There are 11 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: non-lexical tones
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
1b. Re: non-lexical tones
From: Matthew Boutilier
1c. Re: non-lexical tones
From: Alex Fink
1d. Re: non-lexical tones
From: R A Brown
2. Cāvacodes to Kërvor
From: Nathan Unanymous
3a. Re: World without end (was: An engelang to minimize or contain abstr
From: MorphemeAddict
4a. Re: Semantic Components of Motion Verbs
From: David McCann
5a. ZBB has moved
From: Carsten Becker
5b. Re: ZBB has moved
From: Karen Badham
5c. Re: ZBB has moved
From: Carsten Becker
6. The Trouble with Wizards
From: Peter Bleackley
Messages
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1a. Re: non-lexical tones
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Wed Oct 13, 2010 11:48 am ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:31:58 -0400, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
> One thought springs right to mind - what if cases, moods etc. were marked
> with final consonants, which disappeared, leaving tone behind?
Indeed. That is a very plausible road to inflectional tones.
Something similar happened in Insular Celtic languages: while they
don't have tones, they have initial mutations preserving the memory
of lost inflectional endings of the preceding word.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
Messages in this topic (13)
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1b. Re: non-lexical tones
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" mbout...@nd.edu
Date: Wed Oct 13, 2010 1:38 pm ((PDT))
hmm, interesting.
the consensus seems to be that even morphosyntactic tonality could be a
vestige of lost phonemes.
does anyone know about the situation in ancient greek, where the following
groups are distinguished tonally:
Ïί (what?) ÏÎ¯Ï (who?)
Ïι (something) ÏÎ¹Ï (someone)
i assume this distinction did not arise via the method described above ...
so is some kind of stress at work here? and does anyone have examples of *
this* emerging (in a more complicated way than here)?
i suppose if you had certain tonal interrogative pronouns like the above,
these could become bound morphemes ... and trigger tonal changes in the
attached words? ... and then drop out?
matt
On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhieme...@web.de>wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2010 19:31:58 -0400, Amanda Babcock Furrow wrote:
>
> > One thought springs right to mind - what if cases, moods etc. were marked
> > with final consonants, which disappeared, leaving tone behind?
>
> Indeed. That is a very plausible road to inflectional tones.
>
> Something similar happened in Insular Celtic languages: while they
> don't have tones, they have initial mutations preserving the memory
> of lost inflectional endings of the preceding word.
>
> --
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
> http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
>
Messages in this topic (13)
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1c. Re: non-lexical tones
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:58 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 13 Oct 2010 16:35:16 -0400, Matthew Boutilier <mbout...@nd.edu> wrote:
>hmm, interesting.
>the consensus seems to be that even morphosyntactic tonality could be a
>vestige of lost phonemes.
Nn... morphological, yes. Syntactic as such, there was hardly a consensus
-- did anyone else but Christophe even mention it? I'd like a solider idea
what's going on there as well.
>does anyone know about the situation in ancient greek, where the following
>groups are distinguished tonally:
>ti' (what?) ti's (who?)
>ti (something) tis (someone)
>i assume this distinction did not arise via the method described above ...
>so is some kind of stress at work here?
Yeah. These must have once been the same word, but the interrogatives
appeared in stressed position and the indefinites didn't. Ancient Greek had
a pitch accent, so it's not as though there's even any phonetic difference
between this being a stress phenomenon or a tonal one.
>and does anyone have examples of
>*this* emerging (in a more complicated way than here)?
Well, to answer the question you didn't ask, differential reflexes depending
on whether a word has the stress isn't all that uncommon. English _off_ and
_of_ were the same word, for instance, the former being the stressed variant.
But whether more complicated examples of morphosyntactic tone arise from
stress -- surely they do, in any case where stress responds to something
more complicated and the stress is realised via pitch accent. I guess you
could call the Balto-Slavic accentual paradigms a more complicated example
of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Balto-Slavic_language#Balto-Slavic_fixed_and_mobile_paradigms
in the languages where they manifest in tones (and note sometimes the tones
can be the only thing differentiating two paradigm cells). The ultimate
origins of the PIE stress patterns that led to this are probably lost to
time, though.
Alex
Messages in this topic (13)
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1d. Re: non-lexical tones
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2010 12:01 am ((PDT))
On 13/10/2010 21:35, Matthew Boutilier wrote:
> hmm, interesting.
> the consensus seems to be that even morphosyntactic tonality could be a
> vestige of lost phonemes.
> does anyone know about the situation in ancient greek, where the following
> groups are distinguished tonally:
> Ïί (what?) ÏÎ¯Ï (who?)
> Ïι (something) ÏÎ¹Ï (someone)
> i assume this distinction did not arise via the method described above ...
> so is some kind of stress at work here?
I doubt it. But what is at work here is cliticity &
non-cliticity. The 'words' Ïι (something) ÏÎ¹Ï (someone) were
enclitic, i.e. they were not _phonologically_ words, but
were attached to the end of longer phonological words.
Therefore they did not bear the word accent which, in
ancient Greek, was a pitch accent.
Ïί (what?) ÏÎ¯Ï (who?) are unusual in that normally an acute
on a final syllable is written as grave before another word,
but these two always have the accent written as an acute.
There is argument about what such grave accents meant, but
that doesn't concern these words. The retention of the acute
(high pitch) accent must surely indicate that the voice was
raised at the start of questions.
But it must be borne in mind that as far as ancient Greek is
concerned:
1. We know the tonal accentuation of only the Epic,
Attic-Ionic (and later Koine) and Lesbian dialects; we know
next to nothing about the other dialects, including the
important Doric dialect(s). (By convention texts in other
dialects are given accents in accordance with Attic practice
- but that is merely _convention_).
2. We have only an _approximate_ idea how the pitch accent
worked in practice and will almost certainly never know the
details (unless time travel ever proves possible).
3. The role of stress in ancient Greek is very
controversial; it is noteworthy that the modern Greek stress
accent evolved from the ancient pitch accent. Whatever
stress may or may not have occurred in ancient Greek had no
bearing on its subsequent development.
The thread is about tones so it may be worth pointing out
that pitch accent is a variety of _restricted_ tone systems
that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a
syllable or mora within a word. It is very different from
the tonal systems of Chinese and other languages of SE Asia.
--
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 (13)
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2. Cāvacodes to Kërvor
Posted by: "Nathan Unanymous" nathanms...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 13, 2010 11:59 am ((PDT))
Do you think this language change is plausible?
Cāvacodes has two genders and an ergative system:
m f
-- -es
-us -ys (y=schwa)
-a -e
Cāvacodes didn't distinguish any number except for pronouns.
Just doing sound changes, the endings in Cāvacodes's daughter Kërvor
become:
m
-- -ë (ë=open mid front unrounded vowel)
-ü -y (ü=close high front rounded vowel)
-a -ë
I've had a vision of Kërvor being more like a European language. So I decided
to add the
plural pronoun to them; with sound change, it is hyn, hyni, hany
Thus male singular: -- -ü -a
male plural: -(hy)n -üsyni -(y)han
female sing: -ë -- -ë
female plur: -ësyn -ësyni -ëhan
I thought a later language might reinterpret it as agglutinative.
So, what do you think?
Messages in this topic (1)
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3a. Re: World without end (was: An engelang to minimize or contain abstr
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 13, 2010 12:42 pm ((PDT))
According to Wikipedia re Doxology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxology
"That phrase occurs in the King James
Bible<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Bible>(cf. Eph. 3:21;
Isa. 45:17). ...
*... As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without
end. Amen.* "
It occurs in other places too, but it's a very old phrase.
stevo
On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Lars Finsen <lars.fin...@ortygia.no> wrote:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>
> quoting me:
>>
>>> "World without end" - from Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I think.
>>>
>>
>> I don't remember it from that book, but it's ages since I read it. In
>> what context was it used there (or in whichever other book it may have
>> been)?
>>
>
> I was wrong, apparently; it's from "Stranger in a Strange Land":
> http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=339
>
> He may have used it more than once, perhaps.
>
> LEF
>
Messages in this topic (19)
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4a. Re: Semantic Components of Motion Verbs
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Wed Oct 13, 2010 1:18 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 2010-10-13 at 09:44 -0500, Patrick Dunn wrote:
> Could someone offer me a thumbnail sketch of the semantic
> features of motion, for no other reason than to consider it in my
> conlangs?
1. Some languages (like English, Chinese, and non-Romance Indo-European)
have verbs of motion that generally express manner or cause: slide, run,
throw, push. The path of the motion is typically expressed by a verbal
adjunct: up, towards.
2. Other languages (like the Romance, Semitic, and Polynesian ones) have
verbs that express path. English has such verbs, as loans from Romance:
Sp entrar "enter", bajar "descend". Manner and causation have to be
expressed separately if required:
La lancha se fué de la orilla [flotando]. "The boat [floating] departed
from the bank."
The boat floated away from the bank.
Tumbé el árbol a hachazos. "I brought down the tree by chopping."
I chopped down the tree.
3. Some North American languages (e.g. Navaho) express the shape of the
moving object, using affixes to indicate cause, manner, or direction.
Thus "I scraped the poster off the wall" has the same verb as "I stuck
the poster on the wall", but a different one to "I scraped the chewing
gum off my shoe".
Messages in this topic (7)
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5a. ZBB has moved
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" carb...@googlemail.com
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2010 2:09 am ((PDT))
The Zompist Bulletin Board, also known as the ZBB, has now
accomplished its move to:
http://zbb.spinnwebe.com
You might want to update your bookmarks and/or links.
Cheers
Carsten
--
My Conlang: http://benung.nfshost.com
Ayeri Grammar (under construction): http://bit.ly/9dSyTI (PDF)
Der Sprachbaukasten: http://sanstitre.nfshost.com/sbk
Blog: http://sanstitre.nfshost.com
Messages in this topic (3)
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5b. Re: ZBB has moved
Posted by: "Karen Badham" ktbad...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:23 am ((PDT))
Could this mean registration for the board is back open to do the normal way
again?
-Karen Terry
Messages in this topic (3)
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5c. Re: ZBB has moved
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" carb...@googlemail.com
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:47 am ((PDT))
For the time being, yes. Zompist (the owner) and Spinn (the admin) are
currently testing whether a captcha is enough to keep spammers at bay.
Am 14.10.2010 13:12, schrieb Karen Badham:
> Could this mean registration for the board is back open to do the normal way
> again?
>
> -Karen Terry
--
My Conlang: http://benung.nfshost.com
Ayeri Grammar (under construction): http://bit.ly/9dSyTI (PDF)
Der Sprachbaukasten: http://sanstitre.nfshost.com/sbk
Blog: http://sanstitre.nfshost.com
Messages in this topic (3)
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6. The Trouble with Wizards
Posted by: "Peter Bleackley" peter.bleack...@rd.bbc.co.uk
Date: Thu Oct 14, 2010 2:58 am ((PDT))
Googling for the name of my language, I found the following in the
archives of the romconlang list, posted by Mark J. Reed
> Re: [romconlang] coelestial
>
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 03:03:31PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
>> Star Trek episode: For the world is koilos, and I have touched the
>> caelum!
>
> Now there's an interesting source of translation fodder. Project:
> translate all 79 episode titles from the original Star Trek series into
> your conlang. ("What's Khangaþyagon for 'tribble', anyway?")
>
> Random memory vignette: "For the World is Hollow, and I Have Touched the
> Sky" was where I learned the word "simultaneously". I was watching it
> as a young child (I don't recall exactly how young, and it was in
> syndication so the airdate is no help; I'm not old enough to have
> watched the original run). McCoy was explaining to Kirk that in order
> to get a secret door to open one had to press three stars on a starchart
> "simultaneously", so I ran into the kitchen and asked Mom what that
> meant.
>
> -Marcos
>
>
I wonder why Mark thought of Khangaþyagon in this context. Being a
fantasy language spoken in a conworld, nobody who speaks Khangaþyagon
would ever have heard of "Star Trek".
Pete
Messages in this topic (1)
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