There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Mark J. Reed
1.2. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Mark J. Reed
1.3. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
From: Henrik Theiling
1.4. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
From: Henrik Theiling
1.5. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
From: Mark J. Reed
1.6. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Ollock Ackeop
1.7. Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: caeruleancentaur
1.8. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Eric Christopherson
1.9. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
From: Eric Christopherson
1.10. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
From: Eric Christopherson
2a. Re: "Register" a grammatical term
From: R A Brown
2b. Re: "Register" a grammatical term
From: ROGER MILLS
2c. Re: "Register" a grammatical term
From: Mark J. Reed
3a. Re: OT: Clones
From: Jim Henry
3b. Re: OT: Clones
From: Mark J. Reed
4.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Jim Henry
4.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Dana Nutter
4.3. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: ROGER MILLS
4.4. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
From: Jim Henry
5.1. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Lars Finsen
5.2. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Jim Henry
5.3. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
From: Mark J. Reed
6a. Re: Books at Lulu.com
From: Rick Harrison
6b. Re: Books at Lulu.com
From: Jim Henry
7. TECH: info on ftp
From: ROGER MILLS
Messages
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1.1. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:32 am ((PDT))
To go back to the subject in the header for a second - am I correct
that at the time of the creation of the romanization "Peking", the
name was actually pronounced [pe'k_jiN], but then the
diphthongalization and palatalization went further and now we have
[pej'ts\iN] ?
Also, what's up with the tones? According to Wikipedia, the full
Pinyin form is Běijīng, withindicated falling-rising tone on the first
syllable and high level tone on the second; but the IPA transcription
on the same page has a falling tone on the first syllable and a rising
on the second...
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.2. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:10 am ((PDT))
Found this interesting paper:
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp019_peking_beijing.pdf
...which, along with tracing the pronunciation of the name of the city
in question across time and space, suggests that the first syllable of
said name is cognate with English "back". Actually, it does more than
suggest it:
"There can be no question that English 'back' and Chinese 'bak' are
derived from the same etymon."
It then lists a collection of cognates that, as far as I can tell,
succeeds in demonstrating that English "back" is in fact of Germanic
origin rather than an English innovation. What that has to do with
its relation to Chinese, I don't know.
My wingnut sense is tingling...
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.3. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:41 pm ((PDT))
Hi!
Mark J. Reed" writes:
> To go back to the subject in the header for a second - am I correct
> that at the time of the creation of the romanization "Peking", the
> name was actually pronounced [pe'k_jiN],
You're right about the [k_j]. Some northern Mandarin dialects still
distinguish this, while in Beijing dialect, [k_j] and [ts_j]
collapsed. So the earlier romanisation (postal map spelling) was
'Peking' vs. 'Tientsin' while today's official romanisation, ignoring
northern dialects, has 'Beijing' and 'Tianjin'.
About the [e], I am not sure. IIRC, the postal map spelling was a
German invention and it could be that /ej/ was simply written as _e_
because there was no 'standard' way to write /ej/ or because it did
not seem to matter or even because it seemed like an appropriate
choice.
> Also, what's up with the tones? According to Wikipedia, the full
> Pinyin form is Bei3jing1, withindicated falling-rising tone on the
> first syllable and high level tone on the second; but the IPA
> transcription on the same page has a falling tone on the first
> syllable and a rising on the second...
Rising on the second would have to be a mistake, I suppose. But the
first syllable's third tone, the falling-rising, is clipped depending
on phonetic context and usually comes out as either a low-falling tone
or (in front of another third tone) a high-rising tone, in the latter
case collapsing with the second tone (IPA 35). So Bei3jing1 would be
pronounced with IPA 21 on the first syllable and 55 on the second.
The full IPA 213 tone is only pronounced at the end of utterances, in
isolation or in very marked pronunciation, if at all.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.4. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:45 pm ((PDT))
Hi!
Mark J. Reed writes:
> To go back to the subject in the header for a second - am I correct
> that at the time of the creation of the romanization "Peking", the
> name was actually pronounced [pe'k_jiN], but then the
> diphthongalization and palatalization went further and now we have
> [pej'ts\iN] ?
I forgot to mention: the stress on the second syllable is probably due
to misinterpretation of the Mandarin tones. Both syllables are
stressed in Mandarin, but higher pitch on the second might indicate
stress to speakers of whatever other language.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.5. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:52 pm ((PDT))
"Peking" apparently came to us (at least for Anglophone values of
"us") via French.
On 8/18/08, Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Mark J. Reed writes:
>> To go back to the subject in the header for a second - am I correct
>> that at the time of the creation of the romanization "Peking", the
>> name was actually pronounced [pe'k_jiN], but then the
>> diphthongalization and palatalization went further and now we have
>> [pej'ts\iN] ?
>
> I forgot to mention: the stress on the second syllable is probably due
> to misinterpretation of the Mandarin tones. Both syllables are
> stressed in Mandarin, but higher pitch on the second might indicate
> stress to speakers of whatever other language.
>
> **Henrik
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.6. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Ollock Ackeop" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:10 pm ((PDT))
Yeah, it does sound sort of crackpotty. I'd have to see a more rigorous
comparisons before I'd even be convinced that they were loans ("back" and
"hill" are pretty basic). He's also got some other funny ideas:
"The inquisitive layman naturally wants to know why this happened. Most
authorities would assert that it was simply a natural language change. Not
being satisfied that anything in the universe happens without a cause or
concatenation of causes, I feel compelled to seek a reason for these
dramatic modifications in the northern topolects."
The theory he elaborates after that actually sounds reasonable (though I'm
not a Sinologist by any means), but the fact that he came up with out
because he just can't imagine that anything happens without a reason sounds
just a bit unscientific.
Granted -- I'm sure most linguists would say there's *some* mechanism behind
regular sound changes, one we're just not sure of yet.
I've seen Victor Mair (the editor of this series) show a few odd ideas
himself -- but I very much enjoy his coverage of Chinglish for Language Log.
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.7. Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "caeruleancentaur" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:26 pm ((PDT))
> Ollock Ackeop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> ...I feel compelled to seek a reason for these dramatic
> modifications in the northern topolects."
My first encounter with the word 'topolect.' Is there such a word
as 'ethnolect,' meaning the dialect spoken by a specific people?
Charlie
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.8. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:24 pm ((PDT))
On Aug 18, 2008, at 1:10 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> Found this interesting paper:
>
> http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp019_peking_beijing.pdf
>
> ...which, along with tracing the pronunciation of the name of the city
> in question across time and space, suggests that the first syllable of
> said name is cognate with English "back". Actually, it does more than
> suggest it:
>
> "There can be no question that English 'back' and Chinese 'bak' are
> derived from the same etymon."
>
> It then lists a collection of cognates that, as far as I can tell,
> succeeds in demonstrating that English "back" is in fact of Germanic
> origin rather than an English innovation. What that has to do with
> its relation to Chinese, I don't know.
>
> My wingnut sense is tingling...
I just found that paper today, through Language Log! As someone else
said, Victor Mair is the editor of it, and a contributor to LL.
AFAICT the whole journal is available online at < http://www.sino-
platonic.org/ >. There are several papers which deal with Indo-
European<->Sinitic relations there that I look forward to reading.
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.9. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc. (was Re: 'out-' affix in conlangs?)
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:29 pm ((PDT))
On Aug 18, 2008, at 7:50 AM, Eugene Oh wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 1:17 PM, J R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hebrew had such a change word-initially. See for example Arabic /
>> walad/ vs.
>> Hebrew /jElEd/ 'boy'. A certain amount of morphophonemic variation
>> was
>> created - 'to be born' shares the same root, but still contains /w/:
>> /[EMAIL PROTECTED]/. (And in Modern Israeli Hebrew of course /w/ is
>> pronounced
>> /v/,
>> but that's another matter.)
>>
>> The ubiquitous conjunction /w@/ 'and, but, change tense', did not
>> undergo
>> this change.
>>
>> And the word for 'rose' actually didn't either. My etymological
>> dictionary
>> says it's a borrowing, ultimately from Iranian.
>>
>> Josh Roth
>
>
> Ah, illuminating indeed! Many thanks. It seems like a valid
> inference, from
> that, that the Arabic trivocalic system, rather than being the
> archetypal
> "simple predecessor" is actually the product of vowel simplification
Could you elaborate on this?
> (reminds me of someone's theory that the Arab's developed guttural
> sounds
> and simple vowels due to the harsh desert conditions-- was it Sapir?).
>
> And of course I agree with Benct in clamouring for an explanation
> of the
> conjunction that means "change tense"!
Check out < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waw_(letter) >, under "Words
written as vav". Namely:
> Vav Consecutive (Vav Hahipuch, literally "the Vav of Reversal"),
> mainly biblical, commonly mistaken for the previous type of vav; it
> indicates consequence of actions and reverses the tense of the verb
> following it:
> when placed in front of a verb in the imperfect tense, it changes
> the verb to the perfect tense. For example, yomar means 'he will
> say' and vayomar means 'he said';
> when placed in front of a verb in the perfect, it changes the verb
> to the imperfect tense. For example, ahavtah means 'you loved', and
> ve'ahavtah means 'you will love'.
> (Note: Older Hebrew did not have "tense" in a temporal sense,
> "perfect," and "imperfect" instead denoting aspect of completed or
> continuing action. Modern Hebrew verbal tenses have developed
> closer to their Indo-European counterparts, mostly having a
> temporal quality rather than denoting aspect. As a rule, Modern
> Hebrew does not use the "Vav Consecutive" form.)
>
I have been told that the two morphemes are merely homophones and not
the same, but I'm not sure... I wonder if you could use both of them
on the same word?
Messages in this topic (89)
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1.10. Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:32 pm ((PDT))
On Aug 18, 2008, at 2:44 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Mark J. Reed writes:
>> To go back to the subject in the header for a second - am I correct
>> that at the time of the creation of the romanization "Peking", the
>> name was actually pronounced [pe'k_jiN], but then the
>> diphthongalization and palatalization went further and now we have
>> [pej'ts\iN] ?
>
> I forgot to mention: the stress on the second syllable is probably due
> to misinterpretation of the Mandarin tones. Both syllables are
> stressed in Mandarin, but higher pitch on the second might indicate
> stress to speakers of whatever other language.
In English at least it seems to be very common to stress the last
syllable of names taken from Chinese and other languages will mostly
monosyllabic morphemes. To me it feels like each syllable is
perceived as a separate word for purposes of stress, and I think
often the last word in a multi-word name is stressed. (It definitely
feels that way if the syllables have hyphens between them.)
Messages in this topic (89)
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2a. Re: "Register" a grammatical term
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:35 am ((PDT))
caeruleancentaur wrote:
>> Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> Could someone with access to Trask's and Crystal's
>> lingyuistic dictionaries be so kind to look up how
>> they define "register" as a grammatical term?
>>
>> Thanks,
>
> Crystal:
> (1) A term used in phonetics to refer to the voice quality produced
[etc. snipped]
Charlie has given you in full the two definitions given by Crystal.
Neither of them are, as you will have read, are uses as _grammatical_ terms.
I can give you Trask's definition even more succinctly. It's zero! That
is, he doesn't list the word at all.
It would seem that neither of these authors know "register" as a
grammatical term. If it is now used as a grammatical term, its absence
in these two works surely suggests this usage is quite recent -
probably, I'd guess, associated with some specific theory of grammar.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (5)
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2b. Re: "Register" a grammatical term
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:21 pm ((PDT))
Ray Brown wrote:
>>>Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>
>>>Could someone with access to Trask's and Crystal's
>>>lingyuistic dictionaries be so kind to look up how
>>>they define "register" as a grammatical term?
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>
>>Crystal:
>>(1) A term used in phonetics to refer to the voice quality produced
>
>[etc. snipped]
>
>Charlie has given you in full the two definitions given by Crystal. Neither
>of them are, as you will have read, are uses as _grammatical_ terms.
>
The 2nd def. given by Crystal in Charlie's post accords with my knowledge
and use of the term; IIRC it's been in use since at least the 70s, when
people like Derek Bickerton began looking seriously at pidgins/creoles (and
stigmatized dialects like AAVE) and the associated bi- or poly-dialectism.
For example, those Jamaicans (and others Caribbean islanders) who can switch
from pure local creole to the Queen's English (and points in between) at the
drop of a hat-- and then realized that, well, we all do something like that
when the occasion demands.
Perhaps "grammatical term" should be interpreted as "term used by linguists"
:-))))))
Messages in this topic (5)
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2c. Re: "Register" a grammatical term
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:57 pm ((PDT))
That was my thought, that "grammatical" is being (mis)used (overly)
broadly. There are grammatical aspects of register, but its not a
grammatical phenomenon...
On 8/18/08, ROGER MILLS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ray Brown wrote:
>
>>>>Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Could someone with access to Trask's and Crystal's
>>>>lingyuistic dictionaries be so kind to look up how
>>>>they define "register" as a grammatical term?
>>>>
>>>>Thanks,
>>>
>>>Crystal:
>>>(1) A term used in phonetics to refer to the voice quality produced
>>
>>[etc. snipped]
>>
>>Charlie has given you in full the two definitions given by Crystal. Neither
>>
>>of them are, as you will have read, are uses as _grammatical_ terms.
>>
> The 2nd def. given by Crystal in Charlie's post accords with my knowledge
> and use of the term; IIRC it's been in use since at least the 70s, when
> people like Derek Bickerton began looking seriously at pidgins/creoles (and
> stigmatized dialects like AAVE) and the associated bi- or poly-dialectism.
> For example, those Jamaicans (and others Caribbean islanders) who can switch
> from pure local creole to the Queen's English (and points in between) at the
> drop of a hat-- and then realized that, well, we all do something like that
> when the occasion demands.
>
> Perhaps "grammatical term" should be interpreted as "term used by linguists"
> :-))))))
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (5)
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3a. Re: OT: Clones
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:57 am ((PDT))
> On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 18:38 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>> How have other SF authors handled the theme?
The main classic in this area that comes to mind is
Kate Wilhelm's _Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang_,
a post-apocalyptic novel where the few remaining humans
propagate themselves more by cloning than by normal
reproduction.
More than one of John Varley's Eight Worlds stories
involve a legal system where cloning is illegal and
therefore it's legal for anyone to kill a clone *or* its
parent -- as long as that reduces the number of people
with a given genetic pattern to one. (I forget how
his society handled natural identical twins.)
Greg Egan had a very disturbing story about producing
deliberately brain-damaged clones as organ transplant
fodder;
http://eidolon.net/?story=The%20Extra&pagetitle=The+Extra§ion=fiction
My introduction to the idea of cloning was a juvenile SF
novel, _Clone Catcher_ by Alfred Slote; it involved
a similar premise as Egan's "The Extra", clones produced
as sources for transplanted organs, but they were
mentally normal and willing and able to try escaping
to avoid getting carved up for their organs, thus the
job niche for the titular protagonist.
Robert Reed's _Sister Alice_ involves a number of
clone families as the aristocracy of a far-future Earth.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (3)
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3b. Re: OT: Clones
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:23 pm ((PDT))
On 8/18/08, David McCann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 18:38 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
> > How have other SF authors handled the theme?
>
> Lois Bujold:
She was the first thing I thought of, although I almost didn't
recognize her name without the "McMaster" in there. :)
> Clones are generally either the siblings or the children of their
> progenitors, depending on
> which planet you're on.
...at least on those planets where they have legal status at all.
Beta is held up as the exemplar of how such things should be handled,
but some other planets (<cough>Barrayar<cough>) are still playing
catch-up between their customs/laws and technology.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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4.1. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:04 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 11:46 AM, Dana Nutter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Henry
>> in contrast to external tools and materials. I've recently
>> experimented
>> with deriving another instrumental postp. for using materials
>> that get used up during a task as opposed to tools that
>> typically continue to be usable for future tasks, but I'm not
.....
> The idea of something for materials that diminish or
> disintegrate in the process is kind of interesting. Something
> like "my car runs *on* gasoline" where "on" would be some
> special word like "burning up".
Or more generally "consuming".
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (64)
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4.2. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Dana Nutter" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:32 pm ((PDT))
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jim Henry
> >> in contrast to external tools and materials. I've recently
> >> experimented
> >> with deriving another instrumental postp. for using
materials
> >> that get used up during a task as opposed to tools that
> >> typically continue to be usable for future tasks, but I'm
not
> .....
> > The idea of something for materials that diminish or
> > disintegrate in the process is kind of interesting.
Something
> > like "my car runs *on* gasoline" where "on" would be some
> > special word like "burning up".
> Or more generally "consuming".
Would that include food then?
Messages in this topic (64)
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4.3. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:00 pm ((PDT))
Ray Brown wrote:
> > Eugene Oh wrote:
> >
> >> Perhaps "nonetheless", "notwithstanding", "nevertheless" were ahead of
> >> their
> >> time in descriptivity ;)
> >>
> >
> > "nonetheless" looks to me suspiciously like a calque of Classical Latin
> > "nihilominus" which, I guess, puts it way ahead of its time :)
> >
Or French néaumoins IIRC?????
Messages in this topic (64)
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4.4. Re: Derived adpositions (< Linguistic term for ease of changing word
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:13 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Dana Nutter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > The idea of something for materials that diminish or
>> > disintegrate in the process is kind of interesting.
> Something
>> > like "my car runs *on* gasoline" where "on" would be some
>> > special word like "burning up".
>
>> Or more generally "consuming".
>
> Would that include food then?
Maybe. Or maybe it would refer to consuming some material
as a means to some specified end. In practice you eat in order
to do everything else you need/want to do, not as an end in
itself, but you would rarely talk about doing something in
particular _with_ the food you've eaten or the calories
you got from digesting it, because it's so general and pervasive,
it would apply to any activity whatever. In contrast to washing
the windshield _with_ soap or ammonia, driving your car _with_
gasoline, diesel fuel, or ethanol etc., where the material
you're using has a more nearly core relationship to the verb,
conceptually, because you don't use ammonia all that often
for that many tasks so it's more interesting/salient. Whereas
whether you're washing the car with calories you got from
eating potatoes or from eating rice is less core/salient/relevant.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (64)
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5.1. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 1:34 pm ((PDT))
Jim Henry wrote:
>
> quoting me:
>> Wouldn't most languages simply combine "wars" in the nominative
>> with "clone" in the genitive, perhaps preferably plural. English
>> has a special way of
>
> Sure. In a naturalistic artlang, I would do that without agonizing
> over it for a minute. But the point of this thread, or the sub-
> thread, that I revived when this issue occurred to me was that a
> vague, general-purpose adjectival or genitive derivation might not
> be a good thing in an engelang/auxlang. gzb leans toward the
> engelang end of the engelang-artlang spectrum (not auxlangy at all)
> and has more precise adjectival suffixes and genitive-like
> postpositions, none of which correspond exactly to an English
> apposite noun as in "Clone Wars" or any IE lang's genitive for that
> matter.
You mean, you need to express whether the wars are against clones,
between clones, concerning clones, including clones or whatever?
Maybe a point worth considering for naturalistic artlangs as well.
But no natlang or naturalistic artlang will have much trouble
expressing the above, with prepositions and/or case-endings. In
Urianian, zirgi klonet = wars against clones, with an accusative
plural, zirgi klonan = wars between/of clones, with the genitive
plural, zirgi klonant = wars concerning/for clones, with a dative
plural, and zirgi klonit = wars including/with clones, with an
instrumental plural.
Or maybe I miss your point entirely. Anyway it was a nice little
exercise. (I did lack a good word for 'war' in Urianian before. This
one is derived from IE *dhereugh-.)
LEF
Messages in this topic (64)
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5.2. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 2:24 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Lars Finsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You mean, you need to express whether the wars are against clones, between
> clones, concerning clones, including clones or whatever?
Yes, exactly.
> Maybe a point worth considering for naturalistic artlangs as well. But no
> natlang or naturalistic artlang will have much trouble expressing the above,
> with prepositions and/or case-endings. In Urianian, zirgi klonet = wars
> against clones, with an accusative plural, zirgi klonan = wars between/of
> clones, with the genitive plural, zirgi klonant = wars concerning/for
> clones, with a dative plural, and zirgi klonit = wars including/with clones,
> with an instrumental plural.
Cool.
I think the relationship here is pretty much instrumental, but I haven't
seen episodes I-III recently or often (maybe I've deliberately blocked
things out :) and this latest movie dives in in media res without
going into the causes of the war. It could be the use of clones
is one of the issues the war is being fought over, but I don't
remember for sure. I think the semantic relationship here
is more like what we see in English "trench warfare", "nuclear
warfare" etc. -- the war is named for its unusual feature of
being fought with clone soldiers.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (64)
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5.3. Re: Linguistic term for ease of changing word-class (was: 'out-' aff
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:42 pm ((PDT))
The conflict is actually a civil war between secessionist star systems
and the Galactic Republic. The secessionists use robot soldiers
(battle droids), which have been outlawed by the Republic. But the
Republic has no standing army, either; the closest thing to a military
force is the small order of Jedi peacekeepers. So they turn to clone
soldiers (commanded by the Jedi).
Not sure how their ethical system works if battle droids are bad but
cloning soldiers is a-ok. I guess the idea is that robot soldiers
take away the deterrent factor of the horror of war (see also Eminiar
Seven). But since at least some droids are clearly sentient in the
Star Wars universe, I'm not sure the argument holds. Esp if there's a
risk that folks will treat the clones as throwaway cannon fodder, no
more "real people" than the droids. Though that doesn't seem to be
the case in the films.
Anyway, so the clone wars weren't *about* the clones, theoretically.
In actuality, of course, Palpatine/Sidious engineered the
seccessions to provide him an excuse to acquire the clone army, which
he then uses to sieze power in a military coup. So in that sense they
were the whole point of the conflict. But the name "clone wars" was
applied before that was revealed.
On 8/18/08, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Lars Finsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> You mean, you need to express whether the wars are against clones, between
>> clones, concerning clones, including clones or whatever?
>
> Yes, exactly.
>
>> Maybe a point worth considering for naturalistic artlangs as well. But no
>> natlang or naturalistic artlang will have much trouble expressing the
>> above,
>> with prepositions and/or case-endings. In Urianian, zirgi klonet = wars
>> against clones, with an accusative plural, zirgi klonan = wars between/of
>> clones, with the genitive plural, zirgi klonant = wars concerning/for
>> clones, with a dative plural, and zirgi klonit = wars including/with
>> clones,
>> with an instrumental plural.
>
> Cool.
>
> I think the relationship here is pretty much instrumental, but I haven't
> seen episodes I-III recently or often (maybe I've deliberately blocked
> things out :) and this latest movie dives in in media res without
> going into the causes of the war. It could be the use of clones
> is one of the issues the war is being fought over, but I don't
> remember for sure. I think the semantic relationship here
> is more like what we see in English "trench warfare", "nuclear
> warfare" etc. -- the war is named for its unusual feature of
> being fought with clone soldiers.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (64)
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6a. Re: Books at Lulu.com
Posted by: "Rick Harrison" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 4:26 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:23:14 +0200, René Uittenbogaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>That's a cool 2d (language?) diagram on the cover. What's that
>language called? Or is it just a drawing of a bird?
Are you thinking of the one which looks like a diagram of a molecule? I was
thinking that "semantic primitives" are sometimes called "atoms of
meaning"... and I combined that with an idea for using single characters
from Unicode, one per concept, as a briefscript... and combined that with
some vague notion of "non-linear writing systems"... and there you go.
The second one down is just a melange of glyphs from a font called "Crop
Circles." Bottom left corner is a random string of glyphs from a cipher I
made, based on the Myanmar script. Bottom right is modified characters from
the Yi script.
Sorry about the cover illustration... I know it's mediocre but I had already
gone way past my own deadline, so I had to create _some_ image, _any_image,
and go to press.
Messages in this topic (8)
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6b. Re: Books at Lulu.com
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:25 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Rick Harrison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:23:14 +0200, René Uittenbogaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> Sorry about the cover illustration... I know it's mediocre but I had already
> gone way past my own deadline, so I had to create _some_ image, _any_image,
> and go to press.
Don't apologize; it looks pretty darn spiffy.
What about, for the second issue's cover, various of us send you image
or text of the word "invented language" or "conlang" in our conlangs?
Or better, perhaps, we each come up with a short sentence using
the word "conlang" in our conlangs? I'll try to come up with something
in gzb calligraphy and post it to you soon.
--
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 (8)
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7. TECH: info on ftp
Posted by: "ROGER MILLS" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2008 8:46 pm ((PDT))
Who amongst y'all knows a lot about this? I looked at the wikipedia page
and a couple websites and suspect it's beyond my capabilities. And I'm
disinclined to download some program just for a one-time use.
One site metioned that the files must be ASCII. Does that mean that unicode
(e.g. IPA) would not be transmitted correctly? Or does that create another
level of problems?
The problem involves sending a large file, almost 1MB; even the individual
sections are too big to attach to email, and I have fears about that
procedure anyway..........
(There are alternatives)
Messages in this topic (1)
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