that he’s going. Senjecas uses the supine (-u) with a motive (accusative) subject: “mus num átu meína”. Charlie Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ 1i. Re: I am sure Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com Date: Sat Aug 31, 2013 2:37 am ((PDT)) On Fri, 30 Aug 2013 22:08:26 -0400, C. Brickner <tepeyach...@embarqmail.com> wrote: >I'm sure that you will have encountered some complement-taking verbs before >this. How does Senjecan, render, e.g. "I think that he's going"? > >Even if adjectives can't take sentential complements in Senjecan, perhaps "be >sure [that]" is translated by a verb. (Something like one of the older uses >of English "confide".) > >Alex >_________________________________ > >Is this not an example of indirect discourse? I think that he’s going. I >said that he’s going. >Senjecas uses the supine (-u) with a motive (accusative) subject: “mus num átu >meína”. Alright. I suppose the question is, then, whether Senjecas considers the complement of "be sure that" to be indirect discourse (this would not be unreasonable), and whether the construction can be generalised to non-verbal sentences. I'd see this example _mus num átu meína_ as some kind of raising construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_(linguistics) , with _num_ being given the accusative because at some level it's behaving as the object of _meína_. So, does Senjecas have any adjectives that take nominal arguments? (Perhaps like English "proud of X", "loyal to X", "good at X".) If so, it would be at least somewhat parallel to use one of those structures here, and cast "I am sure that he is going" in the pattern of "I am sure of him go.SUPINE", where "him" takes whatever case arguments of adjectives do. Alex Messages in this topic (13) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2a. Re: Colloquial French resources Posted by: "Jonathan Beagley" jonathan.beag...@gmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 4:20 pm ((PDT)) 2013/8/30 And Rosta <and.ro...@gmail.com> > Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, On 30/08/2013 18:59: > >> On 30 August 2013 17:38, Jonathan Beagley <jonathan.beag...@gmail.com>** >> wrote: >> >>> But again, as you've mentioned, I believe there is a strong belief >>> >>> that most Spoken French is simply "wrong". This is a sentiment I >>> heard relatively frequently in my linguistics program, particularly >>> from the syntax prof (Claude Muller). >>> >>> Unfortunately, prescriptivism is pretty strong in France (thank the >> Academy >> for that). But you'd think that linguists, of all people, would not fall >> for it! What kind of a linguist can honestly think a form of language used >> successfully by millions of people is "wrong"? What does it even mean?! >> > > Therefore, my suspicion is that Jonathan misunderstood his professor. > I certainly did not misunderstand my professor. He made his point of view quite clear, and other professors, particularly the semantics professor, mentioned his point of view as being "absurd." Luckily, said syntax professor retired this year. I should make clear that he didn't say that all Spoken French was wrong, but he would not hesitate to "throw out" certain examples if he deemed them to be agrammatical. Muller has written a book on French syntax: the examples you will see there are not based on any corpus but are merely created by Muller himself as examples of "grammatical French." As Christophe has mentioned, this kind of viewpoint is quite prevalent in France, even in linguistics departments, although certain profs were certainly not in agreement and expounded the use of corpus-based studies. > Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, On 30/08/2013 16:07: > > I have yet to find a single good paper devoted to that phenomenon in >> French. However, I've seen it mentioned in throwaway lines in linguistic >> articles on more than one occasion, so I'd be surprised if no article >> existed at all. >> > > I don't know of a relevant article, but I too am familiar with the > polypersonal analysis of French, through channels other than Conlang, so > given that, and the facts of French, I presume that that analysis is pretty > mainstream among typologically-minded syntacticians. > > --And. > Jonathan Messages in this topic (17) ________________________________________________________________________ 2b. Re: Colloquial French resources Posted by: "And Rosta" and.ro...@gmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 5:15 pm ((PDT)) Jonathan Beagley, On 31/08/2013 00:20: > 2013/8/30 And Rosta <and.ro...@gmail.com> >> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, On 30/08/2013 18:59: >>> On 30 August 2013 17:38, Jonathan Beagley <jonathan.beag...@gmail.com>** >>> wrote: >>>> But again, as you've mentioned, I believe there is a strong >>>> belief that most Spoken French is simply "wrong". This is a >>>> sentiment I heard relatively frequently in my linguistics >>>> program, particularly from the syntax prof (Claude >>>> Muller). >>> Unfortunately, prescriptivism is pretty strong in France (thank >>> the Academy for that). But you'd think that linguists, of all >>> people, would not fall for it! What kind of a linguist can >>> honestly think a form of language used successfully by millions >>> of people is "wrong"? What does it even mean?! >> >> Therefore, my suspicion is that Jonathan misunderstood his professor. > > I certainly did not misunderstand my professor. He made his point of view > quite clear, and other professors, particularly the semantics professor, > mentioned his point of view as being "absurd." Luckily, said syntax > professor retired this year. I should make clear that he didn't say that > all Spoken French was wrong, but he would not hesitate to "throw out" > certain examples if he deemed them to be agrammatical. > > Muller has written a book on French syntax: the examples you will see there > are not based on any corpus but are merely created by Muller himself as > examples of "grammatical French." > > As Christophe has mentioned, this kind of viewpoint is quite prevalent in > France, even in linguistics departments, although certain profs were > certainly not in agreement and expounded the use of corpus-based studies. Because the view you attribute to your professor is so foolish, I still suspect a misunderstanding, though not out of any obtuseness on your part; you say he made his point of view quite clear, but did you have the opportunity to enter into dialogue with him to ascertain whether it really was as foolish as it seemed? The foolishness of the view you report lies not at all in eschewing corpus data or inventing or throwing out data, but rather in conflating the category of incontrovertibly "wrong" data, such as is produced by foreign speakers (e.g. me when attempting to speak French), with the category of data consistent with certain dialects of French but not with the dialect under study (e.g. standard written French). I wonder if your professor would accept that such a conflation is invalid, but, perhaps because his focus was on standard written French, was lackadaisical about discriminating among data that was not standard written French. Many's the syntax professor who is la ckadais ical in that way, saying "In [Language X] you can't say [Y]" when in fact they mean only that you can't say [Y] in the dialect of [X] that's under study. --And. Messages in this topic (17) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 3a. Concision in your conlang vs your L1 Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" danny.c.bow...@gmail.com Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 8:16 pm ((PDT)) I recently retranslated Frank Herbert's Litany against Fear, and I was once again struck by the fact that Angosey tends to be "wordier" than English. That is, my words have more syllables, and it seems like I mark a lot of grammar as prefixes and suffixes. I explain this at the end of my blog post as because Angosey is solely written, and because it's only in written form I have unconsciously made extra effort to make up for the fact that other contextual clues (facial expression, tone of voice, etc) are entirely absent from my experience of the language. What are your experiences? For those who do not have a stated goal either way, are your languages "wordier" (in the sense that it takes more glyphs, be they Roman or otherwise) to convey the same meaning compared to your L1? Danny PS I have posted my translation of the Litany online: http://glossarch.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/the-litany-against-fear-translated-into-angosey/ Messages in this topic (3) ________________________________________________________________________ 3b. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1 Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" hst...@quickfur.ath.cx Date: Fri Aug 30, 2013 11:01 pm ((PDT)) On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 11:16:57PM -0400, Daniel Bowman wrote: > I recently retranslated Frank Herbert's Litany against Fear, and I was > once again struck by the fact that Angosey tends to be "wordier" than > English. That is, my words have more syllables, and it seems like I > mark a lot of grammar as prefixes and suffixes. I explain this at the > end of my blog post as because Angosey is solely written, and because > it's only in written form I have unconsciously made extra effort to > make up for the fact that other contextual clues (facial expression, > tone of voice, etc) are entirely absent from my experience of the > language. > > What are your experiences? For those who do not have a stated goal > either way, are your languages "wordier" (in the sense that it takes > more glyphs, be they Roman or otherwise) to convey the same meaning > compared to your L1? [...] Well, my L1 is a Chinese dialect, so it's very concise in the sense that many things are not marked, and most words are 1-2 syllables, occasionally 3. In my conlangs, I didn't want to relex my L1, so I decided not to follow this aspect of it. Nevertheless, each of my conlangs have their own peculiarities when it comes to word length. Ebisédian is mostly 2-3 syllable words, leaning on the side of 3 (they do have an obsession with all things triple), with a smattering of monosyllabic grammatical words and the occasional 4- or 5-syllable word (mostly in compounds). There are some affixes, but most inflections are via consonant lenition/fortition(?) and a kind of ablaut-like vowel contour. Tatari Faran, OTOH, is significantly more verbose. There is a mix of many monosyllabic words and a good number of 3-4 syllable words, but due to nature of the grammar, sentences are generally much longer. There are case particles everywhere, and those finalizers do add up. The san faran aren't particularly concerned about this, though. They are generally a rather relaxed bunch of people who like to take the time to spin elaborate yarns, and the extra verbiage suits them just fine. The grammar is primarily modifier-last: case particles follow the noun, as do postpositions, adverbs follow verbs, and finalizers follow everything else. Tatari Faran has quite analytical tendencies, with a few bits of inflection that show up in genitives and partitives, and in more complex clauses. My as-yet-unnamed alien conlang is a different beast altogether. Almost from the get-go, it took on a life of its own, and refuses to be tamed by ordinary patterns of grammar. What started out as vaguely SAE-like quickly transmogrified into a monstrous bizarrity, where my much-hoped-for verbs still refuse to materialize, being substituted by nouns that behave, not as verbs, but as _half_ a verb, requiring other nouns to fill in the remaining half. Then I discovered that it forms possessives by agglutinating the possessor onto the noun on top of a pronominal possessive affix, so thus far, except when number words are involved, NPs are actually single words. So an NP like "the girl's spaceship" comes out as: voluŋgetfraht [vO'lUNgET,frAxt] voluŋ-et-fraht spaceship-3SG.POSS-girl The girl's spaceship (lit. spaceship-her-the_girl). This then can be turned into a verb thus: voluŋgetfrahtmi aiherlat. [vO'lUNgETfrAxTmI ,ajxEr'lat] voluŋ-et-fraht-mi aiherl-at. spaceship-3SG.POSS-girl-V distant_skies-ABL The girl flies on her spaceship from the distance. So the words have agglutinative tendencies and are far longer than I've ever experienced in my first two conlangs, yet the overall utterances are more concise. The Tatari Faran equivalent of the above 2-word sentence would need 2 words just for "girl", 1 verb, 3 words for "on her spaceship", 2 words for "from the distance", and a finalizer, giving a total of 9 words. (Sadly, I've forgotten enough Ebisédian that I don't know how to estimate how many words would be needed, even in theory.) There isn't enough grammar yet to say what the overall picture will look like, but so far, it seems that even nouns can act as affixes, so this conlang is quite heavy on the affixes. So the words tend to be lengthy, but then there are fewer words. So I'm unsure how it would compare with conciseness in my L1. Probably more verbose for the mundane everyday utterances, but also encoding much more information, thus more compact. T -- The computer is only a tool. Unfortunately, so is the user. -- Armaphine, K5 Messages in this topic (3) ________________________________________________________________________ 3c. Re: Concision in your conlang vs your L1 Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com Date: Sat Aug 31, 2013 1:26 am ((PDT)) My languages basically follow two main principles: short words and isolating structure. I haven't translated enough to know if they're wordier than other languages I know, though. stevo On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 11:16 PM, Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bow...@gmail.com>wrote: > I recently retranslated Frank Herbert's Litany against Fear, and I was > once again struck by the fact that Angosey tends to be "wordier" than > English. That is, my words have more syllables, and it seems like I mark a > lot of grammar as prefixes and suffixes. I explain this at the end of my > blog post as because Angosey is solely written, and because it's only in > written form I have unconsciously made extra effort to make up for the fact > that other contextual clues (facial expression, tone of voice, etc) are > entirely absent from my experience of the language. > > What are your experiences? For those who do not have a stated goal either > way, are your languages "wordier" (in the sense that it takes more glyphs, > be they Roman or otherwise) to convey the same meaning compared to your L1? > > Danny > > PS I have posted my translation of the Litany online: > http://glossarch.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/the-litany-against-fear-translated-into-angosey/ > Messages in this topic (3) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> Your email settings: Digest Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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