There are 13 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
From: Lars Finsen
1b. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
From: Herman Miller
1c. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
1d. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
1e. OT: Re: Evolutio n of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related diale
From: taliesin the storyteller
1f. Re: OT: Re: Evolutio n of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dial
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
1g. Re: OT: Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related diale
From: taliesin the storyteller
2a. Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
From: M. Czapp
2b. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
From: Jim Henry
2c. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
From: Larry Sulky
2d. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
From: deinx nxtxr
2e. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
From: David Fernandez-Nieto
3. Middle voice of intransitive?
From: Henrik Theiling
Messages
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1a. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:27 pm ((PDT))
Den 24. sep. 2008 kl. 23.04 skreiv Jörg Rhiemeier:
> Indeed. Rural dialects tend to be more conservative than
> urban ones, as Alex has said; however, if there is something
> like a standard language, it is the upper classes that tend
> to adhere most closely to it, and standard varieties are often
> oriented at a corpus of "classical" texts which are often in
> an older version of the language. Thus, the urban upper
> classes may be just as conservative in their language habits
> as the countryside dwellers but for different reasons,
Actually they are much the same reasons. Country dwellers don't just
lag behind, they preserve their heritage actively just as the city
upper class do. This is true even with today's weakening of the
countryside societies in the western world, although with different
force in different countries, and just a few generations back, the
preservation activity was very forceful indeed.
LEF
Messages in this topic (7)
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1b. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
Posted by: "Herman Miller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:15 pm ((PDT))
Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:05:22 -0400, Alex Fink wrote:
>> - your "'higher' sides of life" are the areas where speakers are going to
>> have more social motivation to adhere to a formal standard language, if such
>> a thing exists, and this does retard innovations.
>
> Indeed. Rural dialects tend to be more conservative than
> urban ones, as Alex has said; however, if there is something
> like a standard language, it is the upper classes that tend
> to adhere most closely to it, and standard varieties are often
> oriented at a corpus of "classical" texts which are often in
> an older version of the language. Thus, the urban upper
> classes may be just as conservative in their language habits
> as the countryside dwellers but for different reasons, or
> their language is conservative in other regards than the
> rural dialects.
This starts to get into conculture aspects, but that's inevitable with
fictional langs. Indeed, the Tir people, as typical of Sangari cultures,
have a rather stratified social system with distinct "classes". They
might not use the "upper" / "lower" metaphor to describe them -- I'll
have to find a suitable equivalent -- but I think there's a distinct
sense of the "standard" dialect being more "refined" than the regional
varieties; the high degree of regularity in the grammar may be
associated with that. The "standard" dialect retains more of the complex
verbal system including details of tense and evidentiality, along with
the distinctions of vowel length that were lost in the other dialects.
On the other hand, the "standard" dialect has lost some of the
distinctions kept in other dialects (such as the dental fricatives). I
may want to re-introduce the gender system into an older version of the
language. That was a late addition to the language that wasn't very well
thought out or integrated into the structure of the language, but could
make sense for a conservative rural dialect.
> I am working with these assumptions in working out the
> dialectal divisions of Old Albic. There is a standard
> variety (which is by far the most developed so far) which is
> used primarily by the urban upper classes, and based on the
> classical texts, and there are several regional dialects
> (for which there are as for now just lists of sound changes
> starting from Proto-Albic). These dialects are in some
> respects more innovative than Classical Old Albic, but the
> northern dialects are more conservative than the southern ones
> (the most prosperous and densely populated part of the country
> is in the south).
>
> Dialects, of course, are what daughter languages are starting
> at. I am planning to evolve a number of daughter languages
> from them.
>
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
In my case, I'm starting by taking advantage of the many intermediate
stages of my development of Tirelat that I've got scattered about, using
those as starting points for the regional dialects. Some of the
"dialects" actually have interesting phonological developments (such as
the rare phoneme /H_0/ < /fj/ ) and minor differences in the definitions
of words, so that's a good place to start. I've always liked the
dialectal word for "whistle", /'H_0yH_0y/ (Standard Tirelat /'fjufju/).
Messages in this topic (7)
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1c. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 25, 2008 6:44 am ((PDT))
Ämne: Re: [CONLANG] Evolution of dialects (was
Re: Tirelat and related dialects) Från: "Benct
Philip Jonsson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Datum: Thu, 25
Sep 2008 09:51:59 +0200 Till: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Indeed the decisive factors for the rate of
change in a language variety seem to be primarily
the degree of contact with other
places/dialects/languages and degree/rate of
social change/upheaval, which may or may not be
interconnected and may differ with time. For
example there were few or no towns in Scandinavia
just before the viking age, but it was a period
of intense social upheaval and concomitant
linguistic change -- rpmably centered around a
population explosion due to improved agricultural
technology and a conflict between the cults of
Othin and Thor.
Moreover the existence of a written language,
whether formally standardized or not, usually has
an inhibiting effect on language change in
societies with a high literacy rate, and the
bearers of such a literacy is usually the urban
higher and middle classes. In Sweden it used to be
the case that peasants and rural nobility spoke
the same rather 'advanced' dialects while the most
conservative dialects were spoken by the urban
middle classes precisely because their speech was
most influenced by the written language. Modern
spoken Standard Swedish in many ways is just one
big spelling pronunciation and even has restored
sounds that were lost in all dialects two hundred
years ago. Sometimes this is hypercorrective as
when modern [d] [g] correspond to medieval [D] [G]
-- in fact [D] and [G] had both merged with zero
in the meantime, but were 'restored' as stops from
the spelling!
Maybe the problematic status of Tirelat (IIRC)
stress and length which you, Herman, mentioned
some weeks back is because the dialects which
formed the base of the standard language had
actually lost length, but it was erratically
reintroduced from erratic spellings where the old
graphies for long vowels had partly come to be
used to mark stress?
AFMOC I explain some immature historical
phonological changes in Classical Sohlob as
spelling pronunciations: I've come to realize that
preserved [k] and [g] before [i] is rather
unrealistic when *kj > [ts\], so I explain it away
thus that at a time when they had no good spelling
for [ts\] or felt queasy about the spelling they
had {k} for /ts\/ before /i/, which later led to
spelling pronunciations like /kidz\i\b/ and
/kidil/ for what in Kidilib is [ts\idz\ib]
[ts\idz\il] -- in that dialect spelled and
reasonably phonemicized {tidib} {tidil}. Another
example is the preservation of /mp nt nk/ in
Classical Sohlob. The retroexplanation is that at
the time CS spelling became fixed *nt was
invariably /nd/ while in *nd there was lectal
variation between /nd/ and /n/. Both these were
spelled alike, but to indicate an 'invariable'
/nd/ a diacritic dot was sometimes used. Later,
when the -- still always sporadic -- use of
diacritics became more fixed the usual function of
the dot was to distinguish {t} from {d}, so that
/nt/ etc. were retrointroduced due to a faulty
interpretation of diacritics! The actual
pronunciation at the time CS spelling was fixed
was not so different from later Heleb /pand/ <
*pant@ and /pan/ < *pand@ as Classicist
pronunciation leads one to believe. BTW Heleb
introduced the spelling {ngg} /Ng/ < *nk vs. {ng}
/N/ < *ng/*N, which never was accepted in CS.
/BP
2008/9/24, Lars Finsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > Den 24. sep. 2008 kl. 23.04 skreiv Jörg
> > Rhiemeier:
> >
>> >> Indeed. Rural dialects tend to be more
>> >> conservative than urban ones, as Alex has
>> >> said; however, if there is something like a
>> >> standard language, it is the upper classes
>> >> that tend to adhere most closely to it, and
>> >> standard varieties are often oriented at a
>> >> corpus of "classical" texts which are often
>> >> in an older version of the language. Thus,
>> >> the urban upper classes may be just as
>> >> conservative in their language habits as the
>> >> countryside dwellers but for different
>> >> reasons,
> >
> > Actually they are much the same reasons.
> > Country dwellers don't just lag behind, they
> > preserve their heritage actively just as the
> > city upper class do. This is true even with
> > today's weakening of the countryside societies
> > in the western world, although with different
> > force in different countries, and just a few
> > generations back, the preservation activity
> > was very forceful indeed.
> >
> > LEF
> >
Messages in this topic (7)
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1d. Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dialects)
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 25, 2008 6:47 am ((PDT))
On 2008-09-25 Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> rpmably
probably. Stupid T9!
Messages in this topic (7)
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1e. OT: Re: Evolutio n of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related diale
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 25, 2008 7:04 am ((PDT))
* Benct Philip Jonsson said on 2008-09-25 15:47:09 +0200
> On 2008-09-25 Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> >rpmably
>
> probably. Stupid T9!
You wrote all that on a cellphone? Wow, which one? I'm no fast with T9
at all, even using both thumbs.
t.
Messages in this topic (7)
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1f. Re: OT: Re: Evolutio n of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related dial
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 25, 2008 7:33 am ((PDT))
taliesin the storyteller skrev:
> * Benct Philip Jonsson said on 2008-09-25 15:47:09 +0200
>> On 2008-09-25 Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>>> rpmably
>> probably. Stupid T9!
>
> You wrote all that on a cellphone? Wow, which one? I'm no fast with T9
> at all, even using both thumbs.
>
>
> t.
>
I wrote half of it on my new Nokia N82 (not that NEW, but a
bargain price!), sent it to my own mail account, then wrote
the rest on my Acer and sent it off to the list from there...
T9, or rather the Nokia phones, have a setting where the
words are guessed instantly as you type them, with a minimum
of extra button pressing required. I'm mean fast at that,
at least compared to my own slow typing rate on a normal
keyboard -- I'm lame, remember?
/BP
Messages in this topic (7)
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1g. Re: OT: Re: Evolution of dialects (was Re: Tirelat and related diale
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:07 pm ((PDT))
* Benct Philip Jonsson said on 2008-09-25 16:30:11 +0200
> taliesin the storyteller skrev:
> >* Benct Philip Jonsson said on 2008-09-25 15:47:09 +0200
> > > On 2008-09-25 Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> > > Stupid T9!
> >
> > You wrote all that on a cellphone? I'm no fast with T9 at
> > all, even using both thumbs.
>
> I wrote half of it on my new Nokia N82 (not that NEW, but a
> bargain price!), sent it to my own mail account, then wrote
> the rest on my Acer and sent it off to the list from there...
Ah, so not a super-phone with a huge screen. The longer the
message, the more I am in need of a large (tall) screen and
possibilities to scroll easily... not to mention a keyboard.
> T9, or rather the Nokia phones, have a setting where the words
> are guessed instantly as you type them, with a minimum of
> extra button pressing required.
Yeah, but my experience is that it guesses wrong, especially on
short words like 'et' and 'du' (same two buttons in T9). Though:
I thought T9 was tuned to a language? You have a phone with
English T9 or is it universal?
> -- I'm lame, remember?
Yup, but you're also still around :) (Continue so, please)
t.
Messages in this topic (7)
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2a. Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
Posted by: "M. Czapp" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 24, 2008 3:38 pm ((PDT))
Hejida tahoj'ny,
today, something really weird happened to me while I was on the phone with my
fiancee (and of course, I can't resist sharing it). Since he's from a
completely different part of the world than me, we talk in English among each
others, even though my native tongue is German. I was kinda tired and thus
struggled with words. At one point, I neither knew the correct English term,
nor the correct German one, but I did remember the rejistanian term (halen,
meaning something like subjectively important) and used that after a pause.
This already was weird, but then, it turned out that he understood what I
meant, maybe from context or because I used it earlier already. It was really
romantic! He's an angel, and a very nerdy one <3
Did it also happen to you already that you only remembered a term in your
conlang and not in a language, you are supposed to be fluent in?
Va'iln veka,
~Mechthild
--
Bitte beachten Sie, dass dem Gesetz zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung zufolge
jeder elektronische Kontakt mit mir sechs Monate lang gespeichert wird.
Please note that according to the German law on data retention,
information on every electronic information exchange with me is retained
for a period of six months.
www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de
Messages in this topic (5)
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2b. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 24, 2008 3:54 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 6:38 PM, M. Czapp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Did it also happen to you already that you only remembered a term in your
> conlang and not in a language, you are supposed to be fluent in?
I'm moderately fluent in my gjâ-zym-byn, though mostly only in its
written form (still very slow and stuttery in speaking it). It
sometimes happens
that I first think of something in gzb and a moment later in English;
rather more often that happens with an Esperanto word coming to
mind first. It's less frequent for me to be able to think of a word in gzb
but not in English, but it has happened occasionally.
--
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 (5)
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2c. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:11 pm ((PDT))
It did happen one time with Ilomi. I don't remember which word it was. It
just popped out and I remember mentally remarking on it at the time.
This isn't the same as a conlang word becoming a commonly-used word through
initially intentional, and later automatic, use. The Ilomi exclamation
"aya!" became and remains quite natural for me to use. But that is not much
of a stretch, admittedly.
Messages in this topic (5)
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2d. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
Posted by: "deinx nxtxr" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:22 pm ((PDT))
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Larry Sulky
> It did happen one time with Ilomi. I don't remember which
> word it was. It
> just popped out and I remember mentally remarking on it at the
time.
>
> This isn't the same as a conlang word becoming a commonly-used
word through
> initially intentional, and later automatic, use. The Ilomi
exclamation
> "aya!" became and remains quite natural for me to use. But
> that is not much of a stretch, admittedly.
I've been known to use any of my conlangs (usually whichever one I'm
currently working on) in speaking to the cats.
Messages in this topic (5)
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2e. Re: Somewhat Off-Topic: thinking in conlangs
Posted by: "David Fernandez-Nieto" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:41 am ((PDT))
it happens to me. when i am not fluent in english, for example, sometimes the
sentences come to my mind, but not in english, but in esperanto. my
mothertongue is spanish. where are the conlangs here ?
another thing happens to me. in my case, spanish is my conlang, in fact. that
means that i enhance spanish in weird ways, and a lot of times i use those
expressions, not intentionally, as if they were normal in spanish.
for example. hablo a les gates (gatos/as) en mi conlang. tú ey yo (entre tú y
yo) lo conseguiremos. tenío (yo tenía) hambre. vino au cerveza (o vino o
cerveza). poní (puse) la mesa. pásame el traz (trazador, boli, lápiz,
rotulador...).
por cierto: when i write in spanish to someone, ay gets amazed because of my
bizare speech. it is really difficult for me to write in a normal way.
yours,
yulerippo
Messages in this topic (5)
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3. Middle voice of intransitive?
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:24 am ((PDT))
Hi!
I was wondering whether Ancient Greek had middle voice forms of
intransitive verbs.
The question arose when I asked myself whether the English sentence
'I don't swim.'
which is translated as 'I cannot swim' into German (it the right
context), was middle voice.
English has not overt marker for middle voice, of course. But to me,
it feels like that, because 'swim' in the active voice has an
implicit, here reflexive causation/volition/agent, namely the subject
itself. Because middle voice deletes the semantic agent (usually
promiting the object to subject, which would be impossible for
intransitives), I was wondering whether 'I don't swim' could be
analysed as middle voice, and whether Ancient Greek had cases where it
was overtly marked.
Bye,
Henrik
Messages in this topic (1)
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