There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: False friends
From: Daniel Prohaska
1.2. Re: False friends
From: Daniel Prohaska
1.3. Re: False friends
From: Tony Harris
1.4. Re: False friends
From: Roger Mills
1.5. Re: False friends
From: Adam Walker
1.6. Re: False friends
From: Samuel Stutter
1.7. Re: False friends
From: Patrick Dunn
2a. Re: making an oral conlang
From: Gary Shannon
2b. Re: making an oral conlang
From: Vincent Pistelli
2c. Re: making an oral conlang
From: Matthew Turnbull
2d. Re: making an oral conlang
From: Patrick Dunn
2e. Re: making an oral conlang
From: Karen Badham
3a. Re: possible impossibles
From: Brett Williams
3b. Re: possible impossibles
From: Philip Newton
3c. Re: possible impossibles
From: Brett Williams
4a. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
From: Amanda Babcock Furrow
4b. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
From: David Peterson
4c. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
From: Adam Walker
4d. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
From: Piermaria Maraziti
5a. Re: Aspirated Nasals
From: Roger Mills
6a. Re: online etym dicts (was: Re: my new romlang (was: OT (mostly): my
From: David McCann
7a. A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
From: David Edwards
7b. Re: A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
From: Patrick Dunn
7c. Re: A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
From: Andreas Johansson
7d. Re: A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
From: Alex Fink
Messages
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1.1. Re: False friends
Posted by: "Daniel Prohaska" dan...@ryan-prohaska.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:53 am ((PDT))
There are also a couple of instances where Austrian German goes along with
Dutch rather than with German German, e.g. in Austria we say “Kasten” instead
of “Schrank” for “cupboard”, and we also use “Blech” for “tin” as a slang term,
though “Dose” is standard; also there are a few false friends between German
German and Austrian German, such as “Sessel” which in GG means “armchair”
whereas in Austria simply “chair” and we use “Fauteuil” for “armchair”. We say
“eine Kiste Bier” – “a crate of beer” whereas in GG you say “ein Kasten Bier” –
which to Austrians would mean “a cupboard of beer”. “Hosensack” is also our
usual word for “trouser pocket”, whereas GG has “Hosentasche”.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 1:06 PM
There is a sequence of false friends I found for German and Dutch:
de - nl (en)
Schrank - kast (cupboard)
Kasten - doos (box)
Dose - blik (tin/can)
Blick - gezicht (sight, view)
Gesicht - gezicht (face)
Each line has the same meaning, but different words, but the Dutch word then is
false friends with a German word given on the next line.
'gezicht' has two meanings in Dutch, one of which is the same as in German,
thus the sequence ends there. There is a fork in this sequence, though: 'doos'
may also be translated as 'Kiste' in German and 'kist' in Dutch can mean
'casket' (which is 'Sarg' in German).
German and Dutch have tons of false friends, often obviously shifted in
meaning, rendering Dutch funny to Germans. I guess German is not very funny to
Dutch people, because German grammar feels so baroque to the Dutch that 'funny'
is impossible. An unsymmetric situation not unlike Dutch and Afrikaans (and
maybe English and Tok Pisin).
Here's another false friend of German and Dutch to illustrate this:
zak (pocket) - Sack (bag)
Thus 'zaklantaarn' (torch/flashlight) sounds like 'bag lantern' to Germans
(while the real translation is 'Taschenlampe').
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (103)
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1.2. Re: False friends
Posted by: "Daniel Prohaska" dan...@ryan-prohaska.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:54 am ((PDT))
“maylihood” :-)
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Philip Newton
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 11:56 AM
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 09:01, Lars Finsen <lars.fin...@ortygia.no> wrote:
> Den 17. aug. 2010 kl. 12.11 skreiv Philip Newton:
>>
>> Similarly, it amuses me when someone wants to sound educated to
>> stuck-up in German by using more Romance-derived words... which are
>> often quite ordinary words in English!
>>
>> For example, if someone says "Possibilität" instead of
>> "Möglichkeit"... well, as an English speaker, you don't have to be
>> particularly educated to know "possibility", so using that word isn't
>> very impressive to me :)
>
> Hm, I wonder if there is an Anglo-Saxon word for that. Uneducated English
> speakers would say "chance", I guess - another French word.
Likelihood?
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (103)
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1.3. Re: False friends
Posted by: "Tony Harris" t...@alurhsa.org
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 9:40 am ((PDT))
On 08/19/2010 12:33 PM, Roger Mills wrote:
> --- On Tue, 8/17/10, Daniel Nielsen<niel...@uah.edu> wrote:
>
>> (Am Eng) coriander: seed<=> (Br Eng) coriander:
>> cilantro leaf/seed
>>
>>
> But coriander and cilantro are the same thing, AFAIK....though "coriander" is
> more likely to appear in an Asian/Indian recipe, "cilantro" in a Latin Amer.
> one. A powerful flavor, use with care :-))))
>
> OTOH Br.Engl has different words for a number of foodstuffs (among other
> things)-- courgette = zucchini, and a different word for eggplant too, as I
> recall.
>
Are you sure? I use coriander in a variety of dishes, and it's a gentle
spice. Used with things like apple-based desserts for example.
Cilantro on the other hand seems to be a very sharp flavor. I don't
happen to have cilantro here so I can't verify, but they seem to taste
different. I suppose that could be psychological.
>
>
Messages in this topic (103)
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1.4. Re: False friends
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 9:42 am ((PDT))
--- On Tue, 8/17/10, Daniel Nielsen <niel...@uah.edu> wrote:
>
> (Am Eng) coriander: seed <=> (Br Eng) coriander:
> cilantro leaf/seed
>
But coriander and cilantro are the same thing, AFAIK....though "coriander" is
more likely to appear in an Asian/Indian recipe, "cilantro" in a Latin Amer.
one. A powerful flavor, use with care :-))))
OTOH Br.Engl has different words for a number of foodstuffs (among other
things)-- courgette = zucchini, and a different word for eggplant too, as I
recall.
Messages in this topic (103)
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1.5. Re: False friends
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 10:09 am ((PDT))
To me, corriander is the seed, ground or whole. Cilantro is the leaf. And
yes, quite different in flavor and intensity. I use both liberally and
frequently. Carraxan cooking also makes liberal use of both -- both a lone
and in typical combinations. Corriander is a component of the spice blend,
spechi duchi, which is used in deserts and breads and with some meats.
Corriander is an element of ervas verras, which is usually sold in small
bundles of approximatly 1/3 cilantro, 1/3 broad-leaf parsley and 1/3 mint.
It's used in all sorts of savory dishes.
Adam
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Tony Harris <t...@alurhsa.org> wrote:
> On 08/19/2010 12:33 PM, Roger Mills wrote:
>
>> --- On Tue, 8/17/10, Daniel Nielsen<niel...@uah.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> (Am Eng) coriander: seed<=> (Br Eng) coriander:
>>> cilantro leaf/seed
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> But coriander and cilantro are the same thing, AFAIK....though "coriander"
>> is more likely to appear in an Asian/Indian recipe, "cilantro" in a Latin
>> Amer. one. A powerful flavor, use with care :-))))
>>
>> OTOH Br.Engl has different words for a number of foodstuffs (among other
>> things)-- courgette = zucchini, and a different word for eggplant too, as I
>> recall.
>>
>>
> Are you sure? I use coriander in a variety of dishes, and it's a gentle
> spice. Used with things like apple-based desserts for example. Cilantro on
> the other hand seems to be a very sharp flavor. I don't happen to have
> cilantro here so I can't verify, but they seem to taste different. I
> suppose that could be psychological.
>
>
>>
>>
>
Messages in this topic (103)
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1.6. Re: False friends
Posted by: "Samuel Stutter" sam.stut...@student.manchester.ac.uk
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 11:49 am ((PDT))
Aubergine = eggplant fruit
Never understood the American predilection for eating whole plants :)
On 19 Aug 2010, at 17:33, Roger Mills <romi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 8/17/10, Daniel Nielsen <niel...@uah.edu> wrote:
>>
>> (Am Eng) coriander: seed <=> (Br Eng) coriander:
>> cilantro leaf/seed
>>
> But coriander and cilantro are the same thing, AFAIK....though "coriander" is
> more likely to appear in an Asian/Indian recipe, "cilantro" in a Latin Amer.
> one. A powerful flavor, use with care :-))))
>
> OTOH Br.Engl has different words for a number of foodstuffs (among other
> things)-- courgette = zucchini, and a different word for eggplant too, as I
> recall.
>
>
>
Messages in this topic (103)
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1.7. Re: False friends
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 11:59 am ((PDT))
I once stumped a waitress in England by asking "What's rocket?" She
tried to sketch a picture on a napkin. Finally, I just ordered the
darn salad to discover -- it was arugula.
I expected something more exciting from a plant named "rocket."
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 11:33 AM, Roger Mills <romi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 8/17/10, Daniel Nielsen <niel...@uah.edu> wrote:
>>
>> (Am Eng) coriander: seed <=> (Br Eng) coriander:
>> cilantro leaf/seed
>>
> But coriander and cilantro are the same thing, AFAIK....though "coriander" is
> more likely to appear in an Asian/Indian recipe, "cilantro" in a Latin Amer.
> one. A powerful flavor, use with care :-))))
>
> OTOH Br.Engl has different words for a number of foodstuffs (among other
> things)-- courgette = zucchini, and a different word for eggplant too, as I
> recall.
>
>
>
>
--
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window
to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance. --Arthur
Rimbaud
Messages in this topic (103)
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2a. Re: making an oral conlang
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:39 am ((PDT))
Back in the late 60's or early 70's a friend of mine and I went
camping one weekend. He, being a philosophy grad student and me being
a computer science grad student, we decided it would be fun to not
speak a word of English during the whole trip, but to make up whatever
language we needed as the need arose.
Having no linguistics knowledge at the time, however, we quite
predictably ending up relexing English to the tune a a hundred words
or so, and depended heavily on grunting and pointing.
--gary
On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 10:46 PM, Dale McCreery <mccre...@uvic.ca> wrote:
> Has anyone here tried creating a purely oral conlang? By this I mean
> conceiving all the grammar, vocabulary, expressions, all without resorting
> to writing anything down. I suppose you could use audio recordings, but
> labeling files would have to be done without using any words in the
> language, and not using recordings would be the real challenge... An
> equal challenge would be to see if we are even capable of creating words
> and sounds without assigning them a symbolic representation in our minds.
> This might be the barrier that we couldn't overcome... Any thoughts?
>
> -dale-
>
Messages in this topic (9)
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2b. Re: making an oral conlang
Posted by: "Vincent Pistelli" pva...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 10:04 am ((PDT))
The biggest problem with creating a conlang in your mind are the phonology
and vocabulary. It is very difficult to remember which sounds are in your
language and the rules that govern them without writing it down. Vocabulary
is difficult because words are usually learned via repetition, but it
wouldn't be impossible to do that in your head. Grammar, on the other hand,
might be very easy to create in your head.
--
Vincent Pistelli
Messages in this topic (9)
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2c. Re: making an oral conlang
Posted by: "Matthew Turnbull" ave....@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 11:14 am ((PDT))
I did start one, and then eventually switched to writting it down. I never
had trouble with the grammar except I could never remember the 2>3.ani and
3.ani>3.inani markers for verbs. As for vocabulary I said to myself "if I
can't remember it, it's no longer part of the language" I gave it up because
of lexicon constraints eventually, but it took me nearly a month to give up
on not writing it. During that time I had maybe a few dozen lexemes and
quite a bit of grammar. I didn't work on it often and I think that was why
it failed, not because of not writing it. I fully believe that if I devoted
more time to a similar project that it could be done. But then you would
want to document it, and then you need to write it down! (audio can be a
challenge for most people in the computer world.)
I think that it is much easier to learn something if you write it down
though, probably because my brain is used to learning by copying notes.
Messages in this topic (9)
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2d. Re: making an oral conlang
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 11:47 am ((PDT))
Interesting. I find a phonology pretty easy to interiorize. Aerest
has a pretty complicated phonology, but I can just look at a word and
it "feels" Aerest or not. (Strangely, though, the name of the
language is a problem; it was chosen before the phonology was settled,
and I'm not sure it fits. Maybe it's an Anglicization of something
like Aeres. But that sounds almost exactly like "Irish." So I'm not
sure that's a good idea)
Grammar is hard for me to interiorize. Aerest grammar is a little
complicated, but not too bad -- only a few noun classes, a couple
irregular verbs. But I still have to double check my paradigm charts
whenever I decline a consonant stem noun, and mutation stem nouns
aren't even a double check; it's a single check.
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Vincent Pistelli <pva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The biggest problem with creating a conlang in your mind are the phonology
> and vocabulary. It is very difficult to remember which sounds are in your
> language and the rules that govern them without writing it down. Vocabulary
> is difficult because words are usually learned via repetition, but it
> wouldn't be impossible to do that in your head. Grammar, on the other hand,
> might be very easy to create in your head.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Vincent Pistelli
>
--
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window
to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance. --Arthur
Rimbaud
Messages in this topic (9)
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2e. Re: making an oral conlang
Posted by: "Karen Badham" ktbad...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 12:01 pm ((PDT))
I think the act of writing gives a physical element to the process, that
makes things easier to remember. Something like the saying "I hear and I
forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.".
More on topic. I could never do a real conlang all in my head. Grammar yes,
phonology maybe, lexicon... not a chance.
-Karen Terry
http://anti-moliminous.blogspot.com/
Messages in this topic (9)
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3a. Re: possible impossibles
Posted by: "Brett Williams" mungoje...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:45 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What do you mean by 'impossible'? Really difficult to use?
What I'm looking for is things that some people think might be
unnatural, that might not be possible to learn and use with the same
parts of your brain as a normal language. Lojban for instance
successfully does a bunch of impossible things, like people are always
saying it's impossible how our words have numbered places instead of
normal cases. (It's funny how we get a constant stream of people
telling us that "would" be impossible to learn, and we have to insist
to them: no look at us, we're having a conversation right now!!)
<3,
la stela selckiku
aka
mungojelly
aka
bret-ram
aka
veret'he
aka
brett
Messages in this topic (5)
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3b. Re: possible impossibles
Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 9:00 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 17:41, Brett Williams <mungoje...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Lojban for instance
> successfully does a bunch of impossible things, like people are always
> saying it's impossible how our words have numbered places instead of
> normal cases. (It's funny how we get a constant stream of people
> telling us that "would" be impossible to learn, and we have to insist
> to them: no look at us, we're having a conversation right now!!)
And how often do places greater than x4 get used regularly?
I think that in practice, most people treat Lojban not as a
numbered-place system but just as a weird
subject-verb-indirectobject-object system, so they can handle two,
occasionally three places. I wonder whether the numbered-place system
ever gets "properly" used, though.
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (5)
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3c. Re: possible impossibles
Posted by: "Brett Williams" mungoje...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 9:34 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 11:56 AM, Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And how often do places greater than x4 get used regularly?
>
> I think that in practice, most people treat Lojban not as a
> numbered-place system but just as a weird
> subject-verb-indirectobject-object system, so they can handle two,
> occasionally three places. I wonder whether the numbered-place system
> ever gets "properly" used, though.
Lol, hi Philip, thanks for demonstrating my point. :D
All of the places are equally easy to use for fluent speakers. Root
words have a variable number of places, from one to five, so fourth
and fifth places are somewhat less often seen because there are less
of them. There's a fifth place in a number of common words though and
they're used daily without complications. For instance the fifth
place of "fanva", to translate, is the result of the translation, and
it's common to see a sentence like: "fanva zoi gy happy gy fu ma" =
"How would one translate 'happy'?" The fifth place of "klama", to go,
is the means of transportation, and it's common to see a sentence like
"mi klama fu lo karce" = "I go by car." Those sentences take me no
extra effort at all to produce or understand.
You have to memorize the arbitrary meanings of the places for each
word, but in practice this seems to be the same sort of thing as
memorizing which gender nouns belong to in gendered languages. That
is, it can be very confusing to someone encountering the language for
the first time, but it ceases to be a concern once you're sufficiently
familiar with it.
So that's just what I'm looking for, is some more grammatical features
that will continually cause that sort of reaction if I'm able to make
them work. Lojban has clearly (at least to me, looking at it from the
inside) demonstrated the viability of a shape of grammar that seems
like it might be impossible if you haven't tried it. That's good
data! That's something special conlanging can bring to linguistics,
exploring the possibilities of language with more thoroughness.
<3,
la stela selckiku
aka
mungojelly
aka
bret-ram
aka
veret'he
aka
brett
Messages in this topic (5)
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4a. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
Posted by: "Amanda Babcock Furrow" la...@quandary.org
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:53 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 01:48:12AM -0700, David Peterson wrote:
> Well, perhaps not in the last nine years...
>
> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0104D&L=CONLANG&P=R19389
My god, has it been that long?!
tylakèhlpë'fö,
Amanda
Messages in this topic (8)
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4b. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 12:55 pm ((PDT))
On Aug 19, 2010, at 8◊50 AM, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 01:48:12AM -0700, David Peterson wrote:
>
>> Well, perhaps not in the last nine years...
>>
>> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0104D&L=CONLANG&P=R19389
>
> My god, has it been that long?!
It surprised me too. That means there's a nine-years-ago me that
was on the Conlang List! Just wild, man... (30 is just around the
corner for me.)
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.com/
LCS Member Since 2007
http://conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (8)
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4c. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:02 pm ((PDT))
Yeah, well, I've been on the list since diku.dk days -- sometime back around
1996, IIRC. It must be close to 15 years for me now. I feel old.
Adam
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 12:52 PM, David Peterson <deda...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 19, 2010, at 8◊50 AM, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 01:48:12AM -0700, David Peterson wrote:
> >
> >> Well, perhaps not in the last nine years...
> >>
> >>
> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0104D&L=CONLANG&P=R19389
> >
> > My god, has it been that long?!
>
> It surprised me too. That means there's a nine-years-ago me that
> was on the Conlang List! Just wild, man... (30 is just around the
> corner for me.)
>
> -David
> *******************************************************************
> "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
> "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
>
> -Jim Morrison
>
> http://dedalvs.com/
>
> LCS Member Since 2007
> http://conlang.org/
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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4d. Re: Path vs. Manner Languages
Posted by: "Piermaria Maraziti" pierma...@maraziti.it
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:14 pm ((PDT))
Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> scripsit:
> Yeah, well, I've been on the list since diku.dk days -- sometime back
> around 1996, IIRC. It must be close to 15 years for me now. I feel old.
<big delurk>
We're not (I'm approaching to 18 years on the list).
<lurk again>
:-)
Ciao!
---8<----------------------------------------------fnord------
Piermaria Maraziti pierma...@maraziti.it ICQ744473 MSN:kalli...@hotmail.it
www.eridia.it www.hovistocose.info www.wildboar.it www.labasebianca.it
-- La verit� � solo una scusa per la mancanza di immaginazione
Messages in this topic (8)
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5a. Re: Aspirated Nasals
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 9:23 am ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 8/18/10, Toms Deimonds Barvidis <emopun...@inbox.lv> wrote:
> The protolanguge of Longrimol - Quebut, has three aspirated
> nasals, sounds that IMO fit in the phonetic system of it
> very well. However, they did not survive in
> Longrimol; they were broken down to nasal+voiceless stop and
> then
> eventually were voiced between vowels.
> I want these nasals to disappear in another of the daughter
> language of Quebut, the Nagatol language, but I don't
> want them to go the same route they did in Longrimol. So,
> any of you know a possible change that might happen to
> these nasals?
> BTW, they are, of course, mh, nh ŋh.
>
How about:
1. vowels are (automatically) nasalized before all nasals
2. aspirated nasals become voiceless
3. voiceless nasals > 0
4. leaving a sequence of: nasalized vowel + h + (whatever follows)
5. (this might create a stage where nasalized vowel before /h/ is automatic,
i.e. non-phonemic)
6. the nasalized vowels before voiced nasals would probably remain nasalized,
but not contrastively-- OTOH though if you have sequences like ...V+N+C...,
those nasals might also > 0 (as in French) and you would be left with
contrastive (phonemic) nasalized vowels.
An amusing development between 2 and 3 might be for the (still present) nasal
articulation to affect the quality of the vowel-- V+mh might show some
rounding, V+nh raising, V+Nh lowering/backing-- this could create diphthongs
(nasalized, of course), inter alia.
Somewhat baroque, perhaps :-))))))
Messages in this topic (9)
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6a. Re: online etym dicts (was: Re: my new romlang (was: OT (mostly): my
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 10:25 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 11:15 +0200, Lars Finsen wrote:
> You don't think Militarev's work at http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/
> response.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=\data\semham\semet&first=1
> is usable?
It *is* ideal. How did I miss it? Or perhaps I just had problems; the
site www.ieed.nl always drives me mad with its sudden failures.
Messages in this topic (9)
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7a. A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
Posted by: "David Edwards" dedwa...@stanford.edu
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 12:50 pm ((PDT))
Hey all!
Diachronics really isn't my thing--I'm not read up enough to really feel
comfortable developing diachronic developments for my languages yet. It's a
very cool field, though, and one I'd like to become more educated in,
particularly because of how helpful it is in creating realistic language
families.
So!
My major project at the moment, Feayran, is itching to be developed into a
broader language family. The trouble is, it has some morphological weirdness
that has me totally stumped as to how I could reverse engineer a
protolanguage to derive sister languages from. So, I come to the greater
minds of the CONLANG list to see if anybody can work some magic :)
Here's the weirdness that's giving me trouble:
Rather than applying grammatical affixes to root stems, Feayran circumfixes
its roots around its grammatical markers. In most cases this just looks like
infixing, but in some roots, either the first or second component of the
root is null. Thus, depending on the root, grammatical markings can appear
as prefixes, infixes, or suffixes.
Examples:
root - noun form - verb form
*skaì - óaskaì (someone awake) - iváviskaì (I am awake)
th*lme - thóalme (warmth) - thivávilme (I am warm)
avalash* - avalashóa (hope) - avalashivávi (I am hopeful)
Further complicating matters, the complexity of both root components
varies--so, there is no "infixed markers fall after the first metric foot"
or such pattern that I can see.
In verbs, whole roots can also be incorporated into the space between the
root components.
Example:
shanáiri - lake
lóath - place within line of sight
Liválkishanirith
l<i-v-á-lki-shan<i>ri>th
"I can see him there, at the lake."
While I like the system, and I've had some simple conversations in the
languages with learners to at least suggest that it's parseable, I'm totally
at a lost as to how it could have developed diachronically, and without a
protolanguage, I don't know how to go about related languages. I'm a little
afraid I'll end up having to go in and gut my lexicon, redoing a lot of
established words in an attempt to create some semblance of etymological
feasibility--perhaps infixing roots grew out of old multi-word phrases?
Any assistance would be much appreciated. Thanks for your time!
Best,
David
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
7b. Re: A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:15 pm ((PDT))
Dude, if semitic languages could develop naturally, *anything* is possible.
> Rather than applying grammatical affixes to root stems, Feayran circumfixes
> its roots around its grammatical markers. In most cases this just looks like
> infixing, but in some roots, either the first or second component of the
> root is null. Thus, depending on the root, grammatical markings can appear
> as prefixes, infixes, or suffixes.
Aha! That's true of a lot of infixes too, though.
>
> Examples:
>
> root - noun form - verb form
>
> *skaì - óaskaì (someone awake) - iváviskaì (I am awake)
> th*lme - thóalme (warmth) - thivávilme (I am warm)
> avalash* - avalashóa (hope) - avalashivávi (I am hopeful)
>
> Further complicating matters, the complexity of both root components
> varies--so, there is no "infixed markers fall after the first metric foot"
> or such pattern that I can see.
There's the problem.
Here's one solution that occurs to me. The original root in the PL
for skai wasn't -skai but V-skai; the original root for th-lme was
th-lme; the original root for avalash- was sh-. avala- is a prefix or
the element of a compound. Then all you got to do is account for any
cruft before the first C, and come up with a way that V drops out word
initially (not hard). The drawback is, depending how many of your
roots have something like avalash-, you could end up with a lot of
extra morphemes to account for.
I'd definitely analyze it as an infixing of the grammatical morphemes
rather than a circumfixing of the root, though. I mean, unless you
want to.
The Unfolding of Language, by someone or other, is a pretty good
description of how some of the weirder bits of language (like the
semitic languages) evolve. Might be a good resource if you can dig it
up.
> While I like the system, and I've had some simple conversations in the
> languages with learners to at least suggest that it's parseable, I'm totally
> at a lost as to how it could have developed diachronically, and without a
> protolanguage, I don't know how to go about related languages. I'm a little
> afraid I'll end up having to go in and gut my lexicon, redoing a lot of
> established words in an attempt to create some semblance of etymological
> feasibility--perhaps infixing roots grew out of old multi-word phrases?
Well, this could *be* the protolanguage. There's nothing tht says
that a protolanguage has to be simple or even well understood. I
mean, look at PIE. If anything, most IE languages have simpler
grammars than PIE, for at least some values of "simple."
--
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window
to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance. --Arthur
Rimbaud
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
7c. Re: A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" andre...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:36 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 10:10 PM, Patrick Dunn <pwd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dude, if semitic languages could develop naturally, *anything* is possible.
>
That's the germ for a self-consciously crackpotted conspiracy story
right there: proto-Semitic was a conlang crafted by ancient astronauts
with too much time on their hands.
--
Andreas Johansson
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
Messages in this topic (4)
________________________________________________________________________
7d. Re: A Diachronic Riddle - Help?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 19, 2010 2:03 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:46:43 -0600, David Edwards <dedwa...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>While I like the system, and I've had some simple conversations in the
>languages with learners to at least suggest that it's parseable, I'm totally
>at a lost as to how it could have developed diachronically, and without a
>protolanguage, I don't know how to go about related languages. I'm a little
>afraid I'll end up having to go in and gut my lexicon, redoing a lot of
>established words in an attempt to create some semblance of etymological
>feasibility--perhaps infixing roots grew out of old multi-word phrases?
That's precisely the way I see my Sabasasaj having gotten to where it is now.
The form of the Sab. verb is very much like the Feayran one (I remarked on
this when you introduced it, didn't I?):
_gi-an_ stem of 'push' _suu-ta_ stem of 'grab'
_gi-n-is-an_ 'I push em' _suu-n-is-ta_ 'I grab em'
But I've never thought of it as infixing, and don't think that description
apt for Sab;
rather I just think of the verbs as bipartite, with first and second
components. And pace Patrick I don't think you should aim for an infixing
origin either (Feayran verbs aren't nearly homogeneous enough) but a
discontiguous root origin.
Historically the second component is a latecomer. It used to be some kind
of particle which obligatorily appeared with finite uses of the verb, and
this particle further back I imagine may have been from a range of sources
-- some of them are cognate with nouns, some with adverbials, etc. I
imagine that originally there were just a bunch of fixed two-word phrases
with the second word largely redundant (like ?*_ndim- nat_ 'fish (v.) a
fish' > modern _dim-na_), and the construction spread for the purpose of
distinguishing stems as phonetic attrition threatened a bunch of mergers,
and then analogy completed the job and gave every verb a second component.
The second component has some independence still: a perfect is gotten by
plucking off the second component and moving it to the front, usually with
some additional marking:
_i-an gi-n-is_ 'I have pushed em' _sa-ta suu-n-is_ 'I have grabbed em'
My inspiration for all this was natlangs with some discontiguous stems of
this sort -- there are a good number, but none with a system so
throughgoing. I think I first saw them treated nicely in Mithun's
_Languages of Native North America_ (section 2.2? I can look up some
examples when I get home if you're interested).
H. S. Teoh's Tatari Faran looks a good bit like what I imagine the stage
before Sab might've, with its obligatory complements
http://conlang.eusebeia.dyndns.org/fara/grammar.html
(or so I remember at several years' remove).
The topic also calls to mind Ed Vajda's work on Ket. There are many stem
positions in Ket the verb complex, and recently (as these things go) the
root has basically nearly moved from position 0 (on the right) to position 7
(on the left), shifting the makeup of the whole verb from basically
prefixing to basically suffixing, via an intermediate stage where a lot of
verbs had material in both positions 0 and 7 (that's the Sab.-Feayran body
type). The Ket verb is tremendously messy, anyway, and I aspire to
capturing the feel in a conlang one day ;)
Alex
Messages in this topic (4)
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