There are 14 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Unveiling the new Gravgaln (was Graavgaaln)
From: Adam Walker
1b. Re: Unveiling the new Gravgaln (was Graavgaaln)
From: James Kane
1c. Re: Unveiling the new Gravgaln (was Graavgaaln)
From: Eric Christopherson
2a. Re: ablaut plus height harmony
From: neo gu
2b. Re: ablaut plus height harmony
From: Alex Fink
2c. Re: ablaut plus height harmony
From: neo gu
3a. Re: Ejective Consonants a sign of Mountain Living
From: Padraic Brown
4a. Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: James Kane
4b. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: Logan Kearsley
4c. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: James Kane
4d. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: Adam Walker
4e. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: Rich Harrison
4f. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: Alex Fink
4g. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
From: R A Brown
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Unveiling the new Gravgaln (was Graavgaaln)
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jun 14, 2013 6:00 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:42 PM, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
> Wow that is one hell of a phonology! I must ask though, why /ɐ ɑ ɒ/ rather
> than /a ʌ ɔ/. Don't be offended, I just have a bit of a soft spot for
> symmetry. How did you decide on all of the consonants? I noticed there are
> a few gaps like /ɳ/, not that that's a bad thing of course!
>
> James
>
Well, symmetry was exactly what I was trying for. What I noted as e /ɛ /
or /æ / and eu /œ / or /ɶ / are, in most environments the lower of those
pairs. And /a/ isn't actually central according to IPA. What I have, and
intended to describe is three front unround, three central unround and
three back unround -- three high, three mid, three low. The rounded set is
asymmetrical in lacking a low central round vowel, but the rounding harmony
of the Aspectual prefixes amkes claer that the language once had such a
vowel which has merged with /ɐ / since some words with /ɐ / induce rounded
vowels in the prefixes while others take unrounded.
That's the intent anyway. Not saying I have achieved it.
Adam
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 15/06/2013, at 10:48 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 4:11 PM, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> Is there a guide to pronunciation somewhere? There are an awful lot of
> >> digraphs :) Looks good though!
> >>
> >>
> >> James
> > Okay, just remember, you asked for it!
> >
> > Vowels
> >
> >
> > i /i/
> >
> > é /e/
> >
> > e /ɛ / or /æ /
> >
> > î /ɨ /
> >
> > ê /ə /
> >
> > a /ɐ /
> >
> > ue /ɯ /
> >
> > óe /ɤ /
> >
> > oe /ɑ /
> >
> > iu /y/
> >
> > éu /ø /
> >
> > eu/œ / or /ɶ /
> >
> > û /ʉ /
> >
> > ô /ɵ /
> >
> > u /u/
> >
> > ó /o/
> >
> > o /ɒ /
> >
> >
> > Consonants
> >
> >
> > p /pʰ /
> >
> > bb /bʱ /
> >
> > b /b/
> >
> > t /tʰ /
> >
> > dd /dʱ /
> >
> > d /d/
> >
> > t' / ʈ ʰ /
> >
> > dd' /ɖ ʱ /
> >
> > d' / ɖ /
> >
> > k /kʰ /
> >
> > gg /gʱ /
> >
> > g /g/
> >
> > q /qʰ /
> >
> > qgg / ɢ ʱ /
> >
> > qg /ɢ /
> >
> > ph /ɸ /
> >
> > bh /β /
> >
> > f /f/
> >
> > v /v/
> >
> > th /θ /
> >
> > dh /ð /
> >
> > s /s/
> >
> > z /z/
> >
> > sh /ʃ /
> >
> > zh /ʒ /
> >
> > sh' /ʂ /
> >
> > zh' /ʐ /
> >
> > ś /ɕ /
> >
> > ź /ʑ /
> >
> > kh /x/
> >
> > gh /ɣ /
> >
> > hh /ħ /
> >
> > gh /ʕ /
> >
> > h /h/
> >
> > pf /pf͡ /
> >
> > bv /bv͡ /
> >
> > ts /t͡s /
> >
> > dz /dz͡ /
> >
> > ch /t͡ʃ /
> >
> > j /d͡ʒ /
> >
> > ch' /ʈʂ͡ /
> >
> > j' /ɖʐ͡ /
> >
> > m /m/
> >
> > n /n/
> >
> > ñ /ɲ /
> >
> > ng /ŋ /
> >
> > l /l/
> >
> > ł /ʎ /
> >
> > ll /ʟ /
> >
> > hl /ɬ /
> >
> > lz /ɮ /
> >
> > tl /tɬ͡ /
> >
> > dl /d͡ɮ/
> >
> > r /ɹ /
> >
> > rr /r/
> >
> > hr /ʁ / or /ʀ /
> >
> > ř /r͡ʒ /
> >
> > rv /ɹʋ͡ /
> >
> > y /j/
> >
> > w /w/
> > hw /ʍ /
>
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Unveiling the new Gravgaln (was Graavgaaln)
Posted by: "James Kane" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jun 14, 2013 6:23 pm ((PDT))
Ah okay, that makes a lot of sense :)
(And you're right, I should have put ä)
Sent from my iPhone
On 15/06/2013, at 1:00 PM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 7:42 PM, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Wow that is one hell of a phonology! I must ask though, why /ɐ ɑ ɒ/ rather
>> than /a ʌ ɔ/. Don't be offended, I just have a bit of a soft spot for
>> symmetry. How did you decide on all of the consonants? I noticed there are
>> a few gaps like /ɳ/, not that that's a bad thing of course!
>>
>> James
>
>
> Well, symmetry was exactly what I was trying for. What I noted as e /ɛ /
> or /æ / and eu /œ / or /ɶ / are, in most environments the lower of those
> pairs. And /a/ isn't actually central according to IPA. What I have, and
> intended to describe is three front unround, three central unround and
> three back unround -- three high, three mid, three low. The rounded set is
> asymmetrical in lacking a low central round vowel, but the rounding harmony
> of the Aspectual prefixes amkes claer that the language once had such a
> vowel which has merged with /ɐ / since some words with /ɐ / induce rounded
> vowels in the prefixes while others take unrounded.
>
>
> That's the intent anyway. Not saying I have achieved it.
>
> Adam
>
>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On 15/06/2013, at 10:48 AM, Adam Walker <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 4:11 PM, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is there a guide to pronunciation somewhere? There are an awful lot of
>>>> digraphs :) Looks good though!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> James
>>> Okay, just remember, you asked for it!
>>>
>>> Vowels
>>>
>>>
>>> i /i/
>>>
>>> é /e/
>>>
>>> e /ɛ / or /æ /
>>>
>>> î /ɨ /
>>>
>>> ê /ə /
>>>
>>> a /ɐ /
>>>
>>> ue /ɯ /
>>>
>>> óe /ɤ /
>>>
>>> oe /ɑ /
>>>
>>> iu /y/
>>>
>>> éu /ø /
>>>
>>> eu/œ / or /ɶ /
>>>
>>> û /ʉ /
>>>
>>> ô /ɵ /
>>>
>>> u /u/
>>>
>>> ó /o/
>>>
>>> o /ɒ /
>>>
>>>
>>> Consonants
>>>
>>>
>>> p /pʰ /
>>>
>>> bb /bʱ /
>>>
>>> b /b/
>>>
>>> t /tʰ /
>>>
>>> dd /dʱ /
>>>
>>> d /d/
>>>
>>> t' / ʈ ʰ /
>>>
>>> dd' /ɖ ʱ /
>>>
>>> d' / ɖ /
>>>
>>> k /kʰ /
>>>
>>> gg /gʱ /
>>>
>>> g /g/
>>>
>>> q /qʰ /
>>>
>>> qgg / ɢ ʱ /
>>>
>>> qg /ɢ /
>>>
>>> ph /ɸ /
>>>
>>> bh /β /
>>>
>>> f /f/
>>>
>>> v /v/
>>>
>>> th /θ /
>>>
>>> dh /ð /
>>>
>>> s /s/
>>>
>>> z /z/
>>>
>>> sh /ʃ /
>>>
>>> zh /ʒ /
>>>
>>> sh' /ʂ /
>>>
>>> zh' /ʐ /
>>>
>>> ś /ɕ /
>>>
>>> ź /ʑ /
>>>
>>> kh /x/
>>>
>>> gh /ɣ /
>>>
>>> hh /ħ /
>>>
>>> gh /ʕ /
>>>
>>> h /h/
>>>
>>> pf /pf͡ /
>>>
>>> bv /bv͡ /
>>>
>>> ts /t͡s /
>>>
>>> dz /dz͡ /
>>>
>>> ch /t͡ʃ /
>>>
>>> j /d͡ʒ /
>>>
>>> ch' /ʈʂ͡ /
>>>
>>> j' /ɖʐ͡ /
>>>
>>> m /m/
>>>
>>> n /n/
>>>
>>> ñ /ɲ /
>>>
>>> ng /ŋ /
>>>
>>> l /l/
>>>
>>> ł /ʎ /
>>>
>>> ll /ʟ /
>>>
>>> hl /ɬ /
>>>
>>> lz /ɮ /
>>>
>>> tl /tɬ͡ /
>>>
>>> dl /d͡ɮ/
>>>
>>> r /ɹ /
>>>
>>> rr /r/
>>>
>>> hr /ʁ / or /ʀ /
>>>
>>> ř /r͡ʒ /
>>>
>>> rv /ɹʋ͡ /
>>>
>>> y /j/
>>>
>>> w /w/
>>> hw /ʍ /
>>
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
1c. Re: Unveiling the new Gravgaln (was Graavgaaln)
Posted by: "Eric Christopherson" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jun 14, 2013 8:46 pm ((PDT))
On Jun 14, 2013, at 7:37 PM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:32:44 -0500, Eric Christopherson <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> On the subject of pun words in conlangs, I'm usually pretty strict about not
>> allowing conlang words to be too similar to natlang ones if they mean
>> similar things (or even if they mean different things but there's too much
>> of a match in sound and/or orthography), unless that's actually justified in
>> the backstory
>
> If you ask me, that's undue influence from the natlang(s) in question too! I
> aim for total _independence_ from natlangs; in an (unreachably) ideal world
> I'd just forget my natlang knowledge while working on a conlang.
True; I know this has come up in the past (probably several times).
I wonder if anyone ever tries meditation or self-hypnosis or anything in order
to try to suppress some natlang knowledge! (Not sure that's even a plausible
idea.)
> Bear in mind that even natlangs occasionally commit formally impeccable
> coincidences like Persian /b&d/ 'bad' or Mbabaram /dOg/ 'dog'. And if you
> allow a little phonetic leeway and a little semantic leeway the number of
> these should increase multiplicatively -- exactly the same as the behaviour
> that Rosenfelder explains in <http://zompist.com/chance.htm> in the context
> of mass comparison, from the opposite perspective. If you really disallow
> words that are phonetical match to (say) English ones _whatever_ their
> meaning, as you suggest, and your phonotactics is otherwise close, that would
> leave a pretty distinctive crater in your lexicon.
Oh, certainly. I wouldn't dream of disallowing morphemes like /b&d/ or /dOg/;
but I guess I would feel very odd including a sequence that's more complex or
has very marked combinations of sounds -- e.g. /nivx/ in Gravgaln. (I.e. I
don't think the combination /vx/ would be likely to occur that much in
languages in general; to say nothing of the whole four-phoneme sequence. But
again this is my preference; I'm not casting aspersions on Gravgaln.)
This discussion reminds me of a language I haven't really sketched out at all,
where the word for "language" is /bsrag/. As I've indicated on the list, I feel
certain that I saw this word somewhere in some Tibetan text, and because of
that, coupled with the oddness of the sequence /bsr/, I am hesitant to actually
keep the word as such. Ah well.
> (This is e.g. what Eskayan <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskayan_language>
> did, and I think it shows. But then Eskayan is a quite noobish conlang by
> our community's standards.)
Interesting -- hadn't heard of this!
Messages in this topic (11)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: ablaut plus height harmony
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jun 14, 2013 6:10 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:32:55 -0400, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
>> In my latest sketch, which is supposed to be naturalistic for a change, the
>> protolanguage has 4 vowels,
>> call them I, U, E, and A (or O). Most roots are CVCVC with each V specified
>> only as being front or back.
>> There may be a suffixed V, also front or back. This leaves 2 ablaut grades,
>> high and low, which affect
>> both the root and suffix V due to the height harmony. E.g. *xIwIm-U vs
>> *xEwEm-A. For transitive verbs,
>> the low grade is used for active forms and the high grade for passive ones.
>> I'm not sure of the distribution
>> for nouns, prepositions, and intransitive verbs. My question is, how
>> naturalistic is this scheme? Also, is it
>> too limiting?
>
> How large is your consonant inventory? A low consonant inventory limits the
> name of roots. I like small
> inventories and that's one of the things I have to live with. Depending on
> the syntax and the possibility of
> compounding, this may not be a problem.
16 - 18 consonants, currently.
> Is this language verbal or nominal?
I don't know. What are the criteria?
> The ablaut of the prepositions might depend on whether the language derives
> prepositions from nouns or
> verbs, or both.
They take certain case endings, so they probably come from nouns.
> Perhaps you could use verbal alignment to choose whether intransitive verbs
> pattern with active or passive
> transitives.
I'm considering it, along with possibly using animacy for nouns.
Another issue I forgot to mention is whether the height harmony has to apply to
case and aspect suffixes; currently it doesn't.
> This actually reminds me of a height harmony scheme I have notes for, which
> involves "noun classes" derived from apocope of (C)V(N)CV roots, but since
> I'm going NOMAIL for two weeks starting Sunday, I'll think about it and post
> something on it when I return.
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: ablaut plus height harmony
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jun 14, 2013 6:43 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:08:57 -0400, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>In my latest sketch, which is supposed to be naturalistic for a change, the
>protolanguage has 4 vowels, call them I, U, E, and A (or O). Most roots are
>CVCVC with each V specified only as being front or back. There may be a
>suffixed V, also front or back. This leaves 2 ablaut grades, high and low,
>which affect both the root and suffix V due to the height harmony. E.g.
>*xIwIm-U vs *xEwEm-A. For transitive verbs, the low grade is used for active
>forms and the high grade for passive ones. I'm not sure of the distribution
>for nouns, prepositions, and intransitive verbs. My question is, how
>naturalistic is this scheme? Also, is it too limiting?
I reckon it's naturalistic so far, but it would be easy to go overboard by
making the height harmony too systematic, especially in other parts of speech.
If intransitive verbs aren't a totally different part of speech to transitive
verbs, then which height class they have may well have systematic meaning, in
line with the transitives. But for classes like nouns unrelated to the verb,
the expected answer would be "some nouns have high vowels; others have low;
there is no systematic meaning to which one a given noun has." There could of
course be any number of further uses of the height contrast that make up small
systems of their own -- inflectional, derivational of either high or low
productivity, etc. -- one for each morphologically relevant place the
pre-proto-language phoneme which conditioned the height change occurred.
I think the most likely interpretation of the fact that there is a _single_
meaning that vowel height has for _all_ verbs is that the pre-proto-language
had a prominent but less global pattern, and then a sweeping analogical change
rewrote every form of every verb which didn't fit. If e.g. harmony also showed
a single meaning everywhere in nouns, that would demand another such analogical
change, and in semantics an essentially separate one, unless you can construe
some way that nouns can be active or passive. And I don't think one such
analogical perestroika in verbs makes a separate one any likelier in nouns.
On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:10:35 -0400, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:32:55 -0400, Anthony Miles <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> How large is your consonant inventory? A low consonant inventory limits the
>> name of roots. I like small
>> inventories and that's one of the things I have to live with. Depending on
>> the syntax and the possibility of
>> compounding, this may not be a problem.
Eh, a small inventory is also okay if you accept root homonymy, which if you're
being naturalistic you should. There are plenty of ways to work around
inconveniences that root harmony may cause. One example is differing
morphological behaviour in any other category: e.g. a low-vowel intransitive
and a high-vowel intransitive that are phonological counterparts of each other
could coexist with no problem, as potentially could two
phonologically-identical roots which took aspectual inflection differently, or
so forth. Or there could be other lexical material, e.g. adverbs or various
classifier-like stuff or whatnot, which is (more or less) obligatory with one
root or the other that tells them apart, or of course one of the roots could be
restricted to fixed collocations. Etc.
>Another issue I forgot to mention is whether the height harmony has to apply
>to case and aspect suffixes; currently it doesn't.
Well, if it doesn't, then either the harmony isn't purely phonological but
rather morphophonological, or else the case and affix morphs aren't suffixes
but rather some kind of enclitics or particles. Neither of which is actually a
problem.
Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: ablaut plus height harmony
Posted by: "neo gu" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jun 14, 2013 9:05 pm ((PDT))
On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:43:38 -0400, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 14:08:57 -0400, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>In my latest sketch, which is supposed to be naturalistic for a change, the
>>protolanguage has 4 vowels, call them I, U, E, and A (or O). Most roots are
>>CVCVC with each V specified only as being front or back. There may be a
>>suffixed V, also front or back. This leaves 2 ablaut grades, high and low,
>>which affect both the root and suffix V due to the height harmony. E.g.
>>*xIwIm-U vs *xEwEm-A. For transitive verbs, the low grade is used for active
>>forms and the high grade for passive ones. I'm not sure of the distribution
>>for nouns, prepositions, and intransitive verbs. My question is, how
>>naturalistic is this scheme? Also, is it too limiting?
>
>I reckon it's naturalistic so far, but it would be easy to go overboard by
>making the height harmony too systematic, especially in other parts of speech.
>
>
>If intransitive verbs aren't a totally different part of speech to transitive
>verbs, then which height class they have may well have systematic meaning, in
>line with the transitives. But for classes like nouns unrelated to the verb,
>the expected answer would be "some nouns have high vowels; others have low;
>there is no systematic meaning to which one a given noun has." There could of
>course be any number of further uses of the height contrast that make up small
>systems of their own -- inflectional, derivational of either high or low
>productivity, etc. -- one for each morphologically relevant place the
>pre-proto-language phoneme which conditioned the height change occurred.
>
Hmm. Actually, I have no idea how the ablaut was originally conditioned. Or the
vowel harmony. But such things occur.
Speaking of derivation, I guess those suffixes should be affected by the height
harmony. E.g. *xIwIm-tU vs *xEwEm-tA.
>I think the most likely interpretation of the fact that there is a _single_
>meaning that vowel height has for _all_ verbs is that the pre-proto-language
>had a prominent but less global pattern, and then a sweeping analogical change
>rewrote every form of every verb which didn't fit. If e.g. harmony also
>showed a single meaning everywhere in nouns, that would demand another such
>analogical change, and in semantics an essentially separate one, unless you
>can construe some way that nouns can be active or passive. And I don't think
>one such analogical perestroika in verbs makes a separate one any likelier in
>nouns.
>
OK, then the distribution of high V words and low V nouns and prepositions
should be more-or-less unpatterned.
>On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:10:35 -0400, neo gu <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:32:55 -0400, Anthony Miles <[email protected]>
>>wrote:
>>
>>> How large is your consonant inventory? A low consonant inventory limits the
>>> name of roots. I like small
>>> inventories and that's one of the things I have to live with. Depending on
>>> the syntax and the possibility of
>>> compounding, this may not be a problem.
>
>Eh, a small inventory is also okay if you accept root homonymy, which if
>you're being naturalistic you should. There are plenty of ways to work around
>inconveniences that root harmony may cause. One example is differing
>morphological behaviour in any other category: e.g. a low-vowel intransitive
>and a high-vowel intransitive that are phonological counterparts of each other
>could coexist with no problem, as potentially could two
>phonologically-identical roots which took aspectual inflection differently, or
>so forth. Or there could be other lexical material, e.g. adverbs or various
>classifier-like stuff or whatnot, which is (more or less) obligatory with one
>root or the other that tells them apart, or of course one of the roots could
>be restricted to fixed collocations. Etc.
>
Root homonymy should appear eventually.
>>Another issue I forgot to mention is whether the height harmony has to apply
>>to case and aspect suffixes; currently it doesn't.
>
>Well, if it doesn't, then either the harmony isn't purely phonological but
>rather morphophonological, or else the case and affix morphs aren't suffixes
>but rather some kind of enclitics or particles. Neither of which is actually
>a problem.
>
The case markers at least may still be enclitic at the protolanguage stage;
mostly the same markers are used for both singular and plural and across
declensions. Possibly the noun plurals are enclitic as well. I'll have to take
a close look at these and the aspects.
>Alex
Messages in this topic (5)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
3a. Re: Ejective Consonants a sign of Mountain Living
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Fri Jun 14, 2013 8:07 pm ((PDT))
--- On Fri, 6/14/13, Roman Rausch <[email protected]> wrote:
> > As far as ejective mountain dwellers, surely the Nepalese, living as
> > they do in the Himalayas, ought to be ejecting their consonants all
> > over the place?
>
> And drink tea all the time because water is easier to boil? :-)
Oh, quite naturally my good sir! An excellent and astute observation that
will bear considerable fruit and tie all loose ends together: After all,
the distant lands of Asia, where, the historiographer P. Cornelius
Bombastico assures us, based upon the maps of the chief cartographer of
Megas Alexander himself, one Hippophilos Xyphographico, who made the first
great Atlas of maps of the regions where Alexander's armies wandered, the
Nepali do dwell in the vicinity of Shangri La, are lands renowned for all
manner of cultural refinements, was, in point of fact the original
homeland of tea, a plant crop grown and consumed in vast quantities in,
for example, China (where they call the stuff "tshay"), among other
countries in the surrounds. Now, as is well known to anyone familiar with
the works on the history of agriculture, for example, the copious and
lavishly illustrated twelve volume work composed by Cn. Agrigola or the
excessively detailed if not so copiously illustrated work of Mn.
Latifundio, primitive Men, in those golden prehistorical ages before the
ravages of Flood and Frost Giant, knew nothing at all about agriculture,
and therefore nothing about the culture of tea. It was not until some
years after the flood waters washed away the last traces of the works of
the civilizations of the Giants, all the surviving children of Ziusudra
were living upon the tops of what were once high mountains, now having
become isolated islands, or else were compelled to wander the seas upon
rafts and boats, preying upon any and sundry other seafaring folks as they
chanced to meet. Now, as the great historiographer Musa ben Imramico avers,
there was in those days, though we can reasonably presume there were in
earlier times more, only one language in the world, on account of there
being only the household of Deukalion who survived the ravaging floods and
storms of the previous Age. It was at this time, according to the venerable
scholar and historiographer of the East Goths, one Wulfa wan Dunnaqen,
who, having travelled extensively in those distant lands and having
learned much of the ancient history of the world otherwise long forgotten
in the clouded and obscured mysts of mythology in the West, that, a great
light was seen to shine over the Eastfolds, and this being in the evening,
rather surprised one local fellow by the name of Atthman, who, being
attracted by the rapid descent of said light, went over there with his
older son, Cynno, to investigate. The great light was thought by many
to be a falling star, as freuqently used to fall to Earth in the previous
Ages, but some held it to be a falling angel. For as the venerable sawyer
Hamilcar of New Qades tells us in his work De Aggelibus, in the days
anterior to the Flood, the great angel Lucifer had been cast out with his
armies and were seen to fall from on high in great streaks of burning
light. But upon arriving in the Eastfolds, Atthman and Cynno soon found
that the cause was rather more startling in nature, for, there, they
found neither fallen star nor fallen angel but rather beheld a great
golden swan, spewing and sputtering steam, and having opened its
posterior, out came two men, one wearing a kind of fish bowl upon his
head, while the other wore only loose white robes and a rakishly combed
beard of grey. According to Musa, Atthman asks the stranger "who are you?
and why did you crawl out of a golden goose's butt?" To which the stranger
replies: "Me, I'm Enoch, and this here is me chum, O-Say-Reese, and that's
no goose, lad, gold nor otherwise, that's me Vimana Mark VII. A beaut, no?
Anywho, where is everybody? I just left here a while back on the 'Mother
Ship' - and oh boy!, you've never seen such a wonderful craft as the old
Mother Ship! - and there were people all over the place! Say, where can I
get a hot cup of tea hereabouts? I'm more parched than the great sandy
desert!" "Sad to say, old man, most everyone's gone. Big flood a few
years back washed all the Giants anyway, and most humans too. Er, what's
a 'desert' and what's 'tea'?" Needless to say, old Enoch was Not Amused,
there being no tea to be had anywhere in the vicinity. So, according to
wan Dunnaqen, he got back into his Vimana Mark VII, instructing
O-Say-Reese to teach these primitive people "how to bloody well grow some
tea, and take a bath and so forth". And with that, he packed up his golden
goose and shot back up into the sky, just as he had come down. Now,
O-Say-Reese stayed on a while and taught Atthman the arts of agriculture.
But Atthman was more of a grazer and didn't take too kindly to having to
root about in the dirt and muck, and thus called upon his son Cynno to
take over the farm, and this one took such a shine to the task at hand
there was no stopping him. And so, Cynno applied his skills at farming to
all sorts of plants, well known even to the modern day, such as, for
example, apples, corn, rice, hemp, poppies, cocoa and of course the
wonderful rayon bean. Now, according to Agricola, it was the custom in
those days that the discoverer of a new plant or animal also earned the
privilege of naming the said new plant or animal. For example, Cynno's
brother, Appellias, was the first to discover the last remaining herd of
hairy olifants while out tending his flocks by night, when, having been
asked by his friend Josephat what all the stamping and trumpeting was
about, Appellias could only reply "AAAAAAUGHHH!" before being trod upon
by the enraged pachyderm. Josephat, it turned out, upon returning home
is said to have kept muttering, over and over again, "I have seen the
olifant, and no mistake!", and so the name stuck. And so it was that Cynno
took to naming all the new plants he brought under domestication within
the auspices of his new "mega-latifundical farming corporation", or
MegaFarmCo. In time, Cynno discovered a certain kind of herb growing in
the hill country beyond the confines of the latifundium and found that it
was edible and without distressing side effects, such as, for example,
the time when he discovered senna and suffered from flux for a fortnight,
which when its leaves are dried, was found to make a wonderful, bitter
yet full flavored and refreshing drink, especially when chilled over
crunchy waters. This plant he called "ysset'ttshaya" and brewed it by the
gallon in great glass globes up on the sunny slopes of the hills outside
the latifundium. Now, in after years, as Musa tells us, Yahweh having at
last defeated Tehom at whist, thus causing the waters to again separate
and, having pulled the plug from the drains at the bottom of the world
sea, and the waters thereof having receded, this left all sorts of newly
opened real estate for Cynno's newly founded land-scheme corporation to
exploit. The descendants of Noe thus spread out into all the lands around
the now exposed island-mountains, taking with them not only their
penchant for freshly brewed herbal teas, but also their ur-name for the
delicious beverage in question, 'ttshaya', carrying the same into the east
and south, where, in subsequent ages, the inhabitants of Chatai and
Bharat alike call the stuff by a name in a slightly eroded mode of the
ancient: 'chai'; while in the West, far from the lofty mountain home of
their ancient ancestors, the folks of Rum and Phazzania alike call it by
an even further eroded name: 'tey'. Therefore, it can clearly be seen as
demonstrated by Iuuencus Grammaticus, that tea was indeed first brewed,
and continues to be assiduously consumed, by those hardy mountain men,
fresh off the boat in early post-deluge times, and also that in those
distant and tranquil days, the strongly ejected stop consonants were
everywhere in evidence. Q. E. D. -- the tea drinking Nepalese of the
high Himalayas are the modern day ejective spitting, tea brewing,
mountain dwelling descendants of the ancients with whose language theirs
bears a striking similarity in this regard; also, the similarly tea
drinking, but non Nepalese of the lowlands (i.e., the Nether Lands), have,
in the course of wandering away from their mountainous urheimat, lost
their ejectives, though not their penchant for a spot of tea.
Padraic
> Looking at the WALS map for rare consonants
> (http://wals.info/feature/19A?tg_format=map&v1=cfff&v2=d000&v3=cff0&v4=s00d&v5=cd00&v6=dd00&v7=sd00)
> I noticed that interdental spirants seem to occur more often
> in languages situated near coastlines: English, Greek,
> Albanian, Spanish, Icelandic for Indo-European; but also
> Swahili, Aleut, Fijian; a cluster of languages near the
> South China Sea, a cluster in Mexico, and so on.
> If I come up with a tentative reason for how maritime
> climate or seafaring can make you stick your tongue out, I
> can write a paper. :-)
>
Messages in this topic (18)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "James Kane" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jun 15, 2013 4:07 pm ((PDT))
Hi all
Recently there was a thread on how people formed nominal or adjectival
predicates in their conlangs, and specifically about languages that
mark case on nouns. Most replies marked the predicate in either the
nominative or zero-marked it. Here was my reply (tl;dr I mark the
predicate parts in the accusative/direct object case)
> The latest lang that I've been working on, Mulesuax, is quite analytic.
> While it doesn't feature case endings, it does feature case particles that
> come before the noun in question, as Mulesuax is strongly head-initial.
>
> So _ua_ is used for 'X is a Y', which happens to be the third person
> singular pronoun (dua for the plural):
> _ua ba mulessuas mo ttlamt_
> is-subj.-Mulesuax-d.o.-language
> 'Mulesuax is a language'
>
> For adjectives, 'X is Y', the verb _banh_, to have, is used:
> _banh ba do-kksums mo liksia_
> have-subj.-pl-shaman-d.o.-honourable
> 'The shamans have honour/The shamans are honourable'
> The case particle does a sort of nominalisation on the adjective, so
> either translation is acceptable.
>
> For both of these constructions, it's simply verb-subject-direct.object
Is there some inherent reason that this is a weird way to do it?
Looking around other natlangs, it seems most of them leave the
predicate-y part in the nominative, and so does Esperanto, which I
always found counter-intuitive as the rest of the language is very
strict in marking the accusative.
The explanation was always that they were equal, and neither was doing
anything to the other; but my natural instinct (my L1 is English) is
that, in something like 'he is John', John comes after the verb and
thus is a direct object.
I just want to know if I'm being a noob.
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jun 15, 2013 5:46 pm ((PDT))
On 15 June 2013 17:07, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> Recently there was a thread on how people formed nominal or adjectival
> predicates in their conlangs, and specifically about languages that
> mark case on nouns. Most replies marked the predicate in either the
> nominative or zero-marked it. Here was my reply (tl;dr I mark the
> predicate parts in the accusative/direct object case)
>
>> The latest lang that I've been working on, Mulesuax, is quite analytic.
>> While it doesn't feature case endings, it does feature case particles that
>> come before the noun in question, as Mulesuax is strongly head-initial.
>>
>> So _ua_ is used for 'X is a Y', which happens to be the third person
>> singular pronoun (dua for the plural):
>> _ua ba mulessuas mo ttlamt_
>> is-subj.-Mulesuax-d.o.-language
>> 'Mulesuax is a language'
>>
>> For adjectives, 'X is Y', the verb _banh_, to have, is used:
>> _banh ba do-kksums mo liksia_
>> have-subj.-pl-shaman-d.o.-honourable
>> 'The shamans have honour/The shamans are honourable'
>> The case particle does a sort of nominalisation on the adjective, so
>> either translation is acceptable.
>>
>> For both of these constructions, it's simply verb-subject-direct.object
>
> Is there some inherent reason that this is a weird way to do it?
> Looking around other natlangs, it seems most of them leave the
> predicate-y part in the nominative, and so does Esperanto, which I
> always found counter-intuitive as the rest of the language is very
> strict in marking the accusative.
>
> The explanation was always that they were equal, and neither was doing
> anything to the other; but my natural instinct (my L1 is English) is
> that, in something like 'he is John', John comes after the verb and
> thus is a direct object.
>
> I just want to know if I'm being a noob.
Well, that's the way modern colloquial English does it... i.e., while
there's no way to tell the difference with nouns, one more often hears
things like "it's me" than "it's I", where pronouns are marked in the
objective rather than nominative case.
Russian frequently uses the instrumental case for nominal and
adjectival predicates (though only when there is another verb in the
sentence, not in zero-copula constructions), so marking the predicate
is not unheard of in other languages either.
I think the "they're both equal" argument isn't very strong; if it's
possible to identify one as the predicate and one as the subject, then
clearly they are not both equal, if only because they have different
syntactic roles. And while nominal predicates are sometimes used to
indicate actual equality, they're also used to indicate subset
relations (e.g. "John is a man" == there's a set of men, John belongs
to that set; "John" and "man" are not equivalent).
-l.
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
4c. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "James Kane" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jun 15, 2013 6:55 pm ((PDT))
On 16/06/2013, at 12:46 PM, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 15 June 2013 17:07, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hi all
>>
>> Recently there was a thread on how people formed nominal or adjectival
>> predicates in their conlangs, and specifically about languages that
>> mark case on nouns. Most replies marked the predicate in either the
>> nominative or zero-marked it. Here was my reply (tl;dr I mark the
>> predicate parts in the accusative/direct object case)
>>
>>> The latest lang that I've been working on, Mulesuax, is quite analytic.
>>> While it doesn't feature case endings, it does feature case particles that
>>> come before the noun in question, as Mulesuax is strongly head-initial.
>>>
>>> So _ua_ is used for 'X is a Y', which happens to be the third person
>>> singular pronoun (dua for the plural):
>>> _ua ba mulessuas mo ttlamt_
>>> is-subj.-Mulesuax-d.o.-language
>>> 'Mulesuax is a language'
>>>
>>> For adjectives, 'X is Y', the verb _banh_, to have, is used:
>>> _banh ba do-kksums mo liksia_
>>> have-subj.-pl-shaman-d.o.-honourable
>>> 'The shamans have honour/The shamans are honourable'
>>> The case particle does a sort of nominalisation on the adjective, so
>>> either translation is acceptable.
>>>
>>> For both of these constructions, it's simply verb-subject-direct.object
>>
>> Is there some inherent reason that this is a weird way to do it?
>> Looking around other natlangs, it seems most of them leave the
>> predicate-y part in the nominative, and so does Esperanto, which I
>> always found counter-intuitive as the rest of the language is very
>> strict in marking the accusative.
>>
>> The explanation was always that they were equal, and neither was doing
>> anything to the other; but my natural instinct (my L1 is English) is
>> that, in something like 'he is John', John comes after the verb and
>> thus is a direct object.
>>
>> I just want to know if I'm being a noob.
>
> Well, that's the way modern colloquial English does it... i.e., while
> there's no way to tell the difference with nouns, one more often hears
> things like "it's me" than "it's I", where pronouns are marked in the
> objective rather than nominative case.
>
> Russian frequently uses the instrumental case for nominal and
> adjectival predicates (though only when there is another verb in the
> sentence, not in zero-copula constructions), so marking the predicate
> is not unheard of in other languages either.
>
> I think the "they're both equal" argument isn't very strong; if it's
> possible to identify one as the predicate and one as the subject, then
> clearly they are not both equal, if only because they have different
> syntactic roles. And while nominal predicates are sometimes used to
> indicate actual equality, they're also used to indicate subset
> relations (e.g. "John is a man" == there's a set of men, John belongs
> to that set; "John" and "man" are not equivalent).
>
> -l.
This is how I feel exactly, yet there are languages that put both subject and
predicate in the nominative, or at least don't put the predicate in the
accusative. I was curious as to why, if there is a reason at all.
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
4d. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:13 pm ((PDT))
Gravgaln puts the first argument in either the Agentiv or the
Patientive cases depending on volition of the subject and the second
argument in Equative case.
Adam
On 6/15/13, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 16/06/2013, at 12:46 PM, Logan Kearsley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On 15 June 2013 17:07, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Hi all
>>>
>>> Recently there was a thread on how people formed nominal or adjectival
>>> predicates in their conlangs, and specifically about languages that
>>> mark case on nouns. Most replies marked the predicate in either the
>>> nominative or zero-marked it. Here was my reply (tl;dr I mark the
>>> predicate parts in the accusative/direct object case)
>>>
>>>> The latest lang that I've been working on, Mulesuax, is quite analytic.
>>>> While it doesn't feature case endings, it does feature case particles
>>>> that
>>>> come before the noun in question, as Mulesuax is strongly head-initial.
>>>>
>>>> So _ua_ is used for 'X is a Y', which happens to be the third person
>>>> singular pronoun (dua for the plural):
>>>> _ua ba mulessuas mo ttlamt_
>>>> is-subj.-Mulesuax-d.o.-language
>>>> 'Mulesuax is a language'
>>>>
>>>> For adjectives, 'X is Y', the verb _banh_, to have, is used:
>>>> _banh ba do-kksums mo liksia_
>>>> have-subj.-pl-shaman-d.o.-honourable
>>>> 'The shamans have honour/The shamans are honourable'
>>>> The case particle does a sort of nominalisation on the adjective, so
>>>> either translation is acceptable.
>>>>
>>>> For both of these constructions, it's simply verb-subject-direct.object
>>>
>>> Is there some inherent reason that this is a weird way to do it?
>>> Looking around other natlangs, it seems most of them leave the
>>> predicate-y part in the nominative, and so does Esperanto, which I
>>> always found counter-intuitive as the rest of the language is very
>>> strict in marking the accusative.
>>>
>>> The explanation was always that they were equal, and neither was doing
>>> anything to the other; but my natural instinct (my L1 is English) is
>>> that, in something like 'he is John', John comes after the verb and
>>> thus is a direct object.
>>>
>>> I just want to know if I'm being a noob.
>>
>> Well, that's the way modern colloquial English does it... i.e., while
>> there's no way to tell the difference with nouns, one more often hears
>> things like "it's me" than "it's I", where pronouns are marked in the
>> objective rather than nominative case.
>>
>> Russian frequently uses the instrumental case for nominal and
>> adjectival predicates (though only when there is another verb in the
>> sentence, not in zero-copula constructions), so marking the predicate
>> is not unheard of in other languages either.
>>
>> I think the "they're both equal" argument isn't very strong; if it's
>> possible to identify one as the predicate and one as the subject, then
>> clearly they are not both equal, if only because they have different
>> syntactic roles. And while nominal predicates are sometimes used to
>> indicate actual equality, they're also used to indicate subset
>> relations (e.g. "John is a man" == there's a set of men, John belongs
>> to that set; "John" and "man" are not equivalent).
>>
>> -l.
>
> This is how I feel exactly, yet there are languages that put both subject
> and predicate in the nominative, or at least don't put the predicate in the
> accusative. I was curious as to why, if there is a reason at all.
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
4e. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "Rich Harrison" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jun 15, 2013 7:17 pm ((PDT))
Probably going off on a tangent here, but does it help to eliminate the copula?
If you don't have a vague be/am/is thing in your language, then you only have
subject-verb-object statements and of course it makes sense to put the
"predicate" in the accusative:
let's say "seteni" is a transitive verb meaning "to be a member of the set of"
John setenas virojn. John is a man.
Rich rolhavis ondiston. Rich held the office of (played the role of) wave-maker.
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
4f. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jun 15, 2013 11:08 pm ((PDT))
On Sun, 16 Jun 2013 11:07:41 +1200, James Kane <[email protected]> wrote:
>Is there some inherent reason that this is a weird way to do it?
>Looking around other natlangs, it seems most of them leave the
>predicate-y part in the nominative, and so does Esperanto, which I
>always found counter-intuitive as the rest of the language is very
>strict in marking the accusative.
>
>The explanation was always that they were equal, and neither was doing
>anything to the other; but my natural instinct (my L1 is English) is
>that, in something like 'he is John', John comes after the verb and
>thus is a direct object.
>
>I just want to know if I'm being a noob.
Well, I don't know how we can hope to know what's inherent, aside from by
looking at what large samples of languages do (and trying to see what features
of the semantics they're sensitive to).
A first blush attempt at that leads us to the theory of thematic relations,
where the prototypical transitive object is a patient, something that undergoes
(i.e. has no volition or control in) an action, and thereby changes its state.
These are not features of the, er, right-hand arguments of predicates "is
identical to" and "is an instance of", and that speaks against this argument
being in the accusative. Note that there are various other kinds of
two-argument predicates which also don't have a patient, and may not get the
accusative either: e.g. verbs in non-basic voices, like passives, whose demoted
object is not a simple accusative in any case I can think of offhand; verbs of
motion, which also typically don't get the accusative, though there are
phenomena like the Latin "accusative of place to which"; and verbs which take a
_theme_ instead, an argument that doesn't suffer a state change -- but most (if
not all?) languages disregard the difference between patients and themes in
basic case assignment: http://linguistlist.org/issues/4/4-366.html .
Indeed, to judge by the frequency with which non-verbal strategies (or
defective verbs or ...) are used for them, the relationships of being identical
with, or being an instance of, aren't actions at all. If accusative case is
assigned by verbs to their objects but a given construction doesn't even hàve a
verb, then it's not likely to use an accusative.
As for Esperanto, the smart money is that it avoids the accusative in copular
clauses because Greek and Latin did, not because Zamenhof put a lot of thought
into thematic relations or anything.
English intuitions may lead a person astray here, 'cause in English there are
good reasons to say the marked member of the opposition nominative vs.
accusative is the nominative, and this is also not the case for most languages
with that opposition.
On Sat, 15 Jun 2013 22:17:20 -0400, Rich Harrison <[email protected]> wrote:
>Probably going off on a tangent here, but does it help to eliminate the
>copula? If you don't have a vague be/am/is thing in your language, then you
>only have subject-verb-object statements and of course it makes sense to put
>the "predicate" in the accusative:
>
>let's say "seteni" is a transitive verb meaning "to be a member of the set of"
>
>John setenas virojn. John is a man.
>
>Rich rolhavis ondiston. Rich held the office of (played the role of)
>wave-maker.
I think the copula is a red herring here. A zero-copula language, e.g., would
be subject to the same questions of case assignment as one with a copular verb.
And if your language was encountered in the wild, your one example doesn't
give any particular reason that "setenas" shouldn't be called a copula with
weird case and number selection, rather than given this odd gloss 'be a member
of the set of'.
If you really wanted to go serious about set-theory based semantics, there's
much more to do than change "John is a man" type sentences. (Zach Weaver's
Davin, presented at LCC5, is a taste of how this might turn out:
conlang.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/zweaver_lcc5_slides.pdf )
(E-prime was a fine constrained writing exercise and therefore is a fine prompt
for conlang ideas, and it's certainly true that the IE copula has lots of
semantic functions, but I quite disagree with its identification of that fact
as a problematic locus of "vagueness". It's one hundred percent possible to be
just as (overtly or covertly) subjective or misleading or conflict-inducing or
whatever without touching the English copula as it is with it; in inexpert
hands the principal effect of missing it is just stiltedness.)
Alex
Messages in this topic (7)
________________________________________________________________________
4g. Re: Nominal and Adjectival Predicates
Posted by: "R A Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Jun 15, 2013 11:31 pm ((PDT))
On 16/06/2013 00:07, James Kane wrote:
> Hi all
[snip]
>>
>> For both of these constructions, it's simply
>> verb-subject-direct.object
>
> Is there some inherent reason that this is a weird way
> to do it?
Well, yes, there is. This has been debated before on this
list. The complement of the copula (if a language uses a
verb as copula) is not the same as the direct object. In IE
languages the direct object can _always_ become the subject
of a passive verb, e.g.
The cat chased the mouse --> The mouse was chased [by the cat].
(A few, like English, can also promote the indirect object
to become the subject of a passive; but that is unusual.)
You cannot promote the predicate of the copula in the same, e.g.
John is a teacher --> *A teacher is been [by John].
The latter is simply not possible.
> Looking around other natlangs, it seems most of them
> leave the predicate-y part in the nominative, and so does
> Esperanto, which I always found counter-intuitive as the
> rest of the language is very strict in marking the
> accusative.
On the contrary, I find the Esperanto treatment exactly what
I expect from the IE context in which the language was
created (OTOH I find nominative after a preposition weird -
but that's another story).
But not all natlangs use nominative; classical Arabic uses
its accusative. But that does not automatically make it a
direct object. Just as IE languages with cases use the
nominative for both the subject of a verb and the complement
of the copula, so a language may use its accusative for both
the direct object and the complement of a copula (or,
indeed, some other case for the complement). There is,
indeed, no reason why the complement cannot have its own
distinctive case.
> The explanation was always that they were equal, and
> neither was doing anything to the other; but my natural
> instinct (my L1 is English) is that, in something like
> 'he is John', John comes after the verb and thus is a
> direct object.
Yes, but, as I observed above, you cannot promote John to
the subject of an equivalent passive: *John is been by him!
=============================================================
On 16/06/2013 03:17, Rich Harrison wrote:
> Probably going off on a tangent here, but does it help
> to eliminate the copula?
I don't think that is going off at a tangent. I think it is
helpful to realize that the copula is _not_ necessarily a
verb. That, in itself, should make one stop and realize
that something other than SVO is going on here.
For zero copula, see:
http://wals.info/chapter/120
For other ways of expressing the complement:
http://wals.info/chapter/119
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"language � began with half-musical unanalysed expressions
for individual beings and events."
[Otto Jespersen, Progress in Language, 1895]
Messages in this topic (7)
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