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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Future English
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Franj Travellers' Phrasebook
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Passive sentences and indirect objects
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Passive sentences and indirect objects
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Workshops Review #03, 2005
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Franj Travellers' Phrasebook
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. TECH: gmail / reply-to (Was: Passive sentences and indirect objects)
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Index issues
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. More about the chicken
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: More about the chicken
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Index issues
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Dyirbal
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Anadewism? Reflexive case
From: Trent Pehrson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Unusual time / causality / worldviews (natlang/conlang)
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: More about the chicken
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. DECAL: Reader and/or class videos hard copies
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: Anadewism? Reflexive case
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Unusual time / causality / worldviews (natlang/conlang)
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 23:44:24 -0700
From: Muke Tever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> - In English, words that begin with vowels take a definite article
> 'the' pronounced 'thee', but other words take a definite article 'the'
> pronounced 'thuh', so you say 'thee ear' but 'thuh year'. What you've
> said seems to contradict this though. Maybe you're thinking too hard
> about it and saying something other than what you normally do, or
> perhaps your idiolect diverges from most on this count.
> - In some Englishes
For YAEPT-warding probably most of these should have been marked as
"some Englishes" -- IME "the ear" is more likely to be [EMAIL PROTECTED]@`]
than [EMAIL PROTECTED], though the latter too is common, I suppose.
>> As for 'y' itself, well it acts like a vowel in "sky",
>> and I can't think of a single case where it couldn't
>> be replaced by some combination of pure vowels, so I
>> don't even begin to understand why 'y' would be
>> classed as anything but a vowel.
"Dyirbal" could be a counterexample. ;)
>> And yes, I was also TOLD to believe that 'Y' is not a vowel,but, hey, as a
>> non-academic I have the luxury of being free to
>> listen with my own ears and look at the physical waveformswith the eye of a
>> physicist, and ignore the "experts".
/j/, the sound of "Y" in "year", the word in question, is a
_semivowel_. It has most of the properties of a vowel, with the
exceptions that 1) it does not [in English anyway] function as the
nucleus of a syllable and 2) it is slightly less sonorous.
Placing especial emphasis on the /j/ so as to make it a syllable
to itself may obliterate the distinction between /j/ and /i/, but
it doesn't change the fact that underlyingly it's not an /i/.
(Still and again, it's vocalic enough that "thankyou" isn't as
burdensome a consonant cluster as "thankdu".)
*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: 2
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 07:03:04 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
On Sunday, February 6, 2005, at 07:21 , Pascal A. Kramm wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 00:37:22 +1100, Tristan McLeay
[snip]
>> the derivative of 'us' or 'to us' will develop into a 1sg dative,
>> perhaps eventually objective---with 'me' replacing 'I' in the
>> subjective.
>
> Somewhat like in "me thinks..."
Eh?? _methinks_ is a survival of a more *archaic* form of English. _me_ is
dative (as it was in Old English) and _thinks_ is 3rd person singular (as
it still is in modern English). But the _think-_ is not the modern "to
think" <-- OE þencan (German: denken); it is derived from OE þyncan "to
seem" (German: dünken).
OE mé þyncþ --> Middle English: me thinkth, me thinks = it seems to me.
>> perhaps a distinction between active and stative verbs deriving from
>> the simple present and the present progressive.
>
> Not very probably, I'd say...
About as probable as most other things in the so-called "Future English"
methinks.
Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason." [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]
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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 01:10:37 -0600
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
Gary Shannon wrote:
> "That was an historic event."
>
> Aha! 'H' is a vowel! I always wondered about that.
This is a prescriptive rule that never had any basis in linguistic
reality outside those dialects of English that lost their aitches,
which some southern English dialects originally did. So for them,
the use of <an> is entirely reasonable, since the following word
begins with a vowel.
(It's a good example of how weird prescriptivists can be sometimes,
latching onto one tiny little thing and ignoring the larger context...)
==========================================================================
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: 4
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 03:32:06 -0500
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Franj Travellers' Phrasebook
On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 14:48:01 +0100, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>> But what did they call their language? Greek, I assume.
>
>Nope. AFAIK, they called their language "Rhomaiika" /rO'mEika/ until
>not so long ago (18th/19th century?); "Hellenika" /ellini'ka/ was what
>people spoke in the time of Plato.
>
Ok. We can work with this. "Hellenika" would be what the Greeks still
call the Greek language, right?
So that would mean:
Helleneix /E.LE.nejS'/ Hellenic Greek
Rhomaix /ro~.majS'/ Byzantine Greek
Lataing /la.tajJ'/ Latin
Romanu /ro~ma:'nu:/ Romany
BTW, where does the name "Greece/Greek" come from? That it's an exonym
seems obvious, but from whom?
G
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Message: 5
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 10:21:23 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Passive sentences and indirect objects
Hi!
Philip responded to me privately, because I accidentally replied offlist:
> > Wait, don't forget the German indirect passive voice (or whatever you
> > want to call it) with 'bekommen' (or colloq. 'kriegen'):
> >
> > Ich habe das Buch von meinem Cousin vorgelesen bekommen.
> >
> > So, German *can* promote dative arguments to subject position.
>
> Hm... true.
>
> Though that doesn't work for all dative arguments:
>
> *"Ich habe geholfen bekommen"
> *"Der König hat vom General gedient bekommen"
Ah, yes, also true! :-) Maybe a direkt object is needed to make it
grammatical:
?Ich hab vorgelesen bekommen.
Ich hab etwas vorgelesen bekommen.
The first one is almost ungrammatical for me, but not as completely as
your examples.
> (BTW: was this meant for the list?)
Indeed. Gmail again. If I could only tell the Listserv software that
Gmail users don't mean their 'Reply-To'. And if only I could pay
attention before posting... :-)
I've redirected this back to the list now.
**Henrik
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Message: 6
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:31:13 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On 7 Feb 2005, at 4.48 pm, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:10:57 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> (I hold that
>> calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it always refers to
>> the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic variable.)
>
> Like "corn", which can mean "wheat", "barley", or "maize" depending on
> the region? (And probably other things in other places, too. Perhaps
> it means "rice" in India?)
Do people actually use 'corn' to mean anything other than 'maize'? (I
understand Brits call corn 'maize', but that's a different question.)
If so, perhaps sort-of like corn, but in Australia 'corn' means
'maize', but the dominant grain is wheat.
>> British criticism of American
>> spellings like 'behavior' and 'bastardize'.
>
> Heh. -ize is used in the UK, too, AFAIK.
So I understand, and it's even the recommended spelling by some
spelling recommenders, but a remarkable amount of Brits seem to treat
-ise as Theirs and -ize as the Defectors', at least on the Net.
> And it's the original
> spelling, etymologically -- just as "aluminum" is the original form of
> the word.
Mm, but 'aluminium' and 'aluminum' are pronounced differently, so it
ain't a spelling variant and don't belong in the same discussion!
> ...I still prefer -ise and "aluminium" because it's what I grew up
> with. I was just pointing out that criticising people for retaining
> the original spellings and claiming they corrupted them is...
> interesting :)
Hey, I never criticised anyone for those spellings---though I prefer
-ise, obviously, but also prefer -or---I never even said that
'bastardize' was a bastardised spelling. I just like the examples :) It
seemed fitting for the context.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 7
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:41:44 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Passive sentences and indirect objects
On 7 Feb 2005, at 8.21 pm, Henrik Theiling wrote:
>> (BTW: was this meant for the list?)
>
> Indeed. Gmail again. If I could only tell the Listserv software that
> Gmail users don't mean their 'Reply-To'. And if only I could pay
> attention before posting... :-)
If you can change your habits, try using the Reply-All feature. It
normally will direct messages straight to the list, but if a Gmailer
sent it, it'll direct it both to the list and to the Gmailer, which is
better. If you can't change your habits but can afford not to have a
Reply function (I use one account + mail client for conlang, so it's
easy enough---for everything else I use gmail), try getting rid of the
Reply function so that you can *only* use Reply-All..
--
Tristan.
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Message: 8
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:38:01 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was:
Intergermansk - Traveller's Phrasebook))
On 7 Feb 2005, at 5.44 pm, Muke Tever wrote:
> Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> - In English, words that begin with vowels take a definite article
>> 'the' pronounced 'thee', but other words take a definite article 'the'
>> pronounced 'thuh', so you say 'thee ear' but 'thuh year'. What you've
>> said seems to contradict this though. Maybe you're thinking too hard
>> about it and saying something other than what you normally do, or
>> perhaps your idiolect diverges from most on this count.
>> - In some Englishes
>
> For YAEPT-warding probably most of these should have been marked as
> "some Englishes" -- IME "the ear" is more likely to be [EMAIL PROTECTED]@`]
> than [EMAIL PROTECTED], though the latter too is common, I suppose.
Oh, I didn't realise that. And in any case, I wouldn't've expected the
glottal stop to appear: I've always said and heard [Di6] (in
isolation). Well, 'the ear' mightn't be such a good example because the
vowels are the same and disappear ... but try 'the apple' [Di&[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(broadly phonetic). Once you put the glottal stop in, it defeats the
purpose of pronouncing 'the' as 'thee', so if it's common in your
region it's no wonder you get the other form.
>>> As for 'y' itself, well it acts like a vowel in "sky",
>>> and I can't think of a single case where it couldn't
>>> be replaced by some combination of pure vowels, so I
>>> don't even begin to understand why 'y' would be
>>> classed as anything but a vowel.
>
> "Dyirbal" could be a counterexample. ;)
How is that one pronounced? I've always said it (anglicised, mind) as
/dZ2:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/, being too lazy to say [EMAIL PROTECTED]@l] if the
orthography doesn't
indicate a long vowel, but wondered what the 'Dy' was meant to
indicate. ( dj > dZ regularly IMD, so if it means /dj/, it wouldn't
change my anglicisation.)
--
Tristan.
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Message: 9
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:57:49 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Workshops Review #03, 2005
Review #03 (covering the period from Jan 16 to Feb 05):
I put authors' names in square brackets, and projects names in figure ones.
A posteriori workshops:
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aboriconlangs/
"based on lgs of First Nations, Black Africa, Australian Aboriginals etc."
No activity since Jan 13
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Celticonlang/
"based on Celtic lgs"
No activity since Aug 24, 2004. Is the group dead?
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eastasianconlangs/
"based on East Asian lgs: CJK, Indochina, India (both Aryan and Dravidic),
Siberia, Pacific Ocean etc."
Links between unrelated languages?
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/germaniconlang/
"based on Germanic lgs"
Proto-Germanic adjectives: degrees of comparison paradigms. Babel text,
McGuffey Lessons 1-6, «Three Rings», pizza package and «The North Wind and
the Sun» in {Intergermansk} by [Pascal A. Kramm]. Sound changes in {Rúmeann}
by [Jú].
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pieconlang/
"based on Proto-IndoEuropean"
No activity since Dec 01, 2004
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/romconlang/
"based on Romance lgs"
«Purple Cow» in {Uchunata} by [Habarakhe] and {Jovian} by [Christian
Thalmann]. New paradigms for {Old Fortunatian} by [Habarakhe]. Where to find
a good Latin primer?
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Slaviconlang/
"based on Slavic, Baltic lgs or Greek"
No activity since Dec 16, 2004
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uraliconlang/
"based on Uralic lgs"
No activity since Aug 25, 2004
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/westasianconlangs/
"based on West Asian lgs: Semitic and other Afrasian, Turkic, North
Caucasian etc."
No activity since Jan 04
Other specialized workshops:
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/neographies/ - conscripts:
Vertical alphabet from [RoboSteve]. "First Script" from [Jeff Jones].
{Sohlob} script from [Benct Philip Jonsson]. Inuktitut syllabary and
dyslexia.
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lostlangs/ - League of the Lost Languages -
[The Sock]'s {Heefanoshaj} verb system. Phenomenon of "echoing" in affixes.
{Da Mätz se Basa} by [Henrik Theiling].
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/use_your_conlang/ - conlangs in use:
In search of New Ideas for Stress.
Sister groups:
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/artificiallanguages2/
Spammed with Omnial grammar.
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/langmaker2/
How is a language born?
Groups in other languages:
- http://espanol.groups.yahoo.com/group/ideolengua/ - in Spanish:
Aspectuality in Slavic verb system. Neuter genger in Spanish - is it
possible? Is Japanese agglutinative? Alternative approaches to typology.
What is polysynthesis?
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ouglopo/ - in French:
A new member is welcomed.
- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/konlang_ru - in Russian:
Mostly testing. How to classify various types of a posteriori langs.
Enjoy your communication!
-- Yitzik
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Message: 10
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:14:16 +1300
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 13:10, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2005, at 10.29 am, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > The Wiggles seem to consistently refer to football as "soccer"; is this
> > normal? I thought that was strictly an Americanism.
>
> Absolutely not. The word was coined in a non-rhotic dialect, after all
> (it apparently derives from the repetition of 'assoc', as it used to be
> called 'Association Football'*). We do call it 'soccer' and as far as
> I'm concerned, calling it 'football' is the deviant name. (I hold that
> calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it always refers to
> the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic variable.) It
> seems to me that the Brits who tell Americans that 'football' means
> 'soccer' & any other form name or definition is wrong are lamenting the
> fact that American English is the defacto dialect nowadays, and I've
> always read it in the same way I've read British criticism of American
> spellings like 'behavior' and 'bastardize'.
>
> * Which is neither here nor there. Aussie rules is just a contration of
> 'Australian rules football', and I guess 'rugby' is probably based on
> something like 'Rugby rules football' too. It wouldn't surprise me if
> gridiron was properly 'Gridiron Football'.
You'd be right there - it's derived from the game as played in the Rugby
Public School at the time of the British Empire. It's actually "Rugby
Football Union", which gets transformed into "Rugby Union Football" by common
usage.
( Considering the form that the Scrum and the Ruck/Maul takes, and considering
that it derives from the adolescent single sex environment which occasions
deprivation homosexuality (no offense intended to all and any gays on this
list ;), I have often thought that it should be renamed Buggery Football
Union. AFL barrackers get away with calling it the Bum-Sniffers' Game, so I
suppose there is precendence .... ;)
>
> > Does "football"
> > there refer to Aussie rules?
>
> In Queensland and some parts of New South Wales and, perhaps, the ACT,
> (as well as New Zealand) 'football' apparently refers to one particular
> form of rugby (i.e. either league or union, but not the other), but as
> a Melburnian I know nothing about rugby so I don't know which it is.
In New Zealand it refers almost exclusively to Rugby Union; League is the name
commonly applied to Rugby League. In the parts of New South Wales where
League has almost exclusive dominion owing to the fact that Rugby Union is
the preserve of the Private School system, League is footy. In the Private
School system, of course, Rugby Union is football.
How New Zealand came to standardize and monopolize on the Private School game
is a story in itself. It is quite ironic that the Welsh and the South
Africans came to standardize on the game of the English Upper Crust, the
which set of people they had reason to heartily detest!
Wesley Parish
>
> In the rest of Australia, football does indeed refer to Aussie rules,
> being the dominant code.
>
> Sometimes Aussie rules is called 'AFL', which stands for 'Australian
> Football League', I think usually by New South Welshpeople and
> Queenslanders: When they do this, they aren't talking about the AFL,
> but the sport. The organisation usually has a definite article, but
> AFL='Aussie rules' usually doesn't (to my knowledge---this isn't a
> usage I'm used to).
>
> Of course, Aussie rules is the obvious sport for a cricket-playing
> nation to play. It saves significantly on stadiums and so forth, given
> that they're both played on the same oval.
>
> In colloquial speech, 'football' is often contracted to 'footy' (both
> the sport and the ball), all over the country.
>
> --
> Tristan.
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
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Message: 11
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:17:41 +1300
From: Wesley Parish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 14:57, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2005, at 12.12 pm, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 11:10:57AM +1100, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> >> (I hold that calling *anything* 'football' is deviant, because it
> >> always refers to the dominant football code in your area: a linguistic
> >> variable.)
> >
> > The only problem with that idea is that the game played by the USA's
> > National Football League HAS no other name but "football". The term
> > "Gridiron" properly refers only to the field on which the game is
> > played; it was applied to the game itself only recently (and fairly
> > briefly) as part of its introduction in Europe. I don't think even
> > the name
> > is still used by NFL Europe.
>
> Well, maybe the NFL says so, but Australians say otherwise. Australians
> say it's either American football or gridiron. The 'Australian rules'
> bit is just a description; over its history, it's also been called
> 'Melbourne rules' and 'Victorian rules' as the code spread. I got by
> perfectly well for most of my (still short) not knowing any other name
> for 'footy' but 'football', but calling soccer soccer, rugby rugby,
> American football gridiron (or American football). (I don't think I
> knew about the Irish or International rules football codes till I knew
> Aussie rules by its alternative name. Int'l rules is a merger of Aussie
> rules and Irish rules played between Australia and Ireland.)
Gaelic Football! Now _that_ is a cool game! It's only matched for coolness
by Hurling, which is played with sticks waving around head-high! Hurling's
the only game I've ever played where our goalie scored a goal from within his
own goal-square - and it wasn't an _own_ _goal_ either!
Wesley Parish
>
> --
> Tristan.
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 12
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:20:59 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 20:31:13 +1100, Tristan McLeay
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On 7 Feb 2005, at 4.48 pm, Philip Newton wrote:
>
> > Like "corn", which can mean "wheat", "barley", or "maize" depending on
> > the region? (And probably other things in other places, too. Perhaps
> > it means "rice" in India?)
>
> Do people actually use 'corn' to mean anything other than 'maize'? (I
> understand Brits call corn 'maize', but that's a different question.)
> If so, perhaps sort-of like corn, but in Australia 'corn' means
> 'maize', but the dominant grain is wheat.
AHD4 says "Chiefly British. Any of various cereal plants or grains,
especially the principal crop cultivated in a particular region, such
as wheat in England or oats in Scotland." (So my "barley" was
misremembered.)
I daresay that "a cornfield" would be interpreted as a field of wheat
in England, but not having lived there, I cannot say that for certain.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 13
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:17:11 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Franj Travellers' Phrasebook
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 03:32:06 -0500, Geoff Horswood
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 14:48:01 +0100, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> >> But what did they call their language? Greek, I assume.
> >
> >Nope. AFAIK, they called their language "Rhomaiika" /rO'mEika/ until
> >not so long ago (18th/19th century?); "Hellenika" /ellini'ka/ was what
> >people spoke in the time of Plato.
>
> Ok. We can work with this. "Hellenika" would be what the Greeks still
> call the Greek language, right?
Not sure what you mean. "Hellenika" ("Ellinika") is what modern Greek
use to refer to both Ancient Greek *and* Modern Greek; though the use
for "what we're speaking now" is comparatively new, it's the common
word.
I've heard that some "Romaiika" is still used colloquially sometimes,
but "Ellinika" is the usual term TTBOMK. Ancient Greek is called just
that, "Arhea Ellinika", to differentiate.
> BTW, where does the name "Greece/Greek" come from? That it's an exonym
> seems obvious, but from whom?
dictionary.com / AHD4 says, "Middle English Grek, from Old English
Grecas, the Greeks, from Latin Graecus, Greek, from Greek Graikos,
tribal name."
So a bit like Finns calling Germany "Saksa" or English calling the
Netherlands "Holland", I suppose.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
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Message: 14
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:31:38 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: TECH: gmail / reply-to (Was: Passive sentences and indirect objects)
Hi!
Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On 7 Feb 2005, at 8.21 pm, Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> >> (BTW: was this meant for the list?)
> >
> > Indeed. Gmail again. If I could only tell the Listserv software that
> > Gmail users don't mean their 'Reply-To'. And if only I could pay
> > attention before posting... :-)
>
> If you can change your habits, try using the Reply-All feature. It
> normally will direct messages straight to the list, but if a Gmailer
> sent it, it'll direct it both to the list and to the Gmailer, which is
> better. If you can't change your habits but can afford not to have a
> Reply function (I use one account + mail client for conlang, so it's
> easy enough---for everything else I use gmail), try getting rid of the
> Reply function so that you can *only* use Reply-All..
No, that would be wrong for all peoples' postings where the Reply-To
header *does* mean something.
Gmail has that bug -- I would feel bad to change a good policy of this
list. This would be like changing the list config to always ignore
posters' reply-to setting, but then the sender could not chose where
they want people to reply.
As someone said, for Gmail users it would probably be best to have
another mail account for the list until it is fixed at Gmail. And
send mail to Gmail to report this bug until they fix it.
I think paying attention is currently my choice. Maybe I could try to
change a few filtering rules for my incoming mail, but that does not
solve the problem for all the other list members.
**Henrik
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Message: 15
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 22:28:29 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Index issues
The main reason why I currently describe the Twisted Conlangs index
page as experimental is because I need time and experience to find out
about the problems that can arise in maintaining such an index and to
develop policies for handling those problems.
It seems obvious to me that if a particular link is listed on an index
then this is tantamount to a promise that a person can follow that
link in order to find more information about the feature on account of
which it was listed in the first place. Otherwise, what is the point
of listing it at all?
For this reason, it strikes me as reasonable to ask that the conlang's
website should document said feature in at least a moderate amount of
detail (i.e. beyond merely mentioning that it exists, and enough to
provide at least a vague idea of how it works in practise).
I invite comments and discussion on this issue.
I've also received an indexing request in which the link is to a
web page that appears, so far as I can tell, to be blank. I don't
believe that indexing it is an option under those circumstances.
Adrian.
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Message: 16
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 22:29:04 +1030
From: "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: More about the chicken
I've done a bit of research, and found that:
A number of Australians agree that "shall" is formal; typical comments
included: "Shall is perfectly normal, if a little formal", and
"'Shall' would mark you out as Having Read Way Too Much, but that said
I use it too". Still, Tristan's claim that he has never heard the word
used by someone who wasn't deliberately trying to sound British still
strikes me as a trifle extreme.
However, I cannot find *anyone* - not even in Melbourne - who agrees
with Tristan that "a chicken" sounds odd. Everyone else is unanimous
that an article before "chicken" is perfectly grammatical in
Australian English.
Dinner versus tea varies by family and by region.
Adrian.
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Message: 17
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:13:06 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: More about the chicken
On 7 Feb 2005, at 10.59 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)
wrote:
> I've done a bit of research, and found that:
>
> A number of Australians agree that "shall" is formal; typical comments
> included: "Shall is perfectly normal, if a little formal", and
> "'Shall' would mark you out as Having Read Way Too Much, but that said
> I use it too". Still, Tristan's claim that he has never heard the word
> used by someone who wasn't deliberately trying to sound British still
> strikes me as a trifle extreme.
Well, British can mean formal to me; that is, someone may have been
trying to sound formal, and I perceived it as British. But I'm
convinced it's not normal, and it'd take more than question-and-answer
to make me believe otherwise.
> However, I cannot find *anyone* - not even in Melbourne - who agrees
> with Tristan that "a chicken" sounds odd. Everyone else is unanimous
> that an article before "chicken" is perfectly grammatical in
> Australian English.
I didn't mean to claim that was true by anyone other than me, and for
me it's only true with an indefinite article, much the same as 'the
beef' is okay, but 'a beef' is odd.
> Dinner versus tea varies by family and by region.
I'd agree entirely with that one.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 18
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:16:58 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Index issues
Adrian, do you mean
http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/create/language/twisted.htm this
page? One thing: verbs being a closed class is attested in some natlangs
(you say not on page). :) I'm fairly certain there are australian
languages which have a very limited number of verbs, and you could also
argue Basque, which has only at most 12 verbs with finite forms, has a
closed class of true verbs, since the forms used with these auxilliaries
are:
a) Verbal nouns (well, actually verbal noun + locative marking, eg "at
X-ing").
b) Participles which act like adjectives
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Message: 19
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 13:55:19 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dyirbal
Tristan McLeay wrote at 2005-02-07 20:38:01 (+1100)
> On 7 Feb 2005, at 5.44 pm, Muke Tever wrote:
>
> > "Dyirbal" could be a counterexample. ;)
>
> How is that one pronounced? I've always said it (anglicised, mind)
> as /dZ2:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/, being too lazy to say [EMAIL PROTECTED]@l] if
> the orthography
> doesn't indicate a long vowel, but wondered what the 'Dy' was meant
> to indicate. ( dj > dZ regularly IMD, so if it means /dj/, it
> wouldn't change my anglicisation.)
>
Based on this page[1], <dy> is [d_m_j] and <r> is [r\`], with the rest
presumably more or less what you'd expect. It's also written Jirrbal,
Djirubal or Dyirrbal. [dZ] is probably good enough as an
anglicisation.
[1] http://www.linguist.de/Dyirbal/dyirbal-en.htm#f1
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Message: 20
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 11:31:12 -0500
From: Trent Pehrson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Anadewism? Reflexive case
On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:16:11 -0500, Estel Telcontar
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I just had an interesting conlang feature idea, inspired by my syntax
>textbook.
>The textbook points out that (in English) *Dantes accused can't be
>interpreted so that Dantes is both the accuser and the accused.
>
>Now, I know that some languages have reflexive verbs that indicate that
>the subject is also the object.
>
>But what if a language marked this by having a morpheme that was like a
>case marker that indicated that an argument was both subject and
>object, called, say, "Reflexive case"?
>
>For example, as in the following spur-of-the-moment sketch:
>Skampa (a name)
>Epsi (another name)
>kalte (accuse)
>Nominative case: no suffix
In idrani, pronominals are actually morphemes which are attached to deed-
words (the closest thing Idrani has to verbs)as prefixes. These can be
reflexive. So 'he' is the agentive form of 1st person, human, singular,
and 'ehe' is the reflexive version of the same. So, if we prefix 'he' to
the deed word 'nakesh' which roughly translates as *see*, we
get 'henakesh' meaning roughly *I see*. When we add the reflexive
pronominal 'ehe' to 'nake' we get 'ehenake' which roughly translates as *I
see myself*.
Idrani also has agent-patient pronominal affixes which are not reflexive.
For example (as mentioned above) 'he' is roughly *I* and 'ta' is agentive,
2nd person, human, singular. By conjoining the onset 't' from 'ta' to the
agentive pronominal 'he' we get the agen-patient pronominal 'het' which
translates as *I[agent]-you[patient]*. Affixing this to 'nakesh' as above
we get 'hetnakesh' which roughly translates as *I see you*.
Trent
>Accusative case: -ma
>Reflexive case: -kin
>(Free word order)
>
>Sentences
>Skampa accuses Epsi:
>Skampa kalte Epsima ~ Epsima kalte Skampa ~ kalte Skampa Epsima (etc.)
>
>Epsi accuses Skampa:
>Skampama kalte Epsi ~ Epsi kalte Skampama ~ kalte Skampama Epsi (etc.)
>
>Skampa accuses himself:
>Skampakin kalte ~ kalte Skampakin
>
>Epsi accuses himself:
>Epsikin kalte ~ kalte Epsikin
>
>
>Anyone know of an ANADEWism for this?
>
>-Estel
>
>______________________________________________________________________
>Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
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Message: 21
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 08:59:37 -0800
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Unusual time / causality / worldviews (natlang/conlang)
This will be related to another topic I'm working out and will post
later, but here's a question:
Anyone know languages that implement time-reference, causality, or
other major worldview components in a significantly different way than
Ye Normal Languages?
As an example, a friend of mine has a language in which causality is
difficult to express, or at least in which linear-time "X then Y -> X
caused Y" sort is not dominant. (E.g. he could say "X was caused by
Y", for the same timeline.)
Another that I don't actually know much about except the really
generic pleb's redaction is the concept that - at quantum level, or in
other fundamental ways - "Reality" doesn't necessarily follow our
linear-progression-of-time outlook. Could anyone clarify that from an
actual physics perspective?
Anyhow: Any examples of major worldview shifts like these, and a
sketch of how they are implemented in the language?
- Sai
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Message: 22
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 12:23:45 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: More about the chicken
Tristan wrote:
> > However, I cannot find *anyone* - not even in Melbourne - who agrees
> > with Tristan that "a chicken" sounds odd. Everyone else is unanimous
> > that an article before "chicken" is perfectly grammatical in
> > Australian English.
>
> I didn't mean to claim that was true by anyone other than me, and for
> me it's only true with an indefinite article, much the same as 'the
> beef' is okay, but 'a beef' is odd.
>
Well, that's because "beef" is not ordinarily(1) a count noun, along with
pork, veal, mutton, venison...maybe a few others. Otherwise I think if the
name of the animal = the name of its meat, there can be some variation,
sometimes with subtly different meaning.
Do you like chicken? [to eat]
Do you like chickens? [the animal]
We're having chicken tonight. [could be in any form]
......a chicken ...... [IMV implies a whole bird, probably roasted]
And also: roast lamb [probably a leg or other part]
a roast lamb -- the whole animal
Similarly: (a) roast pig -- the whole animal (actually quite delicious,
though not a very pleasant procedure to watch...)
At the market:
Let's buy chicken. [at least this suggests pieces IMV]
Let's buy a chicken [implies a whole bird]
Don't buy the chicken [it's past its due date :-( ]
But perhaps (some) Aussies don't make these distinctions, especially if, as
I gather, (some of) you use chook for the live animal, chicken for the meat.
Indonesian avoids these problems by compounding "daging" ('meat') with the
animal name-- daging babi 'pork', daging sapi 'beef', daging ayam 'chicken',
and usually using a classifier for the animal-- seekor babi '1 pig', dua
ekor sapi '2 cows' etc. (ekor 'tail'). OTOH, I recall seeing a cookbook,
entitled something like "Makanan Tiong-hua tidak pakai babi" = Chinese food
not use (=without) pig/pork
-----------------------------
(1) The form "beeves" does occur, and I've heard it-- but limited to the
world of commercial agricultural lingo, or perhaps commodities trading.
Possibly to distinguish "beef cattle" from "milch cows"
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Message: 23
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 09:53:35 -0800
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: DECAL: Reader and/or class videos hard copies
Because I recall some people expressed interest in this:
Any of you want a hard copy of the reader and/or class videos? (The
latter would be on CD-R.)
I still haven't made copies of the reader, but it'll be about $17. Not
sure how much to ship it, though; probably anywhere from $2-10. Ditto
for video CDs.
Obviously, all of this is available online, but some folk might want a
hardcopy. (Like the ones whose work is in the reader. :-P) Let me know
and we'll see if it can be arranged.
- Sai
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Message: 24
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 18:02:20 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Anadewism? Reflexive case
Estel Telcontar wrote:
> I just had an interesting conlang feature idea, inspired by my syntax
> textbook.
> The textbook points out that (in English) *Dantes accused can't be
> interpreted so that Dantes is both the accuser and the accused.
>
> Now, I know that some languages have reflexive verbs that indicate that
> the subject is also the object.
>
> But what if a language marked this by having a morpheme that was like a
> case marker that indicated that an argument was both subject and
> object, called, say, "Reflexive case"?
Though not a reflexive case per-se, my Térnaru does something like that.
Térnaru uses trigger (though I didn't realise that when I came up with
the idea) particles to denote the function of each NP in a sentence. The
idea to use particles to denote NP function came to me via Japanese. The
next idea was to put two particles on the one NP to denote reflexivity.
Then from there, it wasn't a big jump to "hmm... what if I leave this
NP freestanding and move its particles onto the verb..." and voila:
triggers! Almost: I had to get rid of some deadwood that seems pointless
(like the fact that the verb still denoted voice).
Example:
an-a-Lídu íl ták
ACT-PAT-Lídu PST hit
"Lídu hit him/herself"
> Anyone know of an ANADEWism for this?
'fraid not: only language I know that does anything like this is
Térnaru.
K.
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Message: 25
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 18:30:33 +0000
From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Unusual time / causality / worldviews (natlang/conlang)
>Another that I don't actually know much about except the really
>generic pleb's redaction is the concept that - at quantum level, or in
>other fundamental ways - "Reality" doesn't necessarily follow our
>linear-progression-of-time outlook. Could anyone clarify that from an
>actual physics perspective?
>
>
In quantum mechanics, as far as I know (and I don't know much), the idea
of time is a valid one, but particles are waves (and vice versa) and you
only have probability distributions for the location and velocity of the
particles in the system rather than knowing their exact position as in
the classical case. But, and this is an I think, observation collapses
the probability distributions and fixes some of the attributes of the
system. Which is wierd, and why I don't like quantum mechanics much.
In Relativity though, time is a relative thing. You can have two events
occur simultaneously in one frame, and at different times in another,
and so on.
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