There are 25 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... From: R A Brown 1b. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... From: Daniel Nielsen 1c. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... From: Jim Henry 1d. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... From: Daniel Nielsen 1e. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... From: Roger Mills 2a. Re: XKCD Lobjan From: Philip Newton 2b. Re: XKCD Lobjan From: MorphemeAddict 2c. Re: XKCD Lobjan From: Brett Williams 2d. Re: XKCD Lobjan From: Jim Henry 3a. Re: Young conlanger/cellist on NPR's From The Top From: David McCann 3b. Re: Young conlanger/cellist on NPR's From The Top From: Lars Finsen 4a. Re: Conlang program project From: Ellen Million 5a. Re: New book From: MorphemeAddict 6a. OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Gary Shannon 6b. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: vii iiix 6c. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: p...@phillipdriscoll.com 6d. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Andreas Johansson 6e. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Andreas Johansson 6f. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Alex Fink 6g. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Samuel Stutter 6h. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Garth Wallace 6i. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: kechpaja 6j. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Daniel Nielsen 6k. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Charlie 6l. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? From: Gary Shannon Messages ________________________________________________________________________ 1a. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 8:29 am ((PDT)) On 04/10/2010 14:06, Jeff Sheets wrote: > Hey Conlang list. It's been a while since I posted. I recently took the > plunge back into college, and find myself writing a paper on conlanging (Not > particularly surprising, I think). One of the sources I'm using is > Wikipedia, the bane of Academics everywhere. That said, I'd like to replace > it with a more respected source... So... > > Is anyone aware of any journal articles that define the terms specific to > conlanging? "Conlang", "artlang", "auxlang", and "engelang" are the terms I > most need to be able to point at. Though I'm not concerned with it if there > are no such articles, since I'm only using Wikipedia as a source for these > definitions, and not for any other info, I would like to be able to write > the paper without referencing the big, scary, non-peer-reviewed, community > driven thought-festival. I use all those terms (and one or two others) on: http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Glosso/Glossopoeia.html I wrote that page long before I was aware of the Wikipedia article :) -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== "Ein Kopf, der auf seine eigene Kosten denkt, wird immer Eingriffe in die Sprache thun." [J.G. Hamann, 1760] "A mind that thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language". Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1b. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... Posted by: "Daniel Nielsen" niel...@uah.edu Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 12:31 pm ((PDT)) I'd think there are these routes available: 1) Find the early usage This way someone following the references knows how to start at the seminal point in the discussion. 2) Find a textbook usage I like to cite good textbooks for basics like this, because someone following the paper trail is likely to get a lot of other good information right away by checking out the book. 3) Cite a paper related to your specific thesis that uses the terms For instance, if you are writing about the marketability of conlangs, then you might cite http://www.unish.org/unish/DOWN/PDF/Neil%20Olsen.pdf This way you can also set up your thesis, without putting a follower too far off-track. Dan N Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1c. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:34 pm ((PDT)) On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 3:29 PM, Daniel Nielsen <niel...@uah.edu> wrote: > I'd think there are these routes available: > > 1) Find the early usage > This way someone following the references knows how to start at the seminal > point in the discussion. That's what I tried to do in this document, http://wiki.frath.net/Conlang_terminology -- linking to CONLANG and AUXLANG list threads where terms were first (as far as I could tell) used in particular senses. I couldn't document the earliest uses of the most basic terms that way because the online archives of those lists don't go back further than 1998, though. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/ Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1d. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... Posted by: "Daniel Nielsen" niel...@uah.edu Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 5:15 pm ((PDT)) IMO that sounds like a worthwhile collective conlang-l effort, esp. since we are so engaged with language. Those are really handy archive references, btw. Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1e. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions... Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 7:37 pm ((PDT)) --- On Mon, 10/4/10, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote > > That's what I tried to do in this document, > > http://wiki.frath.net/Conlang_terminology > > -- linking to CONLANG and AUXLANG list threads where terms > were first > (as far as I could tell) used in particular senses. I > couldn't > document the earliest uses of the most basic terms that way > because > the online archives of those lists don't go back further > than 1998, > though. > I'd suspect that these mailing list refs are the originals; before the computer required us to abbreviate and mash things together people used the full phrases. My guess would be that "engelang" is quite recent, and originated on this list within my tenure (since 2001). Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2a. Re: XKCD Lobjan Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 8:41 am ((PDT)) On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 22:07, Matthew Boutilier <mbout...@nd.edu> wrote: > On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 6:48 AM, Samuel Stutter < > sam.stut...@student.manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > >> Sorry, that should be Lojban. One thousand apologies. Please have pity. > > awesome. can you translate the mouse-over text? > > matt zo'o ta jitfa .i .e'o xu do pendo mi My take on it is roughly, "That's not true :) Will you be my friend, please?" (More literally, "[humour] that is.false [utterance.separator] [request] [yes-no.question.marker] you are.friend.of me") mu'o mi'e .filip. -- Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com> Messages in this topic (18) ________________________________________________________________________ 2b. Re: XKCD Lobjan Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 12:26 pm ((PDT)) The Lojban would be better if it had "di'u" ('the last utterance') instead of "ta" ('that thing/place near listener'). I've seen that cartoon several times over the years, but this is the first time I saw the mouse-over text. stevo On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>wrote: > On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 22:07, Matthew Boutilier <mbout...@nd.edu> wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 6:48 AM, Samuel Stutter < > > sam.stut...@student.manchester.ac.uk> wrote: > > > >> Sorry, that should be Lojban. One thousand apologies. Please have pity. > > > > awesome. can you translate the mouse-over text? > > > > matt > > zo'o ta jitfa .i .e'o xu do pendo mi > > My take on it is roughly, "That's not true :) Will you be my friend, > please?" > > (More literally, "[humour] that is.false [utterance.separator] > [request] [yes-no.question.marker] you are.friend.of me") > > mu'o mi'e .filip. > -- > Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com> > Messages in this topic (18) ________________________________________________________________________ 2c. Re: XKCD Lobjan Posted by: "Brett Williams" mungoje...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 4:22 pm ((PDT)) On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 4:07 PM, Matthew Boutilier <mbout...@nd.edu> wrote: > awesome. can you translate the mouse-over text? zo'o ta jitfa .i .e'o xu do pendo mi just kidding, that's not true! won't you please be friends with me? and indeed lojbanists have taken no offense at the comic, in fact we feel quite honored by it!! we're a tiny community and the effect this comic had on our visibility was quite tangible. people i personally know who are now expert lojbanists first heard about lojban from that comic. so it's impacted my life personally, and in a very positive way. it's funny of course because it's true!! lojbanists are unbelievably picky & argumentative, as you'd expect of people drawn to the fool's errand of making language less ambiguous. of course we also have nice qualities, like we have a good sense of humor, we don't take ourselves too seriously, and we're very open minded and creative, and we're often driven to do things the right way instead of just the easy way. <3, la stela selckiku aka brett williams aka mungojelly aka bret-ram aka veret'he aka bret aka j Messages in this topic (18) ________________________________________________________________________ 2d. Re: XKCD Lobjan Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 4:43 pm ((PDT)) On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 7:20 PM, Brett Williams <mungoje...@gmail.com> wrote: > and indeed lojbanists have taken no offense at the comic, in fact we > feel quite honored by it!! we're a tiny community and the effect this I have a vague recollection that Lojban was used or mentioned at least one other time in xkcd, but I can't remember exactly where, or turn it up in a search. Perhaps I'm confabulating. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/ Messages in this topic (18) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 3a. Re: Young conlanger/cellist on NPR's From The Top Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 9:36 am ((PDT)) On Sat, 2010-10-02 at 22:29 -0400, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote: > ...ok, why did some mail server in Yahoo just spit this back out to the > list again (having first gotten it *from* the list?) I did not resend it. > > Amanda I've just had one of my posts duplicated, and a couple of other peoples'; I think it happened on 26 September. It's the computer at Brown that had the fit, not Yahoo's. Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 3b. Re: Young conlanger/cellist on NPR's From The Top Posted by: "Lars Finsen" lars.fin...@ortygia.no Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 10:27 am ((PDT)) Den 4. okt. 2010 kl. 18.33 skreiv David McCann: > > I've just had one of my posts duplicated, and a couple of other > peoples'; I think it happened on 26 September. It's the computer at > Brown that had the fit, not Yahoo's. I think it's Yahoo. I get messages from Sept 22-26 resent from at least one other list. LEF Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 4a. Re: Conlang program project Posted by: "Ellen Million" emill...@ellenmilliongraphics.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 10:18 am ((PDT)) Thank you, Sai! I will definitely take a closer look at that, and contact you offlist if I have any questions! Thanks, Ellen http://ellenmilliongraphics.com -----Original Message You may want to take a look at this: http://github.com/saizai/hyperdictionary - Sai Messages in this topic (3) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 5a. Re: New book Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 11:59 am ((PDT)) My copy of Israel's book arrived just today. Very nice. And I can read it. stevo On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 5:41 PM, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote: > I just ordered my copy. > > stevo > > On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 5:58 PM, Israel Noletto <israelnole...@gmail.com > > wrote: > >> Hi everyone, >> >> I'd like to share my satisfaction with you. I've finally published my book >> on Conlanging. It's a sort of getting started introduction book that aims >> at stablishing a more scientific perspective to the Conlanging vice while >> it >> gets the reader into the language inventing world. It involved a research >> about the Internet, literature and cinema conlangs, as well as an analysis >> on the international communities. >> The book was written in Portuguese, my L1. >> Should anyone be interested, it may be found at amazon.com, look for >> glossopoese. >> >> >> cheers, >> >> Israel Noletto >> > > Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 6a. OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:07 pm ((PDT)) Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: 1) Tripping the light fantastic. 2) Exploring the forest primeval. 3) Respecting the body politic. Are there other exceptions that put the adjective after the noun in English? Inquiring minds want to know. --gary Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6b. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "vii iiix" v...@live.com.au Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:09 pm ((PDT)) That is starnge you should say that, I am native english speaker yet I have never heard of these before, nor can I recall of any time where I have read, heard, or in my speech, where the adjective is placed before the noun. Cheers, vii > Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 15:04:53 -0700 > From: fizi...@gmail.com > Subject: OT: Why these exceptions in English? > To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu > > Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few > idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: > > 1) Tripping the light fantastic. > 2) Exploring the forest primeval. > 3) Respecting the body politic. > > Are there other exceptions that put the adjective after the noun in > English? Inquiring minds want to know. > > --gary Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6c. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "p...@phillipdriscoll.com" p...@phillipdriscoll.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:29 pm ((PDT)) Notary Public ? Poet Laureate ? (When I was a child, my grandmother used to have a song sheet with the lyrics "we tripped the light fantastic." I have no idea what that means, and none of the adults I was around at the time knew what it meant either.) --Ph. D. Gary Shannon wrote: > Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few > idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: > > 1) Tripping the light fantastic. > 2) Exploring the forest primeval. > 3) Respecting the body politic. > > Are there other exceptions that put the adjective after the noun in > English? Inquiring minds want to know. > > --gary Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6d. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" andre...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:32 pm ((PDT)) On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 12:27 AM, <p...@phillipdriscoll.com> wrote: > Notary Public ? > Poet Laureate ? Princess royal. -- Andreas Johansson Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else? Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6e. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" andre...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:32 pm ((PDT)) On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 12:04 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote: > Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few > idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: > > 1) Tripping the light fantastic. > 2) Exploring the forest primeval. > 3) Respecting the body politic. Governor-general is at least etymologically noun+adj, and prescriptively pluralizes as "governors-general". I imagine the French are somehow at fault, but I don't know the story. -- Andreas Johansson Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else? Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6f. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:35 pm ((PDT)) On Mon, 4 Oct 2010 15:04:53 -0700, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote: >1) Tripping the light fantastic. "Light" is historically not any kind of noun here -- this is a sequence of two adjectives. Traceable back to an allusion to Milton's _LAllegro_: | Come, and trip it, as you go, | On the light fantastic toe; ("Trip" has an older sense of 'dance, move nimbly' here.) I don't know why the "toe" fell off. >2) Exploring the forest primeval. That one will be allusive to Longfellow's _Evangeline_, which starts | This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, And in this case the order was clearly chosen to conform to the poem's Graeco-Latinate dactylic hexameter. Poetry has long had enough freedom of word order to do these sorts of things. >3) Respecting the body politic. That one is of the type I think of as most typical among postposed adjective constructions in English: fixed phrases used in the legalistic register, which was in its early days very highly influenced by French, the high-culture language at the time of the Norman Conquest and all that. Some more of this sort are "notary public, attorney general, surgeon general, court martial, fee simple". And originally "treasure trove", the last part orig. an adj. meaning 'found' but now reinterpreted as a noun. (Maybe "poet laureate" too. I don't know.) Alex Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6g. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Samuel Stutter" sam.stut...@student.manchester.ac.uk Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:41 pm ((PDT)) Also; light fandango Isn't it a poetic form, by which the writer may fit a particular rhyme / rhythmic scheme or, alternatively, create a phrase which harks to Latin or French (thus improving its artistic credentials)? It also works to make single noun phrases (like light fandango) sound "more awesome". Fandango light sounds like "light to be used for fandango" whereas light fandango sounds like a single magnificent thing - a special sort of light. English also does this with verbal constructions, where subject and object are shifted about (this is particularly true with instrumental second objects) "Our cat on the table then I placed" Shakespeare and his contemporaries were notorious for this kind of thing, and their mild archaic nature (they are regularly used for this purpose) perhaps is retained in set phrases. On 4 Oct 2010, at 23:27, <p...@phillipdriscoll.com> wrote: > Notary Public ? > Poet Laureate ? > > (When I was a child, my grandmother used to have a song > sheet with the lyrics "we tripped the light fantastic." I have > no idea what that means, and none of the adults I was > around at the time knew what it meant either.) > > --Ph. D. > > Gary Shannon wrote: >> Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few > > idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: > > > > 1) Tripping the light fantastic. > 2) Exploring the forest primeval. > 3) > > Respecting the body politic. > > > Are there other exceptions that put the adjective after the noun in > > English? Inquiring minds want to know. > > > --gary Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6h. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Garth Wallace" gwa...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 3:59 pm ((PDT)) On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 3:04 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote: > Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few > idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: > > 1) Tripping the light fantastic. > 2) Exploring the forest primeval. > 3) Respecting the body politic. > > Are there other exceptions that put the adjective after the noun in > English? Inquiring minds want to know. These are stock phrases, but they aren't exactly exceptions. You can do this with any adjective, as in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". It just sounds rather archaic and poetic (or stuffy and fancypants). It's used all the time in fantasy fiction for the former effect, but comes off as the latter when overused. French and Latin are probably to blame, having historically been prestige languages of the noble and educated classes. ("The light fantastic" may have originally been two adjectives, but I believe it's now generally analysed as noun+adjective, even if nobody quite knows what it's supposed to mean, probably because "light" is used as a noun more often than "fantastic" is) Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6i. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "kechpaja" kechp...@comcast.net Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 4:57 pm ((PDT)) I have never heard the first two, but I hear "body politic" as a sequence of two nouns, or perhaps as a single noun that happens to consist of two lexemes, if there is such a thing. The same would be true of "_ extraordinaire", which is often cited as an example of an adjective in English that comes after its noun. -Kelvin On Oct 4, 2010, at 6:04 PM, Gary Shannon wrote: > Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few > idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: > > 1) Tripping the light fantastic. > 2) Exploring the forest primeval. > 3) Respecting the body politic. > > Are there other exceptions that put the adjective after the noun in > English? Inquiring minds want to know. > > --gary Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6j. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Daniel Nielsen" niel...@uah.edu Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 4:58 pm ((PDT)) I sing the body electric! Also, pretty much any item in a restaurant putting forth a "fancy" image (chicken florentine, etc). I would imagine also in lots of poetry, or in situations where it is nice to list objects by category. Dan N Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6k. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Charlie" caeruleancent...@yahoo.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 6:15 pm ((PDT)) --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Gary Shannon <fizi...@...> wrote: > > Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few > idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: > > 2) Exploring the forest primeval. This is the opening line of the poem "Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "This is the forest primeval, the pines and the murmuring hemlock." Charlie Messages in this topic (12) ________________________________________________________________________ 6l. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English? Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 6:18 pm ((PDT)) I too and a native English speaker and theses phrases were common in my childhood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_the_light_fantastic Google "The Forest Primeval" for many references and examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_politic --gary On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 3:07 PM, vii iiix <v...@live.com.au> wrote: > That is starnge you should say that, I am native english speaker yet I have > never heard of these before, nor can I recall of any time where I have read, > heard, or in my speech, where the adjective is placed before the noun. > > Cheers, > vii > >> Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2010 15:04:53 -0700 >> From: fizi...@gmail.com >> Subject: OT: Why these exceptions in English? >> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu >> >> Adjectives come before their nouns in English except for a few >> idiomatic exceptions. Does anyone know why we ended up saying: >> >> 1) Tripping the light fantastic. >> 2) Exploring the forest primeval. >> 3) Respecting the body politic. >> >> Are there other exceptions that put the adjective after the noun in >> English? Inquiring minds want to know. >> >> --gary > Messages in this topic (12) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> Your email settings: Digest Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------