There are 17 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
From: David McCann
1b. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
From: R A Brown
1c. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
From: Lars Finsen
2a. Re: Tonogenesis
From: Roger Mills
3a. Re: N+ADJ V or N ADV+V
From: Roger Mills
3b. Re: N+ADJ V or N ADV+V
From: Gary Shannon
4.1. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: David McCann
4.2. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
From: Gary Shannon
5a. Re: Writing system for a new project
From: Gary Shannon
6a. What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
From: Matthew Martin
6b. Re: What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
6c. Re: What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
From: Gary Shannon
6d. Re: What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
From: Lee
7. An engelang to minimize or contain abstractness
From: Jim Henry
8a. Consonant system morphing
From: Nathan Unanymous
8b. Re: Consonant system morphing
From: Wm Annis
9a. Re: Koro - Undocumented language found in India
From: BPJ
Messages
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1a. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2010 8:32 am ((PDT))
On Wed, 2010-10-06 at 07:40 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
> On 05/10/2010 18:41, David McCann wrote:
> > How Latinised was lowland Britain, I wonder? The Welsh
> > loan words from Latin generally seem to come from Latin
> > phonological forms, rather than Romance ones.
>
> Hardly! The Latin loan words AFAIK show all the same
> features that one would expect from VL...
No. Consider L. cella > W. cell, L. pensum > W. pwys, L. initium > W.
cyff "Shrove Tuesday", L. vinum > W. gwin. In other words,
L. /ĕ/ > W. e, W.Rom. /ɛ/
L. /ē/ > W. wy, W.Rom. /e/
L. /ĭ/ > W. y, W.Rom. /e/
L. /ī/ > W. i, W.Rom /i/
As Pedersen wrote, "The Vulgar Latin known to the Celts did not vary
considerably from Classical Latin."
Messages in this topic (11)
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1b. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 6:17 am ((PDT))
On 06/10/2010 13:40, Lars Finsen wrote:
> R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> How do you know? The extensive Roman remains
>> throughout that part of Britain we now call England
>> would seem to belie that. The indications are, surely,
>> that that part of Britain was thoroughly romanized.
>
> Gaul had a Latin culture.
Gallia Narbonensis did, but that was a relatively small area
in the south which, moreover, had been subject to Greek
influence before the Romans moved in. But north of that
remained independent until Julius Caesar brought it under
Roman control. I seem to recall that not all Gauls exactly
welcomed Caesar as he moved northward. The Celtic language
appears to have survived up there at least until the 3rd
century AD (and probably beyond).
> There are poets and writers, and the Roman rule was
> relatively benign. In contrast, there was almost
> continuous unrest in Britain throughout the Roman rule
> and little immaterial culture.
Methinks you are overstating the case. The very extensive
archaeological evidence, especially of the numeral 'villas'
(farmsteads, in fact) must indicate a long period of
relative stability at least in the southern part of the island.
> The Romans must have seemed to be there only to exploit
> the natural riches.
..which, I suppose, is why some Britons helped the initial
invasion, siding with Claudius. They even built a temple to
him in Colchester and worshipped him as a god before he had
chance to die and be officially deified - much to the
Romans' surprise. I'm darn sure king Cogidubnus did not
regard the Romans as exploiters but rather as bringers of
peace and, hopefully, prosperity.
It was, after all, the quarrels between the rival
Catuvellauni and Atrebates that brought the Romans in in the
first place. It seems there were many Brits becoming alarmed
at the increasing ambitions of the Catuvellauni and welcomed
direct intervention from Rome.
Several Celtic names of Britons who were high
> ranking enough to leave traces of their existence is
> known from as late as the 4th century, and
> significantly, Vortigern is a Celtic name, although,
> interestingly, his father seems to have a Latin one.
Ah, Vortigern - the guy who invited the Saxons to settle in
Kent in return for helping him fight the Picts. A bad
mistake, his fellow Brits thought - the Saxons liked Kent so
much they invited all their fellow Saxons to come over and,
as they say, the rest is history!
Actually there's so much legendary stuff attached to
Vortigern that some question his very existence, tho most
scholars except that behind the legends there probably was
an historic person. But this digressing a bit.
[snip]
>>
>> Strange that a Romance language has held on in the
>> Balkans, even tho Dacia was colonized by the Romans
>> for less time than Britain was.
>
> It's hard to tell why, really,
Quite - and IMO it is not altogether clear why no Romance
language survived in Britain. Both are one of those
'accidents of history'.
-------------------------------------------------
n 06/10/2010 13:56, Peter Bleackley wrote:
> staving Lars Finsen:
[snip]
>> Latin one. This indicates to me that the position of
>> Latin was much weaker than on the continent, and
>> especially after the abandonment.
>
> I also think that the word "abandonment" might be
> significant here.
I think you are spot on about "abandonment". The "Gemitus
Britannorum" (Groans of the British), a final appeal by the
ruling classes of post-Roman Britain to Rome in 454 AD
surely highlights their sense of abandonment in the face of
Saxon invaders. The Brits seem to have suffered a severe
collapse in confidence and become very inward looking. The
very area that was had probably been the most Romanized,
i.e. the south & east, was abandoned to the Saxons & other
Germanic invaders.
> Perhaps the Romano-British felt that the Empire had
> betrayed them by withdrawing the legions, and turned
> their back on secular Roman culture as a result?
Yep - just they turned back to their Brittonic roots which
still survived in the west.
--------------------------------------------------
On 06/10/2010 16:29, David McCann wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-10-06 at 07:40 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
>> On 05/10/2010 18:41, David McCann wrote:
[snip]
>>
>> Hardly! The Latin loan words AFAIK show all the same
>> features that one would expect from VL...
>
> No. Consider L. cella> W. cell, L. pensum> W. pwys, L.
initium> W./
> cyff "Shrove Tuesday", L. vinum> W. gwin. In other
> words,
Sorry - I'm puzzled. I don't follow this at all.
Latin _cella_ VL /kElla/ --> Welsh _cell_ /keK/ does not
seem to me remarkable. The actual lengthening of the Welsh
/e/ (i.e. [e:]) in a monosyllabic word ending in /K/ is a
Welsh development. How else would one expect _cella_ to behave?
Latin _pensum_ we know from Cicero was actually pronounced
[pe:sU(m)] and in VL this was /pe:su/. The change of VL /e/
to Welsh _wy_ [uj] strikes me as remarkably similar to the
change in north Gaul [e:] --> [ej] --> [Ej] --> [Oj] - and
Welsh _pwys_ [pujs] is surely no more odd than Old French
_pois_ [pOjs}? (OK - Old French _oi_ has had a rather
different developed since the Old French period, and the
moderns stick an unetymological _d_ in _poids_ - but that's
all beside the point).
L. initium> W./ cyff "Shrove Tuesday" ????
L. vinum [wi:nU(m)] - > W. gwin [gwi:n] - but the vowel's
the _same_ in both languages!
> L. /ĕ/> W. e, W.Rom. /ɛ/ L. /ē/> W. wy, W.Rom. /e/ L.
> /ĭ/> W. y, W.Rom. /e/ L. /ī/> W. i, W.Rom /i/
Maybe - but I don't see that in the examples.
> As Pedersen wrote, "The Vulgar Latin known to the Celts
did not vary
> considerably from Classical Latin."
I'm skeptical - but I'd like to see his evidence. In any
case I notice he says *Celts* and the greater number of
Celts - indeed the only place where the actual 'Celti'
themselves lived - was on the continent. I myself have long
argued that attempts, like Brythenig, should pay greater
attention to the way that Romance developed in northern
Gaul, which had several oddities, e.g. the preservation of
final -t which was generally lost in VL.
-----------------------------------------------
Of course, what may or may not have happened in Britain if
things had been slightly different is, as the subject line
says, *conjecture*. I think both Lars and I have made our
positions clear enough - I don't see any point in continuing
to argue the point. Any conhistorian can make her/his own
choices.
We've had Brithenig with its Romance-speaking Britain. We've
had the suggestion, which sparked the present thread, of a
Britain where, essentially, Welsh and Saxon are reversed.
It strikes me there is another althistory scenario. I have
mentioned in this thread (and others) that as well as Saxons
from the east, the Brits were also troubled by predations
from the Irish. Indeed, one group of Irish, the Scotti, even
settled in Scotland, giving Scotland both the Gaelic
language and its very name.
Also during the 4th cent AD, there had been an influx of
Irish settlers into much of what we now call Wales (which
was poorly Romanized). What if the Irish had taken greater
advantage of the Roman withdrawal and pushed on out of Wales
and settled western Britain generally. We could have
finished up with an island partitioned between Saxon &
Gaelic speakers. Who, in the end, would have dominated? Who
knows?
Just a thought for 'yet another alternative British
timeline' ;)
--
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 (11)
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1c. Re: OT: conhistorical conjecture
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" lars.fin...@ortygia.no
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 8:12 am ((PDT))
R A Brown wrote:
> quoting me:
>> Gaul had a Latin culture.
>
> Gallia Narbonensis did, but that was a relatively small area
> in the south which,
Ausonius was born i Burdigala, just like to mention that.
> moreover, had been subject to Greek
> influence before the Romans moved in. But north of that
> remained independent until Julius Caesar brought it under
> Roman control. I seem to recall that not all Gauls exactly
> welcomed Caesar as he moved northward. The Celtic language
> appears to have survived up there at least until the 3rd
> century AD (and probably beyond).
I didn't mean, of course, that Gaulish culture was profoundly Latin,
only that there was a Latin immaterial culture in the province.
>> The Romans must have seemed to be there only to exploit
>> the natural riches.
>
> ..which, I suppose, is why some Britons helped the initial
> invasion, siding with Claudius. They even built a temple to
> him in Colchester and worshipped him as a god before he had
> chance to die and be officially deified - much to the
> Romans' surprise. I'm darn sure king Cogidubnus did not
> regard the Romans as exploiters but rather as bringers of
> peace and, hopefully, prosperity.
Cogidubnos (also known as Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus) had his
motives for siding with the Romans, like many people in similar
circumstances throughout history. Cunobelinos of the Catuvellauni
tried to unite Britain in order to get a stronger position in
relation to the empire and other possible enemies. Of course these
attempts met with resistance, and it is especially striking to see
that the Atrebates, who had fought so heroically for Gaul, now had
turned the other way around.
But they soon had reason to regret, and I suspect this is the first
germ of the Arthur mythos, with Cunobelinos and Caratacos
contributing elements to the Arthur figure and Adminios and
Cogidubnos (=Togodumnos?) contributing to the traitor Mordred.
> Of course, what may or may not have happened in Britain if things
> had been slightly different is, as the subject line says,
> *conjecture*. I think both Lars and I have made our positions clear
> enough - I don't see any point in continuing to argue the point.
> Any conhistorian can make her/his own choices.
Right, and I do think that if British survived in the whole country,
the southeastern dialect, which probably would become dominant, would
be significantly different from Welsh, probably with a few more Latin
loanwords, and some other interesting dialectal differences as well.
LEF
Messages in this topic (11)
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2a. Re: Tonogenesis
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2010 8:34 am ((PDT))
--- On Tue, 10/5/10, Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for the advice on consonant
> cluster reduction. Is there a good
> resource for learning about generative phonology? I'lltry
> to read your Gwr,
> but I'm not fluent in it (one reason I have difficulty
> reading linguistics
> articles on Washo).
Hi Anthony--
In the Gwr paper IIRC, I tended to explain the rules verbally first in familiar
terms (just to make sure I had it straight in my own head :-))), then formally.
Also, some of the cluster reductions (like *pr- > t, and analogous *br- > d)
were based on the little bit I knew about the history of the Thai languages.
Really, almost anything can happen to clusters !!
Well, the Bible is sort of Chomsky and Halle's _The Sound Pattern of English_
but that assumes a lot of prior knowledge of linguistics and Gen.Phon. not to
mention Chomskian theory.........
The book I've used is Robert T. Harms 1968 _Introduction to Phonological
Theory_ in paperback, Perntice Hall. As of a couple years ago, there were used
copies available at Amazon for around $7.00. It has all the basics about
distinctive features, rule writing, ordering etc.
Messages in this topic (24)
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3a. Re: N+ADJ V or N ADV+V
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2010 8:39 am ((PDT))
--- On Tue, 10/5/10, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am playing with a new grammar and I
> had decided that adjectives
> would follow their noun, and adverbs would precede their
> verbs. But
> then I noticed that adverbs and adjectives could be
> interchangeable
> depending on how you analyzed a sequence of words: "House
> TOPIC boy
> quick enter." Is "quick" an adjective modifying "boy", or
> an adverb
> modifying "enter"? It seems like it could go either way.
>
> That being the case it seems like there might not be any
> need for this
> grammar to distinguish between adjectives and adverbs.
> Granted there
> is a difference in English between "The quick boy enters
> the house."
> and "The boy enters the house quickly." But word order
> could make that
> distinction in a different grammar. If the modifier is
> placed between
> the subject and the verb (boy quick enter) then it could be
> taken to
> mean "the boy is quick in this instance of performing this
> action." A
> different word order like "Boy quick TOPIC house enter."
> could
> indicate that "quick" is an adjective on "boy". But if I
> still want
> "house" to be the topic then maybe "House TOPIC boy quick
> he enter."
> using the pronoun to break the direct connection between
> "quick" and
> "enter".
>
> Obviously most adjectives would not cause this kind of
> ambiguity since
> "House TOPIC dog brown enter." Clearly does not mean the
> dog entered
> the house "brownly".
>
> Any ideas on how best to handle the distinction? Or should
> I just go
> with ADJ-NOUN order and avoid the whole issue?
>
Well, you could mark adjectives or adverbs morphologically in some way, or are
you trying to keep this an isolating language?
Or, introduce some sort of particle (a def/indef article? or marker like
Japanese _wa_? ) to mark off the end of the noun phrase-- boy quick ART entered
house vs. boy ART quick entered house
Messages in this topic (6)
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3b. Re: N+ADJ V or N ADV+V
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2010 9:53 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:34 AM, Roger Mills <romi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 10/5/10, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Any ideas on how best to handle the distinction? Or should
>> I just go
>> with ADJ-NOUN order and avoid the whole issue?
>>
> Well, you could mark adjectives or adverbs morphologically in some way, or
> are you trying to keep this an isolating language?
The writing system (in a separate post) uses one compound symbol per
word so there is no real mechanism for inflection, so it being very
purely isolating is sort of a given. That does not preclude the
possibility of marking words with some kind of part-of-speech particle
if necessary.
--gary
Messages in this topic (6)
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4.1. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2010 8:45 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 2010-10-05 at 19:34 -0400, MorphemeAddict wrote:
> Re the technical term "title proper": How is this different from the
> non-technical term "title proper", or any other use of the term "proper", in
> the sense of "itself" or "per se".
Oops, good point! I've just looked in the OED and they remark that the
postponing of "proper" is modern, quoting Barbara Pym "... leading to
the restaurant proper." I'd be interested to know how that started and
when. I don't think I use the construction myself: I'd have written
"actual restaurant".
Messages in this topic (40)
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4.2. Re: OT: Why these exceptions in English?
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2010 9:56 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 8:39 AM, David McCann <da...@polymathy.plus.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-10-05 at 19:34 -0400, MorphemeAddict wrote:
>> Re the technical term "title proper": How is this different from the
>> non-technical term "title proper", or any other use of the term "proper", in
>> the sense of "itself" or "per se".
>
> Oops, good point! I've just looked in the OED and they remark that the
> postponing of "proper" is modern, quoting Barbara Pym "... leading to
> the restaurant proper." I'd be interested to know how that started and
> when. I don't think I use the construction myself: I'd have written
> "actual restaurant".
Or perhaps "the restaurant itself".
--gary
Messages in this topic (40)
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5a. Re: Writing system for a new project
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 6, 2010 9:50 am ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 3:30 AM, J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_w...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 20:39:55 -0700, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
...
>
> I don't like theses idiosyncratic vowel signs, but that's a matter of taste.
> For one thing, they are anything but exact (is there a length opposition; is
> "Y" the only diphthong or are "Æ", "E", "O" diphthongs as well; what is the
> difference between "Æ" and "E"?)
I don't like them either. I guess instead of continuing to go through
life being phonetically challenged I should take the time to finally
learn IPA or XSAMPA. As for the difference between "Æ" and "E", well I
guess there is NO difference. My bad. The vowel system obviously needs
to be more carefully thought out. My only consideration in choosing
those letters was to make each sound with a single keystroke. The idea
was to use a font where the uppercase letters would place C or V
symbols in the upper two quadrants and lowercase letters would place
the same symbols in the lower two quadrants, with the lowercase vowel
keystrokes being the only ones that advance the cursor so that by
typing diacritics, upper consonant, upper vowel, lower consonant, and
lower vowel in that order would produce a compound character with that
font.
>>
>>There are 9 choices for each consonant (8 consonants plus omitted
>>consonant) giving 81 pairs of consonants.
>>There are 10 choices for the first vowel and 11 choices (including the
>>choice to omit) for the second vowel giving 110 choices of vowel
>>combinations. Together than makes 81 * 110 = 8,910 word forms. In
>>addition, there are four diacritics that can be used in any one of 16
>>different combinations giving a total of 16 * 8,910 = 142,560 possible
>>words. Since a diacritic modifying an omitted vowel or consonant is
>>not meaningful, some small percentage of those words would not
>>actually be used, but the majority are viable words in the language.
>
> I guess it is (2*8+1)*(2*10)*(2*8+1)*(2*10+1)=121'380
>
I wrote a quickie program to enumerate them and came up with 103,328.
It's possible I missed some, although I decided not to allow the
voicing diacritical over 'H', so that reduces the possibilities
somewhat.
>>Here's an image of a few sample characters:
>>http://fiziwig.com/conlang/quadro.png
> So, in a way of speaking, there are two additional "diacritic quadrants" on
> top of the four "letter quadrants" you have described. I first thought the
> diacritic would be added to the respective "letter quadrants", and it would
> have the same form for both the upper and the lower "letter quadrants". The
> additional "diacritic quadrants" stress the vertical axis of the word shapes.
>
> The method of having a single word shape consist of two syllables seems
> unusual to me. I guess there has to be a morphological/phonotactical
> explanation for it.
The idea is to have each word be essentially the same size for
uniformity, and since making that size be one syllable there aren't
enough possible words to fill out a lexicon. Clearly this is more
engineered than naturalistic.
> It seems remarkable that nasals cannot occur at the beginning of a word.
I simply ran out of viable symbols that fit in a quadrant before I got
there. Maybe if I go back and try a little harder I can invent some
symbols that are visually distinct enough so I can add those consonant
sounds. I certainly have no objection to doing so. I just don't want
the word glyphs to look too much alike by having C and V symbols that
are not distinct enough.
> Why don't you make this a vertical script? Since every word shape has a
> vertical axis, you could easily joint the axis of consecutive word shapes.
> In that case, it might be more convenient to have a single diacritic shape
> that would be added immediately above each quadrant row. I guess the
> vertical diacritic shape would be more convenient, since according to the
> picture, it seems that the horizontal diacritic shape looks exactly like the
> vowel shape in the bottom right quadrant of the third word.
I hadn't considered that possibility. I think I was limiting myself to
horizontal writing because that would make it easier to design a font
that could build up each word with 4 to 6 keystrokes per word glyph.
The horizontal diacritic would take up less space in a vertical script
and perhaps it could be distinguished from the vowel shape (which is
also a consonant shape when on the left of the vertical) by NOT being
connected to the center line.
I obviously need to do a lot more experimentation before I finalize the script.
--gary
> --
> grüess
> mach
>
Messages in this topic (4)
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6a. What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
Posted by: "Matthew Martin" matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 5:36 am ((PDT))
I'm thinking of trying to write a conlang in November in NaNoWriMo style. As
two
design goals, I am hoping for a language that is different semantically,
syntactically and lexically from English, yet reasonably easy. On the other
hand,
most attempt make easy languages (pidgins, creoles and most auxlangs) resort to
lots of loan words and an "apple that doesn't fall far from the tree" style in
terms
of syntax and semantics, (eg. choosing SVO just because it is common, or
defining a word to mean 'honor' with all 20-some English definitions).
Can any of you offer any advice on what features I should incorporate to end up
with an easy apriori conlang?
Thanks,
Matthew Martin
Messages in this topic (4)
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6b. Re: What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 6:23 am ((PDT))
On 7 October 2010 14:17, Matthew Martin <matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking of trying to write a conlang in November in NaNoWriMo style.
> As two
> design goals, I am hoping for a language that is different semantically,
> syntactically and lexically from English, yet reasonably easy. On the other
> hand,
> most attempt make easy languages (pidgins, creoles and most auxlangs)
> resort to
> lots of loan words and an "apple that doesn't fall far from the tree" style
> in terms
> of syntax and semantics, (eg. choosing SVO just because it is common, or
> defining a word to mean 'honor' with all 20-some English definitions).
>
> Can any of you offer any advice on what features I should incorporate to
> end up
> with an easy apriori conlang?
>
>
Mmm... That's a difficult one. Since you want your language to be a priori,
you can't use the recognition factor to enhance easiness (that recognition
factor is relative anyway). Also, easiness, like beauty, is very much in the
eye of the beholder. What a Japanese speaker will find easy may not be the
same as what a Russian speaker will find easy, which is also not the same as
what a Xhosa speaker will find easy.
Even the big staple of easiness principles: "have no irregularities, make no
exceptions" may actually be relative. Imagine for instance a language where
verbs inflect regularly, but complicatedly (regular but complex ablauts, for
instance, and/or complex allomorphs). Now imagine that, as an exception, the
verb "to go" doesn't inflect at all. Is it less easy, because you have to
remember the irregularity, or is it easier, because the irregular verb is
actually simpler in terms of inflection than the regular verbs? I personally
can't give you an absolute answer here.
Is Toki Pona easy? It's got only a few different words, and is completely
analytic. On the other hand, it requires many set phrases to be learned by
heart to say about anything. Is Lojban easy then? It's based on the rules of
predicate logic (which are few) and disambiguates a lot. But learning all
the terms it uses to disambiguate is very much a challenge.
As you see, easiness is a challenge! :P Your goal is to create a language in
a month, so in terms of easiness, I think you should rather focus on
easiness of design, rather than a kind of "absolute" language simplicity
that may not exist. In this case, about the only principle I think would
work would be Occam's Razor, i.e. "don't needlessly multiply entities". In
other words, base your language on the smallest possible amount of separate
principles (or axioms). I.e. once you've decided on the order between
modifier and modified, use that order everywhere in the language, rather
than having separate rules for e.g. nouns and verbs. Use parsimony and
economy in your language design, and use this principle at every level,
phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic.
One of the nice side effects of such an approach is that since English is
anything but economic in its design, you'll almost automatically end up with
something non-Englishy.
Well, good luck with your project!
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (4)
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6c. Re: What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 8:27 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 5:17 AM, Matthew Martin
<matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm thinking of trying to write a conlang in November in NaNoWriMo style. As
> two
> design goals, I am hoping for a language that is different semantically,
> syntactically and lexically from English, yet reasonably easy. On the other
> hand,
> most attempt make easy languages (pidgins, creoles and most auxlangs) resort
> to
> lots of loan words and an "apple that doesn't fall far from the tree" style
> in terms
> of syntax and semantics, (eg. choosing SVO just because it is common, or
> defining a word to mean 'honor' with all 20-some English definitions).
>
> Can any of you offer any advice on what features I should incorporate to end
> up
> with an easy apriori conlang?
I would start with some easy children's story books and just take each
simple English sentence and just string together some randomly coined
words to represent the meaning of that sentence. Initially, I would
give no thought at all to grammar, syntax, morphology, phonology, etc.
I would NOT try to consciously analyze how the elements of those a
priori sentences break down, I'd just treat them as a whole, and then
move on to the next sentence, trying only to make successive sentences
fit together while making them each sound interesting.
Only after I had "translated" a few hundred sentences in this way
would I look back on them and try to figure out what the grammar is
all about, and how words a built, etc.
E.G:
It is cold outside. You must wear your coat and mittens. The kitten
does not like the snow. She prefers to sleep by the fire.
Chana kota. Besia bunche ota kendorem rekono tonar. Pialu washahana te
pelezor. Xai tomorisi ape raka upelez.
At this point I would not necessarily know which conlang words carried
what meanings, or what the word order was. I don't even have any idea
how the letter 'X' is supposed to be pronounced. Are the sentences SVO
or SOV? I don't really know yet. That will emerge later when more
sentences appear. At this point, I can only suspect that the root
"-pelez-" might have something to do with liking or preferring since
it seems to show up in slightly different form in two sentences. But
those details will have to wait till later when there is more data.
--gary
Messages in this topic (4)
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6d. Re: What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
Posted by: "Lee" waywardwre...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 8:31 am ((PDT))
I can't say anything I've done is necessarily state of the art, but I've tried
you are about to attempt for both LoCoWriMos... and failed to get it done in
the allotted month.
Maybe the third will be a charm!
Anyway, here are a few lessons I've learned along the way. None of these are
earth-shattering, and most a probably obvious.
1. At every level, start simple. Try with all your might to not add that one
extra feature you are not 100% sure you really want/need.
2. Phonology. Create your phonology quickly, and stick with it.
3. Syllable patterns. Select a few and stick to them. If your pattern(s) don't
yield enough possible words, allow your words to have one more syllable.
4. Word generation. Create a spreadsheet or something to randomly create a
collection of words. It is far faster to have a bunch of candidates to choose
from that to sit pondering what word feels "right" for a concept. Just pick one
that sounds good and move on. If your language design allows for words to
readily change part of speech, double-check your lexicon before creating a new
word.
5. If borrowing features from other languages, keep that list of languages
small.
6. Grammar. Keep it simple. Start with grade school beginning reader level
sentences first. Once you can reliably read and write statements and questions,
add a single layer (modal, tense, etc.). Don't add another layer of complexity
until the one you are on works reliably.
7. Delay tweaking as long as possible. Instead, keep a list of potential tweaks
and why you think you want to implement them. You may discover some of them
will become unnecessary.
8. If you find yourself getting stuck on a particular feature or language
construction, make a note of it and move on to something else. (I tend to get
stuck trying to break through a sticking point, and before I know it I've spun
my wheels for five days.)
9. Do something with the language everyday, even if nothing more than creating
ten more basic sentences.
10. Have fun.
Lee
--- On Thu, 10/7/10, Matthew Martin <matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: Matthew Martin <matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com>
Subject: What is the state of the art for easy apriori conlangs?
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Date: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 7:17 AM
I'm thinking of trying to write a conlang in November in NaNoWriMo style. As
two
design goals, I am hoping for a language that is different semantically,
syntactically and lexically from English, yet reasonably easy. On the other
hand,
most attempt make easy languages (pidgins, creoles and most auxlangs) resort to
lots of loan words and an "apple that doesn't fall far from the tree" style in
terms
of syntax and semantics, (eg. choosing SVO just because it is common, or
defining a word to mean 'honor' with all 20-some English definitions).
Can any of you offer any advice on what features I should incorporate to end up
with an easy apriori conlang?
Thanks,
Matthew Martin
Messages in this topic (4)
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7. An engelang to minimize or contain abstractness
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 6:35 am ((PDT))
My recent reading of Guy Deutscher's _The Unfolding of Language_
suggested two possible conlang projects. One I'm sure is not unique
to me -- it probably occured to every conlanger who's read the book:
devise a naturalistic artlang family, or at least two conlangs in
diachronic relationship, where the protolanguage is roughly equivalent
to Deutscher's "Me Tarzan stage" or hypothetical Proto-World,
consisting only of concrete nouns, physical action verbs, deictic
particles, and an SVO or SOV word-order rule, and all abstract words
and grammatical functions in the descendant conlang(s) are gradually
made out of the concrete material in the protolang via metaphor,
erosion and analogy. Has anyone actually done this?
The other idea I suspect/hope may be a bit more original. Most
engelangs, it seem to me, especially semantically minimalist ones,
suffer from an excess of abstraction in their root vocabulary. My own
gjâ-zym-byn is not exempt from this criticism; it, like too many
engelangs and auxlangs, derives some words for more basic, concrete
concepts by compounding or affixing of more abstract concepts. Think
of all the conlangs where the word for "father" breaks down as "male +
parent" (or vice versa in head+modifier langs), and similarly for
"mother"; we most of us have direct, very early experience of specific
persons as our father and mother, or at least of other specific
persons we meet as other people's fathers and mothers; "parent" is an
abstraction from the common traits and behaviors of fathers and
mothers. We meet many specific persons, and divide them into general
categories based on a variety of traits that tend to be strongly
correlated -- "male" and "female" are comparatively abstract
adjectives generalizing from various correlated and prototypical
traits (possession of specific body parts and potential to be fathers
or mothers). Children acquiring their native natlang generally
acquire the equivalents of "mama" and "daddy" first as proper names, I
suppose, then as common nouns; then the words for "man, woman, boy,
girl", and abstract adjectives like "male" and "female" some while
later.
It's occurred to me that one could build a more or less semantically
minimalist engelang on the reverse principle, with all the built-in
abstractions confined to a small number of derivational operations,
all the content root words being concrete nouns or physical action
verbs, and all abstract words and most or all grammatical functions
being derived from the concrete/physical roots via a tiny number of
derivational operations. Following Deutscher, we might also have two
or three physical-pointing deictic words, with more abstract deixis
derived from them somehow.
I started sketching a system with CVC roots, and mutation of the
initial consonant for generalization, the final consonant for
metaphor, and the vowel for metonymy. (A naturalistic Deutscherlang
would I suppose do all those operations with zero-derivation followed
diachronically by erosion due to high frequency, but explicit marking
of them seems advisable for reduced ambiguity in an engelang.) It
would be possible to get by with fewer derivational operations, I
suppose, conflating metonymy with metaphor or even having just one
"abstractness" mutation, but I think this system allows more numerous
and more transparent (or at least less opaque) derivations from the
concrete roots.
We can derive abstract and mental verbs by metaphor or generalization
from concrete verbs. Abstract nouns can be derived by metaphor or
generalization from concrete nouns. Concrete modifiers can be derived
by metonymy from certain prototypical concrete nouns, while abstract
modifiers can be derived by metaphor from the concrete modifiers.
(E.g., elephant + metonymy = big, big + metaphor = important; blood +
metonymy = red, red + metaphor = angry?) Spatial adpositions can be
derived by metaphor or metonymy from motion verbs and body-part nouns.
Such a simple derivational morphology is apt to be somewhat opaque,
with many or most of its derivations being idiomatic; is the
generalization of "mother" going to be "woman" or "parent"? Is the
metonymy from "father" going to be an adjective "male" or a concrete
noun for a body part all fathers have? Any suggestions on how to
ameliorate that without violating the basic design principle would be
welcome. One idea that comes to mind is to *not* make the language
semantically minimalist or oligo(synthetic|isolating) except where
required by (or at least not in conflict with?) the more basic design
principles; the language could in principle have thousands of root
words as long as each of them refers to a concrete thing or action.
On that principle, we wouldn't derive terms for primary or secondary
sexual characteristics from "father" or "mother" or "woman" or "man",
but would have separate root words for those body parts; similarly
we'd probably have separate words for "possum" and "marsupial's
pouch", unless we couldn't think of anything useful for "possum +
metonymy" to signify. (We could derive "marsupial" either from
"possum + generalization" or "pouch + metonymy.)
It might be useful to be able to stack two or more derivations of the
same type, so we can e.g. generalize from "mother" to get "woman" and
from "woman" to get "person"; that might argue for affixing rather
than mutation, or for a more complex mutation system with three or
more grades (like Ithkuil). I'm not sure offhand whether or when it
would be useful to stack metaphors on metaphors, but stacking metonymy
seems useful too.
Another alternative would be to have two derivational operations, one
for abstractness and one for grammaticalization. For instance,
to walk + abstractness = to go
to go + gramaticalization = adposition "to(ward)" or allative case marker
Deutscher says, I think, that question markers are likely to be
primitive -- he knows of no natlang in which question markers are
known to have evolved from something that didn't already have an
interrogative element of meaning. But I think we can derive them
from a verb meaning "to search". He describes negative particles and
affixes as deriving from negative verbs like "remove", "destroy", etc.
How to derive number words and quantifiers? Possibly by metonymy
from concrete nouns which typically come in sets of N; nose > one, eye
> two, finger > five, ant > many...
If anyone would like to collaborate on an engelang along these lines,
let me know.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (1)
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8a. Consonant system morphing
Posted by: "Nathan Unanymous" nathanms...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 7:00 am ((PDT))
How should I morph an archaic system like so:
p t c k
ph th ch kh
b d g
m n ny ng
f s h
v r j
l
h = aspiration
ny = palatal nasal
f = labiodental fricative
h = velar fricative
v = labiodental approximant
r = trill
Into another system? I got a way to turn a lovely macron-filled vowel system
to Finnish, but this has got me stuck.
The only possibility I've thought of is making h/x/ -> h/h/, and then turning
ph,
th, ch, and kh into the bilabial, dental, palatal, and velar fricatives. But
that
adds up to 7 fricatives - reminds too much of English.
So, any ideas?
Messages in this topic (2)
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8b. Re: Consonant system morphing
Posted by: "Wm Annis" wm.an...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 7:27 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 8:55 AM, Nathan Unanymous <nathanms...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The only possibility I've thought of is making h/x/ -> h/h/, and then turning
> ph,
> th, ch, and kh into the bilabial, dental, palatal, and velar fricatives. But
> that
> adds up to 7 fricatives - reminds too much of English.
>
> So, any ideas?
Aspirated -> plain
Plain -> voiced
Voiced -> voiced fricatives (which involves some doubling: you'll have /v/ from
several sources). Having /D/ and /G/ turn into glides based on the vowels
they're near could add some fun, too.
--
William S. Annis
www.aoidoi.org � www.scholiastae.org
Messages in this topic (2)
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9a. Re: Koro - Undocumented language found in India
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Thu Oct 7, 2010 8:12 am ((PDT))
2010-10-06 16:07, Lee skrev:
> Saw this in the news this morning...
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101006/ap_on_sc/us_sci_new_language
Evidently they have found a foolproof definition
of 'sister language' vs. 'dialect' which is
independent of the speakers' opinions on the
issue... ;-)
/bpj
Messages in this topic (5)
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