There are 12 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
From: Carsten Becker
1b. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
From: Logan Kearsley
1c. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
From: Michael Poxon
1d. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
From: Alex Bicksler
2a. Phone frequencies
From: Logan Kearsley
2b. Re: Phone frequencies
From: Matthew
2c. Re: Phone frequencies
From: Logan Kearsley
2d. Re: Phone frequencies
From: Alex Fink
2e. Re: Phone frequencies
From: Philip Newton
2f. Re: Phone frequencies
From: R A Brown
3. Re: TECH: "best" way to organize directory of conlangs
From: taliesin the storyteller
4. Announcement: new stuff at CALS
From: taliesin the storyteller
Messages
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1a. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Sep 6, 2008 12:25 pm ((PDT))
Logan Kearsley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb am 05.09.2008 17:57 +0200:
> Consider the sentence "I ate the fruit on the table."
> In English, this is structurally ambiguous, because the prepositional
> phrase can apply to the verb or a nou
Na ming mesamvāng naranoya You can distinguish between
manisa ay eda-marasena sam these two sentences in my
edāre: conlang like this:
(1) Ang məkonday nihanas ling prihinoya.
AGTFOC PST-eat-1s fruit-PAT on table-LOC
'I ate the fruit on the table.'
(2) Ang məkonday nihanas si ling prihinoya.
AGTFOC PST-eat-1s fruit-PAT REL on table-LOC
'I ate the fruit that was on the table.
Ang no narāra (1), ang (1) means that I ate the fruit
makonday nihanas luga ya while I was lying on the table
ang manga sitang-məhemāy myself, while (2) can only mean
prihinoya -- nārya ang ming that the fruit lay on the
narāra-nama (2), ang table. The relative clause
məhemayo nihan prihinoya. clarifies that.
Ang taboyisayo marasbihengon
adanyaley.
Ang gahāy nelara adanyareng. I hope that helps.
Ban-vā Regards
Krisyān Carsten
--
Venena, 10' Pihaling 2317 ya 20:06:25 pd
Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 08:40:57 pm
Messages in this topic (14)
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1b. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Sep 6, 2008 1:02 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 9:20 AM, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Logan Kearsley wrote:
[...]
>> but it's different from having two distinct classes that each do one
>> thing.
>
> Or would a distinction between adpositions that head phrases used
> adverbially & phrases used adjectivally be shown rather by a difference
> of inflexion?
Could be. That's the 'obvious' way to do it, anyway; same basic idea
as just having two different semantic classes for adverbials and
adjectivals.
> In which case are not such adpositions rather to be
> considered sub-classes of adverbs & adjectives respectively?
Only if you also make a distinction between adverbs and adjectives.
Which would make sense, but isn't necessary.
If I were to collapse adpositions into the same classes as
adverbs/adjectives, though, I'd probably analyze it in the opposite
direction, with adverbs/adjectives being considered 0-valent
adpositions. (Or 1-valent adpositions, if you want to consider the
head of an adposition-modified phrase to be a subject argument to the
adposition, in which case normal adpositions would be 2-valent.)
> For example, let us suppose that Esperanto did mark prepositions in this
> way; then we might have:
> *mi mangxis la fruktojn sure la tablo = I ate the fruit [while I was] on the
> table.
>
> *mi mangxis la fruktojn surajn la tablo = I ate the fruit [which was] on the
> table.
>
> (Again I assume that 'fruit' in English is being used as a mass noun. I
> believe - tho i could well be wrong - that 'frukto' is a count noun in
> Esperanto.)
I think I might end up using something like this in one of my langs;
not *exactly* like this, 'cause the language in question doesn't have
adjectives or adverbs or prepositions, using verbs for all of those
functions instead. But that makes it very natural to just use the verb
conjugation system to the same effect- the verb "to be on" would
conjugate differently to take the action nominal as a subject
(adverbial case) or the noun (adjectival case).
>> There are natlangs with mixed adpositional systems, aren't there?
[...]
> Some languages have a greater number of adpositions occupying either
> preposited or postposited positions. By AFAIK this is due to the way the
> words developed from whatever they'd originally been (often adverbs) to
> their status as adpositions, and that in these languages certain words were
> (almost) always prepositions & others postpositions.
So, it's just a matter of the definition of each adposition whether it
happens to go in front or in back; there's no systematic variation in
syntax.
>> I started contemplating altering one of my conlangs to use this sort
>> of system (it would be a great post-fact historical explanation for
>> why a few irregular features are the way they are), but I have a
>> nagging feeling that it could result in different ambiguity as to
>> which noun is supposed the object of an adposition;
>
> That had actually occurred to me also.
I still haven't been able to think of a good example for this, or
completely convince myself that it's not really a problem.
The only real structural ambiguity I can think of would be in a case
like "I ate the fruit on the table" where either 'fruit' is the object
of post-positional 'on' or 'table' is the object of prepositional
'on'. But here, pragmatics tells you that you can't eat a table, which
nicely resolves the situation. I'm having a hard time coming up with
an example where that sort of ambiguity actually matters, and I'm
pretty sure that it's completely solvable by just using an
adpositional case distinct from accusative or dative. (So, if you
really did want to eat a table on some fruit, you would say "I-NOM ate
the fruit-AD on the table-ACC".)
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> Logan Kearsley writes:
>>>
>>> Additional thought- how common is it to have adpositional phrases
>>> which can behave adjectivally at all?
>
> Quite common, I think. They were there in Ancient Greek, e.g. hoi en te:i
> ne:i andres = the in the boat people men = the men in the boat.
>
> One could also omit the noun and just use the article if the meaning was
> clear, e.g. hoi en te:i ne:i = the [people] in the boat
>
> Although Classical Latin was strict in using prepositional phrases only
> adverbially, in Late Latin & Medieval Latin they were certainly also used
> adjectivally. AFAIK the use of prepositional phrases both adjectivally &
> adverbially is fairly commonplace in (western?) European languages.
Cool. A follow-up question, then- does this commonly produce the kind
of ambiguity that comes up in English, or are there usually other ways
of dealing with it?
>>> English has a habit of eliding
>>> lots of grammatical information like complementizers and relative
>>> pronouns and copulas in relative clauses,
>>> and so it just occurred to me that every instance of a prepositional
>>> phrase modifying a noun, like "the fruit on the table", could be
>>> explained as a relative clause that's been heavily elided- "the fruit
>>> [which is] on the table".
>
> It could - it is not necessary IMO.
Probably not. Time for some historical linguistics research, I think;
'twould be interesting to find out if that actually is the origin of
adjectival adpositions, and if not, where do they really come from.
>> Good question. In English, participles usually come
>> before the noun. "I ate the stolen fruit." But if
>> there is more to the participle, it comes after: "I
>> ate the fruit stolen by my uncle." This could be
>> taken as an ellipsis of "I ate the fruit which was
>> stolen by my uncle."
>
> It could - but that analysis falls down, I think, in languages where
> participles are clearly marked with adjective endings.
Do such languages commonly exhibit the same kind of inversion, though?
Actually, even if they do, that doesn't mean anything; it could just
as well be a difference between "heavy" vs. "light" modifiers. A
participle without arguments would be classed along with light
adjectives, and so come beforehand, whereas a participle with
arguments would be classed with heavy modifiers like relative clauses
and so come afterwards, even if they historically are unrelated to
relative clauses.
>> I think someone mentioned a conlang that has a semantic distinction
>> between adverbial and adjectival prepositions; that would be
>> interesting to investigate.
>
> Check Konya and Ilomi.
That's probably what I was thinking of.
-l.
Messages in this topic (14)
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1c. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
Posted by: "Michael Poxon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 7, 2008 5:51 am ((PDT))
No ambiguity in Omina either:
mui loista sundea inedan
mui | loista | sunde-a | ine-da-n
eat | fruit | table + locative | ergative aux + 1ps subj + 3ps obj +
relative suffix
(I eat (it) the fruit (that is) on the table
Mike
> * Logan Kearsley said on 2008-09-05 17:57:34 +0200
> > Consider the sentence "I ate the fruit on the table."
> > In English, this is structurally ambiguous, because the prepositional
> > phrase can apply to the verb or a noun- did I eat fruit which was on
> > the table, or did I eat the fruit while I was on the table?
> > I think someone mentioned a conlang that has a semantic distinction
> > between adverbial and adjectival prepositions; that would be
> > interesting to investigate.
>
Messages in this topic (14)
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1d. Re: Syntactic Differentiation of Adverbial vs. Adjectival Adposition
Posted by: "Alex Bicksler" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 7, 2008 11:44 am ((PDT))
In my (as of yet unnamed) conlang, adpositions are marked directly on the
verb or noun, so there is no ambiguity (well, there is some, but that is
unrelated).
Ngjotra Dodabjo'nfretib.
Ngjo-tra Doda-ba-jont-Freti-b
Eat-I-past fruit-over-touching-table-acc.
(I eat the fruit that is on the table)
Ngjobjo'nfretitra Dodab.
Ngjo-ba-jont-Freti-tra Doda-b.
Eat-over-touching-table-I-past fruit-acc..
(I eat the fruit while I am on the table)
Alex.
Messages in this topic (14)
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2a. Phone frequencies
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Sep 6, 2008 2:46 pm ((PDT))
I used to have an IPA table that included the frequency of each phone
among world languages- which phones occur in 90% of all languages,
which phones occur in 80% of languages, which phones occur in only 5%
of languages, etc. But I seem to have lost it, and I can't find
anything like that on line. Anybody know where I could get a table or
a list with frequencies for different phones among world languages?
-l.
Messages in this topic (6)
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2b. Re: Phone frequencies
Posted by: "Matthew" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Sep 6, 2008 3:33 pm ((PDT))
Logan Kearsley wrote:
> I used to have an IPA table that included the frequency of each phone
> among world languages- which phones occur in 90% of all languages,
> which phones occur in 80% of languages, which phones occur in only 5%
> of languages, etc. But I seem to have lost it, and I can't find
> anything like that on line. Anybody know where I could get a table or
> a list with frequencies for different phones among world languages?
>
here's something from 25 of the most common languages as sources
http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/phonology.html
Messages in this topic (6)
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2c. Re: Phone frequencies
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Sep 6, 2008 4:16 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 6:32 PM, Matthew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Logan Kearsley wrote:
>>
>> I used to have an IPA table that included the frequency of each phone
>> among world languages- which phones occur in 90% of all languages,
>> which phones occur in 80% of languages, which phones occur in only 5%
>> of languages, etc. But I seem to have lost it, and I can't find
>> anything like that on line. Anybody know where I could get a table or
>> a list with frequencies for different phones among world languages?
>
> here's something from 25 of the most common languages as sources
>
> http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/phonology.html
Aha! Thanks. A larger list of phones would be appreciated, but that
will do nicely.
-l.
Messages in this topic (6)
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2d. Re: Phone frequencies
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Sep 6, 2008 7:20 pm ((PDT))
On Sat, 6 Sep 2008 17:46:14 -0400, Logan Kearsley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>I used to have an IPA table that included the frequency of each phone
>among world languages- which phones occur in 90% of all languages,
>which phones occur in 80% of languages, which phones occur in only 5%
>of languages, etc. But I seem to have lost it, and I can't find
>anything like that on line. Anybody know where I could get a table or
>a list with frequencies for different phones among world languages?
Wouldn't you know it, I was _just_ looking for the very same thing. UPSID
(the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database) does nearly exactly this,
and there's an interface to it at
http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/upsid.html .
Use "find certain sounds and languages that have them", option #5; it gives
you a table with frequencies of each phone in the phonologies in its
database below the output. Not sorted, but you can do that.
Below I excerpt from an offlist message on the Glossotechnia discussion
about this.
[excerpt begin]
For consonants it's got the irritating feature that dentals and
alveolars and unspecified dental/alveolars are all counted separately,
though. I've corrected for that by taking the unspecified counts and
multiplying those by 14/5, and discarding the other two sorts -- this
is indefensibly hacky, when I could've done the summation, but it was
quick. That gives the following top of the frequency list (warning,
monospace table ahead):
n .9935 g .5610 k_h .2284 dz) .1240
t .9436 N .5255 p_h .2239 G .1220
m .9424 ? .4789 r* .2234 c .1197
k .8936 tS) .4169 v .2106 B .1197
l .8445 S .4146 x .2084 q .1153
j .8381 f .3991 4 .1613 tS)_h .1131
s .8381 r .3167 ts)_h .1551 b_< .1086
p .8315 J .3126 t_> .1490 mb) .1064
w .7361 t_h .3041 K .1490 ts)_> .1056
b .6364 ts) .2794 k_> .1397 nd) .1056
h .6186 z .2669 Z .1353
d .5650 dZ) .2506 k_w .1330
and no other sounds in more than one language in ten. r* was glossed
in the list as "voiced dental/alveolar r-sound", whatever we make of
that.
For vowels the parallel irritation is that e.g. /e/ and /E/ and
indifferent /e/~/E/ are counted separately; I've corrected (slightly
less undefensibly) by dropping the indifferents and multiplying the
others by 11/7, but special-cased /@/ and left it alone. This gives
i .8714 I .1641 a_": .0754
a_" .8692 U .1463 e: .0732
u .8182 1 .1353 e~ .0627
E .6481 E~ .1219
O .5645 O~ .1116
o .4565 o~ .0941
e .4320 M .0909
a_"~.1840 i: .0887
i~ .1818 & .0865
@ .1685 o: .0836
u~ .1641 u: .0798
and no other sounds in more than one language in sixteen. My /a_"/
was just written /a/ in the UPSID but they called it unambiguously a
low central vowel (this is a hole in the IPA more than anything).
[exceprt end]
Alex
Messages in this topic (6)
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2e. Re: Phone frequencies
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 7, 2008 1:16 am ((PDT))
On Sun, Sep 7, 2008 at 04:17, Alex Fink <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> For consonants it's got the irritating feature that dentals and
> alveolars and unspecified dental/alveolars are all counted separately,
> though.
[...]
> For vowels the parallel irritation is that e.g. /e/ and /E/ and
> indifferent /e/~/E/ are counted separately;
I think that's a big problem with such lists, especially in the face
of allophonic variation where the main allophone of a given phoneme
just happens not to be what you're looking for.
For example, the chart on
http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/segmental_phonemes.png looks a bit messy
for [a] since it says only English misses that. Which is true enough
as far as it goes, but I'd imagine that someone using [a] in English
(say, for PALM) would still be understood; English has [a]-like
vowels, just not one whose main allophone is precisely [a].
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (6)
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2f. Re: Phone frequencies
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 7, 2008 12:34 pm ((PDT))
Philip Newton wrote:
[snip]
> I think that's a big problem with such lists, especially in the face
> of allophonic variation where the main allophone of a given phoneme
> just happens not to be what you're looking for.
>
> For example, the chart on
> http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/segmental_phonemes.png looks a bit messy
> for [a] since it says only English misses that. Which is true enough
> as far as it goes, but I'd imagine that someone using [a] in English
> (say, for PALM) would still be understood;
I suspect so. It also ignores the fact the _normal_ pronunciation of the
English phoneme usually given as /æ/ ('ash', a-e ligature) is in fact
[a] in most of Wales (except a small band along the cost from Newport to
Cardiff), the north of England and much of Scotland.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (6)
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3. Re: TECH: "best" way to organize directory of conlangs
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat Sep 6, 2008 3:35 pm ((PDT))
* Rick Harrison said on 2008-09-03 21:10:30 +0200
> I want to establish/instigate a directory of all known
> conlangs. Someplace where I can see if the name I'm about to
> give my project has already been used... or, if I suddenly
> remember Vling and get a nostalgic urge to find its
> documentation, get a link to it. Just a brief description with
> links for each language. Preferably each description would be
> written in English and Esperanto so as not to exclude
> nonanglophones.
I've made a system for this at CALS now, see
http://cals.conlang.org/rhlist/
I haven't added a system open to the public for adding this type
of translation/background though, maybe next weekend (if you're
interested).
It's easy enough to restrict that list to only show translations
to/versioms in esperanto... at the core of the matter though:
it's designed so that anyone logged in can add a translation in
any language to anything, so even if lots of backgrounds in
esperanto suddenly spring up, you'd still have to choose which
one or ones to use. Meaning, I'll still add a JSON-download or
something, so that you can filter it yourself. But: not before
next weekend, as I've spent most of this weekend already and
tomorrow I'll hopefully spend some time watching Wall-E at the
cinema (it's been sold out several days in a row!)
t.
Messages in this topic (1)
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4. Announcement: new stuff at CALS
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sun Sep 7, 2008 11:25 am ((PDT))
There's now a system in place at CALS to store translation
exercises, have a look at
http://cals.conlang.org/language/testarossa/translations/
for an example. Yep, that means that there exists a page at
http://cals.conlang.org/language/<your language>/translations/
now too. All brand new so beware of bugs etc.
There's a list of all translations at
http://cals.conlang.org/translation/
(no edit-possibilities from there yet.)
Should I also make it simple for you guys to add new translation
exercises? You can of course request them to be added via the
bugticket-system already, just choose the type "new translation
exercise". If you put a working email-addy in the reporter-field
you should get an email whenever the ticket changes too.
Other new stuff: other ways of listing languages: Kennaway-style
at http://cals.conlang.org/jrklist/, experimental with
translated backgrounds at http://cals.conlang.org/rhlist/.
Btw: anyone know of a place where Wall-E is discussed?
t.
Messages in this topic (1)
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