There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: OT : endos vs entos
From: R A Brown
2a. Re: Fight Linguistic Extinction
From: Douglas Koller
3a. XSAMPA question
From: Gary Shannon
3b. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Andreas Johansson
3c. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Garth Wallace
3d. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Douglas Koller
3e. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Gary Shannon
3f. Re: XSAMPA question
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
3g. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Lars Finsen
3h. Re: XSAMPA question
From: David Peterson
3i. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Arthaey Angosii
3j. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Gary Shannon
3k. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Gary Shannon
3l. Re: XSAMPA question
From: p...@phillipdriscoll.com
3m. Re: XSAMPA question
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
3n. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Jeff Sheets
3o. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Alex Fink
3p. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Patrick Dunn
3q. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Lars Finsen
3r. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Patrick Dunn
3s. Re: XSAMPA question
From: Adam Walker
4a. for those who collect grammars: Chemehuevi
From: Wm Annis
4b. Re: for those who collect grammars: Chemehuevi
From: David Peterson
5a. Through the Language Glass - A Conlanger's Review
From: Donald Boozer
5b. Re: Through the Language Glass - A Conlanger's Review
From: Jim Henry
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: OT : endos vs entos
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 9:27 am ((PDT))
On 20/10/2010 15:44, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:32, R A Brown<r...@carolandray.plus.com> wrote:
>> ento-<-- Ýíôïò _entos_ (preposition) = within, inside
>
> åíôüò, oxytone, no?
OOPS!! Yes, of course. It's a disyllabic preposition, so
oxytone - (but paroxytone if a poet used it as a
postposition :)
-------------------------
On 20/10/2010 14:38, Tim Smith wrote:
> On 10/20/2010 6:32 AM, R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>>
>> Neither Greek word has an ellative or allative meaning;
>> they just mean
>> "inside" (inessive) - one being an adverb and the other a
>> preposition.
>>
>> The reason why you haven't been able to come up with a
>> difference in
>> meaning between the two prefixes is simple: there ain't
>> one :)
>>
>
> <delurk>
>
> Ray, I'm sure you're right about the point at issue. (I
> don't know enough about Greek to be entitled to an opinion.)
> But...
>
> <nitpick>
>
> I think both of you are misusing the terms "ellative" and
> "allative". The former isn't even a real word, AFAIK (it
> sounds to me like a conflation of "illative" and "elative"
> (see below)),
Nope - just a plain ol' misspelling. I intended to write
"elative".
[snip]
>
> My understanding is that these terms, as they are used in
> describing, e.g., Finnish, are members of a group of six
> "local cases" (that is, cases whose core meanings have to do
> with location). Within this group, there are two
> cross-cutting distinctions: "static" (referring to a
> stationary or ongoing location) vs. "dynamic" (referring to
> motion, either to or from a location), and "interior"
> (referring to location within some sort of enclosed or
> bounded space) vs. "exterior" (referring to location at
> either a dimensionless point or a general "place" without
> specific boundaries). The whole group is:
Quite correct.
I should more correctly have written: Neither Greek word
has an elative or illative meaning; they just mean "inside"
(inessive) - one being an adverb and the other a preposition.
>
> It sounds to me as if the terms you really want are
> "elative" and "illative".
Yes - thanks for pointing it out. It's best to get the terms
right otherwise people can get confused.
--
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".
--
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 (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Fight Linguistic Extinction
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" lao...@comcast.net
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 10:53 am ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mario Bonassin" <tar_sa...@yahoo.com>
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 2010 7:55:43 PM
Subject: Fight Linguistic Extinction
>I have recently found the images from the t-shirt that we did for this list
>back in 02'ish.
>I have put them up on my website and I'd like to gather the Name and Author
>of the different conlangs.
>So if you recognize your own handywork or that of someone else please let me
>know, I'd love to give you credit.
43 is Géarthnuns, my lang.
Caught up on 950 backlogged e-mails (ack!), I am
Kou
Messages in this topic (24)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 12:36 pm ((PDT))
So I decided I should finally get with the program and learn XSAMPA so
I can properly describe a new syllabary I'm working on. The problem
is, every resource I can find doesn't seem very complete from the
perspective of an English speaker with know prior knowledge of
phonology. For example, I've been through every XSAMPA chart I can
find looking for the vowel sound in the English words "lake", "rain",
"base", "fail", etc. It's a common enough sound, but I can find any
trace of it in the XSAMPA chart. From that I conclude that it must be
one of the many sounds for which they only give examples from French
and Urdu, assuming for some reason that I already know all about how
those other languages are pronounced. Either that or it one of those
they describe with alien-sounding words like "fricative" and "uvular".
If you detect a trace of frustration in my tone, it's because I can't
find anything on the Internet that talks about XSAMPA in plain English
that a non-linguist could understand. I see why language textbooks for
the general public never use IPA or SAMPA. Nobody but linguists
understands it. And they are, quite successfully, keeping it hidden
from the rest of us common folk!
Grrrrr!
--gary
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Andreas Johansson" andre...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 12:47 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 9:32 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> If you detect a trace of frustration in my tone, it's because I can't
> find anything on the Internet that talks about XSAMPA in plain English
> that a non-linguist could understand. I see why language textbooks for
> the general public never use IPA or SAMPA.
Tangential, but that seems to be an Anglospheric particularity. I had
textbooks using IPA since fourth grade (and no, I was no language
prodigy - rather the opposite - these were standard textbooks for
everyone).
As for the vowel in "rain", it doesn't turn up in the XSAMPA chart
because it's a composite sound (in most Englishes) that would be
written with two signs (one for the first part, one for the second
part). Details vary a bit depending on dialect, but it's [ej] or
thereabouts.
--
Andreas Johansson
Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" gwa...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 12:48 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So I decided I should finally get with the program and learn XSAMPA so
> I can properly describe a new syllabary I'm working on. The problem
> is, every resource I can find doesn't seem very complete from the
> perspective of an English speaker with know prior knowledge of
> phonology. For example, I've been through every XSAMPA chart I can
> find looking for the vowel sound in the English words "lake", "rain",
> "base", "fail", etc. It's a common enough sound, but I can find any
> trace of it in the XSAMPA chart. From that I conclude that it must be
> one of the many sounds for which they only give examples from French
> and Urdu, assuming for some reason that I already know all about how
> those other languages are pronounced. Either that or it one of those
> they describe with alien-sounding words like "fricative" and "uvular".
>
> If you detect a trace of frustration in my tone, it's because I can't
> find anything on the Internet that talks about XSAMPA in plain English
> that a non-linguist could understand. I see why language textbooks for
> the general public never use IPA or SAMPA. Nobody but linguists
> understands it. And they are, quite successfully, keeping it hidden
> from the rest of us common folk!
Learning the IPA before learning basic phonetics is putting the cart
before the horse, isn't it?
Anyway, the letter you're looking for is probably <e>, though the
sound in most dialects of English is properly a diphthong, /ej/.
Messages in this topic (19)
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3d. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" lao...@comcast.net
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 1:18 pm ((PDT))
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Shannon" <fizi...@gmail.com>
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 3:32:58 PM
Subject: XSAMPA question
The problem is, every resource I can find doesn't seem very complete from the
perspective of an English speaker with know prior knowledge of
phonology. For example, I've been through every XSAMPA chart I can
find looking for the vowel sound in the English words "lake", "rain",
"base", "fail", etc. It's a common enough sound, but I can find any
trace of it in the XSAMPA chart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMPA_chart_for_English
Grrrrr!
Breathe! :)
Kou
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:23 pm ((PDT))
Thank you! That chart actually makes sense to me. So of course the
Wiki discussion on the chart is that it should be removed because the
other SAMPA chart, the one I couldn't understand, already covers it.
Go figure. Someone puts up something that's actually useful to the
common man and the linguists lobby against it! More proof of their
conspiracy to keep everyone else in the dark. ;-) (just kidding, of
course)
--gary
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Douglas Koller <lao...@comcast.net> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gary Shannon" <fizi...@gmail.com>
> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 3:32:58 PM
> Subject: XSAMPA question
>
> The problem is, every resource I can find doesn't seem very complete from the
> perspective of an English speaker with know prior knowledge of
> phonology. For example, I've been through every XSAMPA chart I can
> find looking for the vowel sound in the English words "lake", "rain",
> "base", "fail", etc. It's a common enough sound, but I can find any
> trace of it in the XSAMPA chart.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMPA_chart_for_English
>
> Grrrrr!
>
> Breathe! :)
>
> Kou
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3f. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" j_mach_w...@yahoo.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:24 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:32:58 -0700, Gary Shannon wrote:
>If you detect a trace of frustration in my tone, it's because I can't
>find anything on the Internet that talks about XSAMPA in plain English
>that a non-linguist could understand. I see why language textbooks for
>the general public never use IPA or SAMPA. Nobody but linguists
>understands it. And they are, quite successfully, keeping it hidden
>from the rest of us common folk!
XSAMPA indeed is just as esoteric as normal IPA (it really is all of IPA but
in another code). If you're looking for something more user-friendly, you'll
want plain SAMPA, as from the original SAMPA home page which uses readily
usable English sample words (this corresponds to that 4th grade textbook IPA
Andreas Johansson has mentioned):
SAMPA for English:
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/english.htm
SAMPA for American English:
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/american.htm
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3g. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" lars.fin...@ortygia.no
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:25 pm ((PDT))
Den 20. okt. 2010 kl. 23.15 skreiv Gary Shannon:
> Well, anyway...
> Every time I wade into the deep and muddy waters of phonology I become
> more convinced that mouth noises are the least significant aspect of
> language. Granted, its vital for the study of dialects, but hardly
> necessary for the study of LANGUAGE. After all, I can converse with
> people from Brisbane, New Delhi, Boston, Dallas, Berlin, and London
> using the same LANGUAGE even though we all make utterly different
> mouth noises in doing so. So the distinctions made by phonologists are
> a feature of DIALECT, but utterly irrelevant to LANGUAGE.
>
> (Thus endeth my annual rant on the uselessness of phonology, although
> I think my 2004 annual anti-phonology rant titled "Obsessed with Mouth
> Noises" still stands as the classic expression of my opinion on the
> subject: http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?
> A2=ind0404B&L=CONLANG&D=0&P=11611)
> :)
Where is the "like" button!?
:-) LEF
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3h. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:25 pm ((PDT))
On Oct 20, 2010, at 2â15 PM, Gary Shannon wrote:
> (Thus endeth my annual rant on the uselessness of phonology, although
> I think my 2004 annual anti-phonology rant titled "Obsessed with Mouth
> Noises" still stands as the classic expression of my opinion on the
> subject:
> http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404B&L=CONLANG&D=0&P=11611)
> :)
It's as inaccurate now as it was then. Look forward to next year's! ~:D
-David
*******************************************************************
"Sunlü eleškarez ügrallerüf üjjixelye ye oxömeyze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.com/
LCS Member Since 2007
http://conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (19)
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3i. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Arthaey Angosii" arth...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:39 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> decidedly NOT composite. It is a very pure, unchanging vowel sound.
> (There is NO similarity in the pronunciations of "brain" and "brine"
> where the "i" in "brine" is clearly composite.).
I speak Californian English, and I can definitely hear the difference
between the /ej/ in "brain" and, say, the /e/ in Spanish /beso/. The
Englishes I'm familiar with don't have a pure /e/.
You're right that "brine" is different -- it's a separate diphthong
altogether: /Aj/.
I remember when I first started studying phonetics for my Linguistics
minor, having to unlearn some incorrect assumptions I'd made about my
native language. Good luck!
--
AA
Messages in this topic (19)
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3j. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 2:52 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:42 PM, Andreas Johansson <andre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 9:32 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As for the vowel in "rain", it doesn't turn up in the XSAMPA chart
> because it's a composite sound (in most Englishes) that would be
> written with two signs (one for the first part, one for the second
> part). Details vary a bit depending on dialect, but it's [ej] or
> thereabouts.
I can hear its composite nature in UK English, and perhaps in some
American New England dialects, (And it seems more like a glide using
three sounds in Australian English) but where I was raised (Michigan)
and spent my adulthood (Los Angeles and various parts of Oregon) it is
decidedly NOT composite. It is a very pure, unchanging vowel sound.
(There is NO similarity in the pronunciations of "brain" and "brine"
where the "i" in "brine" is clearly composite.).
Well, anyway...
Every time I wade into the deep and muddy waters of phonology I become
more convinced that mouth noises are the least significant aspect of
language. Granted, its vital for the study of dialects, but hardly
necessary for the study of LANGUAGE. After all, I can converse with
people from Brisbane, New Delhi, Boston, Dallas, Berlin, and London
using the same LANGUAGE even though we all make utterly different
mouth noises in doing so. So the distinctions made by phonologists are
a feature of DIALECT, but utterly irrelevant to LANGUAGE.
(Thus endeth my annual rant on the uselessness of phonology, although
I think my 2004 annual anti-phonology rant titled "Obsessed with Mouth
Noises" still stands as the classic expression of my opinion on the
subject:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404B&L=CONLANG&D=0&P=11611)
:)
--gary
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3k. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:05 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Arthaey Angosii <arth...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> decidedly NOT composite. It is a very pure, unchanging vowel sound.
>> (There is NO similarity in the pronunciations of "brain" and "brine"
>> where the "i" in "brine" is clearly composite.).
>
> I speak Californian English, and I can definitely hear the difference
> between the /ej/ in "brain" and, say, the /e/ in Spanish /beso/. The
> Englishes I'm familiar with don't have a pure /e/.
>
> You're right that "brine" is different -- it's a separate diphthong
> altogether: /Aj/.
>
> I remember when I first started studying phonetics for my Linguistics
> minor, having to unlearn some incorrect assumptions I'd made about my
> native language. Good luck!
OK. I'll concede the point on "brain". If I listen real hard I hear a
hint of very slight trace of the subtle influence of an almost
present, but not quite actually spoken additional vowel sound. If,
that is, I use my imagination. ;-)
Here's another conundrum. My syllabary has the "O" sound in "toe",
"slow", "know" the way to "go", and the English SAMPA chart has "no"
as "aU or o", but it has "law, caught" as "o or A". First of all,
"caught" does not have the same vowel as "father", like the chart
claims, and neither does "no" have the same vowel as "law". So I'm
utterly confused as to which SAMPA symbol is the vowel in "toe". None
of them seems to be that vowel. Not if the same vowel is supposedly in
"law", "caught" and "father".
All things considered, I think I'm going to stick with the old-school
"Berliz" method of spelling out pronunciation like
"pro-nun-see-AY-shun". Not only can I understand that, but the average
non-linguist would have no trouble with it. And if I want to share my
conlang with anyone else most of the anyone elses in the world are not
linguists, so I should share using the means of communication held in
common by the largest segment of my potential audience, which
definitely is not IPA or SAMPA.
--gary
Messages in this topic (19)
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3l. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "p...@phillipdriscoll.com" p...@phillipdriscoll.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:27 pm ((PDT))
Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> Here's another conundrum. My syllabary has the "O" sound in "toe",
> "slow", "know" the way to "go", and the English SAMPA chart has "no"
> as "aU or o", but it has "law, caught" as "o or A". First of all,
> "caught" does not have the same vowel as "father", like the chart
> claims, and neither does "no" have the same vowel as "law". So I'm
> utterly confused as to which SAMPA symbol is the vowel in "toe". None
> of them seems to be that vowel. Not if the same vowel is supposedly in
> "law", "caught" and "father".
Â
Â
One of the problems with a phonemic spelling for English
is the many mergers which differ between English dialects.
As one of your examples, in some dialects (especially the
southern United States), "caught" sounds the same as "cot"
although the two are distinct in most others.
Â
--Ph. D.
Â
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3m. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" j_mach_w...@yahoo.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:44 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:03:28 -0700, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Here's another conundrum. My syllabary has the "O" sound in "toe",
>"slow", "know" the way to "go", and the English SAMPA chart has "no"
>as "aU or o", but it has "law, caught" as "o or A".
Wrong. SAMPA distinguishes uppercase and lowercase. SAMPA "o" is only and
used for the (American) sound of "toe slow know go" etc, not for the sound
of "law caught". If SAMPA were what you appearently think it is, it were
indeed stupid and of no use. But it is not what you think it is, but it is
well though-of and may serve as a handy tool for describing the different
phonemic mergers of different varieties of English.
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (19)
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3n. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Jeff Sheets" sheets.j...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:12 pm ((PDT))
I'm intrigued that nobody suggested this (or anything similar), but I find
the following resource remarkably useful in knowing how various IPA (and
thus, SAMPA, XSAMPA, and CXS) letters are pronounced. I wouldn't know many
of the more obscure sounds if not for this stuff:
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/consonants.html
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/vowels.html
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/nonpulmonics.html
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/diacritics.html
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/suprasegmentals.html
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/diphthongs.html
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/othersymbols.html
And finally, to make transcription into an ASCII character set possible, I
suggest the following site to go from IPA letters, diacritics, and other
modifiers, to Conlang's special variant of XSAMPA:
http://www.theiling.de/ipa/
Fundamentally, playing around with the above sites should be a great help to
anyone trying to learn IPA, so that you actually represent your sounds in a
neutral environment, rather than the very dialect centric concepts of word
examples from English and other languages.
I am sure other conlangers may have additional sources of audio for
different IPA characters, to further clarify the sounds represented.
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3o. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:44 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 17:20:33 -0400, J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_w...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
>XSAMPA indeed is just as esoteric as normal IPA (it really is all of IPA but
>in another code). If you're looking for something more user-friendly, you'll
>want plain SAMPA, as from the original SAMPA home page which uses readily
>usable English sample words (this corresponds to that 4th grade textbook IPA
>Andreas Johansson has mentioned):
I would emphasise, though, that
- strictly speaking, SAMPA is useless to describe a conlang, since the SAMPA
standard is only defined for a particular set of languages and the
assignment of symbols to sounds is conflicting between the various languages.
- X-SAMPA is very close to a superset of (each of the) SAMPA(s) anyway.
I say just go with the table Kou found, it's a good 'un.
On Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:15:49 -0700, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Well, anyway...
>Every time I wade into the deep and muddy waters of phonology I become
>more convinced that mouth noises are the least significant aspect of
>language. Granted, its vital for the study of dialects, but hardly
>necessary for the study of LANGUAGE. After all, I can converse with
>people from Brisbane, New Delhi, Boston, Dallas, Berlin, and London
>using the same LANGUAGE even though we all make utterly different
>mouth noises in doing so. So the distinctions made by phonologists are
>a feature of DIALECT, but utterly irrelevant to LANGUAGE.
>
>(Thus endeth my annual rant on the uselessness of phonology, although
>I think my 2004 annual anti-phonology rant titled "Obsessed with Mouth
>Noises" still stands as the classic expression of my opinion on the
>subject:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0404B&L=CONLANG&D=0&P=11611)
> :)
The problem is that you aren't really talking about phonology at all!
You're talking about *phonetics*.
The way linguists use "phonology" nowadays, it's independent of any
particular medium: sign languages have phonologies, e.g. And it's not about
how you pronounce the particular unit of your language, but about how these
units vary in various contexts, and what their combinatory rules are, and so
forth. Phonology cares about things like allophony and phonotactics, which
in their purest form are just structural, combinatorial phenomena.
It's kinda the nature of diachronic change that anything that's supposed to
be an old human language in any mode of communication -- signed,
written-only, expressed in Lego bricks, whatever -- will have phonological
rules. It will have adaptations that were made at one point for ease of
articulation or because of misperception or whatever, that then became
pervasive in the population, and then later become baked into the language
as rules for which units change into which other in what context.
How tongues and glottises work is phonetics, it's a red herring. And if in
city X the green Lego bricks are forest green while in city Y they're lime
green, that's again phonetics! But if there's no legal word that sticks one
brick onto another attached on just one bump with an odd off-kilter angle,
that's phonology.
I recommend you read the recent 'Broad or narrow usage of "phonology"'
thread, which is more or less about this distinction:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind1010a&L=conlang&T=0&F=&S=&P=22157
et seq.
Alex
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3p. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 5:05 pm ((PDT))
I understand your frustration, but I wouldn't give up. IPA (and its cousin,
X-SAMPA) has a lot of value if you want to be unambiguous about the sounds
of a language.
I'm a native English speaker, and your example of phonetic spelling ala
Bertliz isn't transparent to me. "pro-nun-see-AY-shun" is clear only
because I know the word it's supposed to be. But if I didn't, I wouldn't be
sure if AY represented /aj/ as in "fight" or /ej/ as in "fate." And "pro"
"nun" and "shun" are only clear because they're words with their own
pronunciations I can borrow. With the Berlitz system, how can you ever
represent a non-English sound? "A little bit like a k but softer" is nearly
useless.
Finally, using English phonetic spelling to represent the sounds in a word
traps you into unintentional anglo-centricisms. For example, how do you
spell the unrounded-o of German? In English phonetic spelling, you're going
to end up with writing in a pronounced English accent in any conlang you
apply it to. Less so with IPA or X-SAMPA.
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Arthaey Angosii <arth...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> decidedly NOT composite. It is a very pure, unchanging vowel sound.
> >> (There is NO similarity in the pronunciations of "brain" and "brine"
> >> where the "i" in "brine" is clearly composite.).
> >
> > I speak Californian English, and I can definitely hear the difference
> > between the /ej/ in "brain" and, say, the /e/ in Spanish /beso/. The
> > Englishes I'm familiar with don't have a pure /e/.
> >
> > You're right that "brine" is different -- it's a separate diphthong
> > altogether: /Aj/.
> >
> > I remember when I first started studying phonetics for my Linguistics
> > minor, having to unlearn some incorrect assumptions I'd made about my
> > native language. Good luck!
>
> OK. I'll concede the point on "brain". If I listen real hard I hear a
> hint of very slight trace of the subtle influence of an almost
> present, but not quite actually spoken additional vowel sound. If,
> that is, I use my imagination. ;-)
>
> Here's another conundrum. My syllabary has the "O" sound in "toe",
> "slow", "know" the way to "go", and the English SAMPA chart has "no"
> as "aU or o", but it has "law, caught" as "o or A". First of all,
> "caught" does not have the same vowel as "father", like the chart
> claims, and neither does "no" have the same vowel as "law". So I'm
> utterly confused as to which SAMPA symbol is the vowel in "toe". None
> of them seems to be that vowel. Not if the same vowel is supposedly in
> "law", "caught" and "father".
>
> All things considered, I think I'm going to stick with the old-school
> "Berliz" method of spelling out pronunciation like
> "pro-nun-see-AY-shun". Not only can I understand that, but the average
> non-linguist would have no trouble with it. And if I want to share my
> conlang with anyone else most of the anyone elses in the world are not
> linguists, so I should share using the means of communication held in
> common by the largest segment of my potential audience, which
> definitely is not IPA or SAMPA.
>
> --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 (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3q. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" lars.fin...@ortygia.no
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 5:52 pm ((PDT))
Den 21. okt. 2010 kl. 01.55 skreiv Patrick Dunn:
> I'm a native English speaker, and your example of phonetic spelling
> ala
> Bertliz isn't transparent to me. "pro-nun-see-AY-shun" is clear only
> because I know the word it's supposed to be. But if I didn't, I
> wouldn't be sure if AY represented /aj/ as in "fight" or /ej/ as in
> "fate." And "pro" "nun" and "shun" are only clear because they're
> words with their own pronunciations I can borrow. With the Berlitz
> system, how can you ever represent a non-English sound? "A little
> bit like a k but softer" is nearly useless.
It's much more useful than IPA or SAMPA for the vast majority of
readers, even if readers of conlang pages may be assumed to have more
knowledge of phonetic codes on the average than the general public.
The best approach perhaps is to do it both ways. Many sciences can be
described quite well in non-technical terms, why not language?
LEF
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3r. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 6:10 pm ((PDT))
::shrugs:: I suppose I disagree, but I'm not going to tell someone they're
conlanging wrong. :) That'd be pretty ridiculous. It's already a crazy
hobby.
I just find it irksome when I'm reading a grammar and it tells me, as one
once did, that a vowel sound "is a bit like the sound made by a person
sinking into a comfortable chair after a hard day." To this day, I
pronounce one of the French e vowels as "Oooofa, damn my feet hurt."
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Lars Finsen <lars.fin...@ortygia.no> wrote:
> Den 21. okt. 2010 kl. 01.55 skreiv Patrick Dunn:
>
>
> I'm a native English speaker, and your example of phonetic spelling ala
>> Bertliz isn't transparent to me. "pro-nun-see-AY-shun" is clear only
>> because I know the word it's supposed to be. But if I didn't, I wouldn't
>> be sure if AY represented /aj/ as in "fight" or /ej/ as in "fate." And
>> "pro" "nun" and "shun" are only clear because they're words with their own
>> pronunciations I can borrow. With the Berlitz system, how can you ever
>> represent a non-English sound? "A little bit like a k but softer" is nearly
>> useless.
>>
>
> It's much more useful than IPA or SAMPA for the vast majority of readers,
> even if readers of conlang pages may be assumed to have more knowledge of
> phonetic codes on the average than the general public. The best approach
> perhaps is to do it both ways. Many sciences can be described quite well in
> non-technical terms, why not language?
>
> LEF
>
--
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 (19)
________________________________________________________________________
3s. Re: XSAMPA question
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 7:18 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> First of all,
> "caught" does not have the same vowel as "father", like the chart
> claims, and neither does "no" have the same vowel as "law".
>
It all depends, as someone else pointed out, on dialect. For me "caught,"
"father," and "law" all have the same vowel. "No" doesn't. And "hate" and
"fail" have different vowels.
> All things considered, I think I'm going to stick with the old-school
> "Berliz" method of spelling out pronunciation like
> "pro-nun-see-AY-shun". Not only can I understand that, but the average
> non-linguist would have no trouble with it.
>
Yes. That is easy. Because you grew up with it. That and the system used
in American dictionaries. (Do UK/Commonwealth dictionaries use IPA or the
system of funny hats?)
> And if I want to share my
> conlang with anyone else most of the anyone elses in the world are not
> linguists, so I should share using the means of communication held in
> common by the largest segment of my potential audience, which
> definitely is not IPA or SAMPA.
>
And unless they grew up in the US (or another country [if there are any]
that uses this system) they will have absolutely NO idea what you are
talking about. Most of the world uses IPA in dictionaries from early
elementary education on. You will reach a much larger audience by using
IPA. It's like themetric system -- we are the odd ones out.
Adam
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (19)
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________________________________________________________________________
4a. for those who collect grammars: Chemehuevi
Posted by: "Wm Annis" wm.an...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:10 pm ((PDT))
In the 1970s Margaret Press did research on the Chemehuevi
language:
http://www.chemehuevilanguage.org/
That site has her dissertation, a monograph (Chemehuevi: A
Grammar and Lexicon) and some field recordings. Most
surprising to me, it has large PDFs with scans of her field
notes.
--
wm
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: for those who collect grammars: Chemehuevi
Posted by: "David Peterson" deda...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:24 pm ((PDT))
My goodness! What a wonderful resource! Thanks for sharing!
On Oct 20, 2010, at 3â52 PM, Wm Annis wrote:
> In the 1970s Margaret Press did research on the Chemehuevi
> language:
>
> http://www.chemehuevilanguage.org/
>
> That site has her dissertation, a monograph (Chemehuevi: A
> Grammar and Lexicon) and some field recordings. Most
> surprising to me, it has large PDFs with scans of her field
> notes.
-David
*******************************************************************
"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."
-Jim Morrison
http://dedalvs.com/
LCS Member Since 2007
http://conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Through the Language Glass - A Conlanger's Review
Posted by: "Donald Boozer" donaldboo...@yahoo.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:21 pm ((PDT))
I've posted a review of Guy Deutscher's new book on The Conlanging Librarian
blog: http://library.conlang.org/blog/?p=413 Feel free to share your thoughts
on the book and/or the review there.
Thanks,
Don
http://library.conlang.org
Twitter: @FiatLingua
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: Through the Language Glass - A Conlanger's Review
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Oct 20, 2010 5:55 pm ((PDT))
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Donald Boozer <donaldboo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've posted a review of Guy Deutscher's new book on The Conlanging Librarian
> blog: http://library.conlang.org/blog/?p=413 Feel free to share your thoughts
> on the book and/or the review there.
I'm reposting my blog comment here, as well, as I have a question for the list.
Don wrote:
>>Alternatively, a conlang that attempts to be akin to natural languages would
>>be more than likely to have grammatical gender.
According to WALS ( http://wals.info/feature/31 ), only about 44% of
the languages in their sample have any kind of gender system; and of
those, about 75% have sex-based gender. Im not sure offhand how WALS
sample languages from different families; if they have one language
from each sub-family of large and well-documented families like
Indo-European, that could heavily bias the sample toward sex-based
gender (and toward gender in general) compared to if they have one
language per family, period.
Anyway, I agree that unusual gender systems are a cool thing to see in
a naturalistic artlang. David Petersons Zhyler has a good one. The
non-naturalistic collaborative artlang Naeso has IRC-based pronominal
gender, with distinctions based on whether an addressed or mentioned
person is new to a chat channel or has been participating for a while,
whether theyre a regular or infrequent visitor or never online; but
so far theres no gender on nouns. (
http://wiki.frath.net/Naeso/Grammar#IRC-oriented_singular_pronouns )
Now the questions:
1. WALS says that all of the non-sex-based gender systems in their
sample are based in some way on animacy -- usually, however many
genders the system has, there's one or a few classes that contain
humans, or humans and animals, or something similar, with perhaps
sessile animals, plants, inanimate objects and so forth assigned to
other genders. Does anyone have a conlang (or know of a natlang)
which has a gender system completely orthogonal to animacy? E.g.,
maybe "easily portable objects", vs "heavy or unwieldy objects" vs.
"intangibles or abstract concepts"? Words for small children would
typically be in one class, older children and adults in the second,
and ghosts in the third, and similarly for various kinds of animals,
plants, and inanimate objects.
2. How common is it to have pronoun gender without noun gender? As
far as I can tell at a quick skim, WALS features 30-32 talk only about
noun gender as evidenced by agreement of other word classes with nouns
of different types. Engelangs and auxlangs in particular seem apt to
have pronoun gender without noun gender, but I'm not sure it's
unnatural per se, though it seems uncommon. English has pronoun
gender with only faint vestiges of noun gender (e.g., calling ships
"she" and having different sex-based agentive nominalizations such as
"actor" and "actress" (many pairs like "aviator" and "aviatrix" have
lost the feminine version, making the masculine version epicene in
current English)).
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (2)
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