There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Reverse genative?
From: Adam Walker
1b. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Arnt Richard Johansen
1c. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Nikolay Ivankov
1d. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Alex Fink
1e. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Armin Buch
1f. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Leland Kusmer
1g. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Matthew Boutilier
1h. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1i. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Gary Shannon
1j. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Matthew Boutilier
1k. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Adam Walker
1l. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Adam Walker
1m. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Leland Kusmer
1n. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Patrick Dunn
1o. Re: Reverse genative?
From: MorphemeAddict
1p. Re: Reverse genative?
From: MorphemeAddict
1q. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Eugene Oh
1r. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Matthew Boutilier
1s. Re: Reverse genative?
From: Adam Walker
2a. NATLANG: Middle English pronunciation of digraph/diphthong OU/OW
From: Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro
2b. Re: NATLANG: Middle English pronunciation of digraph/diphthong OU/OW
From: Matthew Boutilier
3.1. Re: opossum - opossa
From: John Vertical
3.2. Re: opossum - opossa
From: Eugene Oh
3.3. Re: opossum - opossa
From: Peter Collier
4a. Re: Linguistic literature on conlangs
From: BPJ
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:53 am ((PST))
Yesterday, after I had already frittered away my five posts for the day
enjoying the thread on de-regularizing English conjugations, I had an idea
which I am sure simply must have an ANADEW or at least an ACADEW.
What I was thinking about was possession. In English we can say:
the man's car
or the car of the man
In Chinese it would be
男的車子 (man "of" car) with the "of" working in the opposite direction from
the English word it "translates".
So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
the man car's
where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
Adam
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Arnt Richard Johansen" a...@nvg.org
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:00 am ((PST))
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 09:53:21AM -0600, Adam Walker wrote:
> So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
> why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
> reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
>
> the man car's
>
> where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
>
> Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_state
--
Arnt Richard Johansen http://arj.nvg.org/
Att handla en kvarting p\xE5 Systemet kan vara oerh\xF6rt sofistikerad p\xE5 ett
digitalt plan. -- Z mag@zine
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Nikolay Ivankov" lukevil...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:01 am ((PST))
For me your Genitive / Anti-Genitive construction sounds very similar to
Accusative / Ergative. Thumbs up, I'd like to know an ANADEW.
By the way, I used to play with an idea of wrong-way locative, ablative and
allative in my what-was-supposed-to-become-a-conlang-one-day.
2012/2/24 Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com>
> Yesterday, after I had already frittered away my five posts for the day
> enjoying the thread on de-regularizing English conjugations, I had an idea
> which I am sure simply must have an ANADEW or at least an ACADEW.
>
> What I was thinking about was possession. In English we can say:
>
> the man's car
> or the car of the man
>
> In Chinese it would be
>
> 男的車子 (man "of" car) with the "of" working in the opposite direction from
> the English word it "translates".
>
> So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
> why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
> reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
>
> the man car's
>
> where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
>
> Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
>
> Adam
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1d. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:03 am ((PST))
On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:53:21 -0600, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
>why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
>reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
>
>the man car's
>
>where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
>
>Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
Yup, all the time! This is the head-marked pattern for possessives in
nominal clauses; it splits not too far from fifty-fifty cross-linguistically
with the genitive strategy. Here it is in WALS, with lots of examples:
http://wals.info/feature/24A
In Semitic, this is more or less what the so-called construct state is.
Very often the marker on "car" in your "the man car's" is actually a third
person possessive marker: it's literally "the man car-his".
Alex
Messages in this topic (19)
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1e. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Armin Buch" armin.b...@uni-tuebingen.de
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:04 am ((PST))
There's a construction in colloquial German that might be of interest:
dem Mann [sein Auto]
the.DAT. man(.DAT) his.NOM car.NOM
Since [his car] is a constituent, you might say that the possessive
marking is on the possessed.
There's obligatory gender and number agreement between the possessor and
the pronoun, although people tend to get it wrong.
Am Freitag, den 24.02.2012, 09:53 -0600 schrieb Adam Walker:
> Yesterday, after I had already frittered away my five posts for the day
> enjoying the thread on de-regularizing English conjugations, I had an idea
> which I am sure simply must have an ANADEW or at least an ACADEW.
>
> What I was thinking about was possession. In English we can say:
>
> the man's car
> or the car of the man
>
> In Chinese it would be
>
> 男的車子 (man "of" car) with the "of" working in the opposite direction from
> the English word it "translates".
>
> So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
> why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
> reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
>
> the man car's
>
> where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
>
> Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
>
> Adam
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1f. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Leland Kusmer" lelandp...@thypyramids.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:06 am ((PST))
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Arnt Richard Johansen <a...@nvg.org> wrote:
>
> This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_state
>
Beat me to it. (As did several other folks as I wrote this email.)
The only examples I have on hand are from Ge'ez (Ethiopic):
_wald-a \xC2\xA0 \xC2\xA0 \xC2\xA0 negus_
son-CONS\xC2\xA0 king
"son of the king" / "the king's son"
_qalat-a nabiy_
words-CONS prophet
"the words of the prophet" / "the prophet's words"
My absolute favorite example is how "Son of Man" (the title commonly
used for Jesus) is translated into Ge'ez \xE2\x80\x93 as four nouns, the first
three in construct:
_walda 'egwala 'emma-Heyaw_
son.CONS offspring.CONS mother.CONS living
"the son of the offspring of the mother of the living"
(Where "mother of the living" is a common epithet for Eve.)
-Leland
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1g. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" bvticvlar...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:09 am ((PST))
turkish.
the man car's
>
adam脹 arabas脹
man-GEN car-his
without the -GEN on man (i.e. adam arabas脹) you'd get a kind of *generalized
* genitive, i.e. not "the man's car" or "a man's car" as above, but "the
man-car" or "men's car," exactly how we say "the men's (rest)room."
This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
>
it is?? following is the construct state example in arabic:
sayy\xC4\x81ratu (a)l-rajuli
car-NOM the-man-GEN
which seems to be the syntactical reverse of what adam is looking for.
matt
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:01 AM, Nikolay Ivankov <lukevil...@gmail.com>wrote:
> For me your Genitive / Anti-Genitive construction sounds very similar to
> Accusative / Ergative. Thumbs up, I'd like to know an ANADEW.
>
> By the way, I used to play with an idea of wrong-way locative, ablative and
> allative in my what-was-supposed-to-become-a-conlang-one-day.
>
> 2012/2/24 Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com>
>
> > Yesterday, after I had already frittered away my five posts for the day
> > enjoying the thread on de-regularizing English conjugations, I had an
> idea
> > which I am sure simply must have an ANADEW or at least an ACADEW.
> >
> > What I was thinking about was possession. In English we can say:
> >
> > the man's car
> > or the car of the man
> >
> > In Chinese it would be
> >
> > 男的車子 (man "of" car) with the "of" working in the opposite direction from
> > the English word it "translates".
> >
> > So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either
> direction,
> > why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
> > reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
> >
> > the man car's
> >
> > where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
> >
> > Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
> >
> > Adam
> >
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1h. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:15 am ((PST))
2012/2/24 Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com>
> Yesterday, after I had already frittered away my five posts for the day
> enjoying the thread on de-regularizing English conjugations, I had an idea
> which I am sure simply must have an ANADEW or at least an ACADEW.
>
> What I was thinking about was possession. In English we can say:
>
> the man's car
> or the car of the man
>
> In Chinese it would be
>
> 男的車子 (man "of" car) with the "of" working in the opposite direction from
> the English word it "translates".
>
> So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
> why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
> reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
>
> the man car's
>
> where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
>
> Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
>
> Adam
>
Darn! Arnt beat me to it, I'd just copied the wikipedia URL! :)
So, yeah, you've got for instance the construct state, a feature common in
Afro-Asiatic languages (and present in a few languages of mine, including
Maggel), where the head of a possessor-possessed construction is marked
rather than the dependent. And others have mentioned the possessive
adjective construction as well (which is common in Dutch for instance). In
all cases the possessed is still the head of the noun phrase.
If, on the other hand, you are thinking of a true reversal of the genitive,
i.e. a form where the the head of the phrase is the *possessor* rather than
the possessed (basically translating "the man, who owns a car", with "who
owns a car" being rendered as car-REV.GEN), there doesn't seem to be an
ANADEW. Wikipedia mentions a "possessed case" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possessed_case) used in Tlingit (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlingit_noun#Possession), but it doesn't make
clear whether the possessor in such constructions is the head of the phrase
or not.
I have such a possessed case in one of my conlangs (so there is at least
one ACADEW, though maybe not so EW :P), but I don't have my notes here so I
can't tell you more about it right now. When I'm back home tonight I'll
post about it again.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (19)
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1i. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:37 am ((PST))
When I took German in high school, about a hundred years ago, I remember
wondering if the English possessive marker ('s) might not be a contraction
of "his", as in "the man his car" => "The man 'is car." => "The man's car."
I never found out.
--gary
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Armin Buch <armin.b...@uni-tuebingen.de>wrote:
> There's a construction in colloquial German that might be of interest:
>
> dem Mann [sein Auto]
> the.DAT. man(.DAT) his.NOM car.NOM
>
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1j. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" bvticvlar...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:50 am ((PST))
>
> When I took German in high school, about a hundred years ago, I remember
> wondering if the English possessive marker ('s) might not be a contraction
> of "his", as in "the man his car" => "The man 'is car." => "The man's car."
>
it's actually just the "-es" genitive ending from a-stem nouns in Old
English.
so "the man's dog" in old english would be
綻脱s mannes hund
the-GEN man-GEN dog(-NOM)
(*mann* is not properly an a-stem but in the GEN singular it's treated like
one.)
modern german still (sort of) uses the cognate -es genitival ending.
das Auto des Mannes
the-NOM car the-GEN man-GEN
but few people would use that in speech nowadays.
it's worth noting, though, that in the grand (proto-indo-european) scheme
of things, the -s in "his" and the genitive -es/-'s are ultimately the same
thing. just a masculine genitive suffix (like r\xC4\x93x/r\xC4\x93g*is* in latin
("king"); and an\xC4\x93r/andr*os* in greek ("man"); and putrah/putr*as*ya in
sanskrit ("son").
cheers
matt
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:36 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> When I took German in high school, about a hundred years ago, I remember
> wondering if the English possessive marker ('s) might not be a contraction
> of "his", as in "the man his car" => "The man 'is car." => "The man's car."
>
> I never found out.
>
> --gary
>
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Armin Buch <armin.b...@uni-tuebingen.de
> >wrote:
>
> > There's a construction in colloquial German that might be of interest:
> >
> > dem Mann [sein Auto]
> > the.DAT. man(.DAT) his.NOM car.NOM
> >
> >
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1k. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:53 am ((PST))
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Matthew Boutilier
<bvticvlar...@gmail.com>wrote:
> turkish.
>
> the man car's
> >
>
> adam脹 arabas脹
> man-GEN car-his
>
Except here man is marked a genative. In the system I was thinking of man
would be un marked. Only car would be marked.
>
> without the -GEN on man (i.e. adam arabas脹) you'd get a kind of
> *generalized
> * genitive, i.e. not "the man's car" or "a man's car" as above, but "the
> man-car" or "men's car," exactly how we say "the men's (rest)room."
>
>
Whic is more the kind of marking I was lookig for, but not quite the sort
of meaning. Still it's quite close.
> This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
> >
>
> it is?? following is the construct state example in arabic:
>
> sayy\xC4\x81ratu (a)l-rajuli
> car-NOM the-man-GEN
>
> which seems to be the syntactical reverse of what adam is looking for.
>
> matt
>
>
Indeed. This is completely opposite of what I meant.
Adam
Messages in this topic (19)
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1l. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:57 am ((PST))
this does, indeed, seem to be the sort of thing I was looking for. I knew
it had to be out there. I like this arrangement and am planning to
implementit in a new lang.
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Leland Kusmer
<lelandp...@thypyramids.com>wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Arnt Richard Johansen <a...@nvg.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_state
> >
>
> Beat me to it. (As did several other folks as I wrote this email.)
>
> The only examples I have on hand are from Ge'ez (Ethiopic):
>
> _wald-a negus_
> son-CONS king
> "son of the king" / "the king's son"
>
> _qalat-a nabiy_
> words-CONS prophet
> "the words of the prophet" / "the prophet's words"
>
> My absolute favorite example is how "Son of Man" (the title commonly
> used for Jesus) is translated into Ge'ez \x96 as four nouns, the first
> three in construct:
>
> _walda 'egwala 'emma-Heyaw_
> son.CONS offspring.CONS mother.CONS living
> "the son of the offspring of the mother of the living"
>
> (Where "mother of the living" is a common epithet for Eve.)
>
> -Leland
>
Funny that. Wouldn't Heyaw by itself be cognate with Eve? The Hebrew is
Chava IINM and means, simply, "living."
Adam
Messages in this topic (19)
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1m. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Leland Kusmer" lelandp...@thypyramids.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:02 am ((PST))
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Funny that. \xC2\xA0Wouldn't Heyaw by itself be cognate with Eve? \xC2\xA0The
> Hebrew is
> Chava IINM and means, simply, "living."
Certainly looks like it could be. That's with a pharyngeal h (normally
marked with an under-dot) which contrasts with both /h/ and /x/ in
Ge'ez, BTW. I'm not actually sure if there is another name for Eve \xE2\x80\x93
I'm not terribly far along in my studies.
-Leland
Messages in this topic (19)
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1n. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:26 am ((PST))
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yesterday, after I had already frittered away my five posts for the day
> enjoying the thread on de-regularizing English conjugations, I had an idea
> which I am sure simply must have an ANADEW or at least an ACADEW.
>
> What I was thinking about was possession. In English we can say:
>
> the man's car
> or the car of the man
>
> In Chinese it would be
>
> 男的車子 (man "of" car) with the "of" working in the opposite direction from
> the English word it "translates".
>
> So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
> why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
> reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
>
> the man car's
>
> where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
>
> Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
>
> Adam
>
The Hebrew construct state. Not used so much AFAIK in modern Hebrew, but
ubiquitous in Biblical Hebrew:
susa -- mare, ha-ish -- the man
susat ha-ish -- the mare of the man, the man's mare
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1o. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:27 am ((PST))
This was a common perception at the time (several hundred years ago) and it
was even written that way sometimes. I'm not sure it was not just a folk
spelling, but some people at least analyzed it that way.
stevo
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:36 AM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> When I took German in high school, about a hundred years ago, I remember
> wondering if the English possessive marker ('s) might not be a contraction
> of "his", as in "the man his car" => "The man 'is car." => "The man's car."
>
> I never found out.
>
> --gary
>
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Armin Buch <armin.b...@uni-tuebingen.de
> >wrote:
>
> > There's a construction in colloquial German that might be of interest:
> >
> > dem Mann [sein Auto]
> > the.DAT. man(.DAT) his.NOM car.NOM
> >
> >
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1p. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:29 am ((PST))
So you're looking for something that translates as "(car of) man" instead
of "car (of man)"?
stevo
2012/2/24 Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com>
> Yesterday, after I had already frittered away my five posts for the day
> enjoying the thread on de-regularizing English conjugations, I had an idea
> which I am sure simply must have an ANADEW or at least an ACADEW.
>
> What I was thinking about was possession. In English we can say:
>
> the man's car
> or the car of the man
>
> In Chinese it would be
>
> 男的車子 (man "of" car) with the "of" working in the opposite direction from
> the English word it "translates".
>
> So if a particle like of, showing possession, can work in either direction,
> why couldn't a case like Genative have a sort of anti-genative or
> reverse-genative counterpart in some language?
>
> the man car's
>
> where the reverse-genative marks the possessed instead of the possessor?
>
> Surely this has alread been done. Examples?
>
> Adam
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1q. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" un.do...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:57 am ((PST))
On 24 Feb 2012, at 16:52, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Matthew Boutilier
> <bvticvlar...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
>>>
>>
>> it is?? following is the construct state example in arabic:
>>
>> sayy\x88gratu (a)l-rajuli
>> car-NOM the-man-GEN
>>
>> which seems to be the syntactical reverse of what adam is looking for.
>>
>> matt
>>
>>
>
> Indeed. This is completely opposite of what I meant.
>
Nope -- analyse as follows:
sayy\x88grat-u (a)l-rajuli
Car-CONS man
The construct state marks possessee, ie reverse genitive as Adam asked for.
Messages in this topic (19)
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1r. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" bvticvlar...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:18 am ((PST))
>
> Nope -- analyse as follows:
>
> sayy\xC4\x81rat-u (a)l-rajuli
> Car-CONS man
>
> The construct state marks possessee, ie reverse genitive as Adam asked
> for.
>
yes, true. but the word-order is still backwards with respect to his
example.
and, few semitic languages have construct states that undergo changes as
drastic as in hebrew (cf. d\xC4\x81*b*\xC4\x81r / d’*b*ar = "word" / "word
of"). in
arabic, when you aren't pedantically speaking with the tanw朝n
case-markings, there's rarely an actual "construct"-marking at all.
kalb
dog
"dog"
kalb al-rajul
dog the-man
"the man's dog"
so, in my opinion at least, to call this "possessee marking" seems hardly
appropriate. what you notated as "-CONS" does serve that purpose, but the
/u/ is truly nothing more than the nominative definite ending, which itself
is not obligatory.
matt
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Eugene Oh <un.do...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24 Feb 2012, at 16:52, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Matthew Boutilier
> > <bvticvlar...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> >> This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
> >>>
> >>
> >> it is?? following is the construct state example in arabic:
> >>
> >> sayy\xC4\x81ratu (a)l-rajuli
> >> car-NOM the-man-GEN
> >>
> >> which seems to be the syntactical reverse of what adam is looking for.
> >>
> >> matt
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Indeed. This is completely opposite of what I meant.
> >
>
> Nope -- analyse as follows:
>
> sayy\xC4\x81rat-u (a)l-rajuli
> Car-CONS man
>
> The construct state marks possessee, ie reverse genitive as Adam asked
> for.
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
1s. Re: Reverse genative?
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:38 am ((PST))
Regardless of what is going on in the Arabic example, which looks like it
may, indeed, be something other than preciely what I had in mind (though
aslo quite interesting); in the Hebrew and Ge'ez examples it is quite clear
that the -t (in Hebrew) and the -a (in Ge'ez) are marking exactly what I
was thinking about. And word order isn't really relevant to what I wanted
to explore (at least I didn't intend it to be). the only relevent bit is
that the relationship possessor-possessed is marked, not on the possessor,
but on the possessed.
So, using the Ge-ez morphology:
car-a the man
and
the man car-a
both meet my criterion.
Adam who is enjoying the info flow
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Matthew Boutilier
<bvticvlar...@gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> > Nope -- analyse as follows:
> >
> > sayy\xC4\x81rat-u (a)l-rajuli
> > Car-CONS man
> >
> > The construct state marks possessee, ie reverse genitive as Adam asked
> > for.
> >
>
> yes, true. but the word-order is still backwards with respect to his
> example.
>
> and, few semitic languages have construct states that undergo changes as
> drastic as in hebrew (cf. d\xC4\x81*b*\xC4\x81r / d’*b*ar = "word" / "word
> of"). in
> arabic, when you aren't pedantically speaking with the tanw朝n
> case-markings, there's rarely an actual "construct"-marking at all.
>
> kalb
> dog
> "dog"
>
> kalb al-rajul
> dog the-man
> "the man's dog"
>
>
> so, in my opinion at least, to call this "possessee marking" seems hardly
> appropriate. what you notated as "-CONS" does serve that purpose, but the
> /u/ is truly nothing more than the nominative definite ending, which itself
> is not obligatory.
>
>
> matt
>
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:57 AM, Eugene Oh <un.do...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 24 Feb 2012, at 16:52, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Matthew Boutilier
> > > <bvticvlar...@gmail.com>wrote:
> > >
> > >> This kind of possessee marking is common in Afro-Asiatic languages.
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> it is?? following is the construct state example in arabic:
> > >>
> > >> sayy\xC4\x81ratu (a)l-rajuli
> > >> car-NOM the-man-GEN
> > >>
> > >> which seems to be the syntactical reverse of what adam is looking for.
> > >>
> > >> matt
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > > Indeed. This is completely opposite of what I meant.
> > >
> >
> > Nope -- analyse as follows:
> >
> > sayy\xC4\x81rat-u (a)l-rajuli
> > Car-CONS man
> >
> > The construct state marks possessee, ie reverse genitive as Adam asked
> > for.
>
Messages in this topic (19)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. NATLANG: Middle English pronunciation of digraph/diphthong OU/OW
Posted by: "Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro" hcesarcas...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:10 am ((PST))
Hello conalngers,
I was on a personal project and perceived that OU/OW was the only
digraph/diphthong to have two different pronunciations. As long as I
remembered two different phonemes could not be written with the same
orthography.
Why OU/OW can be /\xC9\x94u/ in know and soul or /u\xCB\x90/ in nou(now) and
house?
This doubt came from a personal project I was doing on English orthography.
I know that this kind of subject usually brings chaos and whining to the
list, so I am already saying that this is only a personal hobby, that I
want to do a simple CON-Reform... I know it won't work, it is only
art-stuff, OK?
Before one says "How many dialects will it consider?". I can say "Everyone
I find. Nowadays I'm working with the 10 dialects that are shown on Wikipedia
page about IPA for English
dialects<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects>.
Thus,I'm using distinct lexical sets for BIT and KIT (due to South African
dialect), for BAD and LAD (Australian dialect), TOE and TOW (Wales
dialect), and FERN, FIR and FUR (Ireland and Scottish dialects)."
I am trying to create a possible con-orthography that would cause a minimal
amount of changes to the current orthography and would make it regular and
rule-based. Some small changes like changing "oo" to "u" when it is
pronounced as /\xCA\x8C/ (blood > blud, flood > flud), or making non-initial
"th"
between vowels when it is pronounced as /丹/ (smooth > smoothe), and other
small changes.
Well, if this brings the chaos and/or whining that I think it will. I will
stop this thread right here, in this post. The only thing I ask is if there
was any rule about how to pronounce OU/OW in Middle English.
If someone shows soem interest, I can continue this thread and say what
kinds of improvement I had and the problema I found.
Best regards for you all,
Hugo Cesar
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: NATLANG: Middle English pronunciation of digraph/diphthong OU/OW
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" bvticvlar...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:29 am ((PST))
>
> Why OU/OW can be /\xC9\x94u/ in know and soul or /u\xCB\x90/ in nou(now) and
> house?
>
well, the <ow> in "know" wasn't originally a digraph.
OE cn\xC4\x81wan "recognize" is the earlier form, where /w/ is a full consonant
--
[\xCB\x88kn\xC9\x91\xCB\x90w\xC9\x91n]
OE /\xC9\x91\xCB\x90/ basically *always* becomes ME /\xC9\x94\xCB\x90/ (and,
later, modern english /o:/
or RP [\xC9\x99\xCA\x8A] or GA [o\xCA\x8A] or what have you)
so, i'm no expert in middle english, but my guess would be that in *
cnowe/cnawe*, <w> still functioned as a semivowel --
[\xCB\x88kn\xC9\x94\xCB\x90w\xC9\x99] -- i.e. a
consonant in it's own right, and not as some part of a digraph.
the diphthongs in modern "now" and "house," contrarily, reflect OE /u\xCB\x90/
-- *
n**笛 *and *h**笛s*; this is an actual case of digraphing, because the ME
sound is still /u\xCB\x90/. so i suppose to tell apart the dual usage of
<ow>/<ou>
i would say that it helps to know a little a bit about the histories of the
words in question.
*
*like i said, i don't know too much about ME, especially orthographical
conventions, but the difference likely stems from this. why <ou> and <ow>
were selected to write the sound /u\xCB\x90/ when OE had been using <u>, i have
no
idea, but it could very well have to do with a contemporaneous problem of
figuring out how to spell all the french loanwords. french today uses <ou>
for /u\xCB\x90/, and <u> for /y(\xCB\x90)/; maybe conditions were similar in
the time of
middle english.
bear in mind that back then <w> and <u> were basically the same thing. OE
did not strictly speaking have <w>, but modern books use <w> to transcribe
the "wynn" letter (looks like a P) that was taken from the runic alphabet.
but <w> was now and then used as a vowel even in ME (cf. *nwe* for "new,"
from OE n朝w), which is probably connected to its use in modern welsh.
cheers
matt
On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Hugo Cesar de Castro Carneiro <
hcesarcas...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello conalngers,
>
> I was on a personal project and perceived that OU/OW was the only
> digraph/diphthong to have two different pronunciations. As long as I
> remembered two different phonemes could not be written with the same
> orthography.
>
> Why OU/OW can be /\xC9\x94u/ in know and soul or /u\xCB\x90/ in nou(now) and
> house?
>
>
> This doubt came from a personal project I was doing on English orthography.
>
> I know that this kind of subject usually brings chaos and whining to the
> list, so I am already saying that this is only a personal hobby, that I
> want to do a simple CON-Reform... I know it won't work, it is only
> art-stuff, OK?
> Before one says "How many dialects will it consider?". I can say "Everyone
> I find. Nowadays I'm working with the 10 dialects that are shown on
> Wikipedia
> page about IPA for English
> dialects<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects
> >.
> Thus,I'm using distinct lexical sets for BIT and KIT (due to South African
> dialect), for BAD and LAD (Australian dialect), TOE and TOW (Wales
> dialect), and FERN, FIR and FUR (Ireland and Scottish dialects)."
>
> I am trying to create a possible con-orthography that would cause a minimal
> amount of changes to the current orthography and would make it regular and
> rule-based. Some small changes like changing "oo" to "u" when it is
> pronounced as /\xCA\x8C/ (blood > blud, flood > flud), or making non-initial
> "th"
> between vowels when it is pronounced as /丹/ (smooth > smoothe), and other
> small changes.
>
>
> Well, if this brings the chaos and/or whining that I think it will. I will
> stop this thread right here, in this post. The only thing I ask is if there
> was any rule about how to pronounce OU/OW in Middle English.
>
> If someone shows soem interest, I can continue this thread and say what
> kinds of improvement I had and the problema I found.
>
>
> Best regards for you all,
> Hugo Cesar
>
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3.1. Re: opossum - opossa
Posted by: "John Vertical" johnverti...@hotmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:41 am ((PST))
>On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Larry Sulky wrote:
>
>> The financial heads in my company use "spend" as a noun ("an amount
>> spent"). I'm trying to convince them that, following the pattern:
>>
>> "lend", "lent", "loan" // "spend", "spent",...
>>
>> the word they're looking for is "spoan".
>>
>>
>That clearly gives us "send" > "sent" > "soan" as a catch-all noun covering
>email, snailmail, etc. Also "rend" > "rent" > "roan" for something that has
>been torn up, "moan" for something that has been fixed, and "boan" for
>something made crooked.
>
>-lp
Well if we're going outside of verb declension and into derivational
morphology, my fave is the nominal suffix *-iT, as seen in pairs like strong
: strength, young : youth, heal : health, high : height, true : truth\x85
\x95 eldth "age" (< old)
\x95 wrength "degree of wrongness"
\x95 sherth "degree of shortness"
\x95 louth /lu:T/ "degree of lowness"
\x95 tealth /tElT/ "degree of tealness"
\x95 wigh "heavy" (backformation < weight)
\x97J.
Messages in this topic (36)
________________________________________________________________________
3.2. Re: opossum - opossa
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" un.do...@gmail.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:59 am ((PST))
On 24 Feb 2012, at 17:41, John Vertical <johnverti...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Larry Sulky wrote:
>>
>>> The financial heads in my company use "spend" as a noun ("an amount
>>> spent"). I'm trying to convince them that, following the pattern:
>>>
>>> "lend", "lent", "loan" // "spend", "spent",...
>>>
>>> the word they're looking for is "spoan".
>>>
>>>
>> That clearly gives us "send" > "sent" > "soan" as a catch-all noun covering
>> email, snailmail, etc. Also "rend" > "rent" > "roan" for something that has
>> been torn up, "moan" for something that has been fixed, and "boan" for
>> something made crooked.
>>
>> -lp
>
> Well if we're going outside of verb declension and into derivational
> morphology, my fave is the nominal suffix *-iT, as seen in pairs like strong
> : strength, young : youth, heal : health, high : height, true : truth\x85
> \x95 eldth "age" (< old)
> \x95 wrength "degree of wrongness"
> \x95 sherth "degree of shortness"
> \x95 louth /lu:T/ "degree of lowness"
> \x95 tealth /tElT/ "degree of tealness"
> \x95 wigh "heavy" (backformation < weight)
>
> \x97J.
Maybe "lout" is a holdover from an age when that was productive...
Messages in this topic (36)
________________________________________________________________________
3.3. Re: opossum - opossa
Posted by: "Peter Collier" petecoll...@btinternet.com
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:30 am ((PST))
Couth - "degree of cow-ness" ?
-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:conl...@listserv.brown.edu] On
Behalf Of John Vertical
Sent: 24 February 2012 17:42
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Subject: Re: opossum - opossa
. louth /lu:T/ "degree of lowness"
Messages in this topic (36)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: Linguistic literature on conlangs
Posted by: "BPJ" b...@melroch.se
Date: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:24 am ((PST))
On 2012-02-24 16:21, Michael Everson wrote:
> > On 2012-02-23 21:31, Michael Everson wrote:
> >
> > > But the Ardalambion crowd are interested in
> > > Neo-Quenya, which is a very different thing from the
> > > study of what Tolkien actually did. That scholarly
> > > work is ongoing; seehttp://www.eldalamberon.com/
> >
> > But which might be an interesting topic in its own right
> > to an academic studying conlangs as a phenomenon.
>
> Perhaps, but it's still not Tolkien's work.
When did I claim it was? Armin Buch (SHT) was looking for
literature on the use and practice of non-auxlang conlangs
in general, and use and practice of conlangs it is, whether
anybody disapprove of it or not. Mind you many, not least in the
academic linguistic world, many disapprove of conlangs in any
form as 'not being languages'. That's only a difference by
degree from what you are saying.
> > BTW one can be interested in Tolkien's languages from
> > both a paleo- and a neo- angle. And how come reviving a
> > conlang would be bad, while reviving a natlang would be
> > good?
>
> You can't "revive" Quenya. Or Sindarin. Or Goldogrin. Or
> Khuzdul. Or the Black Speech. You can make up stuff to
> fill in the gaps, but the result is never "authentic"
By the same criteria you can't revive Cornish either,
because you can never know how authentic a form modelled on
Welsh or Breton, or on general morphological principles
would be in the light of what was not recorded.
And what do you think Fr. Schleyer would have thaught of
Arie de Jong's Volap\xFCk!?
> in Tolkien's terms.
In the terms by which Tolkien revived Gothic and
old English? If 'autenthicness' be the issue he
shouldn't have done that!
The product of a language revival is *never* 'the same
thing' as the language it seeks to revive, be it
Cornish, Gothic, Old English, Hebrew or (Neo-)Quenya,
Novial or myself trying to revive my own conlang Sohlob
from the remains of media loss and format lock in. And
where there's many poeple involved there will always be
that pointless bickering about 'the one true way'. As
if this were hard science -- and even there you have
the observer's paradox! Yet all creative endeavor is
worthwhile in some way at least to those involved in it!
I may look back at my involvement with auxlangs with
mixed feelings, but I learned things about language,
and about people, from it.
> But it's making up stuff.
All creative work is, including what is done in
departments of comparative linguistics, or by different
stripes of 'theoretical linguists'. It may still be
worthwhile, at least to those who pursue it, in ways
unforseen by them or their detractors, even. (And
comparative philologists have their detractors, as do
Chomskyans! In the one case I belong to the detracted,
and in the other to the detractors, but I let them do
their thing and all I ask is for them to let me do my
thing.)
> And may contradict the actual etymological data
> (inconsistent as that may be).
And that differs from the Cornish revival exactly how?
As you surely know not all enthusiasts go about what they
do with the same skill, understanding, care or respect
for their models. Surely you also know that invention
out of thin air is generally frowned upon in Neo-Eldarin
circles.
>
> I suppose I have no great objection to new works being
> written in these languages, so long as anything Neo- is
> labelled as Neo-.
No argument there. The same goes for Tolkien's
Neo-Gothic or Neo-Englisc, of for Neo-Cornish or
Neo-Hebrew, or Neo-Icelandic (compare the 'modern'
antiquarizing standard language to the written
Icelandic of the 17th and 18th centuries -- it's highly
instructive --, yet I'm a great lover and admirer even
of the 'modern' version of the language. Given the
calibre of literature written in it its neo-roots don't
seem to invalidate it in any way!)
>
> Personally, though, I think I would not publish an Alice
> in Neo-Quenya, because of the honour and respect I hold
> for Tolkien, whose work, which I read at a formative time
> in my life, helped to make me the person I am today.
Tolkien's respect for the Beowulf poet or Cynewulf or
Wulfila, or the great impact the acquaintance with their
work had on him, didn't stop him from composing in
Neo-Gothic and Neo-Anglo-Saxon!
> To me, a Neo-Quenya Alice would not be authentic.
Neither are Tolkien's 'Old English' and 'Gothic' poems, then!
> > That the two crowds don't go well together is because of
> > personal chemistry issues rather than the two pursuits
> > being antithetical. It's not like no one can do the
> > other if anyone does the one.
>
> I guess. Ursula Le Guin tells of being asked by various
> writers and aspiring writers for permission to write
> stories set in her Ekumen. Her answer was "No, go invent
> your own universe."
A sentiment I can sympathize with. If I ever get published
you'll see that Sohldar is nothing like Arda. No working
magic for one thing -- unless you count telepathy and
telekinesis (neither of which I consider proven or disproven)
as magic.
The problem with languages is that there is a limit to
the gratification you can derive from merely
catalogizing them. Many philologists have felt and
indulged in the urge to compose 'in the language' of
their study, including Tolkien! One Festshrift highly
valued by my highly conservative professor, and written
by his likes, had a Latin title printed in Linear B!
> Another excellent resource for Tolkienian linguistics is
> Vinyar Tengwar: http://www.elvish.org
Sure, but that's primary sources for the most part.
Mr Buch was looking for secondary literature.
> Michael Everson \* http://www.evertype.com/
/bpj
Messages in this topic (20)
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