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There are 16 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: [OT] conplaneteering
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
From: Damian Yerrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Fwd: Re: My first romlang sentence
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: [OT] decimal point/comma (was conplaneteering)
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: My first romlang sentence
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Romaji as syllabary
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: Romaji as syllabary
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: Romaji as syllabary
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Romaji as syllabary
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. CHATter: personal news
From: J Y S Czhang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: CHATter: personal news
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 01:52:08 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] conplaneteering
Quoting Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> I find all the Swedish products I deal with at IKEA really weird when
> they say things like 'Gewicht* 3,5 kg/Weight 123,5 oz' though. It's
> even weirder when the only language on the packaging is English and
> they still use commas for decimal points. It seems to me that
> translating punctuation (and time into 12-hour) is just as much a part
> of translation as translating 'Gewicht' into 'Weight'.
>
> * I can only remember the German word for 'weight', but chances are the
> German word will be on it somewheres.
The Swedish is simply _vikt_.
Andreas
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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:02:11 -0800
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 19:46:12 -0500, Damian Yerrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Damian had sent his reply to me, when i'm sure it was meant to go to the list.
>
> B. Garcia wrote:
>
> >I find spoken German more pleasant than spoken French. But I
> >prefer sung french over sung German.
>
> Do you prefer French singing or German rap? :)
I dislike rap in general except stuff from the 1980's :)
>
> >Your own esthetcics, Damian will be different from mine. You may think
> >you don't have any, but they're there. Try not to judge what your
> >esthetics should be based upon what others have done with their
> >languages.
>
> So in other words, do you claim that people won't b***h at me
> because, say, the elf-counterparts in my conworld speak a more
> guttural language than the orc-counterparts? You say such a setup
> would amuse you, but would it offend others?
Why worry about what offends people? As long as your conlang isn't
created with offensive words (such as using natlang offensive words as
words in your conlang... like for instance ni**er for "love"). It's
your conlang, you're the one who decides what to do with it. Besides,
i personally would be very amused to make a guttural Elf language. I'd
not worry about offense, more like constant bitching and whining from
fantasy geeks that "That's not how elves speak!"
>
> >It reminds me of those "Folk explanations" that say "such and such
> >ruler/king/chief had a lazy tongue, so everyone began to imitate him".
>
> Something like that is how French _chaire_ = "chair" became _chaise_.
I haven't heard about that one, but I suppose :)
>
> Well if you can't remember that far back, then you're not going to
> remember how to defeat the creatures that took your grandparents
> underground to dine on their flesh :)
Well, they apparently have no mythology either. They do have "evil
spirits" but that's about it. They create no stories, have no
literature, no history, and their art tends to be rudimentary, from
what i've seen.
--
You can turn away from me
but there's nothing that'll keep me here you know
And you'll never be the city guy
Any more than I'll be hosting The Scooby Show
Scooby Show - Belle and Sebastian
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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 21:14:52 -0500
From: Damian Yerrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
Quoting "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Damian had sent his reply to me, when i'm sure it was meant to go to the
> list.
Stupid gmail and its forced Reply-To:. Reposted
Mike Ellis wrote:
>There are a few patterns that show up here and there (words for little
>things tend towards front vowels and words for big things tend to have back
>vowels in them etc etc)
More precisely, this shows a weak correlation of the period of the
second formant (1/F2) with the size of the object. Likewise with the
period of the fundamental (1/F0) in the tonal African language Ewe.
>but they aren't hard rules and they don't stick in a lot of places
You'd be surprised:
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa
* http://www.conknet.com/~mmagnus/Str.html
*
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=3Dcache:i75hDalvvQgJ:www.percepp.demon.co.uk/=
soundsmb.htm
* http://cavlec.yarinareth.net/archives/2002/12/11/phonaesthetics/
(caution: possible "cellar door" bias begins halfway down)
Though English has "small" and "big", it also has "little" and "large".
>A suggestion: if you're having difficulty generating an a priori vocabulary
>that sounds right, try an 'a posteriori' language -- start with an existing
>language and then go nuts with sound/grammar changes etc.
Wouldn't I have to worry about offending native speakers of
the existing natlang(s) or creators of the existing conlang(s)
if I include too many identifiable words? I guess one solution
is to take existing words, compound them, and then "erode" them.
>EVERYBODY knows that the word and phrase order of (pick your first language=
)
>is inherently more logical than the rest.
And such an inherent bias is what I'm trying to understand.
A known bias is better than an unknown bias.
Sanghyeon Seo wrote:
>If you don't want euroclones, there's a very easy way to avoid it:
>learn any non-European language!
I've _read about_ other natlangs and their structures, but I've
never tried hard to learn to speak one. Am I the only one who
got cheated by his middle school and high school, whose foreign
language departments taught nothing but IE languages? I guess I
just haven't yet had the dedication to work through "teach yourself
$LANGUAGE" books from the library, especially because they rarely
come with a cassette or CD to compare my pronunciation to.
Stephen Mulraney wrote:
>But
>a better reason for the low number of distinctive vowel phonemes
>might be large array of consonants, which bear more functional
>load in the language.
So if being consonant-rich makes a phonetic system tend to be
vowel-poor (cf. Caucasian languages), then what are the forces
that help a language become consonant-rich?
And about Toki Pona: Don't the complaints about vagueness
apply in theory to any isolating language, which can be as
vague or as specific as the speaker's patience allows for?
Sally Caves wrote:
>This does sound like a twelve step program, doesn't it! :)
If only it took only 12 steps to make a conlang :)
>Many of the
>linguistic scholars of glossolalia were so sure they could identify the
>artificial aspects of that linguistic practice by noting the 1) open
>syllables, 2) reduced phonology, 3) echoism, etc. that we find in Hawaiian,
>for instance. An over regularity of grammar?
Turkish verbs?
>Sounds, rather, like that South American tribe whose name I can't remember=
;
>I have it on the tip of my tongue. Their language was also almost devoid o=
f
>abstractions, and they showed an inability to calculate, as well, i.e., to
>think in abstractions. We even discussed it about a year ago.
Today I was scouring Wikipedia for information on language isolates
on a hunch that they might have more off-the-wall ANADEWisms,
and I read about Pirah=E3 spoken in Brazil. Is this the one?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%FAra-Pirah%E3_language
B. Garcia wrote:
>Your own esthetcics, Damian will be different from mine. You may think
>you don't have any, but they're there. Try not to judge what your
>esthetics should be based upon what others have done with their
>languages.
So in other words, do you claim that people won't b***h at me
because, say, the elf-counterparts in my conworld speak a more
guttural language than the orc-counterparts? You say such a setup
would amuse you, but would it offend others?
>It reminds me of those "Folk explanations" that say "such and such
>ruler/king/chief had a lazy tongue, so everyone began to imitate him".
Something like that is how French _chaire_ =3D "chair" became _chaise_.
>The pirah=E3 is who you're thinking of. I still can't wrap my head
>around not having stories, or histories further back than one's grand
>parents.
Well if you can't remember that far back, then you're not going to
remember how to defeat the creatures that took your grandparents
underground to dine on their flesh :)
--
Damian
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 23:00:46 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Fwd: Re: My first romlang sentence
Forwarded at Christian's request.
I didn't keep a copy of my reply to him, unfortunately. Christian, you're
free to post it if you kept it.
------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Christian Thalmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> La agilleta, purra hualpa suilet serca nesigia ncaña.
> /la agil_jeta pura walpa silet se4ka nesidZa N_0an_ja/
Ah, the meaning is instantly clear. "The little needle,
purring puppy silent around nobody's dog." Piece of cake.
;o)
Welcome to the romlanging club, Paul.
-- Christian Thalmann
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Message: 5
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:06:17 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
----- Original Message -----
From: "Damian Yerrick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Mike Ellis wrote:
>>A suggestion: if you're having difficulty generating an a priori
>>vocabulary
>>that sounds right, try an 'a posteriori' language -- start with an
>>existing
>>language and then go nuts with sound/grammar changes etc.
>
> Wouldn't I have to worry about offending native speakers of
> the existing natlang(s) or creators of the existing conlang(s)
> if I include too many identifiable words? I guess one solution
> is to take existing words, compound them, and then "erode" them.
Take a look at Ill Bethisad, Damian. Here's the Wiki:
http://ib.frath.net/w/Main_Page
There's an honored tradition of a posteriori language invention that started
on this list and branched off. Take a look at the Romlang and Conculture
lists. Conlangers are hard to offend, and the point is to try everything.
:)
> Sanghyeon Seo wrote:
>
>>If you don't want euroclones, there's a very easy way to avoid it:
>>learn any non-European language!
>
> I've _read about_ other natlangs and their structures, but I've
> never tried hard to learn to speak one. Am I the only one who
> got cheated by his middle school and high school, whose foreign
> language departments taught nothing but IE languages?
No... the only languages taught at my high school were Spanish, French, and
German. And that was thirty five years ago. I think it's even more reduced
in general these days.
I guess I
> just haven't yet had the dedication to work through "teach yourself
> $LANGUAGE" books from the library, especially because they rarely
> come with a cassette or CD to compare my pronunciation to.
Hmmm. They're abundant at Borders, but like you said, it can be expensive.
However, a terrific book is Bernard Comrie's Language Universals and
Linguistic Typology which gives examples from various non IE languages. And
even a plain grammar can give you enough information about a language's
phonology and structure that you can go on from there. That's one of the
beauties of invention: you can create the sounds of a new language in your
own mouth through some experimentation pulling the tongue back for
alveolars, etc. Who cares if it isn't exactly like some natural language?
> Stephen Mulraney wrote:
>
>>But
>>a better reason for the low number of distinctive vowel phonemes
>>might be large array of consonants, which bear more functional
>>load in the language.
>
> So if being consonant-rich makes a phonetic system tend to be
> vowel-poor (cf. Caucasian languages), then what are the forces
> that help a language become consonant-rich?
Your own decision to make it so. You might be trying to rebuild New York
City in minute detail. No invented language will ever have the history of a
real language. One can give it the look of one, though, to some extent.
You are right to want to learn everything you can about linguistics, first,
but don't let that delay your invention. I gather you haven't! :)
> And about Toki Pona: Don't the complaints about vagueness
> apply in theory to any isolating language, which can be as
> vague or as specific as the speaker's patience allows for?
I suppose.
> Sally Caves wrote:
>
>>This does sound like a twelve step program, doesn't it! :)
>
> If only it took only 12 steps to make a conlang :)
:)
>>Many of the
>>linguistic scholars of glossolalia were so sure they could identify the
>>artificial aspects of that linguistic practice by noting the 1) open
>>syllables, 2) reduced phonology, 3) echoism, etc. that we find in
>>Hawaiian,
>>for instance. An over regularity of grammar?
>
> Turkish verbs?
Good point. I do think that Turkish was at some stage consciously
redesigned. My Teonaht--let me introduce you to another peevish element of
conlanging and that is the AFMCL remark ("as for MY conlang...")--has a
terribly regular verbal system, but a rather baroque maneuverability called
"The Law of Detachment."
>>Sounds, rather, like that South American tribe whose name I can't
>>remember=
> ;
>>I have it on the tip of my tongue. Their language was also almost devoid
>>o=
> f
>>abstractions, and they showed an inability to calculate, as well, i.e., to
>>think in abstractions. We even discussed it about a year ago.
>
> Today I was scouring Wikipedia for information on language isolates
> on a hunch that they might have more off-the-wall ANADEWisms,
> and I read about Pirah=E3 spoken in Brazil. Is this the one?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%FAra-Pirah%E3_language
Bingo! :) But there's a better link:
http://www.phatnav.com/wiki/index.php?title=Piraha
>
> B. Garcia wrote:
>
>>Your own esthetcics, Damian will be different from mine. You may think
>>you don't have any, but they're there. Try not to judge what your
>>esthetics should be based upon what others have done with their
>>languages.
>
> So in other words, do you claim that people won't b***h at me
> because, say, the elf-counterparts in my conworld speak a more
> guttural language than the orc-counterparts? You say such a setup
> would amuse you, but would it offend others?
I think Barry also said that you shouldn't be worried about offending others
with your conlang. The only way we get offended is by spam, outsiders
trying to sell their auxlangs to us, or reeeally offensive religious or
political remarks. Feel free to do what you want with your conlang outside
of outrageous plagiarism. Even that is allowed: I've picked up some terms
from Draseleq, for instance (with permission). Felt very much like stealing
from Tatari Faran as well! :)
Sally
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/whatsteo.html
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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:42:12 -0500
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
Sally Caves wrote:
>
> From Damian Yerrick:
> >
> > I've _read about_ other natlangs and their structures, but I've
> > never tried hard to learn to speak one. Am I the only one who
> > got cheated by his middle school and high school, whose foreign
> > language departments taught nothing but IE languages?
>
> No... the only languages taught at my high school were Spanish,
> French, and German. And that was thirty five years ago. I think
> it's even more reduced in general these days.
Most of you were very lucky to have that. Some of us went to
school in more rural areas where our high schools didn't have
a "foreign language department." They only offered one
language, take it or leave it. In my school, it was Spanish. The
high school in the next town (nine miles north) only offered
German.
Damian, if you have access to a large university library, try to
find _Languages and their Status_ and _Languages and their
Speakers_ both edited by Timothy Skopen. Each book has a
chapter on a particular language (about six chapters in each
book). It's not an in-depth grammar, but explores some of the
unusual aspects of the language. Many of the languages are
non-IE.
I've always found it useful to skim through grammar or textbooks
of various non-IE languages at the library. I'm not trying to learn
to speak those languages, but just to understand how their
grammars and morphologies work.
--Ph. D.
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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:13:58 -0600
From: "Thomas R. Wier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [OT] decimal point/comma (was conplaneteering)
Mark wrote:
> These days, a raised dot is a symbol for multiplication,
> used when simple juxtaposition is ambiguous or for special cases like
> the vector dot product.
In Linguistics, it's also used to indicate extra vowel length, e.g.
in Algonquian linguistics. In some languages which have a contrast
between short, long and extralong vowels, the raised dot represents
the mean in that spectrum.
==========================================================================
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: 8
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:25:54 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
Hi!
Damian Yerrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>...
> And about Toki Pona: Don't the complaints about vagueness
> apply in theory to any isolating language, which can be as
> vague or as specific as the speaker's patience allows for?
Hmm?? What is the link between 'isolating' and 'vague'? These
are two totally unrelated concepts.
> Turkish verbs?
I love them! :-)
**Henrik
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Message: 9
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:58:01 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: My first romlang sentence
I've started work on case. So far, I think I'll have three cases, nominative,
accusative and oblique.
Herewith, my test sentence, with case and gender marked, and without making the
second NP indefinite. It may have been apparent that I will be using nasal
mutation to mark the indefinite, thus /un kan_jus/ -> /n=kan_jus/ ->
/N=kan_jus/ -> /N_0an_jus/.
Lo agilleto purro hualpo suilet serca lo desigius cañus.
/lo adZil_jeto pura walpo silet se4ka lo desidZus kan_jus/
ART ADJ-m:nom:sg ADJ-m:nom:sg N-m:nom:sg V-3:s:present PREP ART ADJ-m:obl:sg
N-m:obl:sg
Paul
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Message: 10
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 08:09:39 -0800
From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Romaji as syllabary
I just woke up with this odd thought running through
my mind for a quick and easy syllabary. Each of the
26 letters of the Roman alphabet could be treated as a
syllable and pronounced in full within the context of
the word. Thus "STO" would be pronounced "es'tio",
"HAD" would be "aitchay'dee".
Then maybe the lower case letters could represent an
alternate syllable like "R" = "aar" while "r" = "ro".
Maybe the rule could be vowel before consonant in the
upper case and vowel after consonant in the lower
case. ("M" = "em", "m" = "ma", "P" = "ep", "p" =
"pee", "TO" = "tio", "tO" = "eto", etc. (But what
about "A" vs "a" hmmm. I don't know.))
That would make for an easy-to-remember 52 symbol
syllabary. And it could be easily mapped onto a
custom made font that worked easily with the standard
English keybord.
Is 52 enough? There would be 140,608 valid 3-syllable
words and 7.3 million 4-syllable words. That seems
like enough.
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Message: 11
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 16:14:08 +0000
From: Bryan Parry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Romaji as syllabary
But what syllables exist in English? Probably not
these syllables.
--- Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I just woke up with this odd thought running through
> my mind for a quick and easy syllabary. Each of the
> 26 letters of the Roman alphabet could be treated as
> a
> syllable and pronounced in full within the context
> of
> the word. Thus "STO" would be pronounced "es'tio",
> "HAD" would be "aitchay'dee".
>
> Then maybe the lower case letters could represent an
> alternate syllable like "R" = "aar" while "r" =
> "ro".
> Maybe the rule could be vowel before consonant in
> the
> upper case and vowel after consonant in the lower
> case. ("M" = "em", "m" = "ma", "P" = "ep", "p" =
> "pee", "TO" = "tio", "tO" = "eto", etc. (But what
> about "A" vs "a" hmmm. I don't know.))
>
> That would make for an easy-to-remember 52 symbol
> syllabary. And it could be easily mapped onto a
> custom made font that worked easily with the
> standard
> English keybord.
>
> Is 52 enough? There would be 140,608 valid
> 3-syllable
> words and 7.3 million 4-syllable words. That seems
> like enough.
>
=====
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
-- William Butler Yeats
___________________________________________________________
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 11:33:31 -0500
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Romaji as syllabary
I think he meant it as a syllabary for a conlang.
See the auxlang BABM, where each letter (except
a e i o u) has an inherent vowel attached. B is
always pronounced as "bo", M as "mu", etc.
Bryan Parry said:
> But what syllables exist in English? Probably not
> these syllables.
>
>
> --- Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I just woke up with this odd thought running through
>> my mind for a quick and easy syllabary. Each of the
>> 26 letters of the Roman alphabet could be treated as
>> a syllable and pronounced in full within the context
>> of the word. Thus "STO" would be pronounced "es'tio",
>> "HAD" would be "aitchay'dee".
>>
>> Then maybe the lower case letters could represent an
>> alternate syllable like "R" = "aar" while "r" =
>> "ro".
>> Maybe the rule could be vowel before consonant in the
>> upper case and vowel after consonant in the lower
>> case. ("M" = "em", "m" = "ma", "P" = "ep", "p" =
>> "pee", "TO" = "tio", "tO" = "eto", etc. (But what
>> about "A" vs "a" hmmm. I don't know.))
>>
>> That would make for an easy-to-remember 52 symbol
>> syllabary. And it could be easily mapped onto a
>> custom made font that worked easily with the
>> standard
>> English keybord.
>>
>> Is 52 enough? There would be 140,608 valid
>> 3-syllable
>> words and 7.3 million 4-syllable words. That seems
>> like enough.
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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 12:27:35 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Romaji as syllabary
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ph. D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> I think he meant it as a syllabary for a conlang.
>
> See the auxlang BABM,
And, of course, Ray Brown's briefscripts.
Paul
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Message: 14
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:33:42 -0500
From: J Y S Czhang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: CHATter: personal news
Hiya conlangin' peeps!
I will be soon discontinuing AOL & do not know when I will be online again
(hopefully within the month or two).
So in the interim, those of you (esp'ly the slang-lang, toy-lang, pidgin and
creole fans) who wish to possibly flood my snailmail box with goodies ;)
Jonathan Chang
753 Alma St. #315
Palo Alto, CA 94301
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Message: 15
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 21:10:21 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Introducing myself, and several questions
Hallo!
On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:58:35 -0500,
Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jörg Rhiemeier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > Hallo!
> >
> > On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 00:01:43 -0500,
> > Damian Yerrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >> My name is Damian, and I'm a conlanger.
>
> This does sound like a twelve step program, doesn't it! :)
What is a twelve step program?
> [...]
> >>
> >> LEXICAL ICONICITY
> >>
> >> When creating the a priori lexicon for Qenya (early drafts of
> >> Quenya), Tolkien chose sound patterns that he felt "fit" a given
> >> meaning.
> >> http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/vice.htm
> >>
> >> However, I seem to have a dulled sense of aesthetics, possibly
> >> caused by my Asperger syndrome that causes me to distrust vague
> >> hunches. Much of the time, I can't seem to do better than creating
> >> phonotactic rules and then randomly assigning Swadesh-list glosses
> >> to sound patterns, possibly with the aid of a computer program.
> >> Are there some general procedures that govern lexical innovation
> >> in natlangs and naturalistic conlangs? Has anybody successfully
> >> implemented ding-dong or ta-ta in their conlangs?
>
> Words that are onomatopoeic? Tsyttsytsa is "cricket" in Teonaht, and it
> intends to imitate the sound a cricket makes. In the early stages of
> Teonaht, Damian, I just pulled words out of the air arbitrarily. I had a
> strong sense at the time (which you claim you don't but you may surprise
> yourself!) that a word would "fit" its meaning, and as the language
> developed I resorted to more and more compounding. But I state as strongly
> as Jörg does that this is completely subjective.
What I am doing in my conlanging is to find wprds that sound "right"
to me. Of course, this is entirely subjective, and the sound-meaning
relationship remains arbitrary.
> > The relationship between sound and meaning in languages is generally
> > arbitrary, with only few words approaching iconicity. And aesthetics
> > is a very subjective issue. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
>
> Exactly. In looking over Teonaht, I have found that I find "nrina" rather
> beautiful, although it starts with a rather unconventional consonant
> cluster. I have tended to favor quite a lot of clucky sounds: kemkrilyt for
> "labyrinthine" is full of clusters that other people might find harsh, and
> yet I adore that word. I have a book of words I pulled out of the air
> (where the F*#)(@)k is it?) and to which I had planned to assign meanings,
> and many tend towards three syllables with stress on the first syllable.
> Avgyab, begrimod, krestimait, zydzyend, etc. I find these collection of
> syllables pleasing, though there is nothing inherently beautiful about them.
>
> > I find naturalistic conlangs (i.e., conlangs that look like natlangs,
> > with a sense of historicity) beautiful and conlangs that give away
> > their artificiality at first sight ugly, but there are people around
> > here who have a different taste.
>
> So Jörg, what conlangs give their artificiality away? There are so many
> features of a language that could considered "artificial." Many of the
> linguistic scholars of glossolalia were so sure they could identify the
> artificial aspects of that linguistic practice by noting the 1) open
> syllables, 2) reduced phonology, 3) echoism, etc. that we find in Hawaiian,
> for instance. An over regularity of grammar?
It is not easy to say, but an extreme regularity of phonology, grammar
and word formation looks artificial, so does, for example, a language
which superimposes some sort of grammatical categories onto the IPA
chart. The worst offenders are philosophical languages and closed-
vocabulary schemes.
> > [...]
> >
> > The variation among human languages is enormous, and it is hard
> > to say whether left-branching (object-verb, adj-noun, postpositions)
> > or right-branching (verb-object, noun-adj, prepositions) structures
> > are easier to parse.
>
> Teonaht is a direct violation of the Greenbergian rules for syntax. It is
> OSV, or more colloquially SOV with adjectives that are postpositional and
> prepositions that are... for the lack of a better word. . .prepositional,
> although you do find the -jo and -ro among the conjuntions that are
> postpositional.
>
> If I were ever to invent a new language, don't hold your breath! I would
> probably make its words far more monosyllabic; it would be inflected with a
> syntax that expresses topic and focus. Or I would invent a Teonivar who
> invents a philosophical language. And have it fail, or taken up by
> Rrordaly's mimes.
Who are Rrordaly's mimes?
> >> CULTURAL-PHONETIC CORRELATION
> >>
> >> Does tendency for open or closed syllables, for softer or harder
> >> sounds, or for tones or no tones, depend on culture? I've heard
> >> of the Inuit and the Arabs, whose languages have fewer distinct
> >> vowel heights and more back consonants because their harsh
> >> environments make it painful to open the mouth to the elements
> >> in order to produce low vowels.
> >
> > Few linguists would subscribe to that. There seems not to be
> > any correlation between culture and phonology.
>
> Again, exactly. It's like the amateur linguists who wanted to psychologize
> the Welsh for their initial mutations ("they're lazy") or better, for the
> particles that precede initial verbs and predicates. "Nothing touches. They
> are secretive, careful, mystical." Bosh!
I whole-heartedly agree. It is just a big bucket of bilge.
> >> In addition, Tolkien's chaotic
> >> orcs speak a phonaesthetically "harsher" language than his
> >> lawful elves. Is such correlation the rule or the exception?
> >
> > Again, it's subjective. Tolkien decided that the good guys in
> > his story would speak languages he'd consider beautiful, and the
> > bad guys languages he'd consider ugly. The next author will have
> > different ideas about what is beautiful, and build his languages
> > accordingly.
>
> However, I might add that there is some research being done into the
> aesthetics of western language by no other than the Cornish Language
> revivalists; I talked to one at the Berkeley conference I attended two years
> ago. I don't know if this was his particular bailiwick, or one that has a
> larger calling. But language aesthetic, especially in the reconstruction of
> language, or the creation of a dead language, is of interest to some people.
> We talked about the relatively common assumption that front consonants and
> liquids with few clusters are considered "prettier" than back consonants and
> back consonant clusters. I like Mike Ellis's examples! HAH! But again,
> this is cultural. Like what chords and note sequences express
> "sorrowfulness" vs. "an upbeat attitude" in music.
Yes.
> >> CULTURAL-GRAMMATIC CORRELATION
> >>
> >> Likewise, are any grammatical qualities correlated to aspects
> >> of the culture? Does an environmental or cultural constraint
> >> correlate with an OV or VO preference, with obligate marking
> >> of various properties of a noun or verb, or anything similar?
> >> I can see how a more paranoid culture might lead to evidentiary
> >> markers becoming grammaticalized; are there other examples?
> >
> > There is perhaps more of a correlation between culture and grammar
> > than between culture and phonology. A rigidly stratified culture
> > is perhaps more likely top develop an elaborate system of honorifics
> > than an egalitarian one, for example.
>
> I agree. But I don't think that syntax can be tied down to cultural
> constraints. I also don't think that a culture need be "paranoid" to
> produce evidentiary markers, any more than a culture is overly precise and
> fussy because it shows redundant marking with gender/number and
> noun/adjective. The French however... :) :) :D
This is also what I think about it.
> > [...]
> >
> >> Specifically, is the narrator's description of the language of
> >> the Eloi in chapter 5 of HG Wells's _The_Time_Machine_ unnatural?
> >>
> >> "Either I missed some subtle point or their language was
> >> excessively simple - almost exclusively composed of concrete
> >> substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract
> >> terms, or little use of figurative language. Their sentences
> >> were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to convey
> >> or understand any but the simplest propositions."
> >
> > Sounds like a pidgin.
>
> Sounds, rather, like that South American tribe whose name I can't remember;
> I have it on the tip of my tongue. Their language was also almost devoid of
> abstractions, and they showed an inability to calculate, as well, i.e., to
> think in abstractions. We even discussed it about a year ago.
Pirahã is the name. I could believe the story if it was set in a
Eurasian relic area and involved the speakers of that language
having bony ridges above their eyes and mixed offspring between
them and normal humans being sterile etc., because then it would be
a candidate for a Neanderthal or Homo erectus survival. However,
it is in the wrong location for that, and I am pretty sure that
it is a hoax.
Greetings,
Jörg.
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Message: 16
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 13:09:49 -0800
From: Sai Emrys <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CHATter: personal news
*blink* A Palo Altan?
Pity I don't live there any more...
- Sai
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