There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Ways to get good grammar coverage
From: taliesin the storyteller
2a. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: John Vertical
2b. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Andreas Johansson
2c. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Mark J. Reed
2d. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
2e. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Michael Poxon
2f. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Mark J. Reed
2g. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Jim Henry
2h. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Alex Fink
2i. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Eldin Raigmore
3a. Re: Semantic typology?
From: Andreas Johansson
3b. Re: Semantic typology?
From: John Vertical
3c. Re: Semantic typology?
From: ROGER MILLS
3d. Re: Semantic typology?
From: Mark J. Reed
3e. Re: Semantic typology?
From: Alex Fink
3f. Re: Semantic typology?
From: Alex Fink
4. Slavic diachronics (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: John Vertical
5a. YAEPT: (sorry) GVS repeating itself?
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
5b. Re: YAEPT: (sorry) GVS repeating itself?
From: Mark J. Reed
5c. Re: YAEPT: (sorry) GVS repeating itself?
From: Peter Collier
6a. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Michael Poxon
6b. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Alex Fink
6c. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
From: Roger Mills
7. OT: Re: Nutrition and pleasurable sense data
From: John Vertical
8a. Re: Art is when someone says 'Now' -- or is it?
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1. Re: Ways to get good grammar coverage
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 6:57 am ((PDT))
* David J. Peterson said on 2008-08-11 03:37:35 +0200
> Eric C.:
> <<
> What strategies do you folks have for getting good coverage of
> grammar -- i.e. thinking up grammatical distinctions, traits, and
> quirks?
> >>
>
> To plug Taliesin's new tool, the CALS site is pretty good at
> reminding you about some of the little corners of grammar
> that we can miss sometimes:
>
> <http://cals.conlang.org/>
... like purpose-clauses, in Taruven... I'm not sure that's really
mentioned by Payne even.
Be aware, there's generally no right answer to select if the answer is
"(almost) all of the above", which is the case for Taruven's "adjectives".
t.
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "John Vertical" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:08 am ((PDT))
>> > <Liase> is quite interesting, since <-on> isn't (AFAIK) a
>> > derivational affix in English, such that it could be removed
>> > from the word, the way that <-ance> is. I guess that's
>> > similar to <-aholic> from <alcoholic>. I am trying to think
>> > of other examples of that same thing happening, but they
>> > aren't coming to me.
>>
>> These come to my mind:
>> hamburger > cheeseburger (named after the German city
>> Cheeseburg) execute > electrocute
>
>Or "-gate" (< Watergate) for scandals like "Billygate" or
>"Contragate".
Slang seems to have aplenty of these, too. "-licious", "-rrific", "-tard" etc.
Language Log has most likely covered this phenomenon in English sometime...
John Vertical
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:13 am ((PDT))
Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Plura commentaria in uno voluta!
>
> Från: Alex Fink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
[snip]
> > I can quote two other writers on the subject,
> > however; "Verbing weirds language." (Calvin &
> > Hobbes).
>
> Actually only Calvin. This was one of the
> instances when Hobbes was just a bemused
> spectator.
>
> >
> > Note that the noun "verb" becomes (via "zero-
> > derivation") the verb "verb" which is
> > morphologically altered to the action-nominal
> > "verbing". Note that the adjective "weird" is
> > zero-derived into the verb "weird".
> >
> > Also note that originally -- back in the mists
> > of English etymology -- "weird" was a noun. But
> > in more modern English it has become an
> > adjective.
>
> What really bemuses me is that Calvin didn't
> analyse "weird" as the past participle of a verb
> "weir", illiterate as he presumably is...
Calvin isn't illiterate. One can tell from the various strips where he's taking
(and mostly abysmally failing) various tests at school - he's clearly able to
read the questions.
--
Andreas Johansson
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:28 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> What really bemuses me is that Calvin didn't
>> analyse "weird" as the past participle of a verb
>> "weir", illiterate as he presumably is...
>
> Calvin isn't illiterate. One can tell from the various strips where he's
> taking
> (and mostly abysmally failing) various tests at school - he's clearly able to
> read the questions.
Indeed. He's a 6-year-old boy enrolled in public school. Why would
you assume he's illiterate?
He's also highly intelligent, just, shall we say, not very interested
in most of the material being presented to him at school. Poster
child for gifted programs. He must even have a store of wisdom
somewhere, at least if you are a "Hobbes is all in his head" partisan.
I also think English is too full of non-derived -d words (like "word"
itself) for such an assumption to be reasonable. Valid for wordplay,
sure. Automatically assumed by a native speaker? Not without further
supporting evidence.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:44 am ((PDT))
Mark J. Reed skrev:
> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> What really bemuses me is that Calvin didn't
>>> analyse "weird" as the past participle of a verb
>>> "weir", illiterate as he presumably is...
>> Calvin isn't illiterate. One can tell from the various strips where he's
>> taking
>> (and mostly abysmally failing) various tests at school - he's clearly able to
>> read the questions.
>
> Indeed. He's a 6-year-old boy enrolled in public school. Why would
> you assume he's illiterate?
OK, but he ain't very good at spelling, as you can tell
from various samples of his handwriting that have appeared.
> He's also highly intelligent, just, shall we say, not very interested
> in most of the material being presented to him at school. Poster
> child for gifted programs. He must even have a store of wisdom
> somewhere, at least if you are a "Hobbes is all in his head" partisan.
Agreed. BTW he's very much like me at about that age. I
even had a stuffed leopard (hah!) whose voice was just like
mine except it was falsetto, and who said everything I
hesitated to say.
> I also think English is too full of non-derived -d words (like "word"
> itself) for such an assumption to be reasonable. Valid for wordplay,
> sure. Automatically assumed by a native speaker? Not without further
> supporting evidence.
OK, ý hav this non-nátiv spékr konvinst!
Í'm not a bad spelr, ghyst a non-conformist spelr!
/BP
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2e. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Michael Poxon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:56 am ((PDT))
I wondered what all this Calvin and Hobbes stuff was. I thought someone was
talking about the 17th Century "divines"!
Mike
>>
>> Calvin isn't illiterate. One can tell from the various strips where he's
>> taking
>> (and mostly abysmally failing) various tests at school - he's clearly
>> able to
>> read the questions.
>
> Indeed. He's a 6-year-old boy enrolled in public school. Why would
> you assume he's illiterate?
>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2f. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 9:23 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Michael Poxon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I wondered what all this Calvin and Hobbes stuff was. I thought someone was
> talking about the 17th Century "divines"!
The "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip is a treasure trove for the
conlinguistically-minded.
TEACHER: Explain Newton's First Law of Motion in your own words.
CALVIN: Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2g. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:23 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Aug 9, 2008 at 12:45 PM, Eldin Raigmore
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I know there are languages with no class of adverbs distinct from their class
> of
> adjectives; but aren't many "semantic cases" (that is, cases other
> than "syntactic cases", that show something other than the "grammatical
> relations" of Subject, Object, or Indirect Object) also "adverbial cases"?
> Isn't a
> noun in a case other than Nominative, Accusative, Dative, or Genitive,
> essentially an adverb? So, the "changing of a noun into an adverb" is likely
> to
It seems to me that in a verb-drop language like gjâ-zym-byn, or a
verbless language like Kelen, some such cases act more like
verbs in other language than like adverbial phrases.
> be fairly "easy" -- highly productive -- in most languages with a robust case
> system, right? And Genitive, in those languages that have one, is
> essentially a
> way of changing a noun into an adjective, isn't it?
Semantically, more or less. Morphosyntactically, as Benct pointed out,
adjectives tend to have different inflectional and maybe
distributional properties
than genitive nouns.
> I'd think you'd want to take each pair of large open word-classes and ask
> whether there is a derivation method that applies to almost every word in the
> first one to produce a word in the second one.
I have just this sort of system for säb zjeda. With four semantic classes
corresponding to five word classes, there are twenty possible
conversions, and I've figured out how to make eighteen of them meaningful.
See:
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/conlang13/grammar-p1.htm
I'm not sure yet what it would mean to convert an entity or quality root
into a preposition.
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 8:04 AM, Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> genitive "of teeth". In the days when I was
> actually reading and writing Esperanto (some 20
> years ago now) i often felt that adjectivization
> ('casting to adjective') and the _de_ genitive
> often overlapped semantically.
That's true.
> Från: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Or "made of X" or "resembling, savoring of
>> X" (though there's also the more specific
>> "-eca" for that), or "for the benefit of X"
>> or "suitable for X" or "originating from
>> X"... Issues like these were why I came up
>> with the set of adjective-deriving suffixes
>> I did for gzb.
>
> Would you mind to give a list of those suffixes?
The list here,
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/semantic.htm#p43
is reasonably complete, though there are a couple of suffixes
added in the last year or two that aren't documented on the
website yet. I'm planning to rewrite the whole section on
derivational morphology (except the section on numbers,
which I'm fairly satisfied with) instead of just continuing
to patch it here and there; I want it to be better organized
and it seems that it would be clearer with more focus on
how gzb works in itself and fewer digressions comparing
suffixes to Esperanto equivalents.
> Ido at least does the right thing in that it
> allows the choice between vagueness and precision,
> while engelangs tend to offer only precision. This
> may not be a very big problem if you are composing
> an original text, but what if you're translating
> from a natlang where the original expression is
> vague? You'd have to choose a precise expression
> which may not be 100 per cent justified by the
> context in the original, but the greatest
> objection is that vagueness is often stylistically
> and pragmatically desirable in human comunication
> just as much as precision is.
I've been re-reading Claude Piron's _Le Defi des Langues_,
in which he talks among other things about his experience
as a translator at the UN and WHO; he says most of a
translator's time is taken up with researching ambiguities
in the source text in areas where the target language's
grammar or semantics requires them to be more specific
than the source language.
> Has someone made a list of such types, whether
> actually distinguished in natlangs or semantically
> distinguishable or logically possible?
I started making a stab at it here,
http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_derivation_methods
but it's still pretty incomplete. Y'all are welcome
to add to it.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html
Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before
I analyze the results and write the article
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2h. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:29 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:30:56 -0400, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>To go back to the typecasting metaphor, the idea behind typecasting is
>that it represents the identity operation. The copula, as it were.
>Sure, there are infinitely many functions that receive a character
>string as input and return a floating point number as output, but the
>"obvious" one that needs no qualification is the one that returns the
>"value" of the string - presumably the one it would represent if
>entered as a numeric literal in the source code.
Call it too much mathematical hard-headedness, but if I'm gonna call things
identity functions I want them to be isomorphisms, and their compositions to
be identity functions as well. And I doubt casting a random string to an
integer and back is ever going to preserve it in any sensible lang.
Ah, well, never said my thoughts on proglang design were non-fringe.
Alex
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
2i. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:40 pm ((PDT))
BTW thanks for your posts on that thread!
On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:04:29 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[snip]
>Från: Eldin Raigmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Linguistically I think of those as "castes" or
>>as "types", not as "casts". I refer to the
>>affixes (or other operations) which change part-of-
>>speech as "typecasting" affixes or operations;
>>in programming I refer to a function whose
>>purpose is to change data-type as a
>>"typecasting" function.
>
>How does "caste" differ from "cast" and "type" and
>"word class" in your terminology? Instinctively
>I'd say that "caste" may differ from "word class"
>in that the former is semantically defined while
>the latter is morphologically defined, but that's
>just my mind trying to make sense of what to me is
>an alien terminology.
I probably mis-used the adverb "linguistically" in my original statement.
"Caste" and "type" are (used by me above as) nouns, and "cast" and "type"
are (used by me above as) verbs.
"Caste" is a linguistic term; it's linguistic meaning is derived from its
meaning in
sociology (cf. "the caste system in India"). There are some Indian languages,
including some Dravidian languages, in which some word-classes (nouns?
verbs?) are divided into "castes"; the high-caste ones have a somewhat
different morphosyntax than the low-caste ones.
"Word-class" is a linguistic term, too; I used it almost as a synonym for "part-
of-speech". I do not know what the difference is, if any, between "part-of-
speech" and "word-class".
Parts-of-speech don't exist in every computer-programming language; COBOL
and related languages speak of "nouns" and "verbs", but not every computer-
programming-language does so.
"Type" and "cast" are computer-programming-language terms. "Variable"
names are "typed" (here "type" is a verb) or given a "data-type" (here "type"
is
a noun). This feature of a programming-language is "syntactic salt" to make it
harder to accidentally or unknowingly make certain sorts of errors that are
frequentish in other programming-languages. Each argument input to each
function or procedure or operation has to have a certain type; if the function
returns a value that is also a certain type.
There are lots of operations that one would wish could be done on more than
one type, though; for instance, addition. You would like to be able to add any
two integers and get another integer (integer addition); you'd also like to be
able to add any two double-precision complex numbers and get another double-
precision complex number (double-precision complex addition). A disadvantage
of a strongly-typed language is that you don't get to do that without
explicitly
calling a type-casting function; an advantage is that you won't do it
accidentally or without noticing.
It often happens that one data-type is, conceptually, "included" in another
datatype. For instance, for any integer, there is a corresponding complex
number. Suppose you had defined Z and W as complex variables, and wanted
to add 1 to W and store the value in Z. If you just said "Z = W + 1" that
would probably be a type mismatch error; because "1" is an integer, not a
complex number.
So the language may include a "typecasting" function, which will cast any
integer into its corresponding complex number.
This is not something to skip over in computers; the complex form of "1" looks
nothing like the integer form of "1" in the bits-and-bytes internal
representation of the computer's memory.
My objection to Alex's use of the word "cast" was his apparent feeling that in
deciding about datatypes for computer-programming-languages, you had to
decide one was higher than the other in order to make a "typecasting"
function.
I disagree with the statement I thought he was implying (he never said it
explicitly).
But I also disagree that "cast", in computer-programming-language
terminology, has anything to do with any hierarchy.
"Caste" has to do with hierarchy; "cast" does not.
"Type" is a poor match for "word-class", in analogizing between natlangs and
proglangs. "Type" is a much better match for "gender" or "noun-class".
>[snip]
>Has someone made a list of such types, whether
>actually distinguished in natlangs or semantically
>distinguishable or logically possible?
Someone is trying! And more power to them.
>[snip]
>In German and the Scandinavian languages the
>adverbal derivation coincides with the neuter
>nominative singular of the adjective (which
>happens to be a zero morpheme in German but not in
>Scandinavian). What about Dutch. English is
>actually quite strange in having made the Old
>English adverbial ending _-lice_ (actually the
>dative of the adjectival ending _-lic_! :-) not
>only very productive but practically required.
Interesting!
>[snip]
>You are definitely on to something here -- cf.
>what I said about semantic overlap between
>adjectivization and genitive in Esperanto.
>
>At least in inflecting languages the difference
>would seem to be that an adjective is a derivation
>(possibly zero-derived from a root) and as such
>may be inflected (for case, number, gender...)
>while a genitive is an inflection and as such not
>further modifiable.
Right.
We don't have degree-of-comparison inflections on genitives;
no "his, hiser, hisest".
>[snip]
>Från: ROGER MILLS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>Eldin Raigmore wrote:
>[snip]
>>>However, I remember it said (among other
>>>things) that in most languages...
>>
>>I'd question that "most"!!
>
>Me too. Even AFMOC only two out of an odd dozen
>practice zero derivation.
Well, the "most" applied to the ease of making verbs out of other parts-of-
speech; not to the zero-derivation.
But speaking of that, what (or how many) languages have a "zero-derivation"
method of turning a word from one word-class into another? And what's the
commonest source class? And what's the commonest result class?
>[snip]
>>This seems to be a peculiar ability of English,
>
>Agreed. A function of the fact that English nouns,
>adjectives and verbs have so little morphology.
Maybe so.
>>and I think it can be a pretty random process.
>
>How so. Purist notwithstanding pretty much any
>word in English can be zero-derived into another
>word-class, especially verbed.
Well-said!
(and good question, too, I think.)
>[snip]
Thanks, Benct.
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Semantic typology?
Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:24 am ((PDT))
Quoting Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
[snip]
> > Compass directions, maybe? I would assume any language distinguishing roots
> > for any of the intercardinals should also distinguish some for the
> cardinals.
>
> That's a sensible hypothesis. Do you know of any languages that
> have roots for the intercardinals rather than deriving them from
> cardinals?
I recently read an old (1928) article by L. Weibull which argued that in
pre-Christian Scandinavia, the "north", "east", "south", "west" actually
designated NE, SE, SW, and NW, respectively. I haven't heard of the idea in
anything written in the eighty years since, so I guess it didn't win academical
acceptance, but it does render more sensible some geographical informations in
viking age texts.
Benct, would you happen to know anything more of this? The article's called "De
gamle nordbornas väderstrecksbegrepp", should you happen to have access to it.
--
Andreas Johansson
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: Semantic typology?
Posted by: "John Vertical" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:46 am ((PDT))
On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:44:32 -0400, Jim Henry wrote:
>> Compass directions, maybe? I would assume any language distinguishing
>> roots for any of the intercardinals should also distinguish some for the
>> cardinals.
>
>That's a sensible hypothesis. Do you know of any languages that
>have roots for the intercardinals rather than deriving them from
>cardinals?
Finnish; clockwise from North, _pohjoinen koillinen itä kaakko etelä lounas
länsi
luode_. The only completely opaque ones are SE, SW and W, but eg. _itä_
being a zero-derivation of the verbal root "to germinate" isn't exactly
transparent, either. :)
IIUC this system was standardized together from quite a few dialects, none of
which consistently differentiated all eight terms.
John Vertical
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: Semantic typology?
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:31 pm ((PDT))
Jim Henry wrote:
(re compass points)
>That's a sensible hypothesis. Do you know of any languages that
>have roots for the intercardinals rather than deriving them from
>cardinals?
Malay/Indonesian at least, has one: tenggara 'southeast', not sure of its
origin (Sanskrit anyone?); all the others IIRC are compounds based on the
cardinal points. 'Southwest' oddly, is barat daya, lit. west inland.
>
>The basic directional roots would all be 22.5 degrees clockwise
>off from the cardinals.
On an island oriented NW-SE, and lacking knowledge of the compass and not
too concerned with the stars, "north" might actually refer to the direction
perpendicular to the island, hence really northeast....
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: Semantic typology?
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:37 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 12:31 PM, ROGER MILLS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On an island oriented NW-SE, and lacking knowledge of the compass and not
> too concerned with the stars, "north" might actually refer to the direction
> perpendicular to the island, hence really northeast....
The "not too concerned with the stars" seems unlikely in a low-tech
culture; I would at any rate expect the direction of the sunrise and
sunset to be significant...
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: Semantic typology?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:51 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:05:18 -0400, John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>>If there are such hypothesized universals I want to violate some of them
>>in my next engelang and see what happens.
>>
>>--
>>Jim Henry
>
>Basic color terminology of "polka", "tweed", "chrome", "iridescent"
>and "matte"? :)
I've read -- though it escapes me where at the moment -- that on the grounds
of representation in the lexicon and textual usage, the system of colour
terms on the whole were really secondary to the system of terms describing
luster in Old English. Likewise many languages whose scheme of true colour
terms is poor are often supposed to be well stocked in terms combining
colour/lustre/texture/whatever other aspects of visual appearance: there
might not be a "yellow" but there might be a "yellow, dry, and brittle, like
dead grass".
But, then, if Berlin and Kaye found this dadalang in the wild they'd ignore
all these terms, I think, and zoom in on whatever proper basic colour terms
it did have under their strict criteria, very likely none. One of the
limitations of the scope of their conclusions, I suppose -- just because
there are words that are basic color terms doesn't mean that they're words
anyone uses.
Alex
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
3f. Re: Semantic typology?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:53 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:11:57 -0400, Alex Fink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I've read -- though it escapes me where at the moment -- that on the grounds
>of representation in the lexicon and textual usage, the system of colour
>terms on the whole were really secondary to the system of terms describing
>luster in Old English. Likewise many languages whose scheme of true colour
>terms is poor are often supposed to be well stocked in terms combining
>colour/lustre/texture/whatever other aspects of visual appearance: there
>might not be a "yellow" but there might be a "yellow, dry, and brittle, like
>dead grass".
Oh, yes, AFMCL I've been influenced by these sorts of things in pjaukra:
Berlin and Kaye would say that there are eight basic terms
'white' 'gray' 'black' 'red' 'yellow' 'green' 'blue' 'brown (also covers
orange)'
but in fact there are pairs of words for 'matte black' vs. 'lustrous black',
and for 'dull white/off-white' vs. 'shining white/pure white', that are both
used as basic terms would be, and neither makes a entirely satisfying
hyponym for the other.
For that matter I have it in mind that the native word for 'colour' applies
equally well in the minds of speakers to terms like 'multicoloured',
'white-speckled', 'piebald'. They can of course discriminate the pure
colours but it's a secondary distinction, maybe like warm vs. cold colours
for us.
Alex
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4. Slavic diachronics (was: Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "John Vertical" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:30 am ((PDT))
> By the way, what was that branch of Slavic? East? It doesn't seem to be
> due to palatalisation, though...
>
> Eugene
Re-checking... According to Kortlandt, South & East. 7.4 here:
http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art233e.pdf
John Vertical
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. YAEPT: (sorry) GVS repeating itself?
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:49 am ((PDT))
My son is just now playing golf on the
Xbox and if I'm not a totally bad ear,
or the sound quality abysmal, one of the
'commentators' pronounces _green_ as
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or maybe [gri\jn] or something
inbetween. Has any native speaker heard
this IRL? I'm sure the Great Vowel Shift
has never ended: English heavy syllable
nuclei keep crawling up the edges of the
vowel space and falling down the middle! :-)
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: YAEPT: (sorry) GVS repeating itself?
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:07 am ((PDT))
To my American ear, [EMAIL PROTECTED] approximates what I grossly oversimplify
to "the Australian pronunciation" of /i:/. Also found in other
Rightpondian 'lects, e.g. in Robin Leach's pronunciation of his own
last name.
On 8/11/08, Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My son is just now playing golf on the
> Xbox and if I'm not a totally bad ear,
> or the sound quality abysmal, one of the
> 'commentators' pronounces _green_ as
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] or maybe [gri\jn] or something
> inbetween. Has any native speaker heard
> this IRL? I'm sure the Great Vowel Shift
> has never ended: English heavy syllable
> nuclei keep crawling up the edges of the
> vowel space and falling down the middle! :-)
>
>
> /BP 8^)>
> --
> Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
> à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
> ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
> c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
5c. Re: YAEPT: (sorry) GVS repeating itself?
Posted by: "Peter Collier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:11 am ((PDT))
I've heard something close to [greI)n] a fair few
times.
--- Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My son is just now playing golf on the
> Xbox and if I'm not a totally bad ear,
> or the sound quality abysmal, one of the
> 'commentators' pronounces _green_ as
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] or maybe [gri\jn] or something
> inbetween. Has any native speaker heard
> this IRL? I'm sure the Great Vowel Shift
> has never ended: English heavy syllable
> nuclei keep crawling up the edges of the
> vowel space and falling down the middle! :-)
>
>
> /BP 8^)>
> --
> Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte
> se
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
> à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
> ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
> c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)
>
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Michael Poxon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 7:56 am ((PDT))
Regarding J-less conlangs, Omina would say "dijim" and "dian" /di'jim/ and
/di'an/.
In some modern Welsh dialects (for instance, Pembrokeshire), d+front vowel >
/dz / (sorry, don't appear to have yogh on my keyboard) so that the name of
the folk hero Dic Penderyn comes out as /dzik pendzerin/.
Mike
> Zimeu Zoneon siommasa.
> Jim.TOPIC John.ABL tall.+.PERF
>
> Tangentially, how does your J-less conlang transliterate the "J" sound in
> "Jim" and "John"? I've done so by substituting "Z" [dz] for it in Cl. Ar.
>
Messages in this topic (16)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:32 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:21:08 -0400, John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Old English did not palatalize before rounded front vowels.
>[kYn] > [kIn]
>[kIn] > [tSIn]
Is that so? I thought that the palatalisation completed before the
i-affectation that gave rise to [Y], so what we're seeing here was more or less
[kuni] > [kuni] > [kyni] > [kyn]
[kini] > [tSini] > [tSini] > [tSin]
(no idea if those are protoforms of real words).
Alex
Messages in this topic (16)
________________________________________________________________________
6c. Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:42 pm ((PDT))
Michael Poxon quoted:
>>
>> Tangentially, how does your J-less conlang transliterate the "J" sound in
>> "Jim" and "John"? I've done so by substituting "Z" [dz] for it in Cl. Ar.
>>
Kash: those would be "cim" [tSim] and "can" [tSan], but their /c/ can be
semi-voiced. Of course any Kash resident on Earth will have learned proper
English (they have ways....).
Gwr: closer, but [dZiN], [dZaN], probably mid-tone; but if some
(semi-)obscene or insulting homophone has a different tone, that could be
used (maybe not in direct address, if Jim and John are fluent in Gwr). There
are probably related languages that retain /-m/.
Prevli: could pronounce [dZIm, dZan] but [dZ] is not a phoneme, it derives
from obs. agentive gi+(h)V- and is rare.
Messages in this topic (16)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. OT: Re: Nutrition and pleasurable sense data
Posted by: "John Vertical" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:16 am ((PDT))
On Fri, 8 Aug 2008 14:43:28 -0400, Eldin Raigmore wrote:
> The only mineral I know of that people can taste is sodium.
The only truly basic such taste, sure, but I can still certainly tell hard and
soft
mineral water apart... there's a distinct taste of clay in calcium-rich water.
I'm
not sure how I tell it, might some kind of a residual saltiness; the calcium
and
natr-, er, sodium ions are of compareable size and could plausibly fit the same
activ site.
> (Vitamins)
> Vitamins are traditionally "amine" compounds (thus "-amin"), though I suppose
> not all of them are.
None of ACDEK contain amino groups.
> All of them are dietarily essential (thus "vita-"). They
> often contain essential metals that are needed in small amounts (I think one
> of the B vitamins contains some cobalt?)
B12, cobalamin. I don't recall any other vitamin including essential metals.
>Humans can taste citric acid (but can't really tell it by taste alone from
>various other edible acids).
It seems fairly distinctiv to me, it's got that little dash of sweetness (and
fruitiness) even by itself. Tartaric and tannic acids are fairly caracteristic
too,
considering their somewhat bitter flavor. I considered making a case for acetic
acid too - but that might be just the unusually lo pH of vinegar-containing
products; it's pretty much the same taste as in sauerkraut, and yet, that's
lactic acid.
John Vertical
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
8a. Re: Art is when someone says 'Now' -- or is it?
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 11, 2008 12:43 pm ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 20:19:53 -0400, Jim Henry wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 5:54 PM, David J. Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> [what if Okrand revised Klingon]
>
> Indeed, that can happen even while a conlang exists
> only on the Internet, with nobody paying the author
> anything.
Sure. With most conlangs published web-only, there are
probably people who have downloaded (and perhaps printed)
the pages for their own use; changing the conlang would
thus lead to a version split the same way as if Okrand
was to write and publish a new book on Klingon that
contradicts previously released matter. Only that the
community concerned would in most cases be smaller.
> A few years ago Sonja Kisa published
> a revision of the Toki Pona lexicon on her website,
> which narrowed the senses of some words.
> Some people, though, have continued to use words
> in the more extended sense they were originally defined
> with. The essence here is whether people other than
> the creator are already using the conlang, not whether
> anybody is paying the author or the corporate
> entity the author did the conlang as work-for-hire for
> to get dictionaries and textbooks.
Yes. No matter whether it is published in book form or
on the Web, whether it is with a price tag or for free,
whether the author gets paid for it or not, a revision
means that from then on there are two versions of the
conlang in circulation, which will cause trouble if the
conlang has a user community of any size.
And then there is And Rosta's nice motorcycle comparison.
A conlang that is constantly being revised is like a
motorcycle that is constantly being assembled, disassembled
and modified by its owner who never gets to ride it.
I wish to "ride my motorcycle" one day - I wish to come up
with a FINAL version of the grammar of Old Albic, accompanied
by a vocabulary that will only change in *one* way, namely
by adding new words without invalidating old ones.
I haven't reached that point yet, but I hope to reach it later
this year. (It will be marked by the appearance of a new web
site for the language that is currently under preparation.)
That doesn't mean that my fun with Old Albic will be over then:
no, I am going to write texts in Old Albic, create new words
and idiomatic expressions, explore the culture, and develop
daughter languages.
> > To sum up: I don't think what we've stumbled on here
> > is an inherent difference between artforms by any means.
> > Rather, it's a byproduct of the artform's status in the world,
> > and could easily change if its status in the world changed.
>
> Are you sure that this is purely arbitrary based on an artform's
> cultural status and the way it's published to its audience?
> I suspect that even decades or centuries in the future, when
> all or nearly all publication is electronic and the marginal
> costs of producing revised editions is near zero, you'll find
> relatively many conlangers who keep working on their
> magnum opus throughout their whole life, never considering
> it finished, and relatively few novelists who do the same with
> their major works.
Maybe. A novel is a work with a well-defined beginning and
ending; a language is a more open matter by its nature.
However, most of the openness of language lies in its lexicon
and text corpus, as opposed to phonology and morphology.
And it has been said that a language that doesn't change was
a dead language :)
Online publishing has made it easier to revise work already
published; yet, such revisions will always lead to a version
split because you cannot undo the old version.
> Even if novelists had the opportunity to
> do the same as conlangers, I suspect relatively few of them
> would want to because of the nature of their artforms.
> Not none by any means, -- probably more in absolute
> numbers, as novel-writing will probably always be
> more popular than conlanging -- but relatively fewer.
Yes. A novel is very much a "piece" of art in the classical
sense, much more so than a conlang. Yet, a conlang has its
"core" of phonological and grammatical rules and all that.
On Sun, 10 Aug 2008 18:56:44 -0700, David J. Peterson wrote:
> In a way, though, I don't think we're comparing like things.
> The novel it supposed to be bounded; conlangs not necessarily
> so. If one's goal is to create a language that is akin to a natural
> language (which is not the goal of every conlang, of course,
> but let's just stick with naturalistic ones for now), then it should
> never end, in the same way that natural languages never end.
Yes. A realistic language grows with usage. However, one can
very much strive for stability in the *rules* of the language
(i.e., in its phonology and morphosyntax) and a restriction of
changes to its lexicon to the *addition* of new words, such that
old texts are never invalidated by later changes to the language.
I already have come to regret that there are Old Albic texts in
public existence (a Babel text buried somewhere in this list's
archive, contributions to several translation relays, and a few
smaller bits) that are no longer valid in the current incarnation
of the language. Well, that's all work in progress, and the
future new web site for Old Albic and its descendents will be
declared "canonical" by me.
> Take Latin, for instance. It *seems* like it's a "finished" language
> because there will never be any new words, and we can actually
> point to a finished grammar and a finite set of words that will
> never expand. Given the documents that we have, there are
> different stages in Latin, but it's bounded purely because its
> speakers are dead. That, however, is the *only* reason it's bounded.
Well, Latin is "dead" only in the sense that it has no native speakers
any more and no longer changes the way living languages do. But it
is still in use (e.g., in the Catholic church) and taught in schools.
However, many of those who use it today feel that they should not add
a shred to it, and even coining or adopting new words was illegitimate.
The result are clumsy circumlocutions for concepts of the modern world,
where it would be easy to adopt European internationalisms to the
language which are often built from Latin elements anyway (or from
Greek ones, but the Romans themselves were not afraid of borrowing
from Greek wholesale, so adopting a Greek-based internationalism will
hardly confound the language).
But a similar problem exists with published conlangs, and it is
especially virulent if the conlanger is dead, as with Tolkien's
conlangs. (If the author is still alive, you can still ask him
what the unknown word is, how it is inflected, etc.) There is
a deep rift in the Tolkienian linguistic community between the
"purists" and the "reconstructionists". The latter consider it
legitimate to reconstruct unattested Quenya or Sindarin words
and word forms by linguistically informed methods (such as
reconstructing an unknown Sindarin word from its known Quenya
cognate by applying the known sound correspondences between the
two languages); the former do not. A kind of ceasefire has been
reached by the provison that texts including reconstructed forms
are labeled "Neo-Quenya" or "Neo-Sindarin", though some purists
still feel that the prefix "Neo-" ought to be replaced by something
stronger.
And then there is the case of Volapük, which failed not only due
to its suboptimal design, but primarily due to its author's
proprietary attitude. Schleyer claimed intellectual ownership
of his language, such that he was the only one allowed to add
new words or rules of grammar. That of course totally defeated
the claimed purpose of the language, which was to be a means of
international communication. No wonder that the Volapük movement
almost instantly faltered when Esperanto appeared on the scene,
which was not only better designed (in my humble opinion; discussing
that should be relegated to AUXLANG) but also had a more open-minded
author. (Similar concerns about intellectual ownership vs. openness
led to the Loglan/Lojban split, I have been told.)
> A novel isn't like this. It's goal is to be bounded. In any novel,
> the characters could go on living (or time could go on) after
> the end; it just doesn't. The end serves the purpose of the
> novelist. There goal isn't to reproduce life, let's say (talking
> about a realistic novel), but to tell a story.
Yes.
> I really think a better example is something like a series. Before
> publication, characters, timelines, universes, and key points
> *do* go through major revisions. There are times when an
> author gets to the end of book 1, and realizes it'd be better
> if the main character was raised by goatherds, instead of in
> a castle, and so chapter 1 gets entirely rewritten. The only
> reason that doesn't happen after publication is because of
> the various reasons I mentioned before. But what if there
> were no publication? What if in book 7 of a potentially endless
> series *that's* when it struck the author that the main
> character should be raised by goatherds? It could happen.
> The only difference is once published, the author doesn't
> have that choice. I contend that the same is true of a conlang.
A conlang that has no "canon" is an unstable conlang. If you
change the inner workings of the language all the time, you
arrive at a corpus of ungrammatical texts. If you want to build
up a *consistent* corpus, you must finalize at least some decisions
in the design of the language. Words that are already in your
dictionary stay in; grammatical rules remain valid; and all that.
A conlang is indeed something like a series: at the beginning of
the series, it is not certain which course the events take, but
once an episode has been released, it is part of the canon and
later episodes ought to be consistent with it. It is - or ought
to be - the same with conlangs. What has been released by the
author and not designated "work in progress", becomes canon, and
later canon ought to be consistent with it. Sure, there are ways
to "iron out" revisions. Natlangs usually have synonyms or at
least near-synonyms; they often have several alternative ways of
expressing the same category. In a naturalistic conlang, you
can make use such synonymies - or dialect divisions - to
retroactively canonize revisions: by declaring that *both* the
old and the new version are valid. However, there are limits
to this.
Earlier in this thread, I compared conlangs to role-playing games.
A role-playing game usually consists of a set of rules and a
collection of facts about the game world. Before you begin play,
the story and many details of the game world are undetermined;
they get filled in during play. A good role-playing group should
strive, in my opinion, at internal consistency: events in new game
sessions should not contradict what has happened in earlier sessions.
And the rules should not be changed willy-nilly during play.
> But anyway, who knows? There is no way this could be
> settled, since we can't reorder time and make it so that novels
> aren't publishable. Also, there is a difference between types
> of conlangs. There are at least three different types that
> cross traditional boundaries:
>
> -Usable: Presumably, an infinite vocabulary is necessary.
> -Modern: Should include words for cell phones, pagers, etc.
> -Non-Modern: Vocabulary is bounded.
>
> So, for example, if one is creating a language spoken by a
> stone age tribe, you can create every word and be done.
> If you have to figure out what the word for "wiki" is going
> to be, the conlang will never be finished. Consider Toki
> Pona. It's only "finished" in the most narrow definition of
> the word. It's as finished as my language Kelenala. One
> still has to figure out how to apply the created lexemes to
> modern discourse, and that is a process which will never
> be finished.
Yes. In theory, you can finish the lexicon of a non-modern
conlang as you don't have to worry about words for new concepts,
but in practice, that point will probably never be reached
within a lifetime as even stone age environments are complex
enough to involve many thousands of concepts (and pre-modern
societies had words for things we moderns are hardly aware of
because they no longer are part of our daily life).
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (11)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
