There are 4 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: The philosophical language fallacy (was ...)
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2a. OT: Origin of Catalan reinforced weak pronouns
From: Eric Christopherson
2b. Re: OT: Origin of Catalan reinforced weak pronouns
From: ROGER MILLS
3a. Re: The philosophical language fallacy
From: Henrik Theiling
Messages
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1a. Re: The philosophical language fallacy (was ...)
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 6, 2008 12:07 pm ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 12:24:40 -0400, Dana Nutter wrote:
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jorg
> Rhiemeier
>
> > On the other hand, one should indeed have more than one
> conlang
> > going. Otherwise, you are likely to incorporate all your
> ideas
> > in one conlang and thus end up with a kitchen sink language or
> > whatever. I have several ideas which I wish to try out, but
> > which I feel have no room in Old Albic. So I apply them to
> other
> > conlang projects - some of them diachronically related to Old
> > Albic, others not.
>
> I agree. A lot of my projects are mainly to experiment with
> ideas which may or may not find their way into other creations
> depending on how the experimentation goes.
Exactly. There are various ideas I want to try out, including
ones which I know I will never ever build into Old Albic or
any of its sister or daughter languages, but which I find worth
exploring nevertheless. Thus, I started several "minor" conlang
projects, such as the experimental languages named X-1, X-2 etc.:
http://wiki.frath.net/X-languages
None of the ideas tried out in those conlangettes will ever
find their way into *any* Albic language, never ever, because
Albic is meant to be a family of *naturalistic* languages, and
experimental engelangs are an entirely different game.
Some other sketches serve as testing ground for sound changes
and grammatical developments of Albic languages. I also have
ideas for a modern Continental Celtic language that does not
resemble an Insular Celtic one, an Indo-European language
with preserved laryngeals on one hand and Uralic influence
on the other, and several others.
> > On Fri, 4 Jul 2008 23:14:05 -0400, Dana Nutter wrote:
> >
> > > This is why I gave up on that approach a long time ago. I
> do
> > > still see value in an oligosynthetic system. At least there
> > > will be some mnemonics to aid in learning vocabulary.
> >
> > Oligosynthetic schemes suffer from many, though not all, of
> the
> > problems that weigh down taxonomic schemes. It is not easy to
> > break down reality to a restricted number of semantic
> primitives,
> > and how do you handle proper names and such? You need an
> "escape
> > mechanism" which allows for "importing" arbitrary lexical
> material.
> > At least that is what I feel to be the case.
>
> No, it's not easy but it's only difficult if you take it to
> extremes as with AUI or Toki Pona. I have an oligosynthetic
> project in the works, but there is also a phonosemantic schema
> that will underly the root morphemes. It's just an idea I'm
> playing with right now. I don't expect to reduce everything
> down to 32 roots, though I'd be happy to get it down to the
> 500-600 range.
In my opinion, *all* closed-vocabulary schemes run into
this sort of problems, only to a lesser degree if the set
of roots is larger. There are always things that cannot
easily be captured adequately by any construction of
reasonable length. Of course, you can define it with,
e.g., the word list of Basic English. But what if the
definition of something is 100 morphemes long? In a pure
closed-vocabulary language, you'd have to repeat the
definition every time the concept is mentioned in the text.
Hardly practical, especially if you are talking about a
subject matter where such things occur frequently. You
will want to assign a shorter name to it.
> Proper names will be handled as distinct entities based on
> pronunciation. There will be a particle to introduce them.
This is exactly what I meant by "escape mechanism".
The names are borrowed, and tags added which mark them
as such. In my oligosynthetic experimental language X-3,
for instance, "normal" morphemes are all exactly one
phoneme long (speedtalk-wise). But there is an "escape
mechanism" for proper names and other borrowed material:
the borrowed words are enclosed in glottal stops, which
do not occur elsewhere in the language (and are also not
allowed within borrowed words). Thus, I can borrow
arbitrary material of almost any shape (the only
restriction being the absence of glottal stops) without
sacrificing self-segregation.
On Sun, 6 Jul 2008 12:31:45 -0400, Dana Nutter wrote:
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Herman Miller
>
> > > I have seen at least one taxonomic language scheme that
> derived
> > > place names from geographic coordinates!
>
> That sounds like the kooky scheme of Ygyde. The idea isn't bad
> for an artlang, but this is being promoted as an IAL. I just
> can't see people walking around with GPS's to find out the names
> of places.
Yes, I think it was Ygyde. While, as Herman Miller has
remarked, it is indeed used in some star catalogs, it
is hardly practical for everyday use.
> [...]
> The saxophone is classified as a woodwind because of the reed.
> You could taxonomically place it somewhere in a "woodwind"
> category. Then realize there are several type of the sax:
> baritone, tenor, alto, and soprano.
Yep.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (8)
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2a. OT: Origin of Catalan reinforced weak pronouns
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 6, 2008 2:31 pm ((PDT))
Does anyone know where the Catalan reinforced weak pronouns come
from? Many of them appear to be the reverse of the corresponding
plain form weak pronouns, e.g. plain forms me/te/se : reinforced
forms em/et/es. Did these come about via metathesis, or by some other
route (e.g. by prefixation of e- followed by deletion of final -e)?
Also tangentially related is something I've wondered about for a
while: do linguists make a distinction between the *process* of
metathesis and *end results* which appear to show metathesis (whether
in fact those results came about through said process)?
Messages in this topic (2)
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2b. Re: OT: Origin of Catalan reinforced weak pronouns
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Jul 6, 2008 5:18 pm ((PDT))
Eric Christopherson wrote:
>Does anyone know where the Catalan reinforced weak pronouns come from?
>Many of them appear to be the reverse of the corresponding plain form weak
>pronouns, e.g. plain forms me/te/se : reinforced forms em/et/es. Did these
>come about via metathesis, or by some other route (e.g. by prefixation of
>e- followed by deletion of final -e)?
Can't comment knowledgeably on this, but I'd suspect it might have something
to do (historically at least) with environment--- ...V#me C.... vs. ...C#me
V... > [vowel insertion/deletion rules] ...C#em V...
>
>Also tangentially related is something I've wondered about for a while: do
>linguists make a distinction between the *process* of metathesis and *end
>results* which appear to show metathesis (whether in fact those results
>came about through said process)?
I do, at least. I think true metathesis is sporadic-- cf. Engl. wart :: Du.
wrat, or OE hros :: later horse; there may be some phonological motivation
("difficult" clusters??). Spanish speakers are _said to_ have difficulty
with the word "atlántico", mispronouncing it as "altántico" though I've
never heard that........
Then there's a non-sporadic kind. At least two widely separated Austronesian
langs. have grammatically motivated metathesis-- Rotuman (in the Pacific)
and Timorese (in Indonesia); in these, CVCV bases > CVVC in various
environments, often with changes to the nature of the VV cluster. This is
not well understood, to say the least :-)))
Another group of Indonesian languages (spoken near Timor and eastward) have
what I've termed "pseudo-metathesis", where bases may have one of two forms,
e.g. Leti ulti ~ulit 'skin'. Historically this has an explanation: canonic
AN shape is CVCV(C), and original final C were preserved by adding an echo
vowel, so *kulit > kúlit-i, and the post-tonic original final-syl. V was
then deleted, > **kúlti. This could well have started with "fast-speech"
rules. Other workers in this area seem to have accepted my historical
explanation, but still go to great and complicated lengths to explain it
synchronically. I guess it depends on how willing one is to accept the
"reality" of underlying forms, and the persistence of historical rules.
Another type of met. occurs in these langs., whereby compounds,
nominalizations and conjugated verbs are "bound" together by metathesis:
Leti compd. /pipi+duma/ pipdiuma 'sheep'
Leti noml. sora 'sew' + infix -in- > sniora 'needle'
Leti vb. au 'I' + laa 'go" > aluaa 'I go'
(the i/u reduce to [j, w] respectively)
These can be explained with rules of anticipatory assimilation of the i/u
element (other vowels do not take part). And probably (originally) another
form of fast-speech phenomena.
Messages in this topic (2)
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3a. Re: The philosophical language fallacy
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Jul 7, 2008 5:58 am ((PDT))
Hi!
li_sasxsek writes:
>> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rick Harrison
>
>> i have experimented with making a taxonomic philosophical
> conlang. It seemed
>> to me that some concepts simultaneously needed to be in 2 or
> 3 different
>> categories, e.g. "president" goes in the "people described by
> their
>> occupations or social roles" category and also in the
> "government" category.
>
> This is why I gave up on that approach a long time ago. I do
> still see value in an oligosynthetic system. At least there
> will be some mnemonics to aid in learning vocabulary.
My way of learning that it is hard or maybe impossible of finding a
good lexical taxonomy was simply that it never worked well when I
tried. I gave up because I was very frustrated and lexical design
took long without making the result pleasing. (Lexical design
*always* takes a very long time for me, but e.g. for my historical
conlangs, the result is pleasing. That's a nice reward.)
Newer engelangs like Qþyn|ài do not try to have a strictly
hierarchical lexical structure, but the lexical atoms are meant to be,
well, nothing more than atoms. I do the same for a newer
oligoisolating (or -synthetic, not decided yet) language, although I
do group the lexical atoms semantically a bit.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (11)
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