There are 23 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Diversity in conlang families
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2a. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
From: Jim Henry
2b. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
From: David McCann
2c. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
From: Gary Shannon
2d. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
From: Roger Mills
2e. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
From: Roger Mills
2f. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
From: Roger Mills
3a. Re: Filling in gaps, vocabulary auto-generation, and a research idea
From: Gary Shannon
3b. Re: Filling in gaps, vocabulary auto-generation, and a research idea
From: Logan Kearsley
3c. Re: Filling in gaps, vocabulary auto-generation, and a research idea
From: Alex Fink
4a. Re: Article Frequency
From: Logan Kearsley
4b. Re: Article Frequency
From: Alex Fink
5a. Toward an understanding of serial verbs
From: Patrick Dunn
5b. Re: Toward an understanding of serial verbs
From: Lars Finsen
5c. Re: Toward an understanding of serial verbs
From: Leland Kusmer
5d. Re: Toward an understanding of serial verbs
From: Patrick Dunn
6a. 30-Day Conlang: Day 22
From: Gary Shannon
6b. Re: 30-Day Conlang: Day 22
From: Matthew Boutilier
7a. what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
From: Daniel Bowman
7b. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
From: masukomi
7c. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
From: Eric Christopherson
7d. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
From: Garth Wallace
7e. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Messages
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1. Diversity in conlang families
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 7:48 am ((PST))
Hallo!
To those who build families of related diachronic conlangs:
How much diversity do you build into your families? Do you just use
the same morphosyntactic structure and build languages differing only
in terms of sound changes, such that you could translate between your
conlangs almost morpheme by morpheme (natlang example: Vedic and
Avestan)? Or do you throw in as much typological diversity as seems
plausible to you, such that almost every major language type is
represented in the family? Or do you follow a middle road between
these extremes?
What regards me, I plan for different degrees of typological diversity
in my main conlang family. So far, I concentrate on one language, Old
Albic, in its classical form; that language will have several dialects
that show different phonological developments, but are otherwise very
similar. The modern Albic languages, descending from various Old Albic
dialects, will be more diverse. But then, Albic is part of a larger
stock I call Hesperic, and that will be very diverse. It is pretty
much in the idea-collecting stage, but I will have different word
orders (all three of VSO, SVO and SOV will be found), morphosyntactic
alignments (accusative, ergative, active-stative, split systems and
also some topic-prominent languages), morphological types (isolating,
agglutinating, fusional, even polysynthetic), all developed from a
single common ancestor.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
Messages in this topic (1)
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2a. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 8:34 am ((PST))
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 2:12 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The test of that would be to take some e-texts of books originally
> written in languages other than English and compare words counts in
> the original to word counts in the English translations.
>
> Just out of curiosity I jumped over the the project Gutenberg page and
> did a quick spot check:
>
> Project Gutenberg etext of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
> 138,750 words in original French
> 143,147 words in English translation
> English translation is 3% more words.
Which English translation were you doing a word-count of? The 1873
translation was heavily abridged; if in spite of that it is still
longer than the French original, that argues for an expansion in
verbosity much greater than 3% (but how much it's hard to be sure).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_the_Sea#Translations
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
CONLANG the Movie has only until 30 November on its Kickstarter pledge drive:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/462792628/conlang-special-limited-edition-dvd
Messages in this topic (12)
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2b. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:13 am ((PST))
On Sun, 2010-11-21 at 22:49 -0800, Garth Wallace wrote:
> AIUI it's usually true that a passage in one language will end up
> longer when translated into another, unless the passage was
> specifically written to take advantage of features in the target
> language. Mainly because the source language will have ways of making
> certain things brief that aren't found in the target language, so
> longer circumlocutions will have to be employed to get the meaning
> across, and text written in the source language is unlikely to rely on
> things that the target language is good at making brief.
I've just compared the first 20 chapters of Austen's Sense and
Sensibility with a French version at Project Gutenberg, and there is a
17% increase. That's interesting, compared with the 3% increase in
turning Verne into English. Of course, a lot depends on the skill of the
translator. As Mona Baker said in her textbook, it's an elementary, if
common, mistake to assume that everything in the source has to wind up
in the target.
I'd always assumed, perhaps naively, that the increased length of
English translations of the Classics was due to the greater concision of
Latin and Greek. It would be interesting to compare Winnie the Pooh with
Winnie ille Pu, but I only have the Latin on hand and PG doesn't have
the book. On reflection, I'd still expect English to be bulkier because
of the lower level of synthesis. Perhaps we should be comparing the
number of characters rather than words (obviously our editors won't
count morphemes).
Messages in this topic (12)
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2c. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:17 am ((PST))
I wasn't aware that there were translations of that book that are
significantly different. I just picked the first French eText and the
first English eText and compared their word counts.
But like I pointed out earlier, it would take a much larger sample
involving many other books and as many different original v.
translation language pairs as possible to draw any firm conclusions.
--gary
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 8:25 AM, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 2:12 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The test of that would be to take some e-texts of books originally
>> written in languages other than English and compare words counts in
>> the original to word counts in the English translations.
>>
>> Just out of curiosity I jumped over the the project Gutenberg page and
>> did a quick spot check:
>>
>> Project Gutenberg etext of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
>> 138,750 words in original French
>> 143,147 words in English translation
>> English translation is 3% more words.
>
> Which English translation were you doing a word-count of? The 1873
> translation was heavily abridged; if in spite of that it is still
> longer than the French original, that argues for an expansion in
> verbosity much greater than 3% (but how much it's hard to be sure).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_the_Sea#Translations
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
> CONLANG the Movie has only until 30 November on its Kickstarter pledge drive:
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/462792628/conlang-special-limited-edition-dvd
>
Messages in this topic (12)
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2d. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 11:28 am ((PST))
Messages in this topic (12)
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2e. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:22 pm ((PST))
Sorry about the boo-boo blank msg.
I just did a quick morpheme and word count of a relatively short paragraph in
my LoCoWriMo story. There was only a little bit of dialogue, which would tend
to eliminate certain morphemes--
Kash: 48 words, 86 morphemes (or 90, if I were to count certain compounds
differently, e.g. _tati_ 'nor' = ta 'not' + iti 'or' 1 or 2?, kañavumut
'police' = kaN 'nominalizer' + yavu 'to guard' + umut 'public' 2
(noml.+yavumut) or 3? -- not sure that tati would be considered a "transparent"
compound; but I think the 'police' word would be.) Another possible error: I
counted pfx. mi- 'we' as 1, should it be 2? 1per.+plural?? I think so; but IIRC
there was only 1 occurrence here.
86/48 = 1.79 mpw, 90/48 = l.875 mpw
English: 67 words, 98 morphemes. I counted the irreg. past tense forms as 2,
e.g. could = can+past, was = be+past (actually maybe should be 3, to include
singular; then _were_ (counted as 2) would also be 3, to include plural. Or
not? what think you?
98/67 = l.72 mpw
The next paragraph is much longer, but I got tired.......maybe later.
Messages in this topic (12)
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2f. Re: Readability scores for conlangs?
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 3:30 pm ((PST))
I've done another word count, with revisions. In Kash, I call the 3s ya- verbal
pfx. = 2 morphemes, not one as before. Similarly the mi- pfx '1pl' = 2. I'm
beginning to think I should have included _case_ with some(all?) of the nouns,
perhaps _nominative_(evem though it's unmarked in all nouns), and some
accusatives of neuters-- even though neut.nom/acc is unmarked, still neut.nouns
are accusative by position after some prepositions. I did count _dative,
genitive_, and of course plurals.
Major revisions in the English: "I" is now = 2 morphemes (should probably be
3-- 1-sing + nominative; "me" is 3, 1-sing-obl. Similarly, was/were are now 3
be+past+sing/pl, and similarly is/are =3, be-pres-sing/pl. Is this legit?? The
case problem seems only to affect pronouns in Engl.
Plus I've now done both paragraphs, for a total of 212 Kash words and 342
morphemes (or 348 including doubtful compounds), 268 Engl. words and 392 (or
394) morphemes. (In the first go-round I added up the Kash words of the 1st
para. incorrectly, and I mistakenly computed the MPW for Eng., should have been
1.46 :-(((( ) Perhaps someone who actually knows how to count morphemes can
advise me..........
This now works out to Kash 342/212 = 1.61 mpw
Engl. 391/268 = 1.46 mpw.
If anyone wants to check or revise my figures, I can send you the work-sheet;
it's too complicated to put online I think (beyond my ability and/or patience
at the mo.) But given my apparent inability to count/add/divide correctly it
might be an exercise in futility.
-------------------------------------------------
--- On Mon, 11/22/10, Roger Mills <romi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I just did a quick morpheme and word count of a relatively
> short paragraph in my LoCoWriMo story. There was only a
> little bit of dialogue, which would tend to eliminate
> certain morphemes--
>
> Kash: 48 words, 86 morphemes (or 90, if I were to count
> certain compounds differently, e.g. _tati_ 'nor' = ta 'not'
> + iti 'or' 1 or 2?, kañavumut 'police' = kaN
> 'nominalizer' + yavu 'to guard' + umut 'public' 2
> (noml.+yavumut) or 3? -- not sure that tati would be
> considered a "transparent" compound; but I think the
> 'police' word would be.) Another possible error: I counted
> pfx. mi- 'we' as 1, should it be 2? 1per.+plural?? I think
> so; but IIRC there was only 1 occurrence here.
> 86/48 = 1.79 mpw, 90/48 = l.875 mpw
>
> English: 67 words, 98 morphemes. I counted the irreg. past
> tense forms as 2, e.g. could = can+past, was = be+past
> (actually maybe should be 3, to include singular; then
> _were_ (counted as 2) would also be 3, to include plural. Or
> not? what think you?
> 98/67 = l.72 mpw
>
> The next paragraph is much longer, but I got
> tired.......maybe later.
>
>
>
>
Messages in this topic (12)
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3a. Re: Filling in gaps, vocabulary auto-generation, and a research idea
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:13 am ((PST))
It's not really a "derivational system", but I once compiled a list of
ways one kind of word can be derived from another. It's at
http://fiziwig.com/conlang/functions.txt I came up with about 250 or
so possible derivational relationships between two words.
--gary
On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 9:50 AM, Logan Kearsley <chronosur...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Say you have a derivational system- doesn't have to be regular, just
> some set of grammatical or semantic categories that get widely applied
> in your language so that you can define groups of words that have the
> same "basic meaning" and just vary in these categories.
>
> Wouldn't it be useful to set up your dictionary so that every time you
> added a word, you would tell it what categories it goes in, and then
> the dictionary would automatically generate a table of all the related
> words? Looking at gaps in the table then tells you where you might
> want to add some additional vocabulary.
>
> If you have a regular derivational system, then you could go a step
> further and tell the dictionary what the derivational rules are (maybe
> in the form of regexes), and have it automatically fill in gaps in the
> table (possibly with a basic auto-generated definition as well).
>
> Now, the research idea- you could take a really generic classification
> system, like the decomposition of verbs in Rick Morneau's _Lexical
> Semantics_, and make a multi-lingual dictionary to compare how much of
> the table gets filled and where the gaps are for a bunch of different
> languages.
>
> Is there software that can do that kind of thing, or should I go write
> it myself?
>
> -l.
>
Messages in this topic (5)
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3b. Re: Filling in gaps, vocabulary auto-generation, and a research idea
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:27 am ((PST))
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 5:58 AM, Matthew Martin
<matthewdeanmar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> re: word generation
>
> I'm not entirely sure I understood your question. It certainly is a good
> idea to
> machine generate the various possibilities that a derivational system is
> capable of-- and it isn't very hard. I've manually done the same thing with
> toki pona--GZB has some entries in it's dictionary that are marked "machine
> generated"
The question is, is there a generic piece of dictionary-building
software already in existence that would let me put in some words and
a set of derivational rules and auto-generate all of the derivations
for every word that I put in for me (and possibly tag the ones that
don't have human-verified definitions yet).
> The hard part is deciding what the heck the results mean. In toki pona, you
> can attach all possible 100 odd modifiers to kala (fish) and about 20% seem
> immediately meaningful, implying things like oysters or flying fish. The other
> 80% are suggestive of nothing (what sort of fish is the smart-fish?). On the
> otherhand, the same experiment with the word sona (knowlege) is much more
> productive and has fewer gaps. There is probably a similar story with
> English,
> when you attach un-, -ly, -ment, -ish to words, some are much more
> productive than others, but there isn't a machine way to tell in advance if
> unfroglymentish mean anything or not.
The difficulty can vary depending on what kinds of derivations you
have; some are less ambiguous than others. But you'd reasonably retain
the option of having a human verify or clarify the computer's
suggestions.
> Btw, if you are going to do this on a computer, you can do do it with a single
> line of SQL using cross joins, one of the rare cases when a cross join is
> really
> useful.
Maybe I'm just being dense, but I don't see how that works. Does SQL
do regex replacements or something and I wasn't aware of it?
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not really a "derivational system", but I once compiled a list of
> ways one kind of word can be derived from another. It's at
> http://fiziwig.com/conlang/functions.txt I came up with about 250 or
> so possible derivational relationships between two words.
Oo, neat. That's be really useful for the "research idea"- building a
complete derivational table for one language for some standard set of
derivational operations, and comparing it to the equivalent tables for
a bunch of other languages, to see where they overlap and where they
don't.
-l.
Messages in this topic (5)
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3c. Re: Filling in gaps, vocabulary auto-generation, and a research idea
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:06 am ((PST))
On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:20:38 -0700, Logan Kearsley <chronosur...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 10:05 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's not really a "derivational system", but I once compiled a list of
>> ways one kind of word can be derived from another. It's at
>> http://fiziwig.com/conlang/functions.txt I came up with about 250 or
>> so possible derivational relationships between two words.
>
>Oo, neat. That's be really useful for the "research idea"- building a
>complete derivational table for one language for some standard set of
>derivational operations, and comparing it to the equivalent tables for
>a bunch of other languages, to see where they overlap and where they
>don't.
If resources of that form are helpful, Jim Henry's made one too:
http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_derivation_methods
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
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4a. Re: Article Frequency
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 9:22 am ((PST))
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 12:01 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The raw frequencies of "the" and "a/an" are easy. Just run a script
> against any decent corpus. (I have several corpora (each > 1 million
> words) that I can run for you if I knew exactly what you are looking
> for. All together the three words "the, a, an" account for 8.71% of
> all words in the average English text.)
>
> The frequency of the zero article (by which I assume you mean no
> article at all) is harder since a simple script cannot count something
> that isn't there. Also many noun phrases could have quantifiers in
> addition to other determiners and/or adjectival phrases like "this",
> "that", "these", "those", "my", "Henry's", "The boy next door's
> scruffy little...", etc. which all replace the article.
>
> If by relative frequency you mean what percentage of noun phrases
> include an article, that's also difficult programatically since it
> requires correctly tagging all the words in each sentence, unless you
> have a tagged corpus to work from.
>
> If by relative frequency you mean what percentage of all articles are
> "a/an" as opposed to what percentage are "the", that's also easy.
> 28.8% are "a/an" and 71.2% are "the". (that's from a balanced 1.2
> million word corpus from assorted sources.)
I mean what percentage of all noun phrases have "a/an" as opposed to
"the" as opposed to no article, with plurals and singulars counted
separately (at least in English). That's programatically difficult for
reasons you mentioned- needing to identify every noun phrase and then
check what kind of article it has. Hence, I figured it'd be easier to
ask if that data's been accumulated by someone already, rather than
trying to write the program myself.
> If you can provide more detail on exactly what you need I have a large
> variety of statistical scripts and English corpora to work with. I
> probably have something that will get the data you need in about 35 to
> 40 seconds.
Well, I'm trying to come up with the article systems for a couple of
conlangs with the aim of minimizing the number of phonemes/syllables
that get used for it, and to do that more effectively I want some data
on the relative frequency of different kinds of noun phrases, and
particularly which kinds of articles they use, in natural languages.
For example, if 70% of all plurals have "the", and 30% have a zero
article, then you could save a lot of syllables by switching the
marking and letting definite plurals go unmarked and using an article
for indefinites.
-l.
Messages in this topic (5)
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4b. Re: Article Frequency
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 4:57 pm ((PST))
On Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:13:52 -0700, Logan Kearsley <chronosur...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>I mean what percentage of all noun phrases have "a/an" as opposed to
>"the" as opposed to no article, with plurals and singulars counted
>separately (at least in English). That's programatically difficult for
>reasons you mentioned- needing to identify every noun phrase and then
>check what kind of article it has. Hence, I figured it'd be easier to
>ask if that data's been accumulated by someone already, rather than
>trying to write the program myself.
It's not so difficult if you have an already parsed corpus. Unfortunately
there don't seem to be many such things freely available, but for instance
the NLTK Python package has managed to include 10% of the Penn treebank,
item #56 here:
http://nltk.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/nltk_data/index.xml
tgrep2 is an extant tool for searching a Penn-formatted treebank for various
structures:
http://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Tgrep2/
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
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5a. Toward an understanding of serial verbs
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:45 am ((PST))
I'm working serial verbs into my conlang-in-process, and I'm puzzled. I
thought I understood them, but as in so many things in linguistics, I
realize once I try to use them that I don't.
This use seems pretty straightforward, assuming subject agreement on verbs
and indeclinable pronouns.
I/me take.I book give.I Jim
I give the book to Jim
And wikipedia would agree: these fulfill the criteria for serial verbs in
that they are on the same level of subordination and have the same subject.
But what about:
I/me want.I Jim read.he book.
I want Jim to read the book.
That strikes me as pretty much the same thing, but the subject changes. (I
kind of like that Jim overlaps as subject *and* object of different verbs
there) But this might be interpreted as a subordinate clause. Is it,
though? I suppose the whole accusative of "want" is "Jim read.he book" and
not just Jim. Is that what makes it not a serial verb?
If so, it seems mighty arbitrary. Anyone have a good theoretical
explanation for how these things work?
--
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 (4)
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5b. Re: Toward an understanding of serial verbs
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" lars.fin...@ortygia.no
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 11:15 am ((PST))
Den 22. nov. 2010 kl. 19.43 skreiv Patrick Dunn:
> But what about:
>
> I/me want.I Jim read.he book.
> I want Jim to read the book.
You can make it truly serial by using a causative of the verb read,
perhaps. I suppose you have a way to distinguish direct from indirect
object, don't you?
LEF
Messages in this topic (4)
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5c. Re: Toward an understanding of serial verbs
Posted by: "Leland Kusmer" lelandp...@thypyramids.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 11:17 am ((PST))
I've been struggling with this recently, mostly in natlang research. Neither
of the sentences you give are traditionally termed SVCs, actually: The
second is ECM (as you noted; see below), while the first is technically
Covert Coordination. True SVCs (again, as generally identified by linguists;
see Aikhenvald [0]) share both subject and object.
In Asante Twi (of Ghana, a dialect of Akan), the two cases you give are
treated the same as true SVCs, however:
1)
Kofi fa bukwu no ma Ama [1]
Kofi take book the give Ama
"Kofi gave the book to Ama."
faa maa
take.past give.past
b3-fa a-ma
fut-take infinite-give
Etc.
2)
Kofi ma Ama twa dua no [2]
Kofi give Ama cut tree the
"Kofi made Ama chop the tree."
maa twaa
give.past cut.past
b3-ma a-twa
fut-give infinite-cut
Etc.
3)
Kofi bo bayere no di.
Kofi pound yam the eat.
"Kofi pounds the yam and eats it."
boo dii y3 [3]
pound.past eat.past do
b3-bo a-di
fut-pound inf.-eat
Adverb placement, etc. also shows them to be effectively the same
construction in English, never mind that the second is actually just an
English-style Exceptional Case Marking (i.e. the subject of the second
clause is still marked accusative â pronouns in Akan, like in English, show
case, and prove this).
This gets really tricky in Akan, actually, as it turns out that the meanings
change depending on the tense. For instance:
4)
Kofi tO nyom sa
Kofi throw song dance
"Kofi sings and then dances." OR:
"Kofi sings and dances (simultaneously)"
However:
Kofi tOO nyom saa y3 [3]
Kofi throw.past song dance.past
"Kofi sang and danced (simultaneously)"
*"Kofi sang and then danced.)
The ECM type cases, of course, even when not causative like (2), are always
basically simultaneous, but this has more to do with the semantic type of
verb which can come first in those examples.
tl;dr: Linguists differentiate Covert Coordination (shares subject but not
object), SVC (shares subject and object), and ECM (object of V1 becomes
subject of V2), but not all languages do.
-Leland
[0] http://bit.ly/ayXgRl
[1] Fudging a bit here â normally the first verb would be <de> "take", but
that's a defective verb that doesn't illustrate this phenomenon well, so I'm
substituting a common equivalent. This would be slightly marked, but
perfectly valid.
[2] Can't quite remember the verbs "want" and "read" and don't have my
references on me; this is syntactically equivalent.
[3] Do insertion in Akan is weird and awesome â ask for more details if you
want, but its not relevant to this discussion. The <y3> is a necessary part
of the past tense whenever nothing follows the verb, regardless of the type
of construction.
Messages in this topic (4)
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5d. Re: Toward an understanding of serial verbs
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 12:26 pm ((PST))
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Leland Kusmer
<lelandp...@thypyramids.com>wrote:
> I've been struggling with this recently, mostly in natlang research.
> Neither
> of the sentences you give are traditionally termed SVCs, actually: The
> second is ECM (as you noted; see below), while the first is technically
> Covert Coordination. True SVCs (again, as generally identified by
> linguists;
> see Aikhenvald [0]) share both subject and object.
>
> In Asante Twi (of Ghana, a dialect of Akan), the two cases you give are
> treated the same as true SVCs, however:
>
>
So I won't be terribly naive if I do the same thing. That's good.
What grammatical functions are served by serial verbs, then? It seems
they're indicating something aspecty in some of your examples.
>
> [3] Do insertion in Akan is weird and awesome ask for more details if you
> want, but its not relevant to this discussion. The <y3> is a necessary part
> of the past tense whenever nothing follows the verb, regardless of the type
> of construction.
>
Of *course* I want to know more about weird and awesome do-insertion in
Akan!
--
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 (4)
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6a. 30-Day Conlang: Day 22
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 1:49 pm ((PST))
This is day 22 of the 30-day conlang project. Having completed the
initial translation text I have moved on to translating McGuffey's
First Reader as a form of a "Teach Yourself Txtana" course.
The first 44 sentences have been translated and the dictionary now
contains 1095 English words and 462 Txtana words.
The McGuffey Teach Yourself course is at
http://fiziwig.com/conlang/txtana_mcguffey.html
--gary
Messages in this topic (2)
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6b. Re: 30-Day Conlang: Day 22
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" mbout...@nd.edu
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 2:06 pm ((PST))
your nano-inspired project has been, besides awesome, fascinating to keep
track of.
one question: you have a few phonetic transcriptions of sentences near the
top of the mcguffey page (e.g. "baio matxenu se tau") wherein you use the
schwa <É> in the IPA transcription corresponding to <ey>/<ay> in the
layperson's transcription (which i assume is supposed to invoke the english
/eɪ/) and to <e> in your orthography. why? it seems as though
orthographical <e> and <ey>/<ay> imply an IPA transcription of /eɪ/ or /e/,
not the mid-central vowel /É/. or maybe it's my browser.
well, i know what i'm doing next november.
matt
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 4:47 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is day 22 of the 30-day conlang project. Having completed the
> initial translation text I have moved on to translating McGuffey's
> First Reader as a form of a "Teach Yourself Txtana" course.
>
> The first 44 sentences have been translated and the dictionary now
> contains 1095 English words and 462 Txtana words.
>
> The McGuffey Teach Yourself course is at
> http://fiziwig.com/conlang/txtana_mcguffey.html
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (2)
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7a. what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" danny.c.bow...@gmail.com
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 6:27 pm ((PST))
I was wondering what the "vs" means when used for the artists of a song.
For example: "Globe vs. Push-Dreams from Above" or "Darude vs. Paul
Okenfold-Some Techno Song"
Does it simply mean "versus" as in an attempt to pit the artists against
each other, or does it mean to try and combine both their styles, or what?
I understand this isn't entirely conlang-related but I couldn't figure this
out using either Wikipedia or Google (I feel adrift!). Perhaps that's
because everyone else knows but me...
Rescue, anyone?
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
7b. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
Posted by: "masukomi" masuk...@masukomi.org
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 8:00 pm ((PST))
Yes, it's versus. It's
When you see that in a title you're looking at a mash-up, and vs. /
versus has become the convention. In practice a mash-up is essentially
always combining styles and not a more binary this against that.
Versus isn't really the best choice of words, but that's what the
convention seems to have become.
-K
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:25 PM, Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering what the "vs" means when used for the artists of a song.
> For example: "Globe vs. Push-Dreams from Above" or "Darude vs. Paul
> Okenfold-Some Techno Song"
>
> Does it simply mean "versus" as in an attempt to pit the artists against
> each other, or does it mean to try and combine both their styles, or what?
>
> I understand this isn't entirely conlang-related but I couldn't figure this
> out using either Wikipedia or Google (I feel adrift!). Perhaps that's
> because everyone else knows but me...
>
> Rescue, anyone?
>
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
7c. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" ra...@charter.net
Date: Mon Nov 22, 2010 8:33 pm ((PST))
On Nov 22, 2010, at 9:48 PM, masukomi wrote:
> Yes, it's versus. It's
> When you see that in a title you're looking at a mash-up, and vs. /
> versus has become the convention. In practice a mash-up is essentially
> always combining styles and not a more binary this against that.
> Versus isn't really the best choice of words, but that's what the
> convention seems to have become.
>
> -K
I recall reading somewhere (Language Log, maybe) that this usage originated in
the UK, where names of legal cases of the form "X v. Y" are traditionally read
"X and Y".
Additionally, IIRC it is fairly common across languages for words meaning
"leaning against", "opposing", and "with, and" to be one and the same (as in
the first two aforementioned meanings of "against" in English).
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:25 PM, Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bow...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I was wondering what the "vs" means when used for the artists of a song.
>> For example: "Globe vs. Push-Dreams from Above" or "Darude vs. Paul
>> Okenfold-Some Techno Song"
>>
>> Does it simply mean "versus" as in an attempt to pit the artists against
>> each other, or does it mean to try and combine both their styles, or what?
>>
>> I understand this isn't entirely conlang-related but I couldn't figure this
>> out using either Wikipedia or Google (I feel adrift!). Perhaps that's
>> because everyone else knows but me...
>>
>> Rescue, anyone?
>>
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
7d. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
Posted by: "Garth Wallace" gwa...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Nov 23, 2010 12:35 am ((PST))
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 6:25 PM, Daniel Bowman <danny.c.bow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering what the "vs" means when used for the artists of a song.
> For example: "Globe vs. Push-Dreams from Above" or "Darude vs. Paul
> Okenfold-Some Techno Song"
>
> Does it simply mean "versus" as in an attempt to pit the artists against
> each other, or does it mean to try and combine both their styles, or what?
>
> I understand this isn't entirely conlang-related but I couldn't figure this
> out using either Wikipedia or Google (I feel adrift!). Perhaps that's
> because everyone else knows but me...
>
> Rescue, anyone?
It's used in electronic music for remixes. One of the two is the
original DJ, the other is the remixer. If it's used in part of the
title, rather than the artist, it usually denotes the original
components of a mashup.
A related term is "VIP". In electronic music jargon, a "VIP mix" is
when a DJ remixes their own track, and contrasts with "original mix"
and any other DJ's remixes.
Messages in this topic (5)
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7e. Re: what is the meaning of "vs" in music?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Nov 23, 2010 2:29 am ((PST))
On 23 November 2010 04:48, masukomi <masuk...@masukomi.org> wrote:
> Yes, it's versus. It's
> When you see that in a title you're looking at a mash-up, and vs. /
> versus has become the convention. In practice a mash-up is essentially
> always combining styles and not a more binary this against that.
> Versus isn't really the best choice of words, but that's what the
> convention seems to have become.
>
>
It looks similar to the use of "VS" (the characters) in titles of Super
Sentai cross-over films in Japan (as in
天è£
æ¦éã´ã»ã¤ã¸ã£ã¼VSã·ã³ã±ã³ã¸ã£ã¼ ã¨ããã¯: Tensou
Sentai Goseiger vs. Shinkenger: Epic on Ginmaku, the upcoming one in 2011).
Although the term "vs." is used, the two teams are actually never pitted
against each other, but have to collaborate to defeat a common enemy
(although there may be frictions at first). When spoken, those titles are
pronounced with "tai" instead of "versus", which AFAIK means "together
with".
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (5)
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