There are 9 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
From: Logan Kearsley
1b. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
From: Gary Shannon
1c. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
From: Daniel Nielsen
1d. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
From: Logan Kearsley
1e. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
From: And Rosta
2a. Na'vi Babel Text
From: Richard Littauer
2b. Re: Na'vi Babel Text
From: Richard Littauer
3a. Re: Marking of some nouns determined by properties of others
From: Peter Bleackley
4a. Re: Need help with phonetics/phonology at CALS
From: Daniel Nielsen
Messages
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1a. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2010 3:36 pm ((PDT))
> Logan:
>> By "simplest", do you mean "fewest number of rules", or something like
>> that, or are we fudging that to make allowances for what humans can
>> easily parse? I find there's a significant difference between
>> "logically simplest" and "simplest for a person".
>
> I think what I had in mind was the system that requires the shortest
> explanation. A system that can be explained in eight words is simpler
> than one which takes 14 words to explain.
That's still a little fuzzy, since how long it takes to explain can be
somewhat dependent on the person you're talking to, and how well they
understand.
I started a conlang project (which I may decide to revisit at some
point) with a grammar based on post-fix arithmetic- the complete
description of the grammar only takes three or four sentences (one, if
you use the right conjunctions), but it's incredibly difficult for a
human to parse. There are a couple of other similar languages out
there, though the references escape me at the moment. I ended up
making it slightly more logically complex in order to make it easier
for a human brain to manage.
I've got another project in the works that's based around trying to
come up with the simplest thing that's compatible with our grey stuff
(whatever that means...), and logically it's turning out to be fairly
complex (although nowhere near do much as, say, Russian, or English).
I need to do more social testing to see just how "simple" it really is
to other people.
-logan.
Messages in this topic (22)
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1b. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2010 7:01 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Logan Kearsley <chronosur...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Logan:
>>> By "simplest", do you mean "fewest number of rules", or something like
>>> that, or are we fudging that to make allowances for what humans can
>>> easily parse? I find there's a significant difference between
>>> "logically simplest" and "simplest for a person".
>>
>> I think what I had in mind was the system that requires the shortest
>> explanation. A system that can be explained in eight words is simpler
>> than one which takes 14 words to explain.
>
> That's still a little fuzzy, since how long it takes to explain can be
> somewhat dependent on the person you're talking to, and how well they
> understand.
Perhaps the word "explain" is a bad choice. Maybe "describe" is a
better word. Or maybe even "specify" in some algorithmic sort of way,
like a formal generative grammar in BNF.
> I started a conlang project (which I may decide to revisit at some
> point) with a grammar based on post-fix arithmetic- the complete
> description of the grammar only takes three or four sentences (one, if
> you use the right conjunctions), but it's incredibly difficult for a
> human to parse.
As a long-time FORTH programmer myself I'm quite at home with RPN, but
I'm not how well I'd parse it on the fly in conversation.
> There are a couple of other similar languages out
> there, though the references escape me at the moment. I ended up
> making it slightly more logically complex in order to make it easier
> for a human brain to manage.
> I've got another project in the works that's based around trying to
> come up with the simplest thing that's compatible with our grey stuff
> (whatever that means...), and logically it's turning out to be fairly
> complex (although nowhere near do much as, say, Russian, or English).
> I need to do more social testing to see just how "simple" it really is
> to other people.
I try to make all my grammars simple, with varying degrees of success.
My simplest grammar is isolating with clearly defined and very
unambiguous preposition-like particles and what I call a "chunked"
sentence structure. Word order within each chunk is rigidly fixed but
the order of the chunks themselves is completely free. Thus I might be
able to say [At-time yesterday] [my friends and I] [did go] [to
movies] [for-to see Star Wars]. or shuffle the chunks as [Did go] [to
movies] [for-to see Star Wars] [my friends and I] [at-time yesterday].
Unmarked chunks are either the verbal chunk or the subject/agent
chunk. All other chunks are marked by preposition-like particles, and
being marked, can be put anywhere in the sentence. So there is no SOV,
SVO, VSO, etc. rule. The rule is if it's not the subject or agent,
mark it, and if you mark it, put it wherever you like.
There are 2 rules for interrogative sentences and 15 very brief rules
governing the internal structure of chunks, but the chunk marking
rule, order rule and the 15 internal structure rules are the entire
grammar and can be typed, double spaced, on half a sheet of paper.
--gary
Messages in this topic (22)
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1c. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
Posted by: "Daniel Nielsen" niel...@uah.edu
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2010 10:54 pm ((PDT))
JV:
"Also², I'd probably use a consonant rather than a vowel for the job.
Perhaps
/ʔ/, which I could then claim has the spelling " " - a space :)"
Nice, mine works the same way :). In associating harmonic progressions with
the phonemes, it seemed to make sense that /?/ represent a musical rest, and
the phone seemed to work well with the calendar as number zero (with a
suffix indicating "this is a number"). Great thread - been waiting for this
topic to come up again. Right now, in the early proto-stages, my approach is
to use unvoiced consonants only as the beginning or ending of words (don't
know how long this will last, though).
Messages in this topic (22)
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1d. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Sep 10, 2010 8:25 am ((PDT))
>> I've got another project in the works that's based around trying to
>> come up with the simplest thing that's compatible with our grey stuff
>> (whatever that means...), and logically it's turning out to be fairly
>> complex (although nowhere near do much as, say, Russian, or English).
>> I need to do more social testing to see just how "simple" it really is
>> to other people.
>
> I try to make all my grammars simple, with varying degrees of success.
> My simplest grammar is isolating with clearly defined and very
> unambiguous preposition-like particles and what I call a "chunked"
> sentence structure. Word order within each chunk is rigidly fixed but
> the order of the chunks themselves is completely free.
This is a pattern I've come across in a few natural languages, but
never (as far as I remember) in a totally "pure" form; i.e., there;s
usually some kind of restriction on what contexts allow reshuffling or
certain orders that are disallowed or less common than others. IIRC,
Basque is something like this, and Indonesian.
> Unmarked chunks are either the verbal chunk or the subject/agent
> chunk. All other chunks are marked by preposition-like particles, and
> being marked, can be put anywhere in the sentence. So there is no SOV,
> SVO, VSO, etc. rule. The rule is if it's not the subject or agent,
> mark it, and if you mark it, put it wherever you like.
Sound similar to what I've done with Gogido. Verbs have no inherent
argument structure (which really cuts down on your vocabulary size,
since you end up with just one word to cover all of, e.g., "teach",
"learn", "study", "know", "be knowledgeable", "forget", etc., or "be",
"become", "make", etc., depending on what types of arguments are
supplied), and every noun phrase is marked with a preposition to show
its semantic role. The null preposition indicates agent* if it occurs
before the verb and patient if it occurs after the verb, which pretty
closely approximates an SVO basic word order and saves a few
syllables, but you can explicitly mark the agent and patient and move
them around if you want.
*Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. The null
preposition can indicate a few different roles, out of which you pick
one by a combination of process of elimination (has that role been
marked elsewhere in the clause?) and "what makes the most sense". So
the unmarked ordering is potentially more ambiguous than marking
everything.
The most complicated bits have to do with handling subordinate
clauses. Would you mind posting your minimal grammar? Maybe I'll get
some new ideas from it.
-logan.
Messages in this topic (22)
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1e. Re: Possibly the simplest possible self-segregating morphology
Posted by: "And Rosta" and.ro...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Sep 10, 2010 8:45 am ((PDT))
For me, I'd want a self-segregation algorithm that maximizes utterance brevity.
So, here's a question I invite you to consider (because I'd like to know the
answer...):
1. Assume, for the purposes of experiment, that the frequency curve for English
words (i.e. frequency on one axis and on the other axis the number of words
with the given frequency) is universal for all language. (Ignore derivational
morphology and homonymy.)
2. Assume that the minimal phonological unit is the syllable, and that a
self-segregation algorithm classifies them as word-initial/noninitial or
word-final/nonfinal.
3. If the engelanger's goal is then to achieve maximal brevity of utterance,
then what word-length curve (number of syllables per word, against number of
lexemesa of that length) gives the shortest utterances? (E.g imagine you had to
recode English text, word-by-word, into the new phonology.) (Assume
self-segregation and no homonyms.)
4. The answer for (3) will vary according to the number of syllable types. But
is it possible to state a rule (of thumb) that generalizes over different
numbers of syllables types, such as "generally, n% of syllable types should
mark word-finality"?
I hope the question makes sense and is of interest...
--And.
Gary Shannon, On 09/09/2010 16:49:
> Words are made up of any number of CV syllables where C is a glottal
> stop, a single consonant, or any one of a number of permitted
> consonant clusters (as yet unspecified). The first syllable may have a
> null consonant, i.e. V only.
>
> The first vowel of a word is any vowel other than 'a'. All of the
> remaining vowels of the word are the vowel 'a'. For example:
>
> diva, ropa, upasana, purampada, toskala, osa'atanda ...
>
> The accent falls on the non-a syllable.
>
> Compound words are easily recognized and parsed since they will have
> more than one syllable with a non-a vowel. For example:
>
> otampaposata can only be otampa + posata since that is the only
> partition that satisfies the morphology of roots.
>
> sikalakoranita -> sikala + kora + nita
>
> If a compound joins a vowel to a vowel, e.g. chupa + otaka, a glottal
> stop is inserted: chupa'otaka.
>
> I can't imagine a simpler system than that.
>
> Now all I need is the simplest possible grammar to go along with this
> and I can build the simplest possible conlang. :)
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (22)
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2a. Na'vi Babel Text
Posted by: "Richard Littauer" richard.litta...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2010 6:59 pm ((PDT))
I noticed recently that no one had done this, yet. So, here is my translation.
N��ngl�si: Genesis 11: 1-9
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, �Come, let�s make bricks and bake them
thoroughly.� They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, �Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that
reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not
be scattered over the face of the whole earth.�
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were
building.
6 The LORD said, �If as one people speaking the same language they have
begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand
each other.�
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped
building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel � because there the LORD confused the
language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the
face of the whole earth.
N�Na'vi:
Kifkeyur 'awa l�'fya s� t�p�ngkxo tenga n�wotx set lolu. Trr'ongne Na'vi rerikx
krr a fol m� S�nar teit run ulte m� f�tsenge kelku soli. Fo p�plltxe san
Ziva'u,
kllte� itit ngivop ulte sa'ut 'ivem n�wotx s�k. Fol kllte� itit sar tup skxe,
ulte
kllte� pay s�yim�ri. Tsakrr fol plltxe san Ziva'u, fori fol txivula tsawla
tsrayit a
pumur lu ultral tskxe� a tsawl slu tawne, fte ayngaru tskxot ngivop ulte aynga
avawnir� ke l�ngu m� hey Ewya'eveng� n�wotx s�k.
Sl� Yaw� kllk� fte pol tsawla tsrayit s� utralit tskxe� a fo txarmula kivame.
Yaw� plltxe san Txo fol t�ngusop f�'u� sngol�'i a krr fo n�wotx 'awa pongu a
plltxe tenga l�'fya lu, ke'uri a fo fp�l 'uteri fo ke tsun ke kem sivi. Za'u,
pxenga
kivllk� fte livatem fo� l�'fyat fte fo k�pivame s�k.
Ha Yaw�l fot 'ol�r�p tsatsengne ka Eywa'eveng n�wotx, ulte fol tsawla tsrayit�
t�txuslat ftang. Tafral f�tsenge Px�pxel syaw - alunta f�tsengem� Yaw�l lolatem
l�'fyat Eywa'eveng�. Tsatsengeta Yaw�l '�r�p fot ka key Eywa'eveng�.
I had to break a few words into Na'vi circumlocutions, as normal, but I think
it
works.
Messages in this topic (2)
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2b. Re: Na'vi Babel Text
Posted by: "Richard Littauer" richard.litta...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Sep 9, 2010 7:00 pm ((PDT))
Why the encoding didn't work, I don't know. Those e's should be ì.
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 9:58 PM, Richard Littauer <richard.litta...@gmail.com
> wrote:
> I noticed recently that no one had done this, yet. So, here is my
> translation.
>
> NěĚnglěsi: Genesis 11: 1-9
> 1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
> 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
> 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them
> thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
> 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that
> reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not
> be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
>
> 5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were
> building.
> 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have
> begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
> 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not
> understand
> each other.”
>
> 8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they
> stopped
> building the city.
> 9 That is why it was called Babel — because there the LORD confused the
> language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the
> face of the whole earth.
>
> NěNa'vi:
> Kifkeyur 'awa lě'fya sě těpängkxo tenga něwotx set lolu. Trr'ongne Na'vi
> rerikx
> krr a fol mě Sěnar teit run ulte mě fětsenge kelku soli. Fo päplltxe san
> Ziva'u,
> kllteä itit ngivop ulte sa'ut 'ivem něwotx sěk. Fol kllteä itit sar tup
> skxe, ulte
> kllteä pay säyiměri. Tsakrr fol plltxe san Ziva'u, fori fol txivula tsawla
> tsrayit a
> pumur lu ultral tskxeä a tsawl slu tawne, fte ayngaru tskxot ngivop ulte
> aynga
> avawnirä ke längu mě hey Ewya'evengä něwotx sěk.
>
> Slä Yawä kllkä fte pol tsawla tsrayit sě utralit tskxeä a fo txarmula
> kivame.
> Yawä plltxe san Txo fol těngusop fě'uä sngolä'i a krr fo něwotx 'awa pongu
> a
> plltxe tenga lě'fya lu, ke'uri a fo fpěl 'uteri fo ke tsun ke kem sivi.
> Za'u, pxenga
> kivllkä fte livatem foä lě'fyat fte fo käpivame sěk.
>
> Ha Yawäl fot 'olärěp tsatsengne ka Eywa'eveng něwotx, ulte fol tsawla
> tsrayitä
> tětxuslat ftang. Tafral fětsenge Pxäpxel syaw - alunta fětsengemě Yawäl
> lolatem
> lě'fyat Eywa'evengä. Tsatsengeta Yawäl 'ärěp fot ka key Eywa'evengä.
>
> I had to break a few words into Na'vi circumlocutions, as normal, but I
> think it
> works.
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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3a. Re: Marking of some nouns determined by properties of others
Posted by: "Peter Bleackley" peter.bleack...@rd.bbc.co.uk
Date: Fri Sep 10, 2010 1:43 am ((PDT))
On 09/09/2010 16:23, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets wrote:
> On 9 September 2010 16:43, Adam Walker<carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Um, wow. I'd need an if/then flow chart just to say hi. Cool.
>>
>>
> Actually, you'd be amazed by the amount of stuff that we just internalise
> that would blow our minds it we described it in actual rules. Humans are
> incredibly good at internalising patterns, even very complex ones (to the
> point we actually often see patterns where there are none. Our brains are so
> good at that they create lots of false positives :P ). Sometimes, when I see
> for instance the conjugations systems extant in various Amerind languages, I
> just can't quite understand how people can actually conjugate those verbs
> effortlessly!
>
> As for the morphosyntactic alignment Peter describes, it is slightly odd,
> but between the various kinds of active languages and the various treatments
> of ditransitive verbs in languages, I don't feel it's particularly weird.
> But I need to draw a graph to really get our the various participants
> interact ;) .
>
>
Ok, one chart coming up
Animacy Case
A A P
A 0 Acc
I Erg 0
A R T A R T
A A A 0 Acc Sec
A A I 0 Acc Acc
A I A 0 Dat Acc
A I I 0 Dat Acc
I A A Erg 0 Sec
I A I Erg 0 0
I I A Erg Dat 0
I I I Erg Dat 0
Pete
Messages in this topic (4)
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4a. Re: Need help with phonetics/phonology at CALS
Posted by: "Daniel Nielsen" niel...@uah.edu
Date: Fri Sep 10, 2010 7:08 am ((PDT))
Hi, David, have you considered attaching that disclaimer (without the last
paragraph, of course) as a section within the Wikipedia IPA article, perhaps
with a citation or two?
Messages in this topic (14)
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