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There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. looking for a language term
From: Rodlox R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: very short samples
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: McGuffey Readers and animals
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: TECH: Sound Change program
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: TECH: Sound Change program
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: TECH: Sound Change program
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: McGuffey Readers and animals
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: TECH: Sound Change program
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: Colors as verbsl
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: New, yet unnamed experimental script
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: New language Noygwexaal
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: OT: Germanic Food (was: Expressing "that's how")
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. "pu ni nang" haiku translation
From: Yann Kiraly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: OT: Germanic Food (was: Expressing "that's how")
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: [neographies] New, yet unnamed experimental script
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: New, yet unnamed experimental script
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: looking for a language term
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Unattested... but possible?
From: "Joseph a.k.a Buck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: looking for a language term
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: TECH: Sound Change program
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: McGuffey Readers and animals
From: joaoeugenio2003 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Some thoughts on T4 grammar (inspired by HT & HST)
From: Jonathan Knibb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: TECH: Sound Change program
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: New, yet unnamed experimental script
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: [neographies] New, yet unnamed experimental script
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 03:06:29 +0000
From: Rodlox R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: looking for a language term
I remember hearing about how, in some Iranian languages, if a word is said
early in the statement, its dropped thereafter.
ie, "I picked the apple and I ate the apple" would become "I picked the
apple and ate."
does anyone know what the name is for this phenomenon? *curious*
thanks.
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:27:57 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: very short samples
Zhang replying to many wrote:
> >>> Mekem-langis plenti-fren,
> >> 'fren'?
> >
> > i thought it was "make-language plenty-friend(s)"
>
> Yepyep.
>
I interpreted that more as very (plenti) "user-friendly", which I think
isn't out of line either......:-))
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:54:55 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and animals
Carsten Becker wrote:
> So I downloaded the first McGuffey Reader and skimmed a bit
> through it. What gave me headache is that there are
> frequently mentioned everyday animals. Since the Ayeri are
> supposed to live on another planet, there are of course no
> dogs, cats, duck(ling)s and such per se.
Ah, the perennial problem for those of us who locate our languages on other
planets........
BTW, your orthography is GORGEOUS. (envy, envy) I came up with a lot of
similar chars. before I settled on the Kash alphabet; now I wish I'd been
braver (ease of [me] writing was a consideration, but I suspect Thais don't
have any problem with their system).
But I don't know
> enough about Biology and I can't draw well enough to make
> up own animals of the respective kinds.
Neither do I. :-((( All I know about the Kash/Gwr world is that there are
some large/med/small mammals, large/med/small reptiles ~"lizards" or
saurians (some of which must be warm-blooded since they can live in cold
climates); some mammals and "lizards" can glide and/or fly (no feathered
"birds"); insects of course; fish and perhaps one or two marine amphibians.
So far, names for just a few, esp. the food animals, which have to be
glossed "similar to Terran xxx" (a practice I don't like, but what to do? I
can't make an "Illustrated Dictionary" or Encyclopaedia-- life is short,
after all.......). Also, there are no household pets, or zoos for that
matter-- it's wrong to remove an animal from its natural habitat. The other
night I saw a program on the "Tasmanian Tiger", which apparently still
survives-- a cool looking beast (but I think a marsupial, and I'm not sure
we need those on Cindu. Aren't they sort of an evolutionary dead-end? or
non-competitive?) The idea of egg-laying mammals is fairly intriguing,
however; another dead-end, no?
of the continents of a
> map of Areca I drew "pre-last" summer. -- At least my
> drawing skills are good enough to hand-draw a map.
Let us see them, please, if possible.
But
> better don't ask me to reproduce parts of it by hand. Even
> with checkered paper this is a hard job for me.
C'mon, ain't that hard...and Xerox machines nowadays can increase/decrease
sizes...though I haven't tried making a really big wall map. Best for that
would be to draw a grid. (There must be a way using a bitmap at BIG
magnification, which could be printed out; even when it's reduced to
"normal" size it looks pretty good, though all that carefully inserted
detail is lost.)
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 04:58:49 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program
* Paul Bennett said on 2005-03-25 03:22:22 +0100
> * David J. Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > * Paul wrote:
> > > from > to / environment
> > >
> > > such as:
> > >
> > > d > t / _ #
>
> V=aeiou
Please allow the variables to be longer than one letter.
> Also, I'd need some kind of escape mechanism to distinguish named
> variables from text, since it's plausible that the user would want to use
> some horrible language like Klingon (or indeed CXS), where upper and lower
> case can mix within plain text.
Not to mention CXS using a lot of special characters that could be used
for a variable marker.
Find some symbol not used in cxs and x-sampa at least, like
one of the following characters (latin1):
¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯
° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿
Maybe « and » to mark features, or instead of [ and ] for regexes?
If you're going to allow patterns of the form VARNAMEsomethingelse, with
no space after VARNAME, you might maybe repeat the var-marker...
¦VAR¦ maybe?
t.
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 23:35:21 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:58:49 -0500, taliesin the storyteller
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> * Paul Bennett said on 2005-03-25 03:22:22 +0100
>>
>> V=aeiou
>
> Please allow the variables to be longer than one letter.
Good plan. "V=a,e,i,o,u,ei,ou"
>> Also, I'd need some kind of escape mechanism to distinguish named
>> variables from text,
> Not to mention CXS using a lot of special characters that could be used
> for a variable marker.
>
> Find some symbol not used in cxs and x-sampa at least, like
> one of the following characters (latin1):
> ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯
> ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿
I like § as a gut reaction. I wonder how easy it is to type...?
> Maybe « and » to mark features, or instead of [ and ] for regexes?
I like [] for features and () for regexes, with a descrambling pass before
they're read for real. Maybe the French quotes would be good for the
second-pass feature delimiters.
> If you're going to allow patterns of the form VARNAMEsomethingelse, with
> no space after VARNAME, you might maybe repeat the var-marker...
> ¦VAR¦ maybe?
I think I like single-character variable names, to be honest. We'll see
what happens.
Paul
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 23:56:22 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program
Paul Bennett wrote:
> As an assignment for a programming course I'm taking, I'm building a
> program to read a sound change list and a corpus, and output the corpus as
> modified by the sound changes.
Excellent. Far be it from me to give advice on computer programming, but...
something similar may have been done, even as long ago as the 70s-- One of
the students at Mich. back then (and this in the days of punch-cards, ugh)
wrote a program that generated French words correctly (I'm sure he used
features, in some way, but I really don't know--I know this only by
reputation, it was considered a major accomplishment).
I do think you're going to need some "cover symbols" (C,V, perhaps
R(esonant); and probably features for +/-voi, maybe +/- cont(inuant); rather
than the Jacobsonian of Chomskyan feature for POA (grave, coronal, etc,
though they have their merits) you might get away with (labial, alv., pal.,
velar). Well... I don't want to complicate matters, and certainly wish you
all success!!.
>
> Right now, I'm thinking the sound change list will be applied in the order
> as found in the file, with entries in the familiar format:
>
> from > to / environment
>
> such as:
>
> d > t / _ #
David P. has pointed out the problem with rules like that; it's a case where
some kind of generalization would come in handy to avoid repetition and make
a generalization. Certainly [+voi] > [-voi]/[+stop ___]# is more economical
than b > p/_#, d > t_# etc. Though perhaps not to a simple-minded
computer..........
Don't forget "feeding order" (creates an env. for additional change)vs.
"bleeding order" (eliminates an env.)-- the difference between
1. p > b /V_V
2. b > v /V_V -- both p and b end up v/V_V
vs. 1. b > v /V_V
2. p > b /V_V -- only "original" b changes. (I recall an AN study where
such a difference in ordering was found in 2 closely related but
geographically separated lgs.; the assumption/solution was that sound change
had spread from a centrally located lg., but the rules got applied
differently in the two recipients. This can happen in dialect chains, IIRC)
>
> In addition I will recognise labels like:
>
> 1500:
>
> to mark the (idealised) year a set of sound changes takes place.
Interesting idea. So after N rules, you establish a terminus = year XXXX;
with more rules to follow for a subsequent time sequence?
Oh my, #5 already...boo hiss
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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 21:13:47 -0800
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and animals
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:54:55 -0500, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: Constructed Languages List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Poster: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and animals
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Carsten Becker wrote:
> > So I downloaded the first McGuffey Reader and skimmed a bit
> > through it. What gave me headache is that there are
> > frequently mentioned everyday animals. Since the Ayeri are
> > supposed to live on another planet, there are of course no
> > dogs, cats, duck(ling)s and such per se.
>
> Ah, the perennial problem for those of us who locate our languages on other
> planets........
>
> BTW, your orthography is GORGEOUS. (envy, envy) I came up with a lot of
> similar chars. before I settled on the Kash alphabet; now I wish I'd been
> braver (ease of [me] writing was a consideration, but I suspect Thais don't
> have any problem with their system).
There exists a sort of obsession on online conlang message boards that
when you create a script it HAS to be simplified, and everyone warns
that "all those curves are not amenable to hand writing". For a script
to be used by a broad range and be efficient, I'd agree, but if your
script is functional AND esthetic, I don't get it.
Anyway, I find it hard to create another indic style script because I
end up just not happy with the character shapes (Surprise, surprise).
I think what i'd need to do is start off with a proto script and then
evolve it that way, just as I did for Kuraw. That, or I could create
yet another script style :).
> Also, there are no household pets, or zoos for that
> matter-- it's wrong to remove an animal from its natural habitat.
The Saalangal keep dogs as guardians of the house (great alarms) and
guardians of the chicken and pig pens. They aren't let inside because
they bring fleas and dirt into the house. Cats aren't pets either.
Their sole purpose is to hunt mice in the granaries. Keeping animals
as pets is considered a strange notion. Zoos would be considered odd
since the Saalangal use pens and enclosures as places to keep animals
for food (be it pig or chicken pens, or fish corrals)
> The other
> night I saw a program on the "Tasmanian Tiger", which apparently still
> survives-- a cool looking beast (but I think a marsupial, and I'm not sure
> we need those on Cindu. Aren't they sort of an evolutionary dead-end? or
> non-competitive?) The idea of egg-laying mammals is fairly intriguing,
> however; another dead-end, no?
I don't think they're a dead end really, just that they don't compete
well with mammals like dogs and cats). Hell, the American possum is
pretty damn successful and they have to contend with all sorts of
predatory mammals like mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, foxes,
bobcats, etc. However, they're not too bright and seem to be oblivious
at night to things around them (one walked three feet in front of me
without so much as hissing or showing a fright response)
--
Inu payangyara unamey ati tal amariey ka sey, payangyara kria?
Yanaysatra sonataya atan inu jumoey ati atan matawsara jumoey ati.
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Message: 8
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:25:28 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program
Paul Bennett wrote:
> Well, the language has pattern matching using fairly traditional []
> notation, so I could do
>
> p > b / [aeiou]_[aeiou]
>
> with very few problems, if any.
>
> The problem with named variables, and features for that matter, is that
> they (may) change from one stage of the language to the next. I'd need
> another file with (e.g.)
>
> 1066:
>
> V=aeiou
>
> 1300:
>
> V=aeiouy
I don't know if this is relevant, but you might want to distinguish in some
way "phonemic" vs. "phonetic" change. You might indeed have a rule: i > y
/__(C)u e.g. *bidu > bydu -- but the change is _phonemic_ only if, somehow,
from somewhere, the language produces other instances of /y/ in non-u envs.,
say **byda. Only then is the underlying representation (morpheme structure
rules) changed. (This is how _v_ became phonemic in Engl.)
>
> Also, I'd need some kind of escape mechanism to distinguish named
> variables from text, since it's plausible that the user would want to use
> some horrible language like Klingon (or indeed CXS), where upper and lower
> case can mix within plain text.
Grrr. Tell them to write Klingon in lower case, dammit; it's perfectly
simple to do. >
> I've thought about using $ before variables, to keep in step with several
> programming and scripting languages, but $ is used in environments for
> "morpheme boundary", and it would be a shame to have to use $$ there.
>
> Features, similarwise. if I used [aeiou] notation for variables, I'd need
> some other mechanism for marking features, and a file that looks something
> like
>
> 1066:
>
> t=[+stop][+alveolar][-voice]
>
> Okay, I'm thinking on my feet here...
>
> Make the sound-change file reader multi-pass.
>
> First pass, gobble up all the [features] and re-mark with some other
> character, like `feature' or something. Second pass, take all the
> (variables) and rewrite them in [regex notation].
Not sure I know what you're saying here, tech-wise, but it sounds like this
is where the underlying form/MS rules have changed.
(In my diss. I used ordered "generative phonology" rules to get from
Proto-Austronesian (ca. 7000 BP) > Proto Sulawesi (ca. 2000 BP)--sound
changes resulting in changed underlying phonemic inventory and MS rules,
then from that state onward to the 7 modern lgs. Not a dissimilar process;
it gave me a lot of headaches but taught me the importance of ordering and
precision. And I still find mistakes 30 yrs. later :-((( )
Another interesting concept is "persistent rules"-- Rule A operates for a
given length of time, then stops; but begins to operate again in a later
stage of the lang.--recusiveness of a sort. Wallace Chafe was the first to
point this out formally, in a paper in "Language" back in the early 70s
IIRC. (This may be more than you want to know)
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Message: 9
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:18:31 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Colors as verbsl
Very interesting, Charlie. I invented the stative verbs in Teonaht
precisely to make colors verbs, but got sidetracked. As of now, there are
only two color-statives: bovindi, and myebndi, "be blue" and "be red."
These of course have acquired extra meanings besides simply the room blues,
is blue; it can also mean be cold, be lofty, be superior, be the color of
the sky; and the other can mean be red with embarrassment, glee, health.
Myeebihs, however, became the adjective for "blushing." But though I've
created a bunch of stative verbs (be proud, be alive, etc.) I haven't
extended the colors! Be yellow, be green, be purple, be white, be black...
all of those need meanings. Be gold, be gray, be sea-green...
Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: "caeruleancentaur" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:55 AM
Subject: Colors as verbsl
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>>"Green" may be used as a noun. Most words can stray from their
>>specified part-of-speech role, so something that's technically an
>>adjective can be used as a noun ("green is beautiful") or even as a
>>verb ("the grass greens again after the drought").
>
> Senyecan is language based primarily on verbs. I'm trying to convert
> all lexicon entries into verbs as the base words. So far I've
> managed to do this with about 3/4 of the lexicon.
>
> This plan was obstructed briefly when I came to the names of the
> colors which were adjectives. Then I remembered that the names of
> certain colors in English had been made into verbs with the -en
> suffix: redden, blacken, and whiten. Some of the colors use the
> adjectival form for the verb, e.g., yellow, green, blue and gray.
> And I was delighted to discover two forms I had not known previously:
> embrown and empurple!
>
> Thus, in Senyecan all the colors are originally verbs. Since there
> is no difference in form between transitive and intransitive verbs,
> these verbs can mean, using rúúða as an example, transitively:
> redden, make red; and intransitively: redden, become red, turn red.
>
> This is used with all colors, even the intermediate shades, e.g.,
> reddish-yellow, bluish-green, etc.
>
> Charlie
> http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
>
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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:29:15 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: New, yet unnamed experimental script
For some reason, this is not loading for me. Must be my computer, since
everyone else can see it.
Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carsten Becker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 5:20 AM
Subject: New, yet unnamed experimental script
> Hey!
>
> Sorry for cross-posting, but ...
>
> Please have a look here:
> http://www.beckerscarsten.de/temp/script_unnamed.jpg
>
> I came up with this script yesterday late in the evening, I worked about
> an hour on what you can see there. I was bored by the rectangular "Box
> Script" for my conlang Ayeri.
>
> This one turned out as a corssing between Gujarati, Thai and some other
> Indic/(SE-)Asian letter shapes somehow, as I adore the elegant look of
> those alphabets. I am not completely content with this yet, but it'd be
> a good candidate to replace the Box Script -- or to be just another
> script that is or was used to write Ayeri and its descendands.
>
> Carsten
>
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Message: 11
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 02:40:06 -0500
From: Geoff Horswood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: New language Noygwexaal
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 11:20:25 +0100, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Quoting Steg Belsky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>> On Mar 24, 2005, at 9:34 AM, Roger Mills wrote:
>> > Geoff Horswood wrote:
>> > I'm trying to
>> >> turn all of the fantasy language stereotypes around, so we have a
>> >> fairly
>> >> fluid, "elvish" sounding goblin tongue, a guttural elf-language full
>> >> of
>> >> clicks and stops, a highly aspirated, "breathy" dwarf-tongue, and so
>> >> on.
>> >> Not sure what I'll do with the humans of that realm.
>>
>> > Wha?? Are you Tolkien's evil twin? the un-Tolkien? :-))))) (obviously,
>> > the
>> > humans in such a case would speak...hmm, Russian? Thai? how contrary
>> > do you want to be!? :-))))
>>
>> Aren't the |_h| digraphs in Tolkien's Dwarf-language (Khuzdul)
>> aspirated stops? I.e., not /xuzdul/.
>
>That's right; /k_huzdul/. The aspirated-unaspirated distinction in
voiceless
>stops is perhaps Khuzdul's most exotic phonetic feature compared to other
>Tolkienian languages.
>
> Andreas
Oh. I'd always read it as /xudzul/. [sigh]. Right. The Dwarves will
speak a tonal language! :D
Tolkein's evil twin? That has possibilities... ;)
Geoff
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Message: 12
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:55:11 -0800
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Germanic Food (was: Expressing "that's how")
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 14:10:10 +0100, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 'Matzen' is also same strange type of bread in German. I don't know
> French toast, but googling reveals it might be similar to what's
> called 'Arme Ritter' (lit.: 'poor knights') in German and made with
> normal toast, milk and sugar in a frying pan. It's not broken, but
> taken as a whole however. But it can easily be turned into some kind
> of porridge. :-)
>
French toast in the US at least is made with beaten eggs, milk (to
thin out the eggs), sugar, and some people like to add cinnamon or
flavoring to the batter. Stale bread is usually used (a good quality
brioche is nice.. or any type of bread that tends toward the sweet
side and has a fine but firm structure). However, a lot of people who
aren't into food will just use any plain white bread they have laying
around, even commercial stuff. It's eaten a lot like pancakes are --
doused with syrup.
--
Inu payangyara unamey ati tal amariey ka sey, payangyara kria?
Yanaysatra sonataya atan inu jumoey ati atan matawsara jumoey ati.
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Message: 13
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 06:05:59 -0500
From: Yann Kiraly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: "pu ni nang" haiku translation
Just for fun, I thought I'd post a haiku by Akutagawa (English version here:
http://www.toyomasu.com/haiku/#akutagawa) that I translated into my conlang
"pu ni nang" ("Language of hope"). Despite the name, this is no auxlang. I
just like hope, so I gave the language this name :-). So, here's the poem
(it's no longer a haiku in "pu ni nang"):
ngi mau te wa nang ni oe,
koei wa toeu wa keyn
nu o lu ni tang a?
(oe -> [2,9], y -> [y])
And here's a literal translation:
GEN genitive marker
SUBJ subject marker
OBJ object marker
VOC vocative conjunction
ADV adverb marker
OPPOSITE opposite marker
VOC animal colour ADV hope GEN water,
paint ADV also ADV fresh SUBJ OBJ body of OPPOSITE I?
Notes:
"animal colour ADV hope GEN water" is any green (colour of hope) living
being that lives in water. Adverbs can't be part of a genitive construction,
so the GEN water refers to the animal.
Adverbs marked with ADV never modify other adverbs, so both ADV also and ADV
fresh modify paint.
The opposite of I (source) is you(target), so OPPOSITE I -> you.
This can also be done with pa (no, not): pa a -> not I -> he/she/it.
If SUBJ or OBJ or a preposition is followed directly by another preposition
or the end of the sentence, the role of the non-present noun would be filled
with one in English. So SUBJ OBJ is similar to a passive, but only in usage.
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Message: 14
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 13:05:00 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Germanic Food (was: Expressing "that's how")
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>French toast in the US at least is made with beaten eggs, milk (to
>thin out the eggs), sugar, and some people like to add cinnamon or
>flavoring to the batter. Stale bread is usually used (a good quality
>brioche is nice.. or any type of bread that tends toward the sweet
>side and has a fine but firm structure). However, a lot of people who
>aren't into food will just use any plain white bread they have laying
>around, even commercial stuff. It's eaten a lot like pancakes are --
>doused with syrup.
When I was a child I was introduced to a variation on this theme by
my great-aunt on Long Island. She made cheese sandwiches as if
making grilled cheese sandwiches, then soaked them in the egg/milk
mixture and fried them like French toast. Then came the syrup. Man,
were those good! I like to add bacon strips in mine nowadays.
It is very important to soak the bread thoroughly. Otherwise one
gets a piece of French toast with a hard core of bread instead of the
bread being "custardy" all with way through. I find this to be a
major fault of breakfast buffets.
In Senyecan:
méélßon = milk ß = dz)
sérdïon = cheese ï indicates palatalization
óóyon = egg
meelßóóyon = custard
In Seyecan there are two words for egg. In the animate -en category,
óóyen means a fertilized egg for hatching. In the inanimate -on
category, óóyon means an unfertilized egg for eating. Of course,
an óóyen can be eaten, but as soon as it is cracked, it becomes an
óóyon.
I still haven't figured out how to say "sandwich." The borrowed
word, sàndëµíçon, would be pronounced /[EMAIL PROTECTED]"ts)on/ but I don't
like that. I'd like a more native name.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 14:10:07 +0100
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [neographies] New, yet unnamed experimental script
On Thursday 24 March 2005 21:34 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson
wrote:
> (*) In Devanagari |A o @u| are based on |@|, |i| is based
> on |I|,
>
> |u| is based on |U| and |@i| is based on |e|, and the the
> | situation
>
> is similar in other scripts. Most systematic is
> Panjabi/Gurmukhi where there is one carrier for |@ A|,
> one for |I i e @i| and one for |U u o @u|.
Maybe I'll change my stuff accordingly, I don't know yet.
> Can the Box Script be seen anywhere, or is it too
> infamous?
www.beckerscarsten.de/conlang/ayeri/ayerialphabet.pdf
The point is that the language is flowing and smooth, but
the script is all angular and thus rather harsh. The script
itself isn't bad actually, but it just does not suit the
language. Maybe I have a chance to recycle it later if I
indeed should decide to drop it for now.
Carsten
Watch the reply-to! Not because of GMail, but because this
is a cross-posting.
--
Edatamanon le matahanarà benenoea eibenem ena Bahis Venena,
15-A8-58-1-3-3-3 ena Curan Tertanyan ... Pericyanang nuhiro
emino 15-A8!
» http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri
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Message: 16
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 08:17:36 -0500
From: Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: New, yet unnamed experimental script
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:29:15 -0500, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>For some reason, this is not loading for me. Must be my computer, since
>everyone else can see it.
The file is still there actually. But I can't access my page either. There
are still 500M left for traffic for this month, so it can't be that. For
some reason, my host's configuration interface for my webspace works, just
not the page. Strange. I hope that file will be accessible again tomorrow!
Carsten
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Message: 17
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 13:30:14 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: looking for a language term
Rodlox R wrote at 2005-03-25 03:06:29 (+0000)
> I remember hearing about how, in some Iranian languages, if a word
> is said early in the statement, its dropped thereafter.
>
> ie, "I picked the apple and I ate the apple" would become "I picked
> the apple and ate."
>
> does anyone know what the name is for this phenomenon? *curious*
>
> thanks.
Zero anaphora. (At least, I think that's what you mean.)
See here:
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsZeroAnaphora.htm
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Message: 18
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 06:15:14 -0800
From: "Joseph a.k.a Buck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Unattested... but possible?
> I'm flattered to find Telona - which I'm now calling T4 -
> remembered. I've just started working on it again over the
> last month or two, after a year or so away. The syntax
> remains exactly as described on the website (which is now
> nearly two years out of date), but it now has proper ways of
> expressing number, tense, aspect and suchlike. Perhaps I'll
> get round to posting something about it again...
I hope you do - I still have copies of your original stuff from when we
chatted.
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Message: 19
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 15:03:59 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: looking for a language term
--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Zero anaphora. (At least, I think that's what you mean.)
>See here:
>http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsZeroAn
aphora.htm
In message #129495 I asked for some help in naming the two oblique
cases in Senyecan. My thanks to those who made some suggestions.
Unfortunately, they wouldn't work. I went to the site given above
and got some help.
One case expresses motion (any kind of motion, specificity determined
by the postposition), the other lack of motion [notice my zero
anaphora? :-)]. With all those "-lative" cases in Finno-ugric, each
one specifying a different kind of motion, I thought "lative" would
be the right name. Then I learned that "lative" has its own
specificity. The same with "essive."
For a while I was hung up on the -ive ending for naming cases until I
remembered -al. Thus I am naming the two oblique cases "motional"
and "stational." Neither word occurs in the above site nor are they
in the AHD. For a while I toyed with "positional" but that doesn't
quite capture the function of the case. It doesn't denote merely
poistion, but the lack of motion. I thought "stational" sounded
better than "staionarial"!
Again my thanks to all who helped me.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 20
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:36:46 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program
* Paul Bennett said on 2005-03-25 05:35:21 +0100
> On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 22:58:49 -0500, taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> > Find some symbol not used in cxs and x-sampa at least, like
> > one of the following characters (latin1):
> > ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ® ¯
> > ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿
>
> I like § as a gut reaction. I wonder how easy it is to type...?
>
> > Maybe « and » to mark features, or instead of [ and ] for regexes?
>
> I like [] for features and () for regexes, with a descrambling pass
> before they're read for real. Maybe the French quotes would be good
> for the second-pass feature delimiters.
) is used in cxs.
> > If you're going to allow patterns of the form VARNAMEsomethingelse,
> > with no space after VARNAME, you might maybe repeat the
> > var-marker... ¦VAR¦ maybe?
>
> I think I like single-character variable names, to be honest. We'll
> see what happens.
Then you need to be able to add comments :) "What was the purpose of W
again? Oh, glides starting with /u/.".
t.
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Message: 21
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 13:32:36 -0300
From: joaoeugenio2003 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: McGuffey Readers and animals
>There exists a sort of obsession on online conlang message boards that
>when you create a script it HAS to be simplified, and everyone warns
>that "all those curves are not amenable to hand writing". For a script
>to be used by a broad range and be efficient, I'd agree, but if your
>script is functional AND esthetic, I don't get it.
>
>
See this link http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ayeri.htm , and you'll
have a beatiful example of what you're saying.
thanks.
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Message: 22
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:05:35 +0000
From: Jonathan Knibb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Some thoughts on T4 grammar (inspired by HT & HST)
Thanks to Henrik for a nice, simple set of translation exercises -
exactly what I needed at this stage. The T4 translations proceed
along an interestingly parallel path to the S11 ones. (I wonder if
there’s any significance in the similarity of names between these
two similar but independent conlangs...? :) )
A bit of background: T4 is allnoun, having only one open word
class, a small closed class of number/aspect/definiteness markers,
and three possible relations between phrases (identity, verb-object
(+) and object-verb (-)). A phrase is either a single word or a
linked pair of phrases, thus enforcing a strict binary-branching
tree structure. Phonology is also relatively simple, and morphology
is non-existent, being almost completely isolating and without
derivation. The rest is detail. :)
S11> John-HEARSAY butcher-be. 'John is a butcher.'
I don't have a word for "butcher", so I'll coin "yethi" /jETi/ for
now. Similarly "zilte" /Zilte/ = "book" and "alou" /alou/ = "to
own" for later. Incidentally, the /Z/ here is a voiced apico-
alveolar fricative rather like Czech r-hacek, and /ou/ is intended
to represent a diphthong - /o_u/? /ou)/?
T4 would say:
Ë ca Jónë yethi.
Tg R1k John butcher
The R and T markers express number, definiteness and aspect in a
slightly complicated way which I'll explain another time. R1k
basically means "the", and Tg "all the time". R normally precedes
T, but they're reversed here for euphony.
The acute accent on the word Jonë (and it is on the *word*, not on
the vowel!) marks the final word of the first half of the sentence.
T4 sentences' tree structure is right-branching by default, left-
branching being marked by accents. For this sentence the structure
is ((Ë (ca Jónë)) yethi).
S11> John-HEARSAY butcher-be REL 'John the butcher' (apposition)
The R and T markers for this phrase would depend on context, but
otherwise:
Jonë yethi
(R) (T) John butcher
...it’s as simple as that. You could have "yethi Jonë" as well; the
former means "the John who is a butcher", the latter "the
particular butcher who's called John". It's head-first all the way
in T4 :)
S11> to have: John-HEARSAY book-have. 'John has a book.'
S11> book-HEARSAY-have John. 'A book is what John has.'
There are various ways of tweaking the word order in T4 too, with
similar results. The basic sentence structure is given after each
interlinear:
(1) Ca le alou Jónë cü zilte.
R1k T4t own John + R1c T= book : ((own Jóhn) + book)
John owns a *book* (not just a leaflet).
(2) Ca le alou ce zílte Jonë.
R1k T4t own + R1t book John : ((own + bóok) John)
*John* owns the book (not Steve).
(3) Ca le Jonë yë ce zílte alou.
R1k T4t John he + R1t T= book own : (John (he + bóok)) own)
John *owns* the book (he's not just borrowed it).
(3) is being careful. You could miss out the placeholder "yë"
without any problem here, as there is no obvious relationship
between "Jonë" and its object. If there had been a word like "eat"
instead of "John" here, meaning "the person who is eating", then
"yë" would be (pragmatically, not strictly speaking grammatically)
necessary.
OTOH, (1) feels a little colloquial - I've always felt (though I
don't know why!) that the two halves of a sentence ought to be
linked by the identity relation, not by "+" (which can be thought
of as the verb-object relation, not that there are any verbs in
T4). The sentence could be expressed more formally using a suitable
generic word as a cataphor (do I have the right term here?):
((own Jóhn) + book) -> ((thing - (own John)) book)
The thing that John owns is a book.
S11> book-HEARSAY-have John REL 'John's book'
Again, the R and T markers for this phrase depend on context:
zilte a ca alou Jónë
(R) (T) book - R1k T= own John
S11> This may be used without an argument (like in many langs):
S11> book-HEARSAY-have. 'There's a book.'
This could be expressed simply as "Book." ("Zilte.") - which would
not violate any syntactic rules and so is in principle a
grammatically legal sentence. It would be *so* non-specific,
though, as to be almost uninterpretable except in a very
constraining context (perhaps a direct question). More likely,
there would be some non-specific first half, such as "here", "this"
or something similar. Perhaps the R and T markers themselves would
do:
Ce té zilte.
R1t T4t book.
Hope this is of interest. Comments welcome! I won't be around
over the weekend, but I'll do my best to answer any posts during
the week.
Jonathan.
==
á a-acute; é e-acute
ë e-diaeresis; ü u-diaeresis
personal replies to jonathan underscore knibb at hotmail dot com
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Message: 23
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 18:33:27 +0100
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: TECH: Sound Change program
Paul Bennett skrev:
> I think I like single-character variable names, to be honest. We'll see
> what happens.
There are two problems with that:
1) you soon run out of single letters
2) you run out of *meaningful* single letter abbreviations even sooner.
If V is "vowel" then you want the varnames for e.g.
"rounded vowel" and "front vowel" to be VR and VF.
And variable names should of course be begin with a $!
--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
(Tacitus)
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Message: 24
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 12:46:34 -0500
From: Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: New, yet unnamed experimental script
I can't get to your .pdf file for the boxscript, either. My computer can't
seem to read your computer.
Sally
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carsten Becker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 8:17 AM
Subject: Re: New, yet unnamed experimental script
> On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:29:15 -0500, Sally Caves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
>>For some reason, this is not loading for me. Must be my computer, since
>>everyone else can see it.
>
> The file is still there actually. But I can't access my page either. There
> are still 500M left for traffic for this month, so it can't be that. For
> some reason, my host's configuration interface for my webspace works, just
> not the page. Strange. I hope that file will be accessible again tomorrow!
>
> Carsten
>
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Message: 25
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 12:54:48 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [neographies] New, yet unnamed experimental script
Carsten Becker wrote:
> On Thursday 24 March 2005 21:34 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson
> wrote:
>
> > (*) In Devanagari |A o @u| are based on |@|, |i| is based
> > on |I|,
> >
> > |u| is based on |U| and |@i| is based on |e|, and the the
> > | situation (snip)
>
> Maybe I'll change my stuff accordingly,.....
No No No!!! :-))) At least some scripts use a single V-carrier, modified
with the V-diacritics (Bugis/Makassar for one; of course they have no
diphthongs). Aside from initial position, the V symbols are not much used
word-medial-- /kia/ for ex. would be written K(i)-Y(a); but /kai/ would be
K(a)-A(i)
BTW, I didn't see a V-killer symbol. Or don't you need one? I note in the
full Babel text you have only final m, n, ng, which are taken care of (and
one -r , and I see a -s in your sig.)
>
> > Can the Box Script be seen anywhere, or is it too
> > infamous?
>
> www.beckerscarsten.de/conlang/ayeri/ayerialphabet.pdf
>
> The point is that the language is flowing and smooth, but
> the script is all angular and thus rather harsh. The script
> itself isn't bad actually, but it just does not suit the
> language. Maybe I have a chance to recycle it later if I
> indeed should decide to drop it for now.
Might it be possible that the box script is (or could be tweaked to be)
simplified versions of the more ornate one?
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