There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
From: Eugene Oh
1b. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
From: Michael Poxon
1c. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
From: Mark J. Reed
1d. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
From: Mark J. Reed
2.1. Re: Azurian phonology : LONG
From: Lars Finsen
3a. Re: unknown symbols
From: Lars Mathiesen
4a. Re: Two language change questions
From: David McCann
4b. Re: Two language change questions
From: Gary Shannon
5a. Re: Of accents & dialects
From: Eldin Raigmore
Messages
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1a. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Oct 28, 2008 5:33 pm ((PDT))
Those prepositional phrases are called adverbial phrases. (: Just like how
"a flower in the colour of blood" contains a prepositional, adjectival
phrase. They essentially serve the same purpose, but yes, the part of speech
does not need explicitly to be there.
Eugene
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I was analyzing some sentences and it occurred to me that adverbs can be
> turned into prepositional phrases. A conlang could do well without any
> adverbs at all.
>
> Consider:
>
> He ran slowly. => He ran [IN a slow manner].
> It rains frequently. => It rains [AT frequent intervals].
> I'm happy now. => I'm happy [AT this time].
>
> I also noticed that adjectives, in some cases, really act more like verbs
> in that they can take prepositional phrases that are not related to the
> actual verb. In those cases the verb could be changed into an adverb (or
> prepositional phrase), and the adjective turned into a verb:
>
> He seems worried about X. => He seemingly worries about X.
> He looks happy about X. => He apparently does-happy about X
> He is interested in X. => He has-interest in X.
>
> The prepositional phrase really belongs to the adjective, not to the verb.
> In "He is interested in X." "he" is not "is-ing in X", so the prepositional
> phrase does not modify anything about the action of the verb at all.
>
> I'm not sure whether prepositional phrases can always be turned into
> adverbs, but it seems that may be possible too:
>
> With great courage they advanced on the enemy. =>
> Very courageously they advanced enemy-ward.
>
> I ran past the window. => I ran window-passingly.
>
> I'm not sure what it's worth, but I just thought it was an interesting
> observation that is seems a conlang could use either adverbs OR
> prepositional phrases, but would not need both.
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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1b. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
Posted by: "Michael Poxon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Oct 29, 2008 6:15 am ((PDT))
Omina actually does this, especially with verbs of motion:
A case such as "we walked" is translated "we went walkingly" = mai abatan me
(mai, "go", abata "walk", abata-n "walkingly"!)
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Shannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> I'm not sure what it's worth, but I just thought it was an interesting
> observation that is seems a conlang could use either adverbs OR
> prepositional phrases, but would not need both.
>
> --gary
Messages in this topic (5)
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1c. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Oct 29, 2008 8:48 am ((PDT))
Several languages go the other way and use adverbs where English needs
a prep phrase, e.g. the Esperanto for "how do you say this in
Esperanto?" uses the adverb "esperante" =~ "Esperantoly" instead of
the prep phrase "in Esperanto".
On 10/29/08, Michael Poxon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Omina actually does this, especially with verbs of motion:
> A case such as "we walked" is translated "we went walkingly" = mai abatan me
> (mai, "go", abata "walk", abata-n "walkingly"!)
> Mike
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gary Shannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>
>> I'm not sure what it's worth, but I just thought it was an interesting
>> observation that is seems a conlang could use either adverbs OR
>> prepositional phrases, but would not need both.
>>
>> --gary
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (5)
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1d. Re: Adverbs VS Prepositional phrases
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Oct 29, 2008 8:51 am ((PDT))
Also, several languages have verbs in lieu of adjectives. Klingon is
the obvious conlang example, Japanese a natlang one (which has other
adjectival constructs as well, but arguably no lexical adjectives).
.
On 10/29/08, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Several languages go the other way and use adverbs where English needs
> a prep phrase, e.g. the Esperanto for "how do you say this in
> Esperanto?" uses the adverb "esperante" =~ "Esperantoly" instead of
> the prep phrase "in Esperanto".
>
>
>
> On 10/29/08, Michael Poxon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Omina actually does this, especially with verbs of motion:
>> A case such as "we walked" is translated "we went walkingly" = mai abatan
>> me
>> (mai, "go", abata "walk", abata-n "walkingly"!)
>> Mike
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Gary Shannon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what it's worth, but I just thought it was an interesting
>>> observation that is seems a conlang could use either adverbs OR
>>> prepositional phrases, but would not need both.
>>>
>>> --gary
>>
>
> --
> Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
>
> Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (5)
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2.1. Re: Azurian phonology : LONG
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue Oct 28, 2008 7:03 pm ((PDT))
Den 28. okt. 2008 kl. 13.25 skreiv Henrik Theiling:
> Speaking of Azurian: just wanted to say that I read your description
> with great pleasure after I got back from my holiday triy, and that I
> liked the language a lot. Of course, it is especially nice after I
> have looked into Old Norse in some depth for constructing
> Þrjótrunn. :-)
Oh, I'm glad you like it. I hope you like it after the changes it
probably will go through as well. Currently the phonology is very
much like Faroese. But this is only provisional, and I will probably
add and remove some things when I get to work with it a little.
> Can't wait to read more! :-)
Well, you have to wait until tomorrow. I plan to put in something
then. Though the weather promises to be nice.
> One question: how's the skerping related to the (very common) shift
> also found in Icelandic of /jj/ > /gj/ > ... and /ww/ > /gw/ > ...?
> Did it happen at the same time only more aggressive than in other
> languages, or is it something totally different and unrelated?
Well, my Faroese grammar does mention some relation - apparently not
genetic but parallel developments - to words like Icelandic _höggva_
and Gothic Haggwan. I guess your /jj/ and /ww/ must be proto-
Germanic. They look strange for Norse. Then, the skerping may be
interpreted as a dissimilation from as far back as PG, perhaps.
LEF
Messages in this topic (45)
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3a. Re: unknown symbols
Posted by: "Lars Mathiesen" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Oct 29, 2008 12:23 am ((PDT))
2008/10/28 David McCann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Incidentally, Steven's post arrived in my daily digest as
> "U29tZXRpbWVzLCByaW5nLWJ" and so on. It's lucky I can read it at Yahoo.
> Am I the only one to get garbage from Brown's server?
That looks like the body of Steven's mail was base64-encoded when it
left his system, which is a valid and standards-conforming way of
doing it, often chosen by the mail program when there's more than a
few non-ASCII characters in the mail.
To create a valid digest containing such mails, however, the listserv
must either use the multipart/digest MIME-type to construct it, or it
must decode the mails, convert them to a common character set,
assemble them and maybe encode the whole thing again.
I'm subscribed to individual messages, so I don't get the problem. And
without checking how an actual digest looks 'on the wire', I can't
tell you if the listserv is doing it wrong, or if your mail reader
just doesn't understand what it is doing.
--
Lars
Messages in this topic (11)
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4a. Re: Two language change questions
Posted by: "David McCann" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Oct 29, 2008 10:43 am ((PDT))
On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 04:11 +1100, Yahya Abdal-Aziz wrote:
> I guess I can agree that 'The indefinite article is a quantifier',
> but only incidentally. The significant distinction between the
> definite and indefinite articles is just that: definiteness, or
> particularity. When we say "a" or "some", we're not that
> particular about which particular individual(s) are taken;
> however, we have still identified the kind of thing it is or
> they are.
> Does it follow that an indefinite article is not also a deictic?
> Using an indefinite article, in whatever number, implies the
> _existence_ of a particular thing or things we're talking
> about - at least as a topic of discourse:
I wouldn't say that the indefinite article is *only* a quantifier: I'm
always suspicious of theorists who insist there is only one true way to
describe the phenomena! But *primarily* a quantifier, yes. After all, in
the vast majority of languages that have it, it is either identical to
or derived from the numeral "one": English, Turkish, Scandinavian,
Persian, etc. And if you have a definite article, its absence is
sufficient to show a noun is indefinite: Greek, Gaelic, Coptic, etc.
Messages in this topic (6)
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4b. Re: Two language change questions
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Oct 29, 2008 11:22 am ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 10/29/08, David McCann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
>
> I wouldn't say that the indefinite article is *only* a
> quantifier: I'm
> always suspicious of theorists who insist there is only one
> true way to
> describe the phenomena! But *primarily* a quantifier, yes.
Here's an odd role for the definite vs indefinite article:
The clown hit the man with A cream pie.
The clown hit the man with THE cream pie.
In the first it is clear that the cream pie was the weapon used against the
man, while in the second case it seems that the clown hit, with some unknown
weapon, the man who was holding the cream pie.
E.G:
The clown hit the man with A baseball bat.
The clown hit the man with THE red hat.
--gary
Messages in this topic (6)
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5a. Re: Of accents & dialects
Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed Oct 29, 2008 11:30 am ((PDT))
I've noticed that British actors playing American characters in American shows
usually have quite good American accents; but British actors playing American
characters in British shows frequently have very bad "American" accents.
>From what I've read, American actors playing British characters in American
shows frequently have very bad "British" accents.
Do American actors playing British characters in British shows, usually have
good British accents? Or is this situation asymmetrical?
Messages in this topic (10)
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