There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Voynich 100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2a. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: David McCann
2b. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: Jim Henry
2c. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: Gary Shannon
2d. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: MorphemeAddict
2e. Re: Another vocabulary test
From: Sam Stutter
3a. Re: R2D2 language
From: MorphemeAddict
3b. Re: R2D2 language
From: George Corley
3c. Re: R2D2 language
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
3d. Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
From: Fredrik Ekman
3e. Re: R2D2 language
From: Fredrik Ekman
3f. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
From: Adam Walker
3g. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
From: Patrick Dunn
3h. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
From: Gary Shannon
3i. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
From: Adam Walker
3j. Re: R2D2 language
From: MorphemeAddict
4a. Re: Languages with voiced-unvoiced consonant clusters
From: Miles Forster
5a. Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
From: Gary Shannon
5b. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
From: MorphemeAddict
5c. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
From: Jim Henry
5d. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
From: MorphemeAddict
5e. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
From: Jim Henry
5f. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
From: Daniel Bowman
6a. Sketch of ÄvuuÅ£xh
From: Jim Henry
6b. Re: Sketch of ÄvuuÅ£xh
From: Eugene Oh
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1. Voynich 100
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 7:15 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
Just for your information: On May 11, 2012 a scholarly conference
on the Voynich Manuscript will be held at the Villa Mondragone
near Frascati, not far from Rome - the place where the manuscript
was discovered by Wilfrid Voynich in 1912:
http://www.voynich.nu/100.html
(Not that I am going to attend; I won't. But perhaps this is of
interest to some.)
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (1)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 8:54 am ((PDT))
On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:09:17 +0100
And Rosta <and.ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> English persons who would use _chook_ must number in the hundreds of
> thousands if not millions. IIRC, David, you're a middle class
> Londoner, but in fact not all English people are, and those who
> aren't speak different dialects from middle class londoners.
> As for _shoat_, the word is only as rare as its denotation.
As far as I know shoat is only American or Scots, while chook is
Australian or New Zealand. I don't think any of those would appreciate
being called English! And my being an upper middle class Londoner
doesn't mean I don't understand English dialects; anyone who says
otherwise is being mardy and talking squit :-)
Incidentally, ruck is used in Rugby as well as in Australian rules, and
therefore understood in Ireland, Britain, South Africa, Australia, and
New Zealand. And, apart from technicalities, can't one speak of "the
ruck" in the sense of "the masses"?
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 8:56 am ((PDT))
On 4/1/12, David McCann <da...@polymathy.plus.com> wrote:
> New Zealand. And, apart from technicalities, can't one speak of "the
> ruck" in the sense of "the masses"?
That's the only sense in which I've occasionally seen it used.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 9:06 am ((PDT))
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 8:54 AM, David McCann <da...@polymathy.plus.com> wrote:
>
> Incidentally, ruck is used in Rugby as well as in Australian rules, and
> therefore understood in Ireland, Britain, South Africa, Australia, and
> New Zealand. And, apart from technicalities, can't one speak of "the
> ruck" in the sense of "the masses"?
Speaking as an American with a GRE vocabulary score of 95% in 1968 the
only context in which I have ever heard "ruck" is as part of
"rucksack" as an apparent synonym for back pack. From that context I
have no idea what a "ruck" is or why one would want a sack full of
them.
--gary
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 10:13 am ((PDT))
"Ruck" is from German, where it means 'back' (when written with an umlaut).
stevo
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 12:06 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 8:54 AM, David McCann <da...@polymathy.plus.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Incidentally, ruck is used in Rugby as well as in Australian rules, and
> > therefore understood in Ireland, Britain, South Africa, Australia, and
> > New Zealand. And, apart from technicalities, can't one speak of "the
> > ruck" in the sense of "the masses"?
>
> Speaking as an American with a GRE vocabulary score of 95% in 1968 the
> only context in which I have ever heard "ruck" is as part of
> "rucksack" as an apparent synonym for back pack. From that context I
> have no idea what a "ruck" is or why one would want a sack full of
> them.
>
> --gary
>
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
2e. Re: Another vocabulary test
Posted by: "Sam Stutter" samjj...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 10:54 am ((PDT))
I've only really heard "ruck" as a verb: "to ruck up": to crumple a fabric,
like a carpet or blanket.
Sam Stutter
samjj...@gmail.com
"No e na'l cu barri"
On 1 Apr 2012, at 18:12, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Ruck" is from German, where it means 'back' (when written with an umlaut).
>
> stevo
>
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 12:06 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 8:54 AM, David McCann <da...@polymathy.plus.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Incidentally, ruck is used in Rugby as well as in Australian rules, and
>>> therefore understood in Ireland, Britain, South Africa, Australia, and
>>> New Zealand. And, apart from technicalities, can't one speak of "the
>>> ruck" in the sense of "the masses"?
>>
>> Speaking as an American with a GRE vocabulary score of 95% in 1968 the
>> only context in which I have ever heard "ruck" is as part of
>> "rucksack" as an apparent synonym for back pack. From that context I
>> have no idea what a "ruck" is or why one would want a sack full of
>> them.
>>
>> --gary
>>
Messages in this topic (23)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 10:10 am ((PDT))
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhieme...@web.de>wrote:
> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:57:07 -0400 MorphemeAddict wrote:
>
> > Can anyone direct me to information about using the sounds and utterances
> > of R2D2 (the Star Wars droid) as the basis of a conlang?
>
> According to Wikipedia, the sounds of R2-D2 were created by sound
> designer Ben Burtt with an ARP 2600 analog synthesizer. But when
> I listened to György Ligeti's 1958 electronic composition
> _Artikulation_, I found some passages that sound very much like
> R2-D2, so Burtt probably was inspired by that piece.
>
> I don't know whether there is an actual conlang with lexicon and
> grammar involved here; the sounds heard in the films are probably
> just ad-hoc sounds.
>
Right, I wouldn't expect there to ALREADY be a conlang involved, but
retrofitting a conlang to the movies would be cool.
stevo
>
> --
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
> http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
> "BÄsel asa Äm, a Äm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Ämel." - SiM 1:1
>
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3b. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "George Corley" gacor...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 12:19 pm ((PDT))
@Jörg: There are no conlangs in Star Wars. Any non-English dialogue in
the films is either useless gibberish, sound effects, repurposed natlangs
(Greedo speeks Quechua), or perhaps a relex somwhere. Even the alien
writing is essentially just a different font for English text (the letters
correspond 1:1 to Latin letter or Arabic numerals).
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 1:09 PM, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 9:41 AM, Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhieme...@web.de
> >wrote:
>
> > Hallo conlangers!
> >
> > On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:57:07 -0400 MorphemeAddict wrote:
> >
> > > Can anyone direct me to information about using the sounds and
> utterances
> > > of R2D2 (the Star Wars droid) as the basis of a conlang?
> >
> > According to Wikipedia, the sounds of R2-D2 were created by sound
> > designer Ben Burtt with an ARP 2600 analog synthesizer. But when
> > I listened to György Ligeti's 1958 electronic composition
> > _Artikulation_, I found some passages that sound very much like
> > R2-D2, so Burtt probably was inspired by that piece.
> >
> > I don't know whether there is an actual conlang with lexicon and
> > grammar involved here; the sounds heard in the films are probably
> > just ad-hoc sounds.
> >
>
> Right, I wouldn't expect there to ALREADY be a conlang involved, but
> retrofitting a conlang to the movies would be cool.
>
> stevo
>
> >
> > --
> > ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
> > http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
> > "BÄsel asa Äm, a Äm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Ämel." - SiM 1:1
> >
>
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3c. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 12:25 pm ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Sun, 1 Apr 2012 15:19:04 -0400 George Corley wrote:
> @Jörg: There are no conlangs in Star Wars. Any non-English dialogue in
> the films is either useless gibberish, sound effects, repurposed natlangs
> (Greedo speeks Quechua), or perhaps a relex somwhere. Even the alien
> writing is essentially just a different font for English text (the letters
> correspond 1:1 to Latin letter or Arabic numerals).
Yes, that is what I always have guessed. I have once seen a chart
of a Star Wars script that was just a letter substitution cipher of
the Latin alphabet ("just a different font", as you aptly put it).
Conlangs on the screen big or small are evidently a post-1977 trend;
Klingon may indeed have been the first.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Êm, a Êm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Êmel." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Fredrik Ekman" ek...@lysator.liu.se
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 2:50 pm ((PDT))
Jörg wrote:
> Conlangs on the screen big or small are evidently a post-1977 trend;
> Klingon may indeed have been the first.
It most certainly was not, and depending on how you define your conlangs
(do you, for instance, include auxlangs?) they may have been around for a
long time. Esperanto has been in feature films since at least the 20s, and
in the 60s, there were two movies exclusively dialogued in Esperanto.
Also from the 60s we have Bergman's The Silence. There definitely are some
conlang words and phrases in it, but whether a "complete" conlang or not,
I cannot say.
Speaking of Klingon as "post-1977", by the way, is a bit of a stretch. It
was not developed into a complete conlang until 1984, and before that
there was definitely a conlang in Quest for Fire (1981). That or Bergman's
may have been the first exclusively developed for a movie.
But as early as 1974 there was Paku for the TV series Land of the Lost.
Not a movie, but a similar medium.
Fredrik
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "Fredrik Ekman" ek...@lysator.liu.se
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 2:52 pm ((PDT))
George Corley wrote:
> There are no conlangs in Star Wars.
In the movies, no. But there is supposed to be one in some of the novels.
Right now I do not have access to the name of the author nor the books,
but I could check it up.
Fredrik
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3f. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 3:07 pm ((PDT))
The novella Enemy Mine by Longyear was published in 1979 and later
made into a movie with Louis Gosset Jr in both of which the conlang
Drac features prominently. I am not sure of the film s date, but I
believe it antedates Klingon. Adam
On 4/1/12, Fredrik Ekman <ek...@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> Jörg wrote:
>> Conlangs on the screen big or small are evidently a post-1977 trend;
>> Klingon may indeed have been the first.
>
> It most certainly was not, and depending on how you define your conlangs
> (do you, for instance, include auxlangs?) they may have been around for a
> long time. Esperanto has been in feature films since at least the 20s, and
> in the 60s, there were two movies exclusively dialogued in Esperanto.
>
> Also from the 60s we have Bergman's The Silence. There definitely are some
> conlang words and phrases in it, but whether a "complete" conlang or not,
> I cannot say.
>
> Speaking of Klingon as "post-1977", by the way, is a bit of a stretch. It
> was not developed into a complete conlang until 1984, and before that
> there was definitely a conlang in Quest for Fire (1981). That or Bergman's
> may have been the first exclusively developed for a movie.
>
> But as early as 1974 there was Paku for the TV series Land of the Lost.
> Not a movie, but a similar medium.
>
> Fredrik
>
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3g. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" pwd...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 3:28 pm ((PDT))
Drac is a fully developed conlang? I wasn't aware of that.
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The novella Enemy Mine by Longyear was published in 1979 and later
> made into a movie with Louis Gosset Jr in both of which the conlang
> Drac features prominently. I am not sure of the film s date, but I
> believe it antedates Klingon. Adam
>
> On 4/1/12, Fredrik Ekman <ek...@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> > Jörg wrote:
> >> Conlangs on the screen big or small are evidently a post-1977 trend;
> >> Klingon may indeed have been the first.
> >
> > It most certainly was not, and depending on how you define your conlangs
> > (do you, for instance, include auxlangs?) they may have been around for a
> > long time. Esperanto has been in feature films since at least the 20s,
> and
> > in the 60s, there were two movies exclusively dialogued in Esperanto.
> >
> > Also from the 60s we have Bergman's The Silence. There definitely are
> some
> > conlang words and phrases in it, but whether a "complete" conlang or not,
> > I cannot say.
> >
> > Speaking of Klingon as "post-1977", by the way, is a bit of a stretch. It
> > was not developed into a complete conlang until 1984, and before that
> > there was definitely a conlang in Quest for Fire (1981). That or
> Bergman's
> > may have been the first exclusively developed for a movie.
> >
> > But as early as 1974 there was Paku for the TV series Land of the Lost.
> > Not a movie, but a similar medium.
> >
> > Fredrik
> >
>
--
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 (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3h. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 5:26 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The novella Enemy Mine by Longyear was published in 1979 and later
> made into a movie with Louis Gosset Jr in both of which the conlang
> Drac features prominently. I am not sure of the film s date, but I
> believe it antedates Klingon. Adam
Enemy Mine, he movie, was released in 1985. The first appearance of
Klingon language was in 1979 in _Star Trek: The Motion Picture_,
however it didn't really get developed until 1984 in _Star Trek III:
The Search for Spock_. So for all practical purpose they are
contemporaneous.
--gary
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3i. Re: Conlangs in movies (was: R2D2 language)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" carra...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 5:46 pm ((PDT))
I don t know how ~fully~ developed it is but it has structure and a
phonology. There are numerous bits of dialog, some translated, some
decypherable, others not. Adam
On 4/1/12, Patrick Dunn <pwd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Drac is a fully developed conlang? I wasn't aware of that.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 5:07 PM, Adam Walker <carra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The novella Enemy Mine by Longyear was published in 1979 and later
>> made into a movie with Louis Gosset Jr in both of which the conlang
>> Drac features prominently. I am not sure of the film s date, but I
>> believe it antedates Klingon. Adam
>>
>> On 4/1/12, Fredrik Ekman <ek...@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
>> > Jörg wrote:
>> >> Conlangs on the screen big or small are evidently a post-1977 trend;
>> >> Klingon may indeed have been the first.
>> >
>> > It most certainly was not, and depending on how you define your conlangs
>> > (do you, for instance, include auxlangs?) they may have been around for
>> > a
>> > long time. Esperanto has been in feature films since at least the 20s,
>> and
>> > in the 60s, there were two movies exclusively dialogued in Esperanto.
>> >
>> > Also from the 60s we have Bergman's The Silence. There definitely are
>> some
>> > conlang words and phrases in it, but whether a "complete" conlang or
>> > not,
>> > I cannot say.
>> >
>> > Speaking of Klingon as "post-1977", by the way, is a bit of a stretch.
>> > It
>> > was not developed into a complete conlang until 1984, and before that
>> > there was definitely a conlang in Quest for Fire (1981). That or
>> Bergman's
>> > may have been the first exclusively developed for a movie.
>> >
>> > But as early as 1974 there was Paku for the TV series Land of the Lost.
>> > Not a movie, but a similar medium.
>> >
>> > Fredrik
>> >
>>
>
>
>
> --
> 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 (15)
________________________________________________________________________
3j. Re: R2D2 language
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 6:13 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 5:52 PM, Fredrik Ekman <ek...@lysator.liu.se> wrote:
> George Corley wrote:
> > There are no conlangs in Star Wars.
>
> In the movies, no. But there is supposed to be one in some of the novels.
> Right now I do not have access to the name of the author nor the books,
> but I could check it up.
>
> Fredrik
>
Not for me. I'm interested in the actual sounds and contexts, not a
description or mention in a book.
stevo
Messages in this topic (15)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Re: Languages with voiced-unvoiced consonant clusters
Posted by: "Miles Forster" m...@plasmatix.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 12:00 pm ((PDT))
Okay, so far it sounds like Arabic might do what I have in mind. I'm
only interested in natlangs that do this, because I want to see how
natural it is. Are there no other natlangs that allow voiced-unvoiced
consonant clusters?
â M
Am 01.04.2012 05:25, schrieb Matthew Boutilier:
>> does assimilation occur in Arabic when consonants of different
>> voicing are juxtaposed?
>>
> arabic does not have /p/, so, so much for that part of the question. this
> is going to be a pretty non-technical answer, but after going through my
> mental 'sound clips' i'm going to say that syllable final consonant
> clusters (since the maximum syllable is CV(:)CC) do *not* have voicing
> assimilation going on except for /r/, which has a voiceless allophone when
> it follows voiceless consonants. thus
> /badr/ "full moon" = [bædr], but
> /fitˤr/ "breakfast" = [fɪtˤr̥]
> contrast with, e.g., the voiced /Ê/ and voiceless /ħ/ pharyngeal
> fricatives, which are well distinguished after voiced and voiceless cluster
> onsets alike:
> /rubÊ/ "one-fourth" = [ɾÊbÊ], but
> /sˤubħ/ "morning" = [sˤÊbħ].
> same goes for [zt] vs. [st], etc. i'm having difficulty coming up with
> examples ending in /ts/ and /tz/.
>
> matt
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 9:47 PM, MorphemeAddict<lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I meant, does assimilation occur in Arabic when consonants of different
>> voicing are juxtaposed?
>>
>> stevo
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Padraic Brown<elemti...@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> --- On Sat, 3/31/12, MorphemeAddict<lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Arabic is rather fearless about juxtaposing different consonants. Does
>>>> assimilation occur?
>>> In Anian? No -- but I dó think that all the horrible clusters must be the
>>> result of some kind of weird vowel loss back during the Old Oritanian
>>> period. I don't know a whole lot about the language as of yet, so it is
>>> possible that assimilations occur. I just don't know where or how or why
>>> yet.
>>>
>>> Of the daughter languages, some undergo considerable cluster
>> simplification
>>> while one or two retain a high level of complexity. For example, Anian
>>> "tcani" (rune or wise saying) becomes "cânis" in Hoosickite; "ctlapmi"
>>> (leg) becomes "clamen". Pendarvian is said to retain the clusters.
>> Hecklan,
>>> if it turns out to be a relative of Anian at all, has certainly altered
>>> some Anian words: Anian "hhtcrmîr" (city) becomes "cramion" in Hecklan.
>>>
>>> The history of Anian, which was the native language of Oriata, one of the
>>> Archaic Empires of the Eastlands, has a history going back some 10 to 15
>>> thousand years. As a language of philosophical scripture, it has been
>> quite
>>> resistant to change, and since the destruction of Oriata and the other
>>> ancient empires in the region, it has long since ceased to be a spoken or
>>> living language. In this respect, it is much like Sussian, another
>>> philosophical language of the area, though perhaps not quite so old.
>>>
>>> Very few records of Old Oritanian are extant -- just some fragments of
>>> monumental inscription -- and the syllabary used is not the same as that
>>> of the later language. One fairly certain O.Or. word is
>> HE-TUGQILLIMIILUN,
>>> meaning "within the City". If that's the ancestor of "hhtcrmîr", then
>>> quite a lot of vowel loss and other changes have happened within the
>>> language!
>>>
>>> Padraic
>>>
>>>> stevo
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Padraic Brown<elemti...@yahoo.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> --- On Sat, 3/31/12, Miles Forster<m...@plasmatix.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> are there any languages that don't make use of
>>>>>> devoicing/voicing in consonant clusters? That is,
>>>> are there
>>>>>> languages in which a consonant cluster such as
>>>> [sb] or [pz]
>>>>>> is found and where these are distinguished from
>>>> the
>>>>>> assimilated versions [sp]/[zb] and [bz]/[ps]?
>>>>> Anian would be the best bet for such a thing among my
>>>> languages, but it
>>>>> seems to studiously avoid VL+V consonant clusters (I'm
>>>> not counting things
>>>>> like K + L, because L and R (well, and other
>>>> continuants) are typically
>>>>> syllabic and so don't really form "consonant"
>>>> clusters). For that matter,
>>>>> it shares with other languages of the Eastlands a
>>>> marked preference for
>>>>> VL consonants. D is common enough, but B is rare and I
>>>> don't think I have
>>>>> a G in the lexicon. Has some Vs and perhaps one Z that
>>>> I can find.
>>>>> Anian is otherwise rather fearless as far as consonant
>>>> clusters are
>>>>> concerned. Some represent actual vowelless syllables: F
>>>> is the most common
>>>>> of the "consonants" that form syllabic segments:
>>>> F-TANUM (trisyllabic)
>>>>> would be distinct from FTANUM (disyllabic). M, N, L
>>>> & R commonly form
>>>>> syllabic segments, either alone or in combination with
>>>> one or more other
>>>>> consonants. Others represent coarticulated stops or a
>>>> sort of rapid fire
>>>>> serial articulation of two or more stops. So, clusters
>>>> like PKRINIO is
>>>>> actually [p] and [k] said at the same time; but
>>>> PTKRRTUM is [p-t-k]
>>>>> enunciated separately but in very rapid succession with
>>>> no intervening
>>>>> vowel or other flow of air.
>>>>>
>>>>> Padraic
>>>>>
--
.i da xamgu ganse fi no na'ebo lo risna
.i lo vajrai cu nonselji'u lo kanla
Messages in this topic (9)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
5a. Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 12:48 pm ((PDT))
I have usually created words for a conlang by having some rules of
morphology that I used to construct a word from a root, usually picked
at random. Then after I have a bunch of words to work with I start
making sentences and the first thing I discover is that the language
sounds ugly. The sentences don't flow, and the words don't join
together smoothly.
It occurred to me that natlangs never create new words all at once,
and in isolation. Instead, in natlangs, words are born gradually, over
a long period of time, by whittling on existing ancestral words in
context, sanding down the rough edges, and finding the ways in which
they can best be made to fit, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, into the
sentences in which they appear.
But those new words were not the result of applying sound change rules
either. Sound change "rules" are after the fact. They are descriptions
of what happened. But what happened was not the application of a rule
to the word, but the result of constant use of the word in various
contexts. Like throwing a rock into a tumbler with a handful of
abrasive grit, what was a rough, ugly thing becomes smooth and
beautiful. My conlangs all suffer from being made of rough, ugly words
instead of smooth, beautiful ones.
So the idea occurred to me to work on my conlang coinages several
sentences at a time instead of one word at a time. Instead of trying
to come up with the word for "brook" based on some morphology, come up
with half a dozen sentences about brooks, and plug my rough, ugly word
into each of those sentences, and say the sentences aloud, over and
over, discovering how the word needs to be shaped and molded to fit
smoothly into each and every sentence. If the brook could speak, what
would it call itself? Tumbling over the smooth rocks, twisting and
turning, but always within its banks, comfortable with its course.
But you can't know the brook without knowing the banks that contain
it, and you can't know the word for brook without knowing the
sentences that contain it. The word must be fitted to its context. It
must be grown in a specific environment, not in a vacuum. It must be
surrounded by prepositions and adjectives, it must be singular and
plural, subject and object, and the final polished product must fit
smoothly into each of those contexts.
All of this makes me wonder if perhaps the best vehicle for building a
conlang lexicon might not be primers and readers, but original poetry
written in the conlang. If a conlang can do poetry well, then it can
probably do a nice job of spoken prose as well.
--gary
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
5b. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 2:14 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have usually created words for a conlang by having some rules of
> morphology that I used to construct a word from a root, usually picked
> at random. Then after I have a bunch of words to work with I start
> making sentences and the first thing I discover is that the language
> sounds ugly. The sentences don't flow, and the words don't join
> together smoothly.
>
> It occurred to me that natlangs never create new words all at once,
> and in isolation. Instead, in natlangs, words are born gradually, over
> a long period of time, by whittling on existing ancestral words in
> context, sanding down the rough edges, and finding the ways in which
> they can best be made to fit, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, into the
> sentences in which they appear.
>
> But those new words were not the result of applying sound change rules
> either. Sound change "rules" are after the fact. They are descriptions
> of what happened. But what happened was not the application of a rule
> to the word, but the result of constant use of the word in various
> contexts. Like throwing a rock into a tumbler with a handful of
> abrasive grit, what was a rough, ugly thing becomes smooth and
> beautiful. My conlangs all suffer from being made of rough, ugly words
> instead of smooth, beautiful ones.
>
> So the idea occurred to me to work on my conlang coinages several
> sentences at a time instead of one word at a time. Instead of trying
> to come up with the word for "brook" based on some morphology, come up
> with half a dozen sentences about brooks, and plug my rough, ugly word
> into each of those sentences, and say the sentences aloud, over and
> over, discovering how the word needs to be shaped and molded to fit
> smoothly into each and every sentence. If the brook could speak, what
> would it call itself? Tumbling over the smooth rocks, twisting and
> turning, but always within its banks, comfortable with its course.
>
> But you can't know the brook without knowing the banks that contain
> it, and you can't know the word for brook without knowing the
> sentences that contain it. The word must be fitted to its context. It
> must be grown in a specific environment, not in a vacuum. It must be
> surrounded by prepositions and adjectives, it must be singular and
> plural, subject and object, and the final polished product must fit
> smoothly into each of those contexts.
>
> All of this makes me wonder if perhaps the best vehicle for building a
> conlang lexicon might not be primers and readers, but original poetry
> written in the conlang. If a conlang can do poetry well, then it can
> probably do a nice job of spoken prose as well.
>
> --gary
>
This is how Esperanto started out.
stevo
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
5c. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 6:09 pm ((PDT))
On 4/1/12, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> All of this makes me wonder if perhaps the best vehicle for building a
>> conlang lexicon might not be primers and readers, but original poetry
>> written in the conlang. If a conlang can do poetry well, then it can
>> probably do a nice job of spoken prose as well.
> This is how Esperanto started out.
Yes, several pieces of Zamenhof's original poetry were included in the
Unua Libro along with the mini-grammar and lexicon and some short
translated texts.
I did something like this with Lusanja, an artlang I worked on a few
years ago and have been meaning to get back to. I was developing it
by the corpus method, writing sentences in Lusanja with glosses but no
formal description of the grammar or lexicon. One of the first things
I wrote in it was a four-line poem glossolalically produced and
analyzed into words and morphemes according to the still-vague rules
of Lusanja morphology and syntax afterward. It would be cool to do a
corpus-based language where *all* of the first few dozen sentences
written in the language are produced like that, with meter and rhyme
and general euphony the first priority, and glossing those little
poems and analyzing the morphology, syntax and semantics are a
decidedly lower priority.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
5d. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 6:17 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 9:09 PM, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/1/12, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> All of this makes me wonder if perhaps the best vehicle for building a
> >> conlang lexicon might not be primers and readers, but original poetry
> >> written in the conlang. If a conlang can do poetry well, then it can
> >> probably do a nice job of spoken prose as well.
>
> > This is how Esperanto started out.
>
I meant the first few decades of its existence. In some circles Esperanto
is stilled considered a language of poetry. This was a topic of one of the
talks at the Esperanto literature seminar I went to last year in
Louisville. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the sounds, overall
rhythms, etc., since my relex didn't have nearly the same feel.
stevo
>
> Yes, several pieces of Zamenhof's original poetry were included in the
> Unua Libro along with the mini-grammar and lexicon and some short
> translated texts.
>
> I did something like this with Lusanja, an artlang I worked on a few
> years ago and have been meaning to get back to. I was developing it
> by the corpus method, writing sentences in Lusanja with glosses but no
> formal description of the grammar or lexicon. One of the first things
> I wrote in it was a four-line poem glossolalically produced and
> analyzed into words and morphemes according to the still-vague rules
> of Lusanja morphology and syntax afterward. It would be cool to do a
> corpus-based language where *all* of the first few dozen sentences
> written in the language are produced like that, with meter and rhyme
> and general euphony the first priority, and glossing those little
> poems and analyzing the morphology, syntax and semantics are a
> decidedly lower priority.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
>
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
5e. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 6:29 pm ((PDT))
On 4/1/12, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > This is how Esperanto started out.
> I meant the first few decades of its existence. In some circles Esperanto
> is stilled considered a language of poetry. This was a topic of one of the
> talks at the Esperanto literature seminar I went to last year in
> Louisville. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the sounds, overall
> rhythms, etc., since my relex didn't have nearly the same feel.
Yes, there's been a lot of good poetry written in Esperanto, mainly
from about the 1920s to the 1960s, but starting in 1887 and continuing
until now. Kàlmàn Kaloscay, William Auld and Majorie Boulton are
better IMO than any contemporary poets I know of writing in English,
most of whom seem to regard meter as passé.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
5f. Re: Random Ramblings on the Process of Coining Words
Posted by: "Daniel Bowman" danny.c.bow...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 6:30 pm ((PDT))
I did something like this with Lusanja, an artlang I worked on a few
> years ago and have been meaning to get back to. I was developing it
> by the corpus method, writing sentences in Lusanja with glosses but no
> formal description of the grammar or lexicon. One of the first things
> I wrote in it was a four-line poem glossolalically produced and
> analyzed into words and morphemes according to the still-vague rules
> of Lusanja morphology and syntax afterward. It would be cool to do a
> corpus-based language where *all* of the first few dozen sentences
> written in the language are produced like that, with meter and rhyme
> and general euphony the first priority, and glossing those little
> poems and analyzing the morphology, syntax and semantics are a
> decidedly lower priority.
>
>
>
A lot of my conlang Angosey's early development was the same. I produced
"poems" of text and reanalyzed them to understand how the language was
trying to work. Now that those rules have been encoded, it is easy to keep
Angosey's "poetic form" since it is literally built in to the language
itself.
In fact, I have never sat down, stared at a list of vocabulary words and
concepts, and invented words for each of them. For example, I've never set
aside some time for, say "vocabulary about plants" or "the human body" or
what have you. My coinings are either through glossolalia like Jim
described, or as needed when I am writing in my diary.
It can be hard to keep the language coherent when you coin here and there,
rather than in batches, but I find that my subconscious keeps track of
patterns so that I don't have to give much thought to them.
Messages in this topic (6)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
6a. Sketch of ÄvuuÅ£xh
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 5:37 pm ((PDT))
This is just a sketch, so far, of some syntactic ideas I've been
playing with recently. I don't really have a phonology yet, so to
keep things simple, I've borrowed the phonology and romanization of
Ithkuil wholesale until I figure out what I want ÄvuuÅ£xh (a nonce
name) to really sound like.
The core of ÄvuuÅ£xh is the voice system. There are four voices:
active, passive, receptive, and muddle.
The active voice is the unmarked one:
mbëq xûlâdh nteîm
man bites dog-ACC
mbëq fkôôw çtîsem nteîz
man gives bone-ACC dog-DAT
The passive voice is about what you'd expect, promoting the
patient/direct object to the subject slot and making the agent oblique
and omissible:
nteî xûlâţ (mbëqan)
dog gets.bitten (by man)
The receptive voice is used with ditransitive verbs, prototypically
"give"; it promotes the recipient argument to the subject slot and
makes the agent oblique and omissible:
nteî fkôôm çtîsem (mbëqan)
dog gets.given bone-ACC (from man)
The muddle voice puts all the arguments of the verb in the malefactive
case, lined up after ther verb in no particular order.
xûlâd mbëqââ nteîg
bite-MUDDLE man-MAL dog-MAL
Biting occurs, involving a man and a dog.
fkôômb nteîg çtîsegya mbëqââ
give-MUDDLE dog-MAL bone-MAL man-MAL
Giving occurs, involving a dog, a bone and a man.
Work on this conlang has been going pretty slowly, as gjâ-zym-byn is
taking up most of my creative energies that don't go into writing
fiction, but maybe by this time next year I'll have a phonology and a
kinship system.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
6b. Re: Sketch of ÄvuuÅ£xh
Posted by: "Eugene Oh" un.do...@gmail.com
Date: Sun Apr 1, 2012 10:54 pm ((PDT))
I like this very much! I have to confess I initially thought you might have
typoed "muddle" for "middle" - but was very pleasantly surprised by a novel
invention.
Eugene
Sent from my iPhone
On 2 Apr 2012, at 01:37, Jim Henry <jimhenry1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is just a sketch, so far, of some syntactic ideas I've been
> playing with recently. I don't really have a phonology yet, so to
> keep things simple, I've borrowed the phonology and romanization of
> Ithkuil wholesale until I figure out what I want ÄvuuÅ£xh (a nonce
> name) to really sound like.
>
> The core of ÄvuuÅ£xh is the voice system. There are four voices:
> active, passive, receptive, and muddle.
>
> The active voice is the unmarked one:
>
> mbëq xûlâdh nteîm
> man bites dog-ACC
>
> mbëq fkôôw çtîsem nteîz
> man gives bone-ACC dog-DAT
>
> The passive voice is about what you'd expect, promoting the
> patient/direct object to the subject slot and making the agent oblique
> and omissible:
>
> nteî xûlâţ (mbëqan)
> dog gets.bitten (by man)
>
> The receptive voice is used with ditransitive verbs, prototypically
> "give"; it promotes the recipient argument to the subject slot and
> makes the agent oblique and omissible:
>
> nteî fkôôm çtîsem (mbëqan)
> dog gets.given bone-ACC (from man)
>
> The muddle voice puts all the arguments of the verb in the malefactive
> case, lined up after ther verb in no particular order.
>
> xûlâd mbëqââ nteîg
> bite-MUDDLE man-MAL dog-MAL
> Biting occurs, involving a man and a dog.
>
> fkôômb nteîg çtîsegya mbëqââ
> give-MUDDLE dog-MAL bone-MAL man-MAL
> Giving occurs, involving a dog, a bone and a man.
>
> Work on this conlang has been going pretty slowly, as gjâ-zym-byn is
> taking up most of my creative energies that don't go into writing
> fiction, but maybe by this time next year I'll have a phonology and a
> kinship system.
>
> --
> Jim Henry
> http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (2)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com
conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
