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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Arabic Questions
From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Arabic Questions
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Arabic Questions
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Questions about German Dialects
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Arabic Questions
From: Akhilesh Pillalamarri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Questions about German Dialects
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Questions about German Dialects
From: Sylvia Sotomayor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Questions about German Dialects
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Questions about German Dialects
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. (unknown)
From: Cristina Escalante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Con/Natlang - "The Terminal" ?
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Arabic questions
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. (unknown)
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. (unknown)
From: Cristina Escalante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
From: Trebor Jung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Trigger languages
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
From: Trebor Jung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
From: Ben Poplawski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 11:20:36 +0100
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Word order (Was: Conlangs of mischief (Which in turn was: Re: I'm back!)
On Friday, September 24, 2004, at 07:28 , David Peterson wrote:
> Ray wrote:
>
> <<It is a problem - it's an impossibility if we are producing sounds
> serially or writing in any way that is recognized as writing. The sounds
> (and characters) come one after another, i.e. there is an order.>>
>
> Oh, oops. I of course meant "totally free word order". If words
> *couldn't* be ordered, then, logically, they couldn't very well be
> produced, could they?
No, they couldn't. That's why I was questioning "no word order" claim
currently being touted for some conlangs. If the the word order is not
determined by syntax, it will be determined by other considerations such
as focus & topicalization - even, as we see the rhetorical styles
developed by the ancient Greeks & Romans, by considerations of rhythm.
[snip]
> But I can't imagine a language where you could take, for example:
>
> "The man on the roof gave a book with a blue cover to an unhappy girl in
> the garden."
>
> And produce:
>
> "The a a an the on the in man roof to with blue gave garden book unhappy
> cover girl."
>
> Even if every element was so explicitly marked that there was no way of
> confusing
> which elements formed constituents and which didn't.
Quite so - in the latter case, it would be possible for a computer program
to detect all the explicit markings and generate a nice little parse tree
that could then be read off in a more intelligible word order. But "The a
a an the on the in man roof to with blue gave garden book unhappy cover
girl" is, I think, not a possible word order for a human-to-human language,
even with explicit marking of every element.
==============================================================
On Friday, September 24, 2004, at 08:40 , Rodlox wrote:
[snip]
>>> Take
>>> a look at the Metes text, and how I translated it
>>> Metes:
>>> http://steen.free.fr/relay10/metes.html
>>
>> I have looked - the letters come serially. There is order.
>>
>> Even if Metes makes single utterances one word, the words are ordered,
>> unless everyone is speaking at the same time.
>
> that's a whole other conlang, and one more suited to a herd species. :)
Maybe - but I assure you it is not uncommon among humans. However, it
rarely IME leads to satisfactory communication.
What I was getting at was:
- it was claimed Metes has no word order;
- it is also claimed - and indeed you have reiterated the claim - that
Metes is polysynthetic & whole sentences form single words;
- if there is _no order_ then all sentences are produced at the same time.
If the sentences are not produced at the same time, but one after the
other, they are ordered, i.e. as far as I can see, Metes must have word
order.
>> The single-utterance words
>> are obviously composed of morphemes - they are surely ordered, or did
>> Rolox simply get all his morphemes and then apply a randomizing function
>> before writing them down.
>
> I used Proto-Indo-European as a guide (read, I tried to apply sound
> changes
> to Proto-Indo-European words),
This has been done several hundred times in the last 5000 years or so ;)
> and the result was Metes.
>
> my *big* problem, imho, was that, when I crafted Metes, I accidentally
> confused grammar with word order...since, up to that point, everyone I
> talked to (admittedly, not in school & off the internet), had seemed to
> use
> them interchangeably.
They are not interchangeable. Word order is to do with that part of
grammar known as syntax.
'Grammar' is one of those words that has acquired a range of related
meaning. Trask lists three meanings:
"1. The system by which words and morphemes of a language are organized
into larger units, particularly into sentences, perceived as existing
independently of any attempt at describing it.
"2. A particular description of such a system, as embodied in a set of
rules.
"3. The branch of linguistics dealing with the construction of such
descriptions and with the investigation of their properties,
conventionally divided into _morphology_ and _syntax_."
Morphology:
"The branch of grammar dealing with the analysis of word structure,
conventionally divided into _derivational morphology_ (the study of word
formation) and _inflectional morphology_ (the study of the variation in
form of single lexical items for grammatical purposes)."
Syntax:
"The branch of grammar dealing with the organisation of words into larger
structures, particularly into sentences; equivalently, the study of
sentence structure."
It might be argued that in Metes morphology & syntax are the same thing -
but that is quite different from no word order.
=================================================
> On Friday, September 24, 2004, at 08:43 , Muke Tever wrote:
>
> On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 21:40:11 +0200, Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> (initially, I was puzzled...most of Proto-Indo-European seemed to be
>> prefixes (what with alll the - at- the- end- of- words- ).
>
> Those aren't words or prefixes, but stems that endings must attach to.
Lexical morphemes, in fact.
> To make a parallel example from a natural language, one could make a
> Latin entry _gaud-_ "rejoice", covering all derivatives such as _gaudeo_
> "rejoice", _gaudium_ "joy" etc. but also with the hyphen to note that
> _gaud_ itself is not a word.
And gaud- itself is derived from the _root_ morpheme gau-, which we see in:
gaui:sus sum "I rejoiced", the perfect indicative tense of the _gaude:re_,
to rejoice.
Indeed, whether we want to analyze _gaudium_ as gaud-d-i-um, and _gaudeo_
as gau-d-e-o is questionable; it is difficult to give meaning to each
morpheme in such an analysis. I think _gau-de-_ and _gau-di-_ might be
simpler. Certainly, we should say that:
gaudi - is the _stem_ of the adjective _gaudia:lis_ "joyful" (base: gaudia:
l- ); and both the _stem_ & _base_ of the noun _gaudium_ "joy".
gaude: is the _base_ of the infectum (the so-called 'present stem' tenses
etc) of _gaude:re_ "to rejoice".
gaui:s- is the _stem_ of the future active participle _gaui:su:tus "going
to rejoice" (base: gaui:su:r- ); and both the _stem_ 7 _base_ of the
perfect active participle _gaui:sus_ "having rejoiced".
_gaude:_ occurs as an unbound form in the singular imperative "rejoice!".
It is, therefore, not stem, but it is the base form of all the tenses and
other forms of the infectum.
Note (for those unfamiliar with the terminology):
- root morpheme = "In morphology, the simplest possible form of a lexical
morpheme, upon which all other bound and free forms involving that
morpheme are based" [Trask]
- stem = "In morphology, a bound form of a lexical item which typically
consists of a _root_ to which one or more morphological _formatives_ have
been added and which serves as the immediate _base_ for some further form
or set of forms" [Trask].
- base = "In morphology, a morph, variously consisting of a root, a stem
or a word, which serves, upon the addition of a single further morpheme as
the immediate form of some particular formation" [Trask]
Beware: there are other meaning of 'base', for example in Transformational
Grammar and Government-Binding theories of derivational grammar ;)
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO September, 2004
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 10:03:20 -0000
From: Christian Thalmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Arabic Questions
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], David Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The "ee" in "meet" [i] is to the "y" in "yellow" [j],
> as the "oo" in "boot" [u] is to the "w" in "white" [w],
> as the "a" in "father" [A] is to the letter "'ayn".
That's a description of the voiced h, i.e. [h\]. The
[?\], on the other hand, has a constriction at the
adam's apple. It sounds like the croak you might be
able to produce while somebody is trying to strangle
you. A co-worker of mine says I pronounce it
surprisingly correctly, though I can't manage without
distorting my face and making a buffalo-charge motion
with my head. ;-)
-- Christian Thalmann
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:32:26 +0200
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Arabic Questions
On Sep 26, 2004, at 12:54 PM, Isaac A. Penzev wrote:
> It occurs to me that in a language
>> with contrastive initial /?/::/0/, it might be the onset of
>> /0/-initial
>> words?? Since IIRC you're familiar with both Arabic and Hawaiian, am
>> I
> more
>> or less right?
> In Arabic (as most other Semitic lgs, e.g. Biblical Hebrew) V-initial
> syllables are impossible, so there is no /?/::/0/ contrast.
> In Hawaiian (as well as in her sister lgs), there is such opposition,
> tho i
> don't recall minimal pairs from head now. I find this feature
> especially
> difficult, because smth makes me to pronounce all words in a certain lg
> either with the glottal stop, or without it - just compare English and
> German.
I thought Arabic does have vowel-initial words, hence the opposition
between alif-hamza and plain alif.
-Stephen (Steg)
"rest / rest and listen / rest and listen and learn, creideiki /
for the startide rises in the currents of the dark /
and we have waited long for what must be..."
~ _startide rising_ by david brin
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Message: 4
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 14:43:56 +0200
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Arabic Questions
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:54:12 +0300, Isaac A. Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Roger Mills jazdy:
>
> > It occurs to me that in a language
> > with contrastive initial /?/::/0/, it might be the onset of /0/-initial
> > words?? Since IIRC you're familiar with both Arabic and Hawaiian,
> > am I more or less right?
>
> In Arabic (as most other Semitic lgs, e.g. Biblical Hebrew) V-initial
> syllables are impossible, so there is no /?/::/0/ contrast.
> In Hawaiian (as well as in her sister lgs), there is such opposition, tho i
> don't recall minimal pairs from head now.
In a book on Tongan (Shumway 1988), I find the following minimal pairs
in the introduction:
'anga "shark" vs anga "disposition"
'ono "barracuda" vs ono "six"
'uma "kiss" vs uma "shoulder"
'au "current (in the ocean)" vs au "me"
'omi "bring" vs omi "come"
'utu "draw (water)" vs utu "harvest"
(In Tongan, |'| (apostrophe) represents [?].)
There are also a number of minimal pairs given for intervocalic
glottal stop vs absence of glottal stop (e.g. ta'u "year" vs tau
"war", which incidentally fall together as "tau" in the closely
related Niuean, which has lost the glottal stop), and the book also
cautions the learner to differentiate between long and short vowels as
well as between "i" and "e" (ei/e, ae/ae, oi/oe) and between "u" and
"o" (ao/au, ou/o:, ao/au).
> I find this feature especially difficult, because smth makes me to
> pronounce all words in a certain lg either with the glottal stop, or
> without it - just compare English and German.
I agree; I'd probably tend to pronounce [?] before all vowel-initial words.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 5
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:47:25 +0100
From: Joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Questions about German Dialects
Well, a question, really. Firstly, does anyone know where I can get
some descriptions of the various German dialects. In English,
preferably, but German will do fine.
And, secondly, just for the short term - can anyone describe some
features of the East Franconian and Thuringian dialects for me?
Especially those that seperate it from Standard German(which I suppose
they're not too different from...)
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Message: 6
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 07:50:41 -0700
From: Akhilesh Pillalamarri <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Arabic Questions
I would describe it as a deep rumbling sound. This sound occurs in my conlang, Aryezi.
Adam Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:There is a letter in
Arabic that I need help on. It's often transliterated as c, it's name is cayn and is
the letter between khaa' and ghayn. I think I once saw it described as ?\ in SAMPA -
a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Of course, I'm not the best person at understanding
those descriptions (even though I've looked up pharynx in the dictionary), so does
anyone know a way to describe it, or at least make a sound file in which you say
"cayn" (?\ajn). Also, the word for "yes" is transliterated as 'aywa, but the Arabic
alphabet spells it as "nXcXm" (X = unwritten vowels) - can anyone explain that to me?
~*AKHILESH*~
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Message: 7
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:14:21 +0200
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Questions about German Dialects
* Joe said on 2004-09-26 14:47:25 +0200
> And, secondly, just for the short term - can anyone describe some
> features of the East Franconian and Thuringian dialects for me?
> Especially those that seperate it from Standard German(which I suppose
> they're not too different from...)
Well, the most popular suffix in Thuringian is the diminutive, -le. They
put it on *everything*! So Krista-le goes to scchool-le and reads in the
book-le-s etc.
t., who thinks spätsle is a really great form of pasta, and schorle an
excellent idea on hot summer days.
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Message: 8
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 08:44:40 -0700
From: Sylvia Sotomayor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Questions about German Dialects
On Sunday 26 September 2004 05:47, Joe wrote:
> Well, a question, really. Firstly, does anyone know where I can get
> some descriptions of the various German dialects. In English,
> preferably, but German will do fine.
>
> And, secondly, just for the short term - can anyone describe some
> features of the East Franconian and Thuringian dialects for me?
> Especially those that seperate it from Standard German(which I suppose
> they're not too different from...)
When I took a class in German dialects oh so many years ago, we used the
dtv-Atlas zur deutschen Sprache (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag) which has maps
and such, and a very thick course reader, which I might still have somewhere.
I'd start with the Atlas, though.
-S
--
Sylvia Sotomayor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Kélen language info can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html
This post may contain the following:
á (a-acute) é (e-acute) í (i-acute)
ó (o-acute) ú (u-acute) ń (n-tilde)
áe ńarra anmárienne cí áe reharra anmárienne lá;
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Message: 9
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 18:13:56 +0200
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Questions about German Dialects
Hallo!
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:14:21 +0200,
taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, the most popular suffix in Thuringian is the diminutive, -le. They
> put it on *everything*! So Krista-le goes to scchool-le and reads in the
> book-le-s etc.
Naaaaah, that's not Thuringian, it's Swabian (or rather, a parody of
Swabian). Thuringian is indeed quite similar to standard German,
but spoken with an accent that's hard to describe in a few words.
Basically, standard German is Thuringian as it was spoken a few
hundred years ago, but that's still a simplification of the facts.
Greetings,
Jörg.
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Message: 10
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 11:56:21 -0400
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Questions about German Dialects
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:14:21 +0200, taliesin the storyteller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Well, the most popular suffix in Thuringian is the diminutive, -le. They
>put it on *everything*! So Krista-le goes to scchool-le and reads in the
>book-le-s etc.
Thuringian is *that* southern influenced?! Usually, the -le diminutive is
characteristic for Schwäbisch, Allemannisch and Schwiitzerdüütsch (however
they're called in English).
>t., who thinks spätsle is a really great form of pasta, and schorle an
>excellent idea on hot summer days.
Spätzle is indeed a diminutive of "Spatz" (sparrow). I'm not so sure about
and rather doubt "Schorle", which is wine or fruit juice (usually apple
juice) with much mineral water, is the diminutive of "Schor". I don't know
"Schor" -- J. Wust? Christian Thalmann? The Duden about orthography (Vol. 1)
only lists "Schorle". The Duden about ethymology (Vol. 7) says "Schorle" is
a shortening of "Schorlemorle", wich appeared first in the 18th century as
"Schurlemurle" in Lower Bavaria as name for a mix of wine and mineral water.
The word is of uncertain origin.
I'd like to help with what differences there are between standard German,
Franconian and Thuringian, but I don't know these dialects good enough.
The only thing I can say about this is that our preacher comes from the
Nuremberg area and uses [4] instead of [R] everywhere. And there's the
typical {voiced stop} + {nasal} clusters at the *beginning* of words, mostly
"g-" from the participle marker "ge-": gemacht [g@"mAxt] -> g'macht
["g_0mAxt]. And of course some typical southern words, though I can't think
of some offhand.
Carsten
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Message: 11
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:43:21 -0400
From: Cristina Escalante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: (unknown)
Hello, I've been reading this list for a short time. Hello!
Well, a question: What are some examples of the fifth person?
Scanned by WinProxy
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Message: 12
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 20:12:48 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Con/Natlang - "The Terminal" ?
>
> by now, many of you may have had an opportunity to see the recent movie
> "The Terminal".
>
> I am curious - has anyone begun work on a Krakosia*/English dictionary?
> (or is there already one?).
>
> * = I used 'ia' even though I think it may be related to Chechen. I
could
> be wrong.
>
>
>
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Message: 13
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:38:03 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Arabic questions
I wrote:
> It occurs to me that in a language
>> with contrastive initial /?/::/0/, it might be the onset of
>> /0/-initial
>> words?? Since IIRC you're familiar with both Arabic and Hawaiian, am
>> I
> more
>> or less right?
>From the various replies, it sounds like I was wrong.
and:
<Is there any friction, or is it smooth?>
Again, evidently there is friction. So much for that idea....
I was aware of the Tongan situation, cited by Philip Newton-- there, /?/
goes all they way back to Proto-AN *q (it may well have been *[?] by the
time Proto-Oceanic developed); I'm pretty sure it's lost in all other
Polynesian langs., but some (like Hawaiian) have developed /?/ < *k.
The only cognates I recognize in Philip's list:
To. 'au 'current' vs. au 'me' =
Malay harus *qaRus vs. aku *aku
Haw. IIRC au vs. a'u
Digressing a bit, there are Austronesian languages (and surely others) that
have automatic [?] onset to vowels, but when you add a CV-prefix, some words
show /?/, while others have smooth transition-- e.g. of two homophones with
initial [?]i... one may go to **ma?i... the other > **mai.... One is always
suspicious of [?] between like vowels.
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Message: 14
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:44:35 -0500
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Quoting "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > My understanding is that PAA is usually situated far to the South,
> > somewhere near the Red Sea. It's clear that Akkadian started
> > arriving from southward into Sumerian-speaking lands, and the
> > overall center of gravity of PAA is along the Red Sea, but other
> > than these facts I don't know anything very specific about it.
>
> From southward? What I've read of Mesopotamian history rather seemed
> to suggest they came from the north or west; what evidence is there to
> allow us to tell, anyway?
I'm just reporting what Gene Gragg here at the Oriental Institute
told me. He works on precisely Afro-Asiatic linguistics,
especially Southern Semitic languages like Ge'ez, and Cushitic
and Omotic languages. Like I said, I don't know the details behind
the argument. (He also teaches courses on Hurrian, which is the
context in which I got to know him best.) I can email him for the
details if you like.
Here's his website:
<http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/nelc/facultypages/gragg/index.html>
==========================================================================
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: 15
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:00:41 -0600
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: (unknown)
On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:43:21 -0400, Cristina Escalante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello, I've been reading this list for a short time. Hello!
> Well, a question: What are some examples of the fifth person?
You'll have to be more specific. Person labels after "third person" are not standard,
but specific to certain phenomena in whatever language is being spoken about, and
don't necessarily refer to the same thing across languages.
If you mean examples of languages that have that many person distinctions... I don't
know of any natlangs offhand that use such a term.
*Muke!
--
website: http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt: http://kohath.deviantart.com/
FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/
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Message: 16
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 21:21:03 +0200
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
On Sep 26, 2004, at 8:44 PM, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Quoting "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>> My understanding is that PAA is usually situated far to the South,
>>> somewhere near the Red Sea. It's clear that Akkadian started
>>> arriving from southward into Sumerian-speaking lands, and the
>>> overall center of gravity of PAA is along the Red Sea, but other
>>> than these facts I don't know anything very specific about it.
>> From southward? What I've read of Mesopotamian history rather seemed
>> to suggest they came from the north or west; what evidence is there to
>> allow us to tell, anyway?
> I'm just reporting what Gene Gragg here at the Oriental Institute
> told me. He works on precisely Afro-Asiatic linguistics,
> especially Southern Semitic languages like Ge'ez, and Cushitic
> and Omotic languages. Like I said, I don't know the details behind
> the argument. (He also teaches courses on Hurrian, which is the
> context in which I got to know him best.) I can email him for the
> details if you like.
> Here's his website:
> <http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/nelc/facultypages/gragg/
> index.html>
I think it was in _Guns, Germs and Steel_ by Jared Diamond where i read
that it makes sense for the Semitic-speakers to have come from the
South, since the vast majority (and greatest variety) of Afro-Asiatic
languages are in Northern Africa.
-Stephen (Steg)
'the creator thought that one language would be enough,
but Raven thought differently, and made many.'
~ the bella coola, according to hyde
(thanks hanuman! ;) )
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Message: 17
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 22:37:56 +0200
From: Rodlox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Contemporaneous protolanguages
> I'm just reporting what Gene Gragg here at the Oriental Institute
> told me. He works on precisely Afro-Asiatic linguistics,
> especially Southern Semitic languages like Ge'ez, and Cushitic
> and Omotic languages. Like I said, I don't know the details behind
> the argument. (He also teaches courses on Hurrian, which is the
> context in which I got to know him best.) I can email him for the
> details if you like.
>
> Here's his website:
> <http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/nelc/facultypages/gragg/index.html>
um, with the exception of http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/ARI/ARI.html, none
of the provided [on that page] links work.
just FYI.
sorry.
>
>
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Message: 18
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 15:33:22 -0400
From: Cristina Escalante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: (unknown)
Muke Wrote:
If you mean examples of languages that have that many person
distinctions... I don't know of any natlangs offhand that use such a
term.
Yes, personal distinctions!
Scanned by WinProxy
http://www.Ositis.com/
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Message: 19
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 15:54:43 -0400
From: Trebor Jung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
Muke írta: "If you mean examples of languages that have that many person
distinctions... I don't know of any natlangs offhand that use such a term."
Cristina írta: "Yes, personal distinctions!"
A prize to whoever correctly guesses a conlang that has that many persons...
I'm putting my money on Maggel :)
Welcome to the list, Cristina; hope you enjoy your stay here! :D
Cheers,
Trebor
"Ithkuil is notable in being the only life-threatening conlang."
--Vlad, Zompist BBoard
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Message: 20
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 21:09:06 +0100
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Trigger languages
Roger Mills wrote at 2004-09-21 17:15:54 (-0400)
>
> Leonard Bloomfield, way back in the 20s or 30s, did an extensive
> study of Tagalog-- probably one of the first in English. I read it
> so long ago I've forgotten everything; but for someone interested,
> it might be worthwhile to see how he handled it from his
> Structuralist POV.
I was just reading another paper[1] on Tagalog by Nikolaus Himmelmann,
and the second sentence of his introduction is "Since then, quite a
few grammars have been published, including the perhaps finest piece
of American Structuralist grammar writing, Bloomfield's (1917)
_Tagalog Texts with Grammatical Analysis_". So he likes it, at
least.
[1] http://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/~himmelmann/multifunctional_ma_07-04.pdf
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Message: 21
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 13:28:13 -0700
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
Emaelivpeith Trebor Jung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Muke írta: "If you mean examples of languages that have that many person
> distinctions... I don't know of any natlangs offhand that use such a term."
>
> Cristina írta: "Yes, personal distinctions!"
>
> A prize to whoever correctly guesses a conlang that has that many persons...
I believe Asha'ille qualifies, with 6 primary distinctions (and more possible):
1. self
2. beloveds
3. close friends
4. good friends
5. acquaintances
6. strangers
Each of these categories has its own pronoun and verbal conjugation.
Any tests or examples that you would like as evidence? :)
--
AA
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Message: 22
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:43:28 -0400
From: Trebor Jung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
Arthaey írta: "I believe Asha'ille qualifies, with 6 primary distinctions
(and more possible):
"1. self
2. beloveds
3. close friends
4. good friends
5. acquaintances
6. strangers
"Each of these categories has its own pronoun and verbal conjugation."
Wow, that's *really* neat! I'd like to see examples, esp. using the first
person :P Quite some subtle meanings could be portrayed with such
distinctions.
Or are these for the third person only? :|
Trebor
"Ithkuil is notable in being the only life-threatening conlang."
--Vlad, Zompist BBoard
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Message: 23
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 22:45:42 +0200
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Fifth person? (was Re: (No Subject))
Hi!
Trebor Jung <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Muke írta: "If you mean examples of languages that have that many person
> distinctions... I don't know of any natlangs offhand that use such a term."
>
> Cristina írta: "Yes, personal distinctions!"
>
> A prize to whoever correctly guesses a conlang that has that many persons...
>
> I'm putting my money on Maggel :)
There are perfectly regular languages that have that, too. :-) My
Fukhian has five person distinctions. In indirect speech, the person
assignment 'shifts by two', i.e. first person becomes third, second
fourth and third becomes fifth. Examples:
"Peter told John that he washed his(3rd) car" -> Peter's car
"Peter told John that he washed his(4th) car" -> John's car
"Peter told John that he washed his(5th) car" -> someone else's car
The same distinction can be made with 'he' in the subordinate clause.
In direct sentences, 5th person expresses the unpersonal pronoun,
'man' in German. At the time of constructing Fukhian, I did not think
about the case of using the unpersonal pronoun in indirect
speech... :-)
**Henrik
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Message: 24
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:59:04 -0400
From: Ben Poplawski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 07:27:53 +0100, Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Unlikely, methinks. It is, however, debatable whether the Classical Latin
>sound was a bilabial approximant [w] or a labio-dental approximant [v\].
I would go for the *labiovelar* approximate. I'm thinking this because both
PIE *w and *gw turned into Latin v.
I thought of instances were [w] changed to gu in Spanish and French, but
then I remembered that those were German-borrowed words (guerre from war,
guard from ward, etc.).
Ben
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Message: 25
Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 22:52:15 +0100
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: English sounds `v' and `w'
>> suggesting that this had already happened before
>> the romans started writing.
>
>
> Unlikely, methinks. It is, however, debatable whether the Classical Latin
> sound was a bilabial approximant [w] or a labio-dental approximant [v\].
>
My writing style is convulted. I just wanted to make it clear... I was
saying that the spelling suggested u --> w in some positions before the
romans started writing, not that w --> v (I believe this happened later
as I think you were arguing). :) Sorry... I tend to use lots of commas
and brackets and confuse people.
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