------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater?
Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/TzSHvD/SOnJAA/79vVAA/GSaulB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Tonogenesis
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: ??degrees?? of verbs
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Future English
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: More about the chicken
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Future English
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: [OT] Mandarin glyph selection help
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. CHAT: corn (was: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question)
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: CHAT: corn (was: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question)
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: negativity
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: negativity
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: [OT] Mandarin glyph selection help
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: CONCULTURE: Ayeri calendar again
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. [OT] Hebrew calendar direction
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: CONCULTURE: Ayeri calendar again
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: [OT] Hebrew calendar direction
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: CHAT: corn (was: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question)
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: negativity
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Future English
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Future English
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Correcting a foreigner (was: CONCULTURE: Ayeri calendar again)
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: Future English
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: Future English
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:14:25 -0500
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
On Feb 6, 2005, at 11:47 PM, Gary Shannon wrote:
> --- Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> In a message dated 2/6/2005 7:46:11 PM Eastern
>> Standard Time,[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>>> I don't even begin to understand why 'y' would be
>>> classed as anything but a vowel.
>> If, like every English-speaker I've ever met, you
>> say "a year", not "an
>> year", then that is evidence that in your
>> phonological system the "y" sound at the
>> start of "year" is a consonant. (Because the
>> general rule is "an" before
>> vowels and "a" before consonants.)
> That was an historic event.
> Aha! 'H' is a vowel! I always wondered about that.
> ;-)
Noooooooo!!!!!!!
That's a pet peeve of mine! I hate(s) it!
(insert "S" for gollum-styling)
It's either pronounced _a historical_ or _an 'istorical_! Not _an
historical_!!!
People pronouncing it that way make me _hysterical_! ;-)
:-P
-Stephen (Steg)
"and it's a heave-ho! hi-ho! coming down the plains
stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains
and it's a ho-hey! hi-hey! farmers bar your doors
when you see the jolly roger on regina's mighty shores"
~ from 'the last saskatchewan pirate'
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 09:55:24 -0500
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Tonogenesis
On Feb 4, 2005, at 8:57 AM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
> Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> ..
>> TILDE-LENGTHENED: the word means _tsunami_.
>> (one of Rokbeigalmki's unique 'palindromic powerful phenomena' words)
> Wow! Did you borrow that? An anadewism? I like that!
I don't *think* i borrowed it, but i'm forgetful, so if you've heard of
an ANADEW source i'd appreciate knowing about it :) .
>> /galaX\alag/ ~ ancient rokbeigalmki
> So there are more PaPoPhe words?
> **Henrik
Yup, although i can only remember two at the moment:
galãlag /gala::lag/ 'tsunami'
(gal = 'wave')
urõõru /uru\::ru/ 'wildfire'
(ur = 'flame')
-Stephen (Steg)
"and it's a heave-ho! hi-ho! coming down the plains
stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains
and it's a ho-hey! hi-hey! farmers bar your doors
when you see the jolly roger on regina's mighty shores"
~ from 'the last saskatchewan pirate'
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 10:09:51 -0500
From: Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ??degrees?? of verbs
On Feb 4, 2005, at 10:35 PM, Scotto Hlad wrote:
> Let's try it again....
> Ok all the talk about degrees of adjectives has me thinking of verbs
> in a
> new conlang that I've been putting together. When I was studying
> Hebrew for
> my religious education degree, I learned about the different stems. I
> was
> always fascinated with teh qal and piel, the piel having been
> explained as a
> stronger form of the verb. I may not get the example 100% (it has been
> 10
> years since I studied) but
> hit (qal) -> strike (piel)
> I tend so see everything in a mirror, so if there must be a stronger
> form
> there must be a weaker form. My conlang will have a form that gives
> both a stronger and weaker form. I have dubbed this property "force."
> example:
> tap, hit, strike
> I have named the weaker form "diminutive" and the stronger form
> "augmentative" but couldn't think of a name for the neutral form.
> I'm open to suggestions for this neutral form.
> Scotto
Why don't you just call it what Hebrew does? "simple"!
Also, i've heard _pi`eil_ called the "intensive" paradigm in English.
-Stephen (Steg)
"and it's a heave-ho! hi-ho! coming down the plains
stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains
and it's a ho-hey! hi-hey! farmers bar your doors
when you see the jolly roger on regina's mighty shores"
~ from 'the last saskatchewan pirate'
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 00:29:04 +0000
From: Stephen Mulraney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
Gary Shannon wrote:
> --- Doug Dee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That was an historic event.
>
> Aha! 'H' is a vowel! I always wondered about that.
> ;-)
Well, as Philip said, 'H' is a letter, though I still know
what you mean - I've never known it to mean a vocoid in
itself.
But you example strikes me as mind-bogglingly strange. Sure,
if one is speaking a variety where "history" is pronounced
"'istory", then there's nothing remarkable about "an historical"
(/an Istorikl=/, broadly). But are you suggesting that some
people say /an hIstorikl=/?
While writing this email I've had a bit of a bad conscience since
at the back of my mind there's been a little memory of someone
actually saying such a thing trying to surface. So I left the
email as a draft for a few minutes, and now I've remembered:
it was in a Monty Python sketch, from someone speaking absurdly
oldfashioned hyper-RP. So maybe it happened once :). Or do you
actually say it?
s.
--
To be sure Stephen Mulraney
to be sure [EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 5
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 17:09:44 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: YAEPT: "year" (sorry!) (was Re: Why "y" ain't arbitrary (was: I...
I am reminded of why I usually do (and probably always
should) stay away from pronunciation threads. To tell
the truth, I just don't get it most of the time. I
find the subject confusing and not very interesting.
I get a much bigger kick out of playing with grammars
and lexicons. Guess I'll stick with those areas and
leave YAEPT's to the people who know what they're
talking about, 'cause I sure don't.
--gary
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:10:25 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
This thread has inspired me to develop a grammar and syntax for a Future
English language. This Future English will be spoken at least 500 years
from now. It demonstrates many of the characteristics of modern-day Hebrew
and Arabic:
- VSO word-order
- Proclitic prepositions
- Prefixed subject markers and suffixed object markers on (transitive) verbs
- Mostly prefixing TMA morphology
The Future English verb has the following tenses: past (ha-,
from 'have/has') and non-past (unmarked). It has these aspects:
progressive (-en, from '-ing') and non-progressive (unmarked). Finally,
there are the following moods: imperative (les-, from 'let's'), optative
(me-, from 'may'), potential (ku-, from 'could'), conditional (vu-,
from 'would'), suggestive/hortative (xu- /Su/, from 'should'),
subjunctive/conjunctive (da-, from 'that'), and volitional (vi-,
from 'will'). The order of the morphemes is the following:
SUBJ-MOOD-TENSE-ROOT/STEM-ASPECT-PLURAL-OBJ
The 1st and 2nd persons have the same forms for subject and object markers:
1st-person -mi-, 2nd-person -jo-. With transitive verbs, a 3rd-person
subject is unmarked and a 3rd-person object is marked by the suffix -im.
Finally, the 1st- and 2nd-person plural objects have the plural -s suffixed
to their respective object endings.
Another interesting feature of this Future English is its distinction
between alienable and inalienable possession. The former is marked by a
suffix -on, from the verb "own", on a personal pronoun, while the latter is
expressed by the preposition o' "of" followed by the pronoun. For example,
_ket mion_ "my cat" (lit. "the cat that I own/have" or "my own cat") vs.
_fado o'mi_ "my father" (lit. "father of mine").
With nouns, there are no morphological case forms. Plural number is
distinguished by the suffix -s(a). However, unlike current English, Future
English does not use the plural when a noun is quantified by a number, e.g.
_dari buka_ vs. "three books". This feature presumably came from the
influence of Mandarin and other such languages.
Regarding phonology, Future English has simplified the complex phoneme
inventory of current English. Most consonant clusters have been
simplified, either by inserting prothetic vowels or eliminating them. The
vowel system, phonemically speaking, has collapsed back into the classic 5-
vowel Continental system. However, most vowels are pronounced "shorter"
(i.e. more open for non-low vowels and [EMAIL PROTECTED] for the low vowel /a/)
in closed
syllables. Also, aspiration, not voicing, is now the distinguishing
feature between the two "stop series" inherited from current English. So,
for example, _mitekenim_ "I'm taking [something]" would be pronounced
['mi.t_he.k_he.nIm].
That's about all for right now.
- Rob
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 7
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 16:15:57 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: More about the chicken
On 8 Feb 2005, at 4.23 am, Roger Mills wrote:
> 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.
Yeah, but for me, 'chicken' is in the same category as 'beef', 'pork'
etc. which is where this part of the thread comes from. Chicken is
slightly mixed up because you don't normally eat a whole cow (or have a
whole cow on the dinner table), but you do with whole chooks. Whether
the whole chook on the dinner table is thus a chook (focusing on the
wholeness) or a chicken (focussing on the foodness) is subject to
individual variation.
--
Tristan.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 8
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 17:00:49 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
It seems my earlier reply didn't get through...
On 8 Feb 2005, at 10.05 am, Rob Haden wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 00:37:22 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> It looks very Germanised. I don't expect English to develop in that
>> manner, unless the Germans take over the world. It also has absolutely
>> no change to the grammar, but the changes in grammar will be the most
>> interesting aspect. How will the clitics develop? Will we see some
>> reanalysed into case markers? Will they become verbal prefixes? I
>> propose, distant enough in the future, that:
>>
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] will be reanalysed as, ironically, a singular subject
>> marker
>> (from 'is', 'has')
>
> I think it may be more likely that the |-s| marker will develop into a
> marker of plural subject, due to its phonological syncretism with the
> nominal plural |-s|. However, there may also be a new plural marker
> for
> nouns.
Well, we get by often enough using [EMAIL PROTECTED] after a singular element as
it is...
>
>> if retained, the plural would be [EMAIL PROTECTED]@~@
>
> One of the allophones would be [EMAIL PROTECTED] How do you figure?
[EMAIL PROTECTED]@, [EMAIL PROTECTED]@ > z@, s@
houses're h&[EMAIL PROTECTED]@ > h&Oz@
boxes're [EMAIL PROTECTED]@ > bOks@
(ignoring other changes in pronunciation)
>> the distinction between him ('im) and them ('em) will finally
>> collapse, perhaps taking with it the entire pronominal gender system
>> (a
>> regular plural is easily created with the current [EMAIL PROTECTED], as in
>> 'youse').
>
> I think it likely that that pronoun will become a postclitic verbal
> marker
> for transitivity.
I think it sensible to avoid the word 'likely'.
>> the derivative of 'us' or 'to us' will develop into a 1sg dative,
>> perhaps eventually objective---with 'me' replacing 'I' in the
>> subjective.
>
> I don't see how that could happen in the forseeable future.
Oh, for the derivative of 'us' or 'to us' to become singular dative,
all it needs is for informal speech to become standard. A feature of
informal British and Australian English is and has been for some time
to use 'us'/'to us' to mean 'me'/'to me'. (Reports on the web suggest
it's more common in some British variants than it is in my Australian
variant, but it's common enough here too.)
> Rather, it
> seems more likely that oblique forms will be constructed similar to
> Hebrew
> and Arabic: t'mi for "to me", n'yu for "and you", etc. Compare Hebrew
> l'chaym "to life", etc.
Which differs from one current option only in orthography.
>
>> perhaps a distinction between active and stative verbs deriving from
>> the simple present and the present progressive.
>
> It seems more likely that there will be a suffix -im or -em that
> denotes
> transitive or active verbs. The lack thereof, then, would indicate
> intransitive or stative verbs. For example:
Well transitive and active aren't exactly similar, nor are intransitive
and stative. I
>
> Mi tekim. = I take [something].
> Mi tek. = I am taken.
That second one (the English translation at least) is just
BTW---I see no reason why English of the 24th Century should be any
more likely to have had its orthography changed than English of the
21st. Some words might change spelling in minor ways, but I wouldn't
expect anything radical---maybe just more things like 'gonna' or
'wanna' will become more standard (and others unthought of as things
become grammaticalised and reduced), or as <miniture> from <minuture>,
unstressed syllables might change. I thus suggest:
Me take 'em.
Me take.
If you feel so inclined, you can suggest the IPA pronunciation: /mi
"tekIm/, you seem to imply.
> Other possibilities:
>
> 1. A contrast between alienable and inalienable possession. The
> former is
> expressed by the verb _on_ "own", e.g. ket mion "my cat", while the
> latter
> is expressed by the preposition _o_ "of", e.g. hed omi "my head".
I was never trying to suggest things that don't already have some
indication of where it's coming from in current English... I can say
'my own head' just as easily as I can say 'my own cat'.
> 2. Complete obliteration of the fossilized ablaut verb forms (e.g.
> sing ~
> sang ~ sung) and also the currently productive past-tense formation in
> -
> ed. The new verb system would have mostly prefixing TMA markers.
I doubt it'll be *completely* obliterated. Lexical words, yeah, but
grammaticalised words I think will retain it for a while.
> 3. Possibly a new animate/inanimate grammatical gender distinction
> expressed by different verbal markers. For example, an animate direct
> object would be marked by the suffix -im on the verb, while an
> inanimate
> direct object would be marked by the suffix -it (or perhaps -o, from
> "her").
I'm sure all the women will enjoy being turned into inanimates. While
similar things have happened in other languages, normally there's
already no relationship between masculine and feminine and male and
female, whereas in English, the relationship is incredibly strong.
Leaving that aside, I don't see it happening anyway, at least, there's
no indication of it happening already... Perhaps a French-style 'Me, I
went to the park', or 'Jack and Fred, they went outside' (which happen
sometimes in English, but not religiously yet), but that's the closest
in the current system I can get to any sign of nominal indication via
inflexion on the verb.
--
Tristan.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 9
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 07:12:43 +0100
From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] Mandarin glyph selection help
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 17:42:50 -0500, Pipian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > jiÇŽ (one of the two Celestial Stems associated with the element Wood)
> >
> > I think this is 瘕
>
> The CJK Dictionary Database says 甲.
> (http://www.uoregon.edu/~felsing/wired/C102.htm#%C2%8Db)
[snip snip]
FWIW, these are the Twelve (å二支) in Japanese:
å丑寅å¯è¾°å·³åˆæœªç”³é…‰æˆŒäº¥
and the Ten (åå¹²):
甲乙丙ä¸æˆŠå·±åºšè¾›å£¬ç™¸
I could also give you the characters for the twelve animals, but (a)
one or two of them differ between Japanese and Chinese and (b) I
imagine you can find them for yourself as well.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Watch the Reply-To!
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 10
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 07:26:43 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: CHAT: corn (was: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question)
On Monday, February 7, 2005, at 10:20 , Philip Newton wrote:
[snip]
> I daresay that "a cornfield" would be interpreted as a field of wheat
> in England,
I would be :)
A field of maize is, well, just a field of maize.
> but not having lived there, I cannot say that for certain.
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" ]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 11
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 18:36:34 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT: corn (was: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question)
On 8 Feb 2005, at 6.26 pm, Ray Brown wrote:
> On Monday, February 7, 2005, at 10:20 , Philip Newton wrote:
>
> [snip]
>> I daresay that "a cornfield" would be interpreted as a field of wheat
>> in England,
>
> I would be :)
*You* would be interpreted as a field of wheat in England? Those
Englishfolk are weirder than I thought :)
But the real question is, that I've wanted to know the answer for, does
'corn' in everyday speech of your everyday urban English person refer
to wheat or maize? ('Cornfield' could be interpreted as a compound ...
'cornflour' is wheat starch in Australia, in spite of the definition of
'corn'.)
--
Tristan.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 12
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 03:57:30 -0500
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: negativity
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:01:45 -0500, # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I was asking myself if a language needs a lot of levels of negativity
>
>let me explain
>
>If I beggin with the sentence
>
>"I will can want to have been eaten"
>
>It's a little weird but it's grammatical (as much I know, and if not just
>follow my toughts it will be ok)
I'm really not sure about this sentence but I see what you mean. I don't
know about French, but in my version of English (British) you can't put
both "will" and "can" together like that. "I will possibly/probably..."
or "I may..." It's like something my Texan wife says that drives me
nuts: "I might could have..." Ack!
>each auxiliaries have a different meaning of tense, aspect, mood, or voice
>
>will = futur
>can = hypothetic
>want = optative (I think...)
>have = perfective
>been = passive
>
>to make the sentence negative, each or some of the auxiliaries may be
>negative by adding "not" after it, depending of each tense, aspect, mood,
or
>voice you want to say negative
>
>I will not can want to have been eaten
>I will can not want to have been eaten
>I will can want not to have been eaten
>I will can want to have not been eaten
>I will can want to have been not eaten
The last three are about identical in meaning, IMO, and the first two are
only slightly different: the first implies that I _can_ want to have been
eaten, but *I will not* in the future (if I understand your general train
of thought correctly), the second that in the future I *cannot* want to
have been eaten, and the last three that in the future I can want to be in
a situation where *I have not been eaten*. [negative part marked with **s]
>There are, in that situation, 5 levels of negativity
Well, three, anyway.
>For the same sentence in French "Je pourrai vouloir avoir été mangé"
>
>there are only 3 levels because the futur tense and the hypothetic aspect
>are represented by the same word and the part "avoir été mangé" can only be
>made negative as a whole and not each part indepedently
>
>Je ne pourrai pas vouloir avoir été mangé
>Je pourrai ne pas vouloir avoir été mangé
>Je pourrai vouloir ne pas avoir été mangé
>
>(But, the fact that, in spoken french, the "ne" is usually dropped don't
>reduce that number of level because there's a little difference in
>intonation between the two parts "Je pourrai pas vouloir")
See what I said about can and will in English, and the last 3 being
variants with the same meaning.
>So I ask that question: does a language has to have a lot of levels to make
>a sentence negative or may it be possible to make the whole sentence
>negative?
>
>Because if we look each of the 5 negative sentences I gave, their meanings
>are very similar...
>
>So I could use a way in my conlang to make the sentence negative and not
his
>parts, there are probably natlangs that make this..
>
>What do you think about this?
It's your conlang. You can do what you like. Though if you ask me, you'll
want to be able to make parts of the sentence negative rather than only the
whole sentence in some situations (Think about the nuances of meaning
conveyed by the differences, and also, what about double negatives? "I
will probably not want not to have been eaten"- meaning that I probably
_will_ want to have been eaten.)
In Kazakh, negativity is expressed by the addition of an infix (well,
suffix on the stem before the person/tense marking):
bardym: I went
barmadym: I did not go
Helping verbs for "can" and "want", and the perfect tense with /etu/- to be:
bara alghym keledi: I want to be able to go
bara alghym keler edim: I wanted to be able to go
Negatives:
barmas alghym keler edim: I wanted to be able to not go
bara almaghym keler edim: I wanted to be unable to go
bara alghym kelmes edim: I did not want to be able to go
bara alghym keler etpedim: similar to the above, but stronger. I think
this is your "whole sentence negative"
barghym kele alamyn: I can want to go
barghym kele alar edim: I could(past) want to go
Negatives:
barmaghym kele alar edim: I could(past) want to not go
bargyhm kelmes alar edim: I could(past) not want to go
barghym kele almas edim: I couldn't(past) want to go
barghym kele alar etpedim: as above.
But:
bara almaghym kelmes edim: I did not want to be unable to go
Hope this helps some.
Geoff
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 13
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 08:31:11 -0600
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: negativity
From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I was asking myself if a language needs a lot of levels of negativity
> [...] "I will can want to have been eaten"
> It's a little weird but it's grammatical (as much I know, and if not
> just follow my toughts it will be ok)
It's not grammatical English, but as a rough thought experiment it's
fine. ("Can" is lexically aberrant in lacking a base form which is
selected by "will", making "will can" impossible. Instead English
speakers must say "will be able to".)
> to make the sentence negative, each or some of the auxiliaries may be
> negative by adding "not" after it, depending of each tense, aspect, mood, or
> voice you want to say negative
>
> I will not can want to have been eaten
> I will can not want to have been eaten
> I will can want not to have been eaten
> I will can want to have not been eaten
> I will can want to have been not eaten
This is the phenomenon that semanticists refer to as "scope":
operators such as negation and quantifiers like "many", "some",
etc., provide truth-conditionally different readings
depending on which phrasal constituents fall under the scope of
the operator. Thus in "many arrows didn't hit the target", there
are at least two readings: (1) at least one arrow hit the target,
while others did not [where "many" outscopes "not"] (2) in fact no
arrows hit the target, and the cardinality of the arrows not hitting
the target is large [where "not" outscopes "many"]. IIRC, there
should be at least n! readings for n operators, although
usually many or most of the readings will be pragmatically weird or
impossible in the real world.
> So I ask that question: does a language has to have a lot of levels to make
> a sentence negative or may it be possible to make the whole sentence
> negative?
This is actually a somewhat complicated question about which I am
only partially competent. I think the answer is that it depends on
whether you're speaking about negation as a syntactic process, or
as a semantic process. E.g. in English, it is commonly assumed that
the negation suffix _n't_ must attach to an auxilliary verb; if there
is none, one must be supplied in the form of "do".
==========================================================================
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
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 14
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:00:23 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] Mandarin glyph selection help
Thanks, Pipian and Philip. Wikipedia rules. :)
Now I have my all-Chinese calendar ready for the new year, which starts
tomorrow.
-Marcos
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 15
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 10:11:30 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CONCULTURE: Ayeri calendar again
Congrats on the calendar completion. Looks cool!
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 02:47:56PM -0500, Carsten Becker wrote:
> ... now without fever, but with a running nose instead.
I'm sure this varies among English 'lects, but in mine, we say "runny
nose". In my head the phrase "running nose" conjures up the amusing
image of an ambulatory proboscis. :)
-Marcos
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 16
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 11:19:04 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [OT] Hebrew calendar direction
Just a random dumb question since I have calendars on the brain -
am I correct in assuming the days of the week read across the calendar
page from right to left on calendars printed in Hebrew?
-Marcos
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 17
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 16:30:09 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CONCULTURE: Ayeri calendar again
On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 02:47:56PM -0500, Carsten Becker wrote:
> ... now without fever, but with a running nose instead.
In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>>I'm sure this varies among English 'lects, but in mine, we
>>say "runny nose". In my head the phrase "running nose" conjures up
>>the amusing image of an ambulatory proboscis. :)
I wanted to comment on this, in a humorous vein, but wasn't sure if
I should. I don't know how touchy some folks can be about having
their English corrected. I know that when I'm attempting to speak a
language foreign to me, I am very glad for any corrections I can get.
But I had the same image as Mark!
I thought of some changes to the sentence:
1. I have a runny nose
2. My nose is runny.
3. I have a running nose.
4. My nose is running.
The 3rd one is humorous. The 4th one, in context, doesn't have to be.
BTW, an intersting formation: the adjectival ending -y on a verb.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/User:Caeruleancentaur
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 18
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 18:36:53 +0200
From: Shaul Vardi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] Hebrew calendar direction
Often, but not always. I just popped to look at the wall calendar my
insurance agent sent me, and it goes left to right. But pocket diaries
all go right to left in my experience.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark J. Reed
> Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 6:19 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: [OT] Hebrew calendar direction
>
>
> Just a random dumb question since I have calendars on the
> brain - am I correct in assuming the days of the week read
> across the calendar page from right to left on calendars
> printed in Hebrew?
>
> -Marcos
>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 19
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 11:35:26 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHAT: corn (was: [CHAT] Aussie terminology question)
I was almost into adulthood before I learned the British usage of "corn";
prior to that, Keats' line about Ruth "amid the alien corn" merely called up
a rather peculiar mental image.... :-)))))
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 20
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 18:42:10 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: negativity
On Monday, February 7, 2005, at 09:01 , # 1 wrote:
> I was asking myself if a language needs a lot of levels of negativity
>
> let me explain
>
> If I beggin with the sentence
>
> "I will can want to have been eaten"
>
> It's a little weird but it's grammatical (as much I know, and if not just
> follow my toughts it will be ok)
No, it is not grammatical. The future tense of 'can ~ could' is "will be
able"
So:
Je pourrai vouloir avoir été mangé = I will be able to want to be eaten.
At least both sentences are now grammatical in the two languages, even if
the meaning is weird :)
> each auxiliaries have a different meaning of tense, aspect, mood, or voice
>
> will = futur
> can = hypothetic
Not really - I'm not sure what you mean by 'hypothetic' , but the mood
expressed by 'can/ be able' is usually called "potential"
> want = optative (I think...)
possibly.
> have = perfective
> been = passive
>
> to make the sentence negative, each or some of the auxiliaries may be
> negative by adding "not" after it, depending of each tense, aspect, mood,
> or
> voice you want to say negative
>
> I will not can want to have been eaten
> I will can not want to have been eaten
> I will can want not to have been eaten
> I will can want to have not been eaten
> I will can want to have been not eaten
>
>
> There are, in that situation, 5 levels of negativity
No - we can get only 4 levels. The negative of "will be able" is "will not
be able" (ne pourai pas). We cannot negate 'will' and 'be able' separately.
The grammatically acceptable negatives are:
I will not be able to want to have been eaten.
I will be able not to want to have been eaten. ('not' is put _in front_
of the infinitive 'to want')
I will be able to want not to have been eaten. (negates 'to have')
I will be able to want to have not been eaten. (negates 'been')
I will be able to want to have been not eaten. (negates 'eaten')
> For the same sentence in French "Je pourrai vouloir avoir été mangé"
>
> there are only 3 levels because the futur tense and the hypothetic aspect
> are represented by the same word
Yes, but even tho we say "will be able' in English, we can have only one
negative form for this.
> and the part "avoir été mangé" can only be
> made negative as a whole and not each part indepedently
We can negate each separately if we wish to for reasons of emphasis.
> Je ne pourrai pas vouloir avoir été mangé
> Je pourrai ne pas vouloir avoir été mangé
> Je pourrai vouloir ne pas avoir été mangé
>
> (But, the fact that, in spoken french, the "ne" is usually dropped don't
> reduce that number of level because there's a little difference in
> intonation between the two parts "Je pourrai pas vouloir")
:)
> So I ask that question: does a language has to have a lot of levels to
> make
> a sentence negative or may it be possible to make the whole sentence
> negative?
>
> Because if we look each of the 5 negative sentences I gave, their meanings
> are very similar...
They are - the differences are subtle and relate more to placing emphasis
on different parts of the sentenced.
> So I could use a way in my conlang to make the sentence negative and not
> his
> parts, there are probably natlangs that make this..
French :)
> What do you think about this?
I am of course slightly biased, but I like the greater flexibility of
English in this respect ;)
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" ]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 21
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 18:41:51 +0000
From: Ray Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
On Tuesday, February 8, 2005, at 04:10 , Rob Haden wrote:
> This thread has inspired me to develop a grammar and syntax for a Future
> English language. This Future English will be spoken at least 500 years
> from now. It demonstrates many of the characteristics of modern-day
> Hebrew
> and Arabic:
> - VSO word-order
etc.
So English will catch up with Welsh ;)
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" ]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 22
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 21:32:33 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
Hallo!
On Mon, 7 Feb 2005 23:10:25 -0500,
Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> This thread has inspired me to develop a grammar and syntax for a Future
> English language. This Future English will be spoken at least 500 years
> from now. [...]
>
> [lots of good stuff snipped]
>
> That's about all for right now.
That's a good start! I'd like to see more of it. What are the
sound changes like?
And it is not implausible, though I would give it at least 1000 years
to evolve. 500 years are a bit short, I think. The transformation
of a mostly analytic, inflecting language into a highly synthetic
agglutinating language is interesting.
Greetings,
Jörg.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 23
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 23:47:52 +0200
From: Isaac Penzev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Correcting a foreigner (was: CONCULTURE: Ayeri calendar again)
caeruleancentaur wrote:
> I wanted to comment on this, in a humorous vein, but wasn't sure if
> I should. I don't know how touchy some folks can be about having
> their English corrected. I know that when I'm attempting to speak a
> language foreign to me, I am very glad for any corrections I can get.
I personally would prefer to be corrected privately. I still don't know how
to react at Adrian Morgan's commentary on Monday, January 31, 2005 2:34 PM:
<<I gotta ask what a homosexualist is. Someone who believes in
homosexuals?>>
Is this intended to mean that my English in most cases is so much good that
a minor mistake must be mocked in public?
My gratitude to Muke Tever who explained it by Russian (my L1) influence:
<<The Russian word appears to be "gomoseksualist", with an adjective
"gomoseksual'nyj".>>
That was absolutely correct.
-- Yitzik
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 24
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 17:06:59 -0500
From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 17:00:49 +1100, Tristan McLeay
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Well, we get by often enough using [EMAIL PROTECTED] after a singular element
>as
>it is...
Yes.
>> One of the allophones would be [EMAIL PROTECTED] How do you figure?
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]@, [EMAIL PROTECTED]@ > z@, s@
>houses're h&[EMAIL PROTECTED]@ > h&Oz@
>boxes're [EMAIL PROTECTED]@ > bOks@
Ah, okay. Makes sense. Also possible are long s-sequences:
houses're > haussa ['[EMAIL PROTECTED]
boxes're > bakssa ['baks)[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> I think it likely that that pronoun will become a postclitic verbal
>> marker for transitivity.
>
>I think it sensible to avoid the word 'likely'.
Why's that? It's already happened in some creoles, e.g. Tagalog.
>Oh, for the derivative of 'us' or 'to us' to become singular dative,
>all it needs is for informal speech to become standard. A feature of
>informal British and Australian English is and has been for some time
>to use 'us'/'to us' to mean 'me'/'to me'. (Reports on the web suggest
>it's more common in some British variants than it is in my Australian
>variant, but it's common enough here too.)
Oh, I see. I didn't know about that. Over here in 'Merca, we don't do
that. :b
>> Rather, it
>> seems more likely that oblique forms will be constructed similar to
>> Hebrew
>> and Arabic: t'mi for "to me", n'yu for "and you", etc. Compare Hebrew
>> l'chaym "to life", etc.
>
>Which differs from one current option only in orthography.
Yes.
>Well transitive and active aren't exactly similar, nor are intransitive
>and stative. I
No, but the pairs transitive-active and intransitive-stative have more in
common than transitive-stative and intransitive-active.
>> Mi tekim. = I take [something].
>> Mi tek. = I am taken.
>
>That second one (the English translation at least) is just
>
>BTW---I see no reason why English of the 24th Century should be any
>more likely to have had its orthography changed than English of the
>21st. Some words might change spelling in minor ways, but I wouldn't
>expect anything radical---maybe just more things like 'gonna' or
>'wanna' will become more standard (and others unthought of as things
>become grammaticalised and reduced), or as <miniture> from <minuture>,
>unstressed syllables might change. I thus suggest:
>
>Me take 'em.
>Me take.
It's just my preference to have a more phonemic/phonetic orthography. :)
>If you feel so inclined, you can suggest the IPA pronunciation: /mi
>"tekIm/, you seem to imply.
Actually, I posit that stress would always be on the initial syllable and
would be rather weaker than that of current English. So, |mitekim|
= /mitekim/ = ['mi.t_he.k_hIm].
>> Other possibilities:
>>
>> 1. A contrast between alienable and inalienable possession. The
>> former is
>> expressed by the verb _on_ "own", e.g. ket mion "my cat", while the
>> latter
>> is expressed by the preposition _o_ "of", e.g. hed omi "my head".
>
>I was never trying to suggest things that don't already have some
>indication of where it's coming from in current English... I can say
>'my own head' just as easily as I can say 'my own cat'.
I didn't say that you suggested such things. I suggested them. :) While
one can say "my own head" as easily as "my own cat", it seems like the
related verb "own" implies alienable possession.
>> 2. Complete obliteration of the fossilized ablaut verb forms (e.g.
>> sing ~
>> sang ~ sung) and also the currently productive past-tense formation in
>> -
>> ed. The new verb system would have mostly prefixing TMA markers.
>
>I doubt it'll be *completely* obliterated. Lexical words, yeah, but
>grammaticalised words I think will retain it for a while.
I think things like sing vs. song will remain, but not Ablaut within a
given class of words (nouns, verbs, etc).
>> 3. Possibly a new animate/inanimate grammatical gender distinction
>> expressed by different verbal markers. For example, an animate direct
>> object would be marked by the suffix -im on the verb, while an
>> inanimate
>> direct object would be marked by the suffix -it (or perhaps -o, from
>> "her").
>
>I'm sure all the women will enjoy being turned into inanimates. While
>similar things have happened in other languages, normally there's
>already no relationship between masculine and feminine and male and
>female, whereas in English, the relationship is incredibly strong.
Women wouldn't be turned into inanimates. They'd be part of the animates.
However, in colloquial English, some inanimate objects are referred to in
the 3rd-person feminine. So there isn't a complete lack of basis for such
a development.
>Leaving that aside, I don't see it happening anyway, at least, there's
>no indication of it happening already... Perhaps a French-style 'Me, I
>went to the park', or 'Jack and Fred, they went outside' (which happen
>sometimes in English, but not religiously yet), but that's the closest
>in the current system I can get to any sign of nominal indication via
>inflexion on the verb.
These are just my own thoughts.
- Rob
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 25
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2005 09:40:36 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Future English
On 9 Feb 2005, at 9.06 am, Rob Haden wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Feb 2005 17:00:49 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>> I think it likely that that pronoun will become a postclitic verbal
>>> marker for transitivity.
>>
>> I think it sensible to avoid the word 'likely'.
>
> Why's that? It's already happened in some creoles, e.g. Tagalog.
I didn't mean in that specific case; I meant in general. We're
predicting the future with very little basis.
...
>> unstressed syllables might change. I thus suggest:
>>
>> Me take 'em.
>> Me take.
>
> It's just my preference to have a more phonemic/phonetic orthography.
> :)
I would prefer to use the current orthography, but change the
grammar/pronunciation around myself :) Maybe I'll do it, creating a
language complimentary to your future English (Which I spose really
should be Fyutxo Inlix, shouldn't it, so I can call mine Future
English? :)
>> If you feel so inclined, you can suggest the IPA pronunciation: /mi
>> "tekIm/, you seem to imply.
>
> Actually, I posit that stress would always be on the initial syllable
> and
> would be rather weaker than that of current English. So, |mitekim|
> = /mitekim/ = ['mi.t_he.k_hIm].
Yeah, I hadn't read the next message yet..
> I didn't say that you suggested such things. I suggested them. :)
> While
> one can say "my own head" as easily as "my own cat", it seems like the
> related verb "own" implies alienable possession.
But I think seeing as 'own' in the context of possession is actually an
emphasiser, if either's going to mean inalienable possession, it'd be
'me-own' i.e. the emphatic form.
> Women wouldn't be turned into inanimates. They'd be part of the
> animates.
Well, then they'd turn into men, which they'd object to at least as
hard!
> However, in colloquial English, some inanimate objects are referred to
> in
> the 3rd-person feminine. So there isn't a complete lack of basis for
> such
> a development.
It is pretty damn rare though...
>> Leaving that aside, I don't see it happening anyway, at least, there's
>> no indication of it happening already... Perhaps a French-style 'Me, I
>> went to the park', or 'Jack and Fred, they went outside' (which happen
>> sometimes in English, but not religiously yet), but that's the closest
>> in the current system I can get to any sign of nominal indication via
>> inflexion on the verb.
>
> These are just my own thoughts.
I know, I was just giving my own thoughts on your own thoughts.
--
Tristan.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
