There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Roger Mills
1b. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: MorphemeAddict
1c. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Patrick Dunn
1d. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Lee
1e. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Eric Christopherson
1f. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1g. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Peter Bleackley
1h. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Philip Newton
1i. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Jim Henry
1j. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Eugene Oh
1k. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Philip Newton
1l. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Jim Henry
1m. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Eugene Oh
2a. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
From: Jeff Sheets
2b. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
From: Eric Christopherson
2c. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
From: Eric Christopherson
2d. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
From: Israel Noletto
3. TECH: Yahoo
From: Sai
4. An interesting noun marking system
From: Peter Bleackley
5a. OT: conhistorical conjecture
From: Peter Collier
5b. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
From: Philip Newton
5c. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
From: R A Brown
6a. Re: Tone death
From: Philip Newton
6b. Re: Tone death
From: Philip Newton
7.1. Re: Worldwide conlanger locations map, v2
From: John Lategan
Messages
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1a. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 7:37 pm ((PDT))
--- On Mon, 10/4/10, 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.
>
Don't you mean "after the noun"? Granted, they're not the sort of thing we say
all the time........Most are fixed expressions.
>
> > 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.
Since both are adjectives, this one seems doubtful.
> > 2) Exploring the forest primeval.
pace Longfellow. ("Evangeline", the dread of 8th graders in my day...:-))) no
doubt postposed for the meter.
> > 3) Respecting the body politic.
Attorney General
Surgeon General
Postmaster General
a date certain (we've heard this a lot recently wrt ending our 2 wars)
There are various expressions "XXX central" but I can't think of any offhand.
IIRC there was a play in the 1920s/30s called "The House Beautiful"-- Dorothy
Parker's review was: "The House Beautiful" is the play boring.
There is still a magazine called "House Beautiful".
> > Are there other exceptions that put the adjective
> after the noun in
> > English? Inquiring minds want to know.
> >
> > --gary
>
>
>
>
Messages in this topic (25)
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1b. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 8:05 pm ((PDT))
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-positive_adjective
stevo
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 6:04 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.
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (25)
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1c. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 8:21 pm ((PDT))
Word order in English used to be a lot freer than it is now, as well.
In Old English, adjectives can come anywhere near the noun (and in
poetry, anywhere on the page, seems like. I remember one poem I had
to translate that had the participle "beloved" a line and a half from
the noun it modified). You could get away with that in a highly
inflected language, as English used to be. Once you go isolating, you
get snapped into a more rigid word order.
But, of course, poetry and some other domains of language still might
use archaic forms.
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 10:03 PM, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-positive_adjective
>
> stevo
>
> On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 6:04 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.
>>
>> --gary
>>
>
--
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 (25)
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1d. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Lee" waywardwre...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 8:48 pm ((PDT))
I'm going to guess you are either not old enough (at least for #1) or they are
American English idioms.
I always assumed they came from some kind of literary effect.
Lee
--- On Mon, 10/4/10, vii iiix <v...@live.com.au> wrote:
From: vii iiix <v...@live.com.au>
Subject: Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Date: Monday, October 4, 2010, 5:07 PM
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 (25)
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1e. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" ra...@charter.net
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 11:02 pm ((PDT))
On Oct 4, 2010, at 5:04 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.
This thread reminds me of "Team ___", which Language Log covers here:
<http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2043>
Back to adjectives, though, one construction I like is "[noun] the [ordinal
number]", as in "page the first" = "the first page". I hadn't thought of this
before, but that's probably the same construction used in e.g. "Henry the
eighth".
And while we're on the subject of "[noun] the [ordinal]", when people see
something in print that looks like "4 Oct 2010" (chiefly in non-American
English sources, of course; I'm not sure if Canada is among them!), how is that
pronounced? "Four October 2010"? "Fourth October 2010"? "The fourth of October,
2010"?
And do people in non-USA English-speaking countries ever say "October fourth"?
Messages in this topic (25)
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1f. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 1:33 am ((PDT))
On 5 October 2010 00:33, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 _Lä½llegro_:
> | 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.
>
>
Frostbite? ;P (sorry, couldn't resist :) )
I only knew this expression from Pratchett's second Discworld novel, so I
never really wondered about it. I didn't know it was a known set phrase.
> >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.
>
"trove" meant "found"? Is it in any way related to French "trouvé"? (past
participle of "trouver": to find)
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (25)
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1g. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Peter Bleackley" peter.bleack...@rd.bbc.co.uk
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 1:38 am ((PDT))
staving Gary Shannon:
> 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.
This one is based on a quote, and I think that the original said
"trip the light fantastic toe".
> 2) Exploring the forest primeval.
Can you give me a source for this one? Most people would say "primeval
forest."
> 3) Respecting the body politic.
This one is probably influenced by French. "Body politic" is a somewhat
fossilized expression which acts as a single lexical item. "These
policies are the symptom of a decadent and corrupt body politic."
Pete
Messages in this topic (25)
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1h. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 6:42 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 08:00, Eric Christopherson <ra...@charter.net> wrote:
> And while we're on the subject of "[noun] the [ordinal]", when people see
> something in print that looks like "4 Oct 2010" (chiefly in non-American
> English sources, of course; I'm not sure if Canada is among them!), how is
> that pronounced? "Four October 2010"? "Fourth October 2010"? "The fourth of
> October, 2010"?
As for me, it's "the fourth of October, 2010".
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 10:30, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<tsela...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5 October 2010 00:33, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "treasure trove", the
>> last part orig. an adj. meaning 'found' but now reinterpreted as a noun.
>
> "trove" meant "found"? Is it in any way related to French "trouvé"? (past
> participle of "trouver": to find)
Almost certainly: etymonline says it's from "Anglo-Fr. _tresor trové_
(late 12c.)", and I think it's safe to say that Anglo-French "trové"
and Modern French "trouvé" are, if not father-son, then at least
related (uncle-nephew?).
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (25)
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1i. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 7:04 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 08:00, Eric Christopherson <ra...@charter.net> wrote:
>> And while we're on the subject of "[noun] the [ordinal]", when people see
>> something in print that looks like "4 Oct 2010" (chiefly in non-American
>> English sources, of course; I'm not sure if Canada is among them!), how is
>> that pronounced? "Four October 2010"? "Fourth October 2010"? "The fourth of
>> October, 2010"?
> As for me, it's "the fourth of October, 2010".
As also for me.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (25)
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1j. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" un.do...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 7:18 am ((PDT))
Presumably, though, the definite article in both your lects drops in casual
speech? That's how I would say it. In a speech, with "the"; with friends,
without.
(OT: Was that previous sentence hard to parse for anyone? I used such a
structure in a piece of work and was told it was too complex.)
Eugene
2010/10/5 Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com>
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 08:00, Eric Christopherson <ra...@charter.net>
> wrote:
> >> And while we're on the subject of "[noun] the [ordinal]", when people
> see something in print that looks like "4 Oct 2010" (chiefly in non-American
> English sources, of course; I'm not sure if Canada is among them!), how is
> that pronounced? "Four October 2010"? "Fourth October 2010"? "The fourth of
> October, 2010"?
>
> > As for me, it's "the fourth of October, 2010".
>
> As also for me.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
>
Messages in this topic (25)
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1k. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 7:28 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 16:14, Eugene Oh <un.do...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Presumably, though, the definite article in both your lects drops in casual
> speech? That's how I would say it. In a speech, with "the"; with friends,
> without.
I can only speak for myself, but I can't see myself dropping it in
sentences such as "He came here on the fourth of October", "The party
will be on the fourth of October", "The shop will be closed from the
fourth to the seventh of October", "He was born sometime before the
fourth of October".
> (OT: Was that previous sentence hard to parse for anyone? I used such a
> structure in a piece of work and was told it was too complex.)
Worked for me.
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (25)
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1l. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 7:30 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Eugene Oh <un.do...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Presumably, though, the definite article in both your lects drops in casual
> speech? That's how I would say it. In a speech, with "the"; with friends,
> without.
No, I don't think so. In casual speech, or in a context where the
year is obvious and doesn't need to be mentioned I might reverse the
order, saying "October Fourth" instead of "the Fourth of October
2010", but I don't think I would say "Fourth of October".
> (OT: Was that previous sentence hard to parse for anyone?
Not for me, -- not reading it, anyway; it might be a little harder in
listening to someone talking.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (25)
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1m. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" un.do...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 7:51 am ((PDT))
Interesting. My instinct would be to say "He came here on fourth October",
"The shop will be closed from fourth to seventh October" etc.
Although "the" is mandatory when the month is unspecified, so "The shop will
be closed from the fourth to seventh October" would mean the fourth of this
month (whichever it is) to the seventh of October.
Like Jim I could also reverse the spoken order into "October fourth". While
reading 4/10/2010 I would say "fourth October, twenty-ten", while in
American style (10/4/2010) I would say "October fourth, 2010", but that's
rarer, given I don't see many American-style dates.
Eugene
2010/10/5 Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 16:14, Eugene Oh <un.do...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Presumably, though, the definite article in both your lects drops in
> casual
> > speech? That's how I would say it. In a speech, with "the"; with friends,
> > without.
>
> I can only speak for myself, but I can't see myself dropping it in
> sentences such as "He came here on the fourth of October", "The party
> will be on the fourth of October", "The shop will be closed from the
> fourth to the seventh of October", "He was born sometime before the
> fourth of October".
>
> > (OT: Was that previous sentence hard to parse for anyone? I used such a
> > structure in a piece of work and was told it was too complex.)
>
> Worked for me.
>
> Cheers,
> Philip
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
>
Messages in this topic (25)
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2a. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
Posted by: "Jeff Sheets" sheets.j...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 10:38 pm ((PDT))
Thanks for all of the responses!
I am already citing Arika Okrent's "In The Land of Invented Languages", and
no dissent on that source from my teacher, however, it only barely touches
on the terminology, and does not provide definitions.
I will try to hunt down a copy of Sarah Higley's _Hildegard of Bingen's
Unknown Language_. I may also ask my teacher if citations of FrathWiki are
more acceptable, since the wiki is the product of us conlangers. That said,
academics will be aware of the lack of respect given to online sources that
are not also represented in print.
Even if I don't find a better source, I think my teacher may accept
Wikipedia as a source, simply because I'm using it only to show the
definitions of lingo specific to our community. All of the more linguistic
and historical details of constructing languages are getting sourced from my
old copy of _Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication_,
and Okrent's book.
Messages in this topic (14)
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2b. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" ra...@charter.net
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 10:44 pm ((PDT))
On Oct 4, 2010, at 5:32 PM, Jim Henry wrote:
> 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.
There's a little bit here: <http://www.glossopoeia.org/conlang/index.html>
Messages in this topic (14)
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2c. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" ra...@charter.net
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 11:04 pm ((PDT))
On Oct 4, 2010, at 9:35 PM, Roger Mills wrote:
> --- 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).
And Rosta said it was coined in 2001:
<http://archives.conlang.info/phi/zelghon/jhaufuersuan.html>
Messages in this topic (14)
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2d. Re: Reliable Reference for definitions...
Posted by: "Israel Noletto" israelnole...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 7:31 am ((PDT))
Hi,
A bit late, indeed, but in case you're still interested in more references,
here is list of books I know that give definitions on the conlanging terms:
Glossopoese - O Complexo e Desconhecido Mundo das Línguas Artificiais
by Israel Noletto (me :)), in Portuguese.
Language and Linguistics: Key Concepts. Nova Iorque by Robert L. Trask
and Peter Stockwell.
The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder
Mind Performance Hacks: Tips and Tools for Overclocking Your Brain by
Ron Hale-Evans.
besides those already mentioned.
cheers,
Israel Noletto
Messages in this topic (14)
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3. TECH: Yahoo
Posted by: "Sai" s...@saizai.com
Date: Mon Oct 4, 2010 11:21 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Lars Finsen <lars.fin...@ortygia.no> wrote:
> I think it's Yahoo. I get messages from Sept 22-26 resent from at least one
> other list.
>
I hope none of y'all are actually using the Yahoo version? It's not really
compatible w/ the real one...
- sai
Messages in this topic (1)
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4. An interesting noun marking system
Posted by: "Peter Bleackley" peter.bleack...@rd.bbc.co.uk
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 2:52 am ((PDT))
As Khangaþyagon is supposedly an ur-language (an old trope I invoked to
explain its magical properties in a suitably mythical way), I often
think about what its descendents might be like.
Khangaþyagon has quite a complex noun marking system, but leaves
differentiating subjects and direct objects to the syntax. I've been
thinking about how accusatives might evolve in its descendents. There
are a few segunakar that can mark recipents, benificiaries or
destinations, so I thought that the meaning of these might generalise to
cover the object in a monotransitive sentence. OK, but what happens in a
ditransitive sentence? Let the segunakar retain their original meaning
of "recipient" in this case, so how are we going to differentiate the
subject and the theme? One way would be to create a secundative marker,
but it occurred to me that there are segunakar that can mark causes,
reasons and sources. One or more of these could become an ergative
marker in ditransitive sentences, thus giving us
Intransitive
S
Nom
Transitive
A P
Nom Acc
Ditransitive
A P T
Erg Nom Acc
Does anyone know of anything like this happening in the wild? It doesn't
seem odder than some of the things I've heard of on the list before.
Pete
Messages in this topic (1)
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5a. OT: conhistorical conjecture
Posted by: "Peter Collier" petecoll...@btinternet.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 5:52 am ((PDT))
Walking to the school to collect my children I was imagining, as you do, an ATL
in which the linguistic situation in Britain was reversed. In other words, a
generally 'Welsh' speaking populace, with an 'English' speaking nation in East
Anglia comparable to OTL Wales (presumably a descendant of Mercian rather than
West Saxon), and perhaps a recently extinct descendant of Kentish undergoing
something of a limitied revival in that corner of the country (c.f. Cornish).
I've no idea what might have brought about such a situation, be it a lower
level
of Germanic immigration, or its repulse, or even just the Anglo-Saxons
eventually abandoning their West-Germanic dialects in favour of the indigenous
Celtic ones. The latter seems least likely, but given a different political
situation, who knows. The Normans adpoted French after all. For the purposes
of
my imaginings that's all kind of moot anyway.
Anyhow, my musings threw up a few questions I couldn't answer, so I thought I'd
poke you for your thoughts. Assuming a general timeline little different from
our own, other than the linguistic:
- What might the linguistic situation further north have been? I can imagine
Cumbrian would have merged into Old Welsh, in the same way the various
pre-English dialects merged. What would be our analogy to Scots (Lallans)?
Perhaps something that evolved from Cumbrian, or a slightly later version of
Welsh but with Cumbrian influences (cf. Scots, Middle English, Northumbrian)?
- Further north still, would Scottish Gaelic have developed/survived in such an
environment, or would its immediate promixity to a more closely related
language
have brought about a different outcome?
- To what extent is modern Welsh influenced (OTL) by English, I'd want to
mirror
a similar degree of influence on the ATL Mercian.
P.
Messages in this topic (3)
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5b. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 6:45 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 14:49, Peter Collier <petecoll...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> - Further north still, would Scottish Gaelic have developed/survived in such
> an
> environment, or would its immediate promixity to a more closely related
> language
> have brought about a different outcome?
Isn't that roughly parallel to asking about the survival/development
of Scots in OTL? After all, it was in proximity to various forms of
English.
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (3)
________________________________________________________________________
5c. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 6:48 am ((PDT))
On 05/10/2010 13:49, Peter Collier wrote:
> Walking to the school to collect my children I was
> imagining, as you do, an ATL in which the linguistic
> situation in Britain was reversed. In other words, a
> generally 'Welsh' speaking populace, with an 'English'
> speaking nation in East Anglia comparable to OTL Wales
> (presumably a descendant of Mercian rather than West
> Saxon), and perhaps a recently extinct descendant of
> Kentish undergoing something of a limitied revival in
> that corner of the country (c.f. Cornish).
:)
> I've no idea what might have brought about such a
> situation, be it a lower level of Germanic immigration,
> or its repulse, or even just the Anglo-Saxons eventually
> abandoning their West-Germanic dialects in favour of the
> indigenous Celtic ones. The latter seems least likely,
Yes, I agree. It is _most_ unlikely IMO.
> but given a different political situation, who knows.
> The Normans adpoted French after all.
Well, sort if - in a way it's really an anachronism to be
calling the language 'French'. The Normans thought they were
adopting the Roman language when they accepted Christianity
(indeed, they were - the local northern Gaul version of the
_lingua Romanica_). The various spoken vernaculars evolving
from Vulgar Latin were not yet establishing themselves as
written national languages.
IMO if the Germanic settlement in Britain was no greater
than that envisaged in your first paragraph above, the
Vulgar Latin of urban Roman Britain would have survived and
the Celtic language would have gradually disappeared as it
did in Gaul, i.e. the 'Brithenig' situation (tho I do not
think British Romance would finished up like Brithenig).
> For the purposes
> of my imaginings that's all kind of moot anyway.
>
> Anyhow, my musings threw up a few questions I couldn't
> answer, so I thought I'd poke you for your thoughts.
> Assuming a general timeline little different from our
> own, other than the linguistic:
>
> - What might the linguistic situation further north have
> been? I can imagine Cumbrian would have merged into Old
> Welsh, in the same way the various pre-English dialects
> merged. What would be our analogy to Scots (Lallans)?
> Perhaps something that evolved from Cumbrian, or a
> slightly later version of Welsh but with Cumbrian
> influences (cf. Scots, Middle English, Northumbrian)?
The earliest written Welsh actually comes from Strathclyde
in what is now the Scottish Lowlands. If, for some reason,
the old Brittonic dialects had survived in most of Britain
(personally, I think it unlikely), then 'Welsh' would be
spoken from Lowland Scotland down to Cornwall. The
peculiarities of Lallans & Jordie owe much to Viking/ Danish
settlement and was possible because Saxon and Old Norse were
related. Old Norse is not closely related to Celtic, so I
guess either old Norse would have had little or no effect on
native Brittonic or we'd have Norse speaking area in NE
England and Scottish Lowlands.
>
> - Further north still, would Scottish Gaelic have
> developed/survived in such an environment, or would its
> immediate promixity to a more closely related language
> have brought about a different outcome?
As I have observed before, no one before the 18th century
had any inkling that Old Irish and Brittonic were related. I
see no reason at all to suppose that if the Gaels had
settled in the Hebrides and Scottish Highlands that their
language would not have survived there.
> - To what extent is modern Welsh influenced (OTL) by
> English, I'd want to mirror a similar degree of influence
> on the ATL Mercian.
Modern Welsh has many borrowings from modern English, simply
because English is the dominant language of the island and
there are now no monoglot Welsh speakers (there are plenty
who have Welsh as their L1, of course).
But IMO the only credible scenario that could lead to a
Brittonic speaking Britain would be if the Romans had not
invaded and settled here, and if the Britons could have put
aside their internecine quarrels (which gave both the Romans
and later the Saxons an excuse to intervene) and united to
resist the Saxons. But that scenario would have resulted in
a rather different language to Welsh, which has a not
inconsiderable vocabulary element from Vulgar Latin.
--
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 (3)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Re: Tone death
Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 6:56 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 23:17, Garth Wallace <gwa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 1:36 PM, Nathan Unanymous <nathanms...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> This is the oppisite of tonogenisis; how does tone die? For example, how
>> would
>> the classic Chinese mā má mǎ mà die?
>>
>> I have a language with tones I want to convert to non-tonal.
>
> It's not quite the same thing, but when Japanese borrowed large swaths
> of Chinese vocabulary, it ended up with a ton of homophones, since it
> is not a tonal language. Lots of compounding ensued.
For that matter, the "lots of compounding ensued" happened in spoken
Mandarin, too, didn't it? As a result of mergers (e.g. four tones
compared to Cantonese's eight or so; merger of final -m -n; loss of
initial ng-; loss of final stops/entering tone; etc.).
Hence why the "lion-eating poet in the stone den" is incomprehensible
when spoken, but that doesn't mean Chinese doesn't work, it just means
that _spoken_ Chinese doesn't use as many single-syllable words,
simply _because_ there would be too much homophony otherwise.
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (14)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: Tone death
Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 6:58 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 15:54, Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For that matter, the "lots of compounding ensued" happened in spoken
> Mandarin, too, didn't it? As a result of mergers (e.g. four tones
> compared to Cantonese's eight or so;
For that matter, standard Dungan - a Mandarin dialect written in
Cyrillic - apparently has only three tones (cf.
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/dungan.html ), though there is a
Dungan dialect with four.
I wonder whether they use slightly more compounding to compensate.
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (14)
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________________________________________________________________________
7.1. Re: Worldwide conlanger locations map, v2
Posted by: "John Lategan" jla...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 5, 2010 7:44 am ((PDT))
>
> Please go add yourself now:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/conlangmap
>
> Thanks & enjoy,
> - Sai
>
I'm added... I feel quite alone...
Anyway, my pin is on the Stellenbosch University:
It's a central point between Home and School* and I'll be a student there in
2 years.
* Home, School and SU form a triangle; 'tis under half-hour drive to SU from
the other two locations.
Messages in this topic (46)
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