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There are 11 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Language comparison
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Language comparison
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Language comparison
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Reasonable sound changes.
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: P- and Q-Celtic (was Re: Reasonable sound changes.)
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: OT: How common is it to speak 5+ languages?
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. "Uncleftish Beholding" by Poul Anderson
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Isolating natlangs?
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: OT: How common is it to speak 5+ languages?
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: Silindion - Present Tense
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: "Uncleftish Beholding" by Poul Anderson
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:07:24 -0800
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language comparison
> I think the deal is that there are a thousand criteria, possibly more, by
> which a human language can be judged.
Mm, quite probably. How many do you need, though, to get a good approximation?
> I cannot concieve of a single, general test of over-all quality. Not that
> I cannot think what this test might be, but that I cannot intellectually
> accept that such a test could exist.
Also agreed. Hence why I said that there would be multiple "tests of
overall quality" - one for every axiomatic set of goals. Quite
possibly an infinite number of these, too, though I think most could
likely be encompassed by a dozen at most.
> That will be my final word on the subject. Please, please, please, take
> this off list. Discussions of optimality are well and good, but we're
> getting beyond discussion and into dogma, and that is never fun for
> someone outside the conversation to read. Kill it.
Shall I call "Hitler"? :-P
- Sai
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:07:35 -0800
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language comparison
> Spoken Cantonese OTOH, seems to be so concise that it is quite
> unbelievable to me -- when listening to Hongkong movies I cannot
> believe how much information is transported by their mumbled,
> ultrashort utterances. :-))) But maybe this is just typical for the
> genre I was watching...
Careful that they're not over-translating. I don't know Cantonese, but
the bits of Mandarin I understood in films are often translated in
very... flowery ways.
Perhaps it's just that they're saying less. Or that the translator is
filling in context that a "foreigner" wouldn't have understood. ;-)
- Sai
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:07:09 -0800
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Language comparison
> How many bits are in a connotation, how many in a proverb, in an implicit
> request, in a baptism, in a line of a verse? How many bits are in that
> sentence you've just written?
>
> The application of the notion "bit" makes only sense if there's something
> countable, like e.g. zeros and ones. I wouldn't dare to make the meaning of
> language countable.
Would you say that this non-explicit information is, then,
inaddressable? IOW, that it's not possible / feasible to get a
"complete" translation - complete = including all the connotations,
etc.
(Reminds me rather of RAM's essays.)
- Sai
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:19:49 +0100
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Reasonable sound changes.
On Monday 10 January 2005 18:19, Carsten Becker wrote:
> but that does not mean other languages can do it as was
> originally suggested of coures.
Reading this again, I found my sentence structure very
misleading and ambiguous. So here's a correction (OK, I
understood now!!):
... but that does not mean other languages cannot do it the
way it was originally suggested of course. -> I wanted to
say that what I said about Italian does not necessarily
mean that I doubt this change. I did not intend to say that
there may not be languages where the sound change happened
just the way whoever suggested it in the orignial mail.
I hope it's clear now ;) -- Sorry for confusion. I know I
should listen and learn instead of talking about stuff I
have no clue of myself. But my mouth is (resp. my fingers
are) sometimes faster than my brain :-/ And my English does
not make up the distance either sometimes ...
Apologizingly,
Carsten
--
Eri silveváng aibannama padangin.
Nivaie evaenain eri ming silvoieváng caparei.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince
http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 22:51:21 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: P- and Q-Celtic (was Re: Reasonable sound changes.)
Hallo!
On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 18:40:38 +0000,
Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Monday, January 10, 2005, at 08:01 , Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> > Hallo!
> >
> > On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:19:55 +0100,
> > Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >> BTW, I've always wondered why there is P and Q-Celtic. So
> >> it's because on the Isle, people changed /k_w/ -> /p/ and
> >> on the continent they didn't?
> >
> > The geographical distribution of P- and Q-Celtic is different.
> > They shifted /k_w/ to /p/ in Britain and Gaul, but not in Ireland
> > and on the Iberian peninsula.
>
> Yes, the /k_w/ is the older form inherited form inherited from PIE. The
> shift /k_w/ --> /p/ happened in the central area, leaving the outlying
> areas unaffected.
Exactly. This also means that there is no "Q-Celtic" node in the
Celtic language family tree other than the root, Proto-Celtic.
Proto-Celtic was indeed a "Q-Celtic" language. Not even "P-Celtic"
necessarily forms a valid node.
Some scholars assume that the /k_w/ > /p/ shift was connected
with the more advanced La Tène culture and spread because
it was considered a shibboleth of a more sophisticated population.
But that's merely speculation. After all, it just filled up a gap
in the Celtic stop inventory that was left behind by the deletion
of PIE /p/, and could have happened more than once.
> We find similar things happening in the Italic dialects
> which is one of the factors that have led some to postulate a Celt0-Italic
> group.
I think Italo-Celtic makes sense, but I know that the evidence
for it is rather weak.
> [...]
>
> >
> > A feature that seems indeed to be confined to the British Isles
> > (with the exception of Brittany, which was settled by British Celts)
> > are initial mutations, which are found in both Goidelic (insular
> > Q-Celtic, i.e. Irish, Manx and Scots Gaelic) and Brittonic
> > (insular P-Celtic, i.e. Welsh, Cornish and Breton), but not in
> > Celtiberian (continental Q-Celtic) or Gaulish (continental P-Celtic).
>
> Absolutely! This feature which some seem to regard as quintessentially
> 'Celtic' developed only in Ireland and Britain; also, tho there are
> superficial similarities, the Gaelic and Brittonic systems of initial
> mutations are different.
Yes, they are. Even if one assumes that there is such a thing as
"Proto-Insular Celtic", which probably isn't at all anyway,
one could not reconstruct any initial mutations for it (except
perhaps some kind of subphonemic fortis/lenis thing).
> > VSO word order is also an insular phenomenon, it seems.
> > Why that? It just happened. Blame the Elves ;-)
>
> Possibly - but it is more often the Semites who get blamed, leading to all
> sorts of wild theories :)
Yes.
> I have seen it postulated that the 'Insular Celtic' languages developed
> from a creole that evolved in the Cornish peninsular as the result of
> trade contacts between Phoenician traders to the 'Tin Islands'. I am not
> sure how Old Irish would fit into such a theory.
Not at all, I think.
> Others have suggested a substrate population that was related to the
> modern Berbers and migrated up through western Europe in the age of the
> megalith builders (who were certainly pre-Celtic).
>
> Who knows?
In my conworld, i.e. in the framework of the League of Lost Languages,
it is a rather convoluted affair involving *two* different non-IE,
pre-Celtic families, Albic and Pictic. These two and Insular Celtic
form a linguistic area which is characterized by the "Insular Celtic"
features - initial mutations, VSO order, etc. What regards the
affiliations of Albic and Pictic, many scholars assume that Albic
is related to IE and arrived on the isles later than Pictic, while
Pictic is linked to Basque by some and to Afro-Asiatic by others.
> Just to add to the fun, other features common to Insular Celtic and the
> Semitic langs are:
> - all nouns are either masculine or fem. (common also to romance langs)
Yes. This has happened several times in IE, e.g. in Lithuanian.
And I seem to remember that Old Irish still had a neuter gender.
> - adjectives follow the noun (a few excptions in Celtic langs - and
> Romance :)
Most, if not all VSO languages have that order.
> - definite article only
> - prepositions are conjugated
> - common way of expressing genitive, thus:
> Arabic: beet ir raagil (double vowels indicate long vowel)
> Welsh: ty'r dyn
> house the man = the man's house
This is indeed an interesting coincidence.
> Perhaps after all the elves are indeed to blame ;-)
Perhaps... well, they have a long tradition of being considered a
race with strange, magical powers, and being blamed for just about
everything.
Greetings,
Jörg.
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:35:16 -0800
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: How common is it to speak 5+ languages?
> >So, how common would you say it is for someone to be conversant enough
> >in 5+ languages where it's more than what your average "teach
> >yourself" book is going to prepare you for?
>From my experience:
I speak a bunch. English, Spanish, French, Russian, ASL pretty much
fluently (though half-illiterate in Russian, since I learned it at
home and never read much; can't write at all) - "fluently" as in "good
enough to hold intelligent (intelligble?) conversation on most common
topics". It wouldn't be too hard to break my vocabulary knowledge with
jargon, but I learn that fast; just a matter of experience. I know a
few more - Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin - from school, but never got
good enough to have a critical mass of it, and so they have declined a
lot since then (sad, since my once-almost-fluent Japanese is now just
able to do phrases).
This, however, seems to be a major aberration around here (Bay Area,
CA currently; upstate NY before).
My parents know several Cyrillic languages - both Russian immigrants;
I have a cousin (a poet / Russian teacher at NWU) who knows about a
dozen languages fluently, half of them close relatives.
I've a few friends - generally children of immigrants - who grew up
speaking some relatively-obscure branch (e.g. Latvian) and then
learned the more common one (e.g. Russian). Plus English makes 3, and
it's not that unlikely to learn one or two more in high school or
college. Native English speakers wouldn't get that head start.
I suspect that people in Europe would be more easily exposed to a wide
variety of languages (geographically), and hence more likely to speak
several. I remember asking a customs agent once about this, and they
said it was part of the job requirement to speak at least [some list
of 5+].
- Sai
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 16:27:24 -0500
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "Uncleftish Beholding" by Poul Anderson
Does anyone have the text of this article? It is the article he wrote in
English purged of its romance elements.
Bryan
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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:36:40 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Isolating natlangs?
Of the two conlang projects I have going right now one
of them is mutating in the direction of becoming more
isolating. However, I'm not at all familiar with
isolating languages as they occur in the wild, and I'd
love to look at the grammar for one or two examples.
I'd prefer languages that are at the more extreme end
of isolating. Can anyone suggest a couple isolating
natlangs (for which grammars are readily available)
that I might take a look at for guidance and
inspiration?
Thanks,
--gary
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Message: 9
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 13:44:21 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: How common is it to speak 5+ languages?
I speak English as my L1. While in college I was
fluent in German after 2 years of high school and 2 of
college German, but that was 40 years ago and I'm
worse than rusty now. I have a passing familiarity,
but no fluency with Russian, Italian and Spanish. I
recently read Harry Potter in Latin and surprised
myself at how much I remembered from high school Latin
40+ years ago.
Of all the languages I have played around with I am
really only fluent in English, Pascal, Forth, Basic,
and C++. That's 5. ;-)
--gary
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Message: 10
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 23:05:10 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Silindion - Present Tense
Hallo!
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 14:28:49 -0800,
Elliott Lash <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The present tense in Silindion is divided into an
> Athematic and Thematic conjugation. The Thematic
> conjugation is formed by adding a thematic present
> tense vowel to the root, followed by the endings. The
> thematic tese vowel is mostly determined by the root
> vowel, although, there are some exceptions.
Strongly reminding of Indo-European.
> [paradigms snipped]
>
> I appologize for the length of this, but I hope you
> enjoyed it :)
Yes, I did! This was awesome, drop-dead gorgeous stuff once again!
Old Albic, in comparison, doesn't have "thematic" and "athematic"
verbs. The present tense is marked by a vowel suffix (-a in the
current version, but I consider changing it to -@, i.e. a vowel
that repeats the root vowel), to which the patient and agent
agreement markers are suffixed. The aorist has no vowel suffix
between the stem and the agreement markers, but an augment @-
prefixed to the root. Examples:
_matáma_
mat-a-a-ma
eat-PRES-3SG:P-1SG:A
`I eat it'
_amatama_
@-mat-a-ma
AOR-eat-3SG:P-1SG:A
`I ate it'
Greetings,
Jörg.
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Message: 11
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 21:56:58 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: "Uncleftish Beholding" by Poul Anderson
Bryan Parry wrote at 2005-01-11 16:27:24 (-0500)
> Does anyone have the text of this article? It is the article he wrote in
> English purged of its romance elements.
>
> Bryan
It's online here:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.language.artificial/msg/69250bac6c7cbaff
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