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There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: kinship systems
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Subterranea
From: Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
From: Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Subterranea
From: Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 21:52:21 +0100
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
David J. Peterson wrote at 2005-04-06 11:33:58 (-0700)
> Carsten wrote:
>
> > I began translating the first McGuffey Reader today, but I found
> > that Ayeri's syntax is way more difficult than the English one.
>
[...]
>
> Since no one's ventured a reply yet, I'll give you my thoughts.
> First, though the words are longer and more morphologically
> complex, they don't look all that tough. I mean:
>
> Veneyin ang manimpiyà.
>
> That's a sentence with three elements. That's not too bad. Plus,
> you're comparing Ayeri to an essentially *isolating* language,
> English. There's just no way to compare. I mean, how can you beat
> "He ran home"? Three syllables, yet an entire sentence. So I
> think it should be natural that English sentences are shorter and
> less morphologically complex than Ayeri, and that I think you
> shouldn't worry about. I *certainly* don't think you should
> simplify the language. Consider a real world. Would you want to
> teach children an entirely different form of the language? They'd
> end up learning too languages: Real Ayeri at home and on the
> playground, and Simplified Ayeri in school.
>
It's probably true that Carsten is overestimating the problems
presented by Ayeri here. Whatever language is suitable for Ayeri
children in speech is probably going to be acceptable in text.*
What might be useful is to look at real-world evidence - children's
books in languages with more complex morphology than English. One
might start with the International Children's Digital Library:
http://www.icdlbooks.org/
Of course, if you don't speak the language it can be difficult to tell
both what level a book is pitched at and how complex the sentences
are, but you can at least compare the length of words with the style
of the illustrations.
* Although even in English, the language in such works is simplified
to the point of sounding distinctly unnatural. "See Spot run", for
example. I'm not sure that keeping the grammar simple for children
is actually the main reason for this, but it does suggest that
children can learn to read a simplified subset of the language and
go on to more natural texts without any particular trouble.
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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:40:58 -0400
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
Tim May and others have written:
> David J. Peterson wrote at 2005-04-06 11:33:58 (-0700)
> > Carsten wrote:
> >
> > > I began translating the first McGuffey Reader today, but I found
> > > that Ayeri's syntax is way more difficult than the English one.
> >
> [...]
> >
> > Since no one's ventured a reply yet, I'll give you my thoughts.
> > First, though the words are longer and more morphologically
> > complex, they don't look all that tough. I mean:
> >
> > Veneyin ang manimpiyà.
> >
> > That's a sentence with three elements. That's not too bad. Plus,
> > you're comparing Ayeri to an essentially *isolating* language,
> > English. There's just no way to compare. I mean, how can you beat
> > "He ran home"? Three syllables, yet an entire sentence. So I
> > think it should be natural that English sentences are shorter and
> > less morphologically complex than Ayeri, and that I think you
> > shouldn't worry about. I *certainly* don't think you should
> > simplify the language. Consider a real world. Would you want to
> > teach children an entirely different form of the language? They'd
> > end up learning too languages: Real Ayeri at home and on the
> > playground, and Simplified Ayeri in school.
> >
>
>
>
> It's probably true that Carsten is overestimating the problems
> presented by Ayeri here. Whatever language is suitable for Ayeri
> children in speech is probably going to be acceptable in text.*
>
> What might be useful is to look at real-world evidence - children's
> books in languages with more complex morphology than English. One
> might start with the International Children's Digital Library:
>
> http://www.icdlbooks.org/
A very good idea; haven't looked yet, but will...
>
>
> * Although even in English, the language in such works is simplified
> to the point of sounding distinctly unnatural. "See Spot run", for
> example. I'm not sure that keeping the grammar simple for children
> is actually the main reason for this, but it does suggest that
> children can learn to read a simplified subset of the language and
> go on to more natural texts without any particular trouble.
Without examining all the material in the first few lessons, I suspect one
aim is to limit the number of variant spellings of vowel sounds the learner
is exposed to. "Cee(C)#" is always /i/ "long e", CoC# always /a/ "short o",
CaC# always /&/ "short a" and so on for most of the words used. I seem to
recall being introduced to reading in such a way (we didn't use McGuffey,
however). Later on, we got to the "long vowels", first in words with
"silent (final) e" and so on. It was a long time, I'm sure, before we got
into "enough, cough, through, thorough". I can recall being flummoxed by
"fiend", assuming it was pronounced like "friend".........
Earlier today, there was a msg. on Ideolengua, decrying the failure of
Spanish (and French) kids to use the accents correctly if at all. The writer
blamed it on increasing use of messaging on mobile phones. Well, that's as
may be....
>
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 16:18:32 -0500
From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: kinship systems
>From: Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>I don't think it's attested, but as far as naturalism goes I could see
>the sort of system you describe arising from a system that makes a
>strong distinction between potential and taboo mates. Here's an
>example of what I'm thinking, beginning with a very simple
>Hawaiian-type system.
<snip>
>Such a system could be as complicated as one wants; I just chose a
>Hawaiian system because it meant less typing for me.
I'm using overtly unrelated roots (although they would be historically
related, I suppose). Also, the most important distinction here is lateral
distance from the matrilineal line. I figured it all out, so I can now be
more illustrative. I made a pretty picture! http://people.ku.edu/~athey/
This will be up for only a couple of days, as I use my school webspace for a
number of other things, but it should be there for a week or so.
How's it look?
Athey
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 15:48:33 -0700
From: "B. Garcia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
On Apr 6, 2005 2:17 AM, Carsten Becker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I wonder how such
> a primer for Ayeri first-graders would look like if there
> are no short, easy words. Maybe using a simplified, more
> colloquial language? I don't know if it would be a too big
> change to put all the case markers in front of an NP
> instead and making the personal endings (plus case marker)
> single words so that verbs are not conjugated anymore.
> Maybe even drop double syllables where they are not the
> product of grammatical reduplication? I think it would
> simplify the structure a lot, though, except dropping
> syllables. Langs often search for the most simple way to
> express something as it seems, there wouldn't be
> 'watered-down' everyday language otherwise -- *IMHO*.
True. Think about our own native languages and the shortcuts people
use when speaking it.
What I present for Ayhan is the formal language. Colloquially, they
might tend to drop the animacy/inanimacy, natural/unnaturalness
affixes (but i'd not gotte that far). I can't really shorten the
derived nouns though. However, that really doesn't shorten things, it
just makes using the verbs easier. But, I like the verbs with the
special affixes, because it makes them trickier to use and a lot more
interesting.
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Message: 5
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 16:37:33 -0700
From: Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Subterranea
There have been experiments where humans live underground, entirely cut
off from any kind of external time reference. What researchers learned is
that humans have a natural "internal clock" of 26 hours. After a few days
of adjustment, humans will sleep for about nine hours, be awake and active
for about 17 hours, and then sleep again. When there is a group, the
entire group quickly falls in to a common pattern of sleeping at the same
time, being awake and active at the same time, even being hungry at the
same time.
Applying this to a race that lives primarily underground: Perhaps your
orcs have a similar "common time" of a bit longer than an averge solar
day. This would be divided in to an "active period" and a "sleep period,"
based on the (presumably) instinctive agreement. Assuming enough
similarity to human biology, the active period would be twice as long as
the sleep period, so if "night" is measured as 10 intervals, "day" would
be 20 intervals. The length of those intervals is entirely arbitrary, so
pick something that make sense. Maybe a full night is "both hands worth of
fingers" intervals long, or maybe the orcs hold the number 11 to have
sacred meaning.
As for longer intervals, how about go with the amount of time it takes
from planting a staple crop to harvesting it? If the orcs had some kind of
agriculture, it seems logical that they would measure a period of days as
"one growing cycle" or "three growing cycles." This, in turn, can become
the basis of even longer periods. Perhaps biology or the orc culture
requires a field to be left fallow every "both hands" of cycles; you have
just defined a sabbatical. And the "both hands" must be observed by a
special ceremony or sacrifice: there you have a jubilee. And now, you say
that an orc child is considered an adult at two sabbaticals, or make a
proverb juxtaposing a long life and seeing two jubilees. What those time
periods actuall "mean" with regards to the position of the sun and moon is
entirely irrelevant.
Gregory Gadow
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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 16:42:14 -0700
From: Gregory Gadow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ayeri: Menan Coyalayamoena ena McGuffey
It might be instructive to look at a reader in an agglutinative natlang.
What would a Turkish primer look like?
Gregory Gadow
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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 20:56:46 -0400
From: Patrick Littell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Subterranea
On Apr 6, 2005 2:17 AM, David J. Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> First, even though they can't see the sun or perceive its motion,
> they do sleep, right? (A genuine question: I don't know if orcs
> need sleep.) If they do, then a "day" would simply be from the
> time they wake up to the time they go to sleep. Of course, not
> everyone will do this at the same time, so perhaps it can be set
> to a chief or king's sleep pattern. And, indeed, it might change
> with every new chief or king.
Like determining units of length based on the king's stride and the
length of one of his finger bones. An orcish second = the length of
the king's heartbeat, at rest, on average. The day begins when he
rises and ends when he falls asleep. A week, maybe when he needs a
manicure or haircut. A month? Well, maybe we leave that to the queen
to determine.
--
Patrick Littell
PHIL205: MWF 2:00-3:00, M 6:00-9:00
Voice Mail: ext 744
Spring 05 Office Hours: M 3:00-6:00
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