There are 17 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Matthew Boutilier
1b. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Alex Fink
1c. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1d. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Peter Bleackley
1e. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
1f. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Matthew Boutilier
1g. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1h. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1i. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Lars Finsen
1j. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: R A Brown
1k. Re: Case Inflection Development
From: Alex Fink
2a. Re: "Best" way to write a complete description of a language
From: Donald Boozer
2b. Re: "Best" way to write a complete description of a language
From: Vincent Pistelli
2c. Re: "Best" way to write a complete description of a language
From: Gary Shannon
3.1. Re: An engelang to minimize or contain abstractness
From: John Q
3.2. Re: An engelang to minimize or contain abstractness
From: John Q
4. Usona Esperantiso and Dothraki
From: Richard Littauer
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" mbout...@nd.edu
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2010 11:58 am ((PDT))
>
> "Jan z'n hond" is a perfectly correct
> way to translate "John's dog" and literally does mean "John his dog".
>
interestingly, an analog construction has developed in the egyptian dialect
of arabic.
whereas in classical arabic one would say
ßáÈ ÃÍãÏ kalbu ahmadi (the.dog-NOM Ahmed-GEN)
in the modern colloquial it becomes
ÃÍãÏ ßáÈå ahmad kalbuh (Ahmed the.dog-his)
for "Ahmed's dog."
similarly, of course, for feminine:
Óáãì ßáÈåÇ salma kalbiha (Selma the.dog-her)
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 7:00 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <tsela.cg@
gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17 October 2010 18:42, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing academic about the subject and
> > can only contribute wild guesses.
> >
> > That said, I've always felt that the English genitive marker ('s) is a
> > contraction of "his" as in "John his dog..." => "John's dog...".
>
>
> It would only work if the genitive of feminine nouns was 'r ("Mary her dog"
> => *"Mary'r dog"). An idea for Future English? :P
>
> That said, such constructions are actually quite a common way to mark
> possession in various languages, and could easily evolve into actual
> genitives. The funny thing is, although English doesn't have this
> construction, its cousin Dutch does. "Jan z'n hond" is a perfectly correct
> way to translate "John's dog" and literally does mean "John his dog". And
> indeed, feminine nouns use the feminine possessive: "Marie d'r hond". In
> Dutch, this way of forming genitive constructions competes with the Saxon
> genitive (which is on its way out: "Jans hond" is possible, but feels
> old-fashioned and stilted) and noun complements using the preposition
> "van":
> of ("de hond van Jan" is allowed, but lacks punch. "van" is normally only
> used when the possessor is a long noun phrase).
>
>
> > I
> > like this theory even it it's not true. :) (Just like I like my theory
> > about verb past tense endings being derived from "did", as in "John
> > turn did" => "John turned.")
> >
> >
> That's a fun one! :)
> --
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
>
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2010 3:14 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, 17 Oct 2010 10:22:44 -0400, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 17 Oct 2010 13:14:31 +0200, Daniel Prohaska
><dan...@ryan-prohaska.com> wrote:
>
>>"see" eventually becomes a marker for the object, and the meaning shifts
>>from "a man sees a tree and climbs it" to "a man climbs a tree".
>
>Verbs may be involved, sure -- AIUI the prototypical one is something like
>"take", as Eric says. But "see" I don't think I've ever seen in this role.
> Do you have a natlang example?
I realised why I was finding that strange; it's more or less
information-structural reasons. "See" is nicely germane if (from the
subject's perspective) the object is first being introduced in this clause,
but it's less likely germane if both subject and object have been
foregrounded for awhile. "X and Y were arguing, X was getting angrier and
angrier, and at last when he couldn't take it anymore X _saw_ Y and hit him"?
Come to think of it, it would be neat if both "see" and "take" were used as
object-introducers depending on whether the object was new to the setting in
this sense -- then with a little grammaticalisation, you could have "take"
turn into the definite / specific accusative while "see" turns into the
indefinite / nonspecific accusative.
Alex
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 12:57 am ((PDT))
2010/10/18 Matthew Boutilier <mbout...@nd.edu>
> >
> > "Jan z'n hond" is a perfectly correct
> > way to translate "John's dog" and literally does mean "John his dog".
> >
>
> interestingly, an analog construction has developed in the egyptian dialect
> of arabic.
> whereas in classical arabic one would say
> ÙÙب Ø£ØÙ
د kalbu ahmadi (the.dog-NOM Ahmed-GEN)
> in the modern colloquial it becomes
> Ø£ØÙ
د ÙÙب٠ahmad kalbuh (Ahmed the.dog-his)
> for "Ahmed's dog."
> similarly, of course, for feminine:
> سÙÙ
Ù ÙÙبÙا salma kalbiha (Selma the.dog-her)
>
>
I'd heard about this. Actually, as far as I know, this way (just adding a
separate possessor to a form already possessed, whether by a possessive
clitic, affix or adjective) is quite a common way of forming possessives all
around the world, regardless of language family. I can't find that feature
in WALS, but at home I have a book that lists common structures and their
frequency around the world, and if I remember correctly this structure for
producing possessives was quite widespread.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Peter Bleackley" peter.bleack...@rd.bbc.co.uk
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:15 am ((PDT))
staving Matthew Boutilier:
>> "Jan z'n hond" is a perfectly correct
>> way to translate "John's dog" and literally does mean "John his dog".
>>
>>
> interestingly, an analog construction has developed in the egyptian dialect
> of arabic.
> whereas in classical arabic one would say
> ßáÈ ÃÍãÏ kalbu ahmadi (the.dog-NOM Ahmed-GEN)
> in the modern colloquial it becomes
> ÃÍãÏ ßáÈå ahmad kalbuh (Ahmed the.dog-his)
> for "Ahmed's dog."
> similarly, of course, for feminine:
> Óáãì ßáÈåÇ salma kalbiha (Selma the.dog-her)
>
>
>
In Shakespeare, we do get examples like
"Once in a sea-fight against the Count his galleys" (Twelfth Night)
Does anyone know when and how the form arose in English? And are there
examples with "her" and "its", or is "his" acting as an invariable
particle in this construction?
Pete
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1e. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" j_mach_w...@yahoo.com
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:45 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:11:00 +0100, Peter Bleackley wrote:
>In Shakespeare, we do get examples like
>
>"Once in a sea-fight against the Count his galleys" (Twelfth Night)
>
>Does anyone know when and how the form arose in English?
My guess is that it is an old (West?) Germanic form of expressing
possession. It is common in Dutch, it used to occur in English, it is common
throughout German dialects (though in standard German, it is deemed
ungrammatical or dialectal). So it seems much more likely that there is a
common origin than independent developments.
I think the German form also sheds a light on the original form:
dem Jan sein Hund (the-DAT Jan his dog)
Here, the possessor is in the Dative case. I guess English and Dutch also
would have used a Dative case in this form while there still was a
distinctive Dative case. Does anybody know more about that?
Another peculiarity of this form is that it is used only for actual
possession. A phrase such as the following seems very dubious:
*dem Baum sein Blatt (the-DAT tree his leaf)
This sounds as if the tree somehow animatedly purchased a leaf. Is it like
this in Dutch as well?
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1f. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" mbout...@nd.edu
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:47 am ((PDT))
from Pete:
> In Shakespeare, we do get examples like
>
> "Once in a sea-fight against the Count his galleys" (Twelfth Night)
>
> Does anyone know when and how the form arose in English? And are there
> examples with "her" and "its", or is "his" acting as an invariable particle
> in this construction?
>
hmm, interesting. while we're on the subject, there's a similar german
construction for talking about one's body parts:
Ich putze mir die Zähne. = I brush-1s myself-DAT the teeth-ACC
that could feasibly be related, if, given the similarity to dutch -
> "Jan z'n hond" is a perfectly correct
> way to translate "John's dog" and literally does mean "John his dog".
>
- from above, we imagined it as a vestige of some proto-(west-)germanic
construction. thoughts?
matt
2010/10/19 Peter Bleackley <peter.bleack...@rd.bbc.co.uk>
> staving Matthew Boutilier:
>
> "Jan z'n hond" is a perfectly correct
>>> way to translate "John's dog" and literally does mean "John his dog".
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> interestingly, an analog construction has developed in the egyptian
>> dialect
>> of arabic.
>> whereas in classical arabic one would say
>> ÙÙب Ø£ØÙ
د kalbu ahmadi (the.dog-NOM Ahmed-GEN)
>> in the modern colloquial it becomes
>> Ø£ØÙ
د ÙÙب٠ahmad kalbuh (Ahmed the.dog-his)
>> for "Ahmed's dog."
>> similarly, of course, for feminine:
>> سÙÙ
Ù ÙÙبÙا salma kalbiha (Selma the.dog-her)
>>
>>
>>
>>
> In Shakespeare, we do get examples like
>
> "Once in a sea-fight against the Count his galleys" (Twelfth Night)
>
> Does anyone know when and how the form arose in English? And are there
> examples with "her" and "its", or is "his" acting as an invariable particle
> in this construction?
>
> Pete
>
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1g. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:31 am ((PDT))
On 19 October 2010 10:42, J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_w...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:11:00 +0100, Peter Bleackley wrote:
>
> >In Shakespeare, we do get examples like
> >
> >"Once in a sea-fight against the Count his galleys" (Twelfth Night)
> >
> >Does anyone know when and how the form arose in English?
>
> My guess is that it is an old (West?) Germanic form of expressing
> possession. It is common in Dutch, it used to occur in English, it is
> common
> throughout German dialects (though in standard German, it is deemed
> ungrammatical or dialectal).
It's frown upon in written Dutch, but considered correct in standard spoken
Dutch.
> So it seems much more likely that there is a
> common origin than independent developments.
>
> I think the German form also sheds a light on the original form:
>
> dem Jan sein Hund (the-DAT Jan his dog)
>
> Here, the possessor is in the Dative case. I guess English and Dutch also
> would have used a Dative case in this form while there still was a
> distinctive Dative case. Does anybody know more about that?
>
>
Sounds logical, although I have no idea how it may have looked like in Old
Dutch.
> Another peculiarity of this form is that it is used only for actual
> possession. A phrase such as the following seems very dubious:
>
> *dem Baum sein Blatt (the-DAT tree his leaf)
>
> This sounds as if the tree somehow animatedly purchased a leaf. Is it like
> this in Dutch as well?
>
>
I am not a native speaker, but "de boom z'n blad" does sound weird indeed.
This structure is mostly used with names, less with common nouns. It feels
especially weird with inanimate nouns.
Note that in the Dutch construction, the possessives have to be in their
unaccented form (z'n, d'r) rather than their accented form (zijn, haar).
"Jan z'n hond" is licit, *"Jan zijn hond" isn't.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1h. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:43 am ((PDT))
On 19 October 2010 10:44, Matthew Boutilier <mbout...@nd.edu> wrote:
> >
> hmm, interesting. while we're on the subject, there's a similar german
> construction for talking about one's body parts:
> Ich putze mir die Zähne. = I brush-1s myself-DAT the teeth-ACC
> that could feasibly be related, if, given the similarity to dutch -
>
>
That's not exactly the same. This construction is extremely common in French
("Je me lave les dents", literally "I brush myself the teeth" is the normal
way to say "I brush my teeth") and other Romance languages (as well as
occasionally used in Modern Greek), while those languages all lack the
possessive construction with possessive adjective. It's actually quite a
common phenomenon: when the subject of the verb actually possesses the
object of the verb, this mark of possession is often promoted as an actual
(oblique) argument of the verb (I've heard it happens also in
non-Indo-European languages, but I don't know any example). But I'm not sure
whether it's related to the possessive construction at all.
> > "Jan z'n hond" is a perfectly correct
> > way to translate "John's dog" and literally does mean "John his dog".
> >
> - from above, we imagined it as a vestige of some proto-(west-)germanic
> construction. thoughts?
>
>
I personally thought that the Dutch construction was a relatively recent
development, but I may be wrong. That said, it sounds like such a simple
structure to evolve (just add a word to an already possessed noun to give
precisions on who is owning something), it could easily have been innovated
more than once.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1i. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" lars.fin...@ortygia.no
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 3:46 am ((PDT))
Den 19. okt. 2010 kl. 10.42 skreiv J. 'Mach' Wust:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:11:00 +0100, Peter Bleackley wrote:
>
> My guess is that it is an old (West?) Germanic form of expressing
> possession. It is common in Dutch, it used to occur in English, it
> is common throughout German dialects (though in standard German, it
> is deemed ungrammatical or dialectal). So it seems much more likely
> that there is a common origin than independent developments.
It is also common in Norwegian, but this usage seems to be borrowed
from Hansa traders. It was exclusive to the west and north earlier,
but in the 50s and 60s when I grew up, it was common in the east,
too. It is generally frowned upon, regarded as incorrect in Bokmål,
but accepted in Nynorsk. There is no trace of it in other North
Germanic languages to my knowledge, although the Faroese -sa particle
could perhaps be related.
I have never heard it used with the possessor in the dative case, but
the dative case is going extinct here, so I could have missed it.
Should do some more listening, perhaps, for things like "jegara si
hagle", "jentinje sin bil" or "guto sine klede". Or perhaps the
dative form of the possessive pronouns would be used, too, which I
believe is "sine" in all these examples, at least in my local area.
> Another peculiarity of this form is that it is used only for actual
> possession. A phrase such as the following seems very dubious:
>
> *dem Baum sein Blatt (the-DAT tree his leaf)
>
> This sounds as if the tree somehow animatedly purchased a leaf. Is
> it like this in Dutch as well?
In Norwegian, there is nothing abnormal about "treet sitt blad" or
"treet sine blader". But in most cases you would choose to say
"bladene til treet" instead, with a prepositional possessive. The
pronominal (called "garpegenitiv") is used mostly to emphasise the
possessor, which is more common with animates, naturally, but not
unheard of with inanimates.
LEF
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1j. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 5:32 am ((PDT))
On 19/10/2010 09:42, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:11:00 +0100, Peter Bleackley
> wrote:
>
>> In Shakespeare, we do get examples like
>>
>> "Once in a sea-fight against the Count his galleys"
>> (Twelfth Night)
In the Millenary Petition to James VI of Scotland when he
became James I of England in 1603 the phrase "for Christ His
sake" is found. It is also found in other texts of the
Tudor & Stuart period IIRC.
>> Does anyone know when and how the form arose in
>> English?
>
> My guess is that it is an old (West?) Germanic form of
> expressing possession. It is common in Dutch, it used to
> occur in English,
Yep - IIRC it remained in some English dialects way past
Shakespeare's time. I'm sure example with 'her' occurred,
but probably not 'its' since the latter is a relatively late
development in English, the original neuter possessive being
'his' just like the masculine.
> it is common throughout German dialects
and isn't it standard in Afrikaans?
> (though in standard German, it is deemed ungrammatical or
> dialectal). So it seems much more likely that there is a
> common origin than independent developments.
I think so.
It was because 'his' became confused with old genitive
ending in such expressions that the genitive got written as
's, the apostrophe supposedly indicating the omission of
_hi_ - which is all very well if the possessor was masculine
or a thing, but a mite illogical when the possessor is
female. But then, natlangs usage does not always adhere to
logic.
--
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 (25)
________________________________________________________________________
1k. Re: Case Inflection Development
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 6:38 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:28:46 +0100, R A Brown <r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote:
>On 19/10/2010 09:42, J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
>> On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:11:00 +0100, Peter Bleackley
>> wrote:
>>
>>> In Shakespeare, we do get examples like
>>>
>>> "Once in a sea-fight against the Count his galleys"
>>> (Twelfth Night)
>
>In the Millenary Petition to James VI of Scotland when he
>became James I of England in 1603 the phrase "for Christ His
>sake" is found. It is also found in other texts of the
>Tudor & Stuart period IIRC.
>
>>> Does anyone know when and how the form arose in
>>> English?
>>
>> My guess is that it is an old (West?) Germanic form of
>> expressing possession. It is common in Dutch, it used to
>> occur in English,
>
>Yep - IIRC it remained in some English dialects way past
>Shakespeare's time. I'm sure example with 'her' occurred,
>but probably not 'its' since the latter is a relatively late
>development in English, the original neuter possessive being
>'his' just like the masculine.
[...]
>It was because 'his' became confused with old genitive
>ending in such expressions that the genitive got written as
>'s, the apostrophe supposedly indicating the omission of
>_hi_ - which is all very well if the possessor was masculine
>or a thing, but a mite illogical when the possessor is
>female. But then, natlangs usage does not always adhere to
>logic.
C. M. Millward in _A Biography of the English Language_ suggests that the
"his" form originated in Early Modern English, which in her periodisation
begins 1500, as a reinterpretation of the genitive ending, as opposed to by
confusion with some extant structure with "his". But I suppose that's an
oversimplification of some sort ...
... since the OED does have the construction recorded before that, with
citations back to c1000 ("{Th}a Gode his naman neode cigdan", "We gesawon
Enac his cynryn"). It notes
| Found already in OE., but most prevalent from c1400 to 1750; sometimes
| identified with the genitive inflexion -es, -is, -ys, esp. in 16-17th c.,
| when it was chiefly (but not exclusively) used with names ending in -s,
| or when the inflexional genitive would have been awkward. Archaically
| retained in Book-keeping and for some other technical purposes.
There's also a single 1607 citation ("Mrs. Sands his maid") under the subheading
| Sometimes an erroneous expansion of 's.
Alex
Messages in this topic (25)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: "Best" way to write a complete description of a language
Posted by: "Donald Boozer" donaldboo...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2010 12:01 pm ((PDT))
I think this is a great idea, and it has me rethinking my (pending) project on
presenting Dritok and the other languages I'm working on. Thank you, Matthew,
for the new direction.
Don Boozer
http://library.conlang.org
Twitter: @FiatLingua
> Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 15:41:47 -0400
> From: Matthew Martin <matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: "Best" way to write a complete description of
> a language
>
> Finally, if the is truly an artlang, I'd make a plea to
> write something that can
> be read cover to cover with entertaining example sentences
> and entertaining
> prose in between the charts. Most conlang grammars
> are not going to be
> studied but read once and enjoyed, not read over and over
> and constantly
> checked and cross-referenced. May you be so fortunate
> and talented to write
> the language that will capture the imaginations of hundreds
> who will need a
> carefully arranged reference grammar.
>
> Matthew Martin
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: "Best" way to write a complete description of a language
Posted by: "Vincent Pistelli" pva...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2010 5:26 pm ((PDT))
All of my conlangs(which aren't very good) are laid out in the following
way, usually in a composition book:
Phonology and Romanization and/or Separate writing system.
Morphology-nouns, verbs, etc.
Syntax
Lexicon & Idioms/Special words
*This system works okay for me, but if I decide to add or remove something
it can make the order in the notebook confusing and difficult to sort
through because it is on paper. This system would probably work better on
the computer, but I am not able to access a computer from where I do most of
my conlanging, which is Study Hall.
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: "Best" way to write a complete description of a language
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2010 6:35 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Matthew Martin
<matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Finally, if the is truly an artlang, I'd make a plea to write something that
> can
> be read cover to cover with entertaining example sentences and entertaining
> prose in between the charts. Most conlang grammars are not going to be
> studied but read once and enjoyed, not read over and over and constantly
> checked and cross-referenced. May you be so fortunate and talented to write
> the language that will capture the imaginations of hundreds who will need a
> carefully arranged reference grammar.
I almost always put my descriptions in the form of a language learning
textbook for general audiences. Something along the lines of a Berliz
Teach-Yourself book.
Lessons for ai Basata: http://fiziwig.com/conlang/basata/basata_01.html
Lessons for Tazhu: http://fiziwig.com/conlang/tazhu/korpu001.html
Learn Elomi through pictures: http://fiziwig.com/conlang/elomi/imupix01.html
Learn Elomi textbook: http://fiziwig.com/conlang/elomi/bp1.html
NOTE: Ekomi (later Ilomi) is Larry Sulky's conlang, but I wrote these
lessons for it just for fun.
And the exceptions:
ai Basata concise grammar: http://fiziwig.com/conlang/basata/grammar.html
Soaloa grammar: http://fiziwig.com/conlang/soaloa/soaloa.html
Pop grammar: http://fiziwig.com/conlang/soaloa/pop.html
Plus a whole host of brief sketches.
--gary
Messages in this topic (8)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3.1. Re: An engelang to minimize or contain abstractness
Posted by: "John Q" jquijad...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2010 7:28 pm ((PDT))
maikxlx wrote:
>> I can't say that I understand Ithkuil at all well, and so I could well be
>> wrong, but I am not sure that anything like Ithkuil will be maximally
>> compact. It seems to me that such a hyperfusional morphology -- one which
>> grammaticalizes just about everything under the sun, producing countless
>> rarely-used permutations each assigning an obscure meaning to one possible
>> form in word-space -- will necessarily be suboptimal compactnesswise. To be
>> honest, I think that the real reason that Ithkuil pulls off a semblance of
>> compactness is that it more-or-less uses the entire IPA chart, sans clicks,
>> as a phoneme inventory. This is not to knock the language, which is totally
>> brilliant and interesting to study; I just doubt that it's maximally
>> compact.
>
>After reflecting on this, I would like to clarify that I am in no way
>disputing Ithkuil's general capability to encode a relatively complex
>meaning into a very compact form. In fact it's probable that, given an
>arbitrary complex meaning X, Ithkuil is maximally compact compared to any
>other potentially human-speakable conlang.
>
>I did mean to point out, though, that the most frequently intended, often
>logically simpler meanings are not assigned forms any shorter than the
>rarely intended, often logically complex ones. So while Ithkuil makes
>countless maximally compact individual utterances possible, I doubt whether
>a longer text of general prose would be maximally compact.
______________________________
Thanks for the interesting comments. In general, I agree with what you're
saying regarding Ithkuil's compactness. I personally don't believe that the
language's morpho-phonology represents any sort of "maximum" form of
compactness, but rather simply a high degree of compactness compared to
natural languages, where "compactness" might be defined as a high ratio of
morphemes-to-syllables. In fact, merely trying to avoid long-windedness via
a high degree of morpho-phonological fusion was the motive behind the
morpho-phonological design, not necessarily trying to find the most compact
forms possible.
(After all, if I really wanted, I could go beyond pure phonology as
morphological markers and start bringing in hand/body gestures, accompanying
hand claps or bleeps on a mandatory air-horn, or patterns of flashing lights
from a device mandatorily worn around the neck. Or even go so far as to
provide the language with an alien conworld in which its speakers have three
sets of vocal chords by which to add accompanying harmonies, humming,
falsetto accompaniment, burping, clicks, vocal "raspberries," etc., to carry
additional and simultaneous grammatical information.)
Indeed, much has been made by many commentators of Ithkuil's compactness,
which, frankly, has always disappointed me somewhat, since
morpho-phonological compactness is very much a secondary design parameter of
the language (the primary design parameter being the overt
morphologizing/grammaticization of various covert aspects of human cognition
that are rarely, if ever, morphologically realized in natural languages --
unfortunately, this design parameter has rarely, if ever, been commented
upon in the many descriptions and references to Ithkuil which abound on the
Internet).
--John Q.
Messages in this topic (34)
________________________________________________________________________
3.2. Re: An engelang to minimize or contain abstractness
Posted by: "John Q" jquijad...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Oct 18, 2010 8:01 pm ((PDT))
maikxlx wrote:
>I did mean to point out, though, that the most frequently intended, often
>logically simpler meanings are not assigned forms any shorter than the
>rarely intended, often logically complex ones. So while Ithkuil makes
>countless maximally compact individual utterances possible, I doubt whether
>a longer text of general prose would be maximally compact.
________________________
In further pondering your observation above, I realize it is not quite
correct if one includes the lexico-semantic and morpho-lexical
levels/aspects of the language. After all, the meanings assigned to the
basic set of 3600 possible roots and each roots 18 derivational stems are,
for the most part, chosen with base-level categorization in mind. As one of
the more obvious examples of this, Ithkuil has specific lexical stems for
the most common animals, e.g., dog, cat, goat, pig, butterfly, etc., as
opposed to morphologically deriving such genus-level categories from
higher-order hierarchical archetypes such as "mammal" or "canine" or
"quadiped", etc. After all, it does tend to defeat the goal of
morpho-phonological and morpho-lexical conciseness if the word for
"elephant" breaks down morphologically as "largest example of land-based
mammalian quadriped."
And regarding the issue of whether Ithkuil can sustain morpho-phonological
compactness in longer random prose examples, I have translated longer random
texts into the language on five or six occasions (e.g., the Babel text, the
first paragraph of the Declaration of Human Rights, the text from Conlang
Relay 16, and a couple of private requests) -- in each of these cases, I'd
say the length of the Ithkuil text tends to average about 2/3 to 3/4 the
length (in terms of number of total syllables) of the original English text.
I'd say that this demonstrates (not conclusively, of course) that the
language is more morpho-phonologically compact than most, if not all,
natural languages, but by no means demonstrates the maximal such system of
compactness possible.
Also: one must remember that Ithkuil sentences tend to contain
significantly more overt morphology than their natural language counterparts
-- after all, Ithkuil verbs alone are marked for over 20 morphological
categories and any given Ithkuil sentence may easily require a verb form in
which at least five, if not more, of those categories be marked by other
than the default zero-form.
--John Q.
Messages in this topic (34)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4. Usona Esperantiso and Dothraki
Posted by: "Richard Littauer" richard.litta...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Oct 19, 2010 1:28 am ((PDT))
Dear Esperantists among you,
I have no idea where I would get this article, short of subscribing off of the
website here: http://esperanto-usa.org/en/node/7
There is an article in the most recent issue by our very own David Peterson
concerning Dothraki, according to DP. Seeing as how I'm one of the guys in
charge of www.dothraki.org, I'd really appreciate it if anyone who does get
this
journal could read the relevant article and tell me if there's, in particular,
any
vocabulary items - or any other information, if that's cool.
Or maybe someone knows where I could get my hands on a copy? I seem to be
the only conlanger on this list who is in Scotland, though, and I don't know
any
Esperantists...
Richard
Messages in this topic (1)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
