RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
>En cuanto a la palabra larga que aparece, >awatkipasipxañanakasatakipunirakiskarak'panaya. >Habria que preguntar al autor de esta palabra >que analizara cada morfema y podemos sugerir lo que >quiere decir. La fuente proviene de la canción "Jilata" del grupo musical AWATIÑAS. La letra aparece en http://home.no.net/awatinas/text1.htm Ahí no hace referencia pero en otra oportunidad escuché, sea cierto o no, que la palabra la habian extraido de una cita del Dr. Yapita. En cualquier caso, en aymara coloquial huancaneño, la raiz _awati_ jamás daria a entender el sentido de vigilancia, de alerta, de conservacion, que se pretendia en la traduccion que circulaba (algo así como "debemos cuidar/conservar lo nuestro" no recuerdo exactamente cómo estaba traducido) sino sobre alimentar animales o hacerlos pastar. _ Lista de discusion Aymara http://aymara.org/lista/lista.html _
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Estimado Ken, Es una buena idea de que ya se comience a discutir sobre sobre los morfemas de la lengua aymara. En cuanto al mofema -p- plus -xa-habria que ver si es un mofema o dos morfemas. Un colega nuestro don Domingo en su dialecto escuche decir sarapta en lugar de sarapxta. Yo dejaria pendiente hasta verificar si es un morfema o dos mofemas. En cuanto a la palabra larga que aparece, awatkipasipxañanakasatakipunirakiskarak'panaya. Habria que preguntar al autor de esta palabra que analizara cada morfema y podemos sugerir lo que quiere decir. A mi no me suena un aymara corriente. Es por eso que pido un analisis. Esta palabra podria escribir de esta manera, awatkipasipxañanakakasakipunirakiskarakpanaya. Esta palabra me suena aymara que se podria hablar en ciertas ocasiones. Yo sugiero que en el futuro se entre a hablar sobre las clausulas subordinadas en aymara. Uka kusaspaw urxat arst'añaxa. Atentos saludos Juan ILCA Casilla 2681 La Paz, Bolivia, Sudamérica Tel: (00 591 2) 396806 Fax: (00 591 2) 396815 url: www.ilcanet.com _ Lista de discusion Aymara http://aymara.org/lista/lista.html _
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> Resent-Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 14:10:01 -0500 > X-Authentication-Warning: host4.the-web-host.com: arpasi set sender to [EMAIL PROTECTED] using -f > From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Respuesta a un viejo mensaje: Alex Condori: > No me viene a la cabeza otra ilustracion mejor > que ese ya tipico ejemplo que utiliza esa palabra tan > larga, y tantas veces repetida acá y allá que encontré > citada por Hardman, por Yapita y por no se sabe quién mas. > Uso el analizador de Ken Beesley para las glosas > > (1) parlakipasipxañanakasakipunirakïspawa > > parla [verb] > +kipa[side_to_side] > +si[reflexive] > +p[plural] > -xa[perfective] > +ña[V2N_infinitive] > +naka[plural] > +sa[4P_possessive] > +ki[limited/only] > +puni[emphatic] > +raki[also] > :[N2V] > +spa![3-3_Desiderative] > #wa[affirmative/absolute] > > Root gloss: parla > speak > > "debemos dialogar (es imprescindible, ojalá así sea)" En el sistema actual, yo sequí el análisis de Hardman/Váquez/Yapita donde +p = plural y -xa = perfectivo. Según Cerrón-Palomino (y también según la gramática vieja de Ross 1963) esto sería un error; +pxa sería un solo sufijo, históricamente *pisca. A veces con un alomorfo /p/. Antes de cambiar mi sistema, me gustaria leer la crítica de Cerrón-Palomino en la Revista Andina 1995? sobre Briggs 1993. Tiene alguien la referencia exacta? > En realidad no se porqué a la gente le gusta esta palabra, puede > haberlas mas largas como . Mi sistema no puede analizar esta palabra. ¿Qual es la raiz? > Lo cierto es que la "version oficial" es algo diferente > pero no me parece > que sea equivalente de , al menos en > aymara moderno. Aquí vemos este análisis, también con el +p y el -xa sospechosos. aruskipasipxañanakasakipunirakïspawa=> aru+si [verb] +kipa[side_to_side] +si[reflexive] +p[plural] -xa[perfective] +ña[V2N_infinitive] +naka[plural] +sa[4P_possessive] +ki[limited/only] +puni[emphatic] +raki[also] :[N2V] +spa![3-3_Desiderative] #wa[affirmative/absolute] Root gloss: aru+si hablar regañar reñir reprender a los hijos Cuando informé a Dra Hardman de la existencia de mi analizador, ¡ella comenzó a evaluarlo con esta palabra enorme! > Hay muchas lenguas que permiten construcciones igualmente > largas; puede que el turco, el nahuatl intuyo que tambien, > y muchas otras. En español esta informacion probablemente > vendria fusionada en morfemas y lexemas menos abundantes > y con estructuras silabicas más complejas, y usando > varias palabras, ya que es una oracion con significado > completo. Alguien podria decir que el aymara es > antieconomico, pero en realidad es simplemente otra > "filosofia de la lengua". Ni más ni menos perfecta. Estoy completamente de acuerdo. > >En cuanto a qué es superior no lo sé, aunque tiendo a pensar que desde el > >punto de vista de un computador o un programa que intente enseñar a hablar > >a las computadoras está bastante claro qué tipo de lenguas son superiores. > > No superiores simplemente -no se como lo diria en > español- ¿parseable? Digamos que el aymara > facilita la tarea del programador. No sé si > Ken estaría de acuerdo conmigo en esta afirmacion. Antes de programar la morfotáctica y la morfofonología, se tiene que describirlas. Sin contacto personal con aymara-hablantes (nunca he conocido personalmente un Aymara) yo sequí la análisis publicada de Harman/Váquez/Yapita. Yo diría que el trabajo de formalizar y programar la morfotáctica fue mas difícil que en la lengua media; y que programar la morfofonología fue mas o menos normal. Aún hay cuestiones sobre la análisis, como indico acima, y mi diccionario de raices es muy pequeño. Ken ** Kenneth R. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Xerox Research Centre EuropeTel from France:04 76 61 50 64 6, chemin de Maupertuis Tel from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 64 38240 MEYLANFax from France:04 76 61 50 99 France Fax from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 99 XRCE page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com Personal page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley/beesley.html ** _ Lista de discusion Aymara http://aymara.org/lista/lista.html _
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
>Eso parece una especie de ciclo >Big Bang/Big Crunch ¿linguodinámica? Sí algo así :-). La idea sería dado el estado actual de la lengua calcular una serie de indices (indice de aglutinación, morfemas por palabra, ...) y formular adecuadamente las "ecuaciones" de evolución que los ligan, en el sentido de que un alto valor de alguno de ellos inicia una tendencia a la baja o alza en otros, etc. >Si lo que dices es cierto ¿crees que podriamos >esperar una "reconcentracion" del aymara a >largo plazo? ¿qué necesitarias encontrar para >poder afirmarlo en terminos de tu teoria? Habría que evaluar unos cuantos índices (por el momento no están claro cuales son relevantes). Para poder afirmarlo la teoría necesita ser calibrada, lamentablemente sólo existen unas pocas lenguas con registros históricos suficientemente largos y aún así los datos son muy deficientes.
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
>Ciertamente! Las lenguas oscilan entre lo eficiente >y lo comprensible. Los datos parecen apoyar que >las longitudes de las palabras y la morfología de las >lenguas se expande y contrae por ciclos. Eso parece una especie de ciclo Big Bang/Big Crunch ¿linguodinámica? >Una lengua sobre contraida necesariamente tiende a expandirse >mientras que una lengua muy comprensible y sobre expandida tiende >a contraerse haciendose más eficiente. Cierto que le cambio no >lleva a ningún fin concreto pero a medio-largo plazo las tendencias >se ven marcadas por la estructura presente de la lengua. Si lo que dices es cierto ¿crees que podriamos esperar una "reconcentracion" del aymara a largo plazo? ¿qué necesitarias encontrar para poder afirmarlo en terminos de tu teoria? saludos Alex
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Alex, Mire http://www.xmission.com/~health/mormon/language.html donde se puede ver una lista de todas las traducciones disponibles del Libro de Mormon. En esta lista, "Aymara" no es en "italics" (letras cursivas), que (según la página) quier decir que no hay solamente selecciones pero el libro _entero_. Claro que puede ser un error. Aún más, segün la página, se puede obtener un ejemplar gratis. Pero tome cuidado--así Ud dá su nombre y su dirección a los misioneros mormones! Ken > Resent-Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 16:42:11 -0500 > X-Authentication-Warning: host4.the-web-host.com: arpasi set sender to [EMAIL PROTECTED] using -f > From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 22:46:50 +0100 > MIME-Version: 1.0 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > X-Priority: 3 > X-MSMail-Priority: Normal > X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 > Resent-Message-ID: <"ms-1rB.A.pxG.xktl6"@host4.the-web-host.com> > Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > X-Mailing-List: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> archive/latest/202 > X-Loop: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Resent-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > > For the Aymara Book of Mormon selections, try contacting > > Stuart Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > He might be able to help. > > > > I'm exploring some other possible avenues. > > > > Best wishes, > > I deeply thank you, Ken > > yours > > Alex > ** Kenneth R. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Xerox Research Centre EuropeTel from France:04 76 61 50 64 6, chemin de Maupertuis Tel from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 64 38240 MEYLANFax from France:04 76 61 50 99 France Fax from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 99 XRCE page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com Personal page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley/beesley.html **
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
I found the Aymara Book of Mormon on the LDS Church Distribution center Web page http://www.ldscatalog.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=2593896&; prmenbr=1402&CGRY_NUM=search&search=Aymara&RowStart=1&LocCode=DIST If this above link will not get you there for some reason, try www.ldscatalog.com then type Aymara in the search window and it will take you there have fun! don - Original Message - From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 1:46 PM Subject: RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > > For the Aymara Book of Mormon selections, try contacting > > Stuart Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > He might be able to help. > > > > I'm exploring some other possible avenues. > > > > Best wishes, > > I deeply thank you, Ken > > yours > > Alex > >
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
- Original Message - From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 10:54 AM Subject: RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > > > In reply to book of Mormon translation in Aymara, Yes is the answer, at > > least in part. I was serving as a missionary in the altiplano of Bolivia( > > Achicachi) while portions of the Book of Mormon were being translated by > my > > fellow missionaries and later published before I came home ( Oregon) > > September 1978. The translation was very arduous and a very serious > > undertaking by hand with much personal "research" in the form of > consulting > > with very old Aymaristas to seek out "correct form and grammar expressions > > etc." in old aymara form. I brought back home a copy of that book. I do > > not know if the translation was ever completed on the whole book however. > > I'd love to know such translation. We are not very plenty of > written texts in aymara. I will see if I can locate a source of a copy, Are you in Bolivia or ? We had free copies for those who wanted them in our apartments and at the Mission office in LaPAz. I also have a small selection of Hymns translated into Aymara. I could probably scan and e-mail those if you wish.. > > > I was taught Aymara in LaPaz. > > Certainly? Is there any institution that teaches it? No, no institution per se, We as missionaries taught each other. Not sure the exact year it started. early 70's. We used the peace corps lesson booklet I mentioned vocabulary word sheets we made ourselves and personal experience, We trained under those that had already mastered the language as missionaries in a 2 month long class 6 days week, 10-14 hours a day. As we rotated through our 2 year missions, those that learned the best taught the next group of elders and hermanas. When we "graduated" the class we rotated to many campo locations, Achicachi, Santiago de huata, (sp?) other locations around Lago Titicaca etc. As I said earlier, they attempted to have a formal class in Provo for those assigned to the Aymaras before arriving. But, you really had to be there, had to be imersed in the people, the language, hear it, try to speak it in person to get it down. I became quite comfortable speaking in only Aymara my last year there but never became an awesome linguist as some did. It was really a treat to go to the Mercado Negro in La Paz for supplies once each month. The cholitas would talk among themselves about the virahochas, gringos in aymara feeling completely secure in saying anything about us. We would then break into their conversations at some convenient point and all have a great laugh! I am bad at names, I believe an Elder Lyman was my teacher, He was the very most fluent in Aymara and was the one that began the Book of Mormon translation in his last few months in Bolivia by assignment. Elder James Webster then was assigned to assist in Bolivia as Elder Lyman returned home and continued to work with others in Provo. Elder Webster was the person who could go to the Aymara people and ask questions of grammar and best way to convey the points and to use old aymara words and forms not those mixed in from castillano etc. They worked very long and hard to "preserve the oldest knows forms of aymara to make the translation." We received our first copies of the sectional translation about 6 months before I returned home. I will look up to see if any of these missionaries are registered on the LDS missions Bolivia web page http://www.inconnect.com/bolivia/ > > Since you seem to be a LDS (a Mormon, for outsiders), YES! > I'd like to cast a question in the air, you don't > have to answer if you don't want to: happy to attempt it.. this may take a while...I will condense and over simplify but try to get the gist across. What is > the position we aymaras have in the history of the > Americas, according to the latter-saints view? We believe, as outlined in the Book of Mormon that the Aymaras are direct descendants of ancient prophets that sailed from the biblical lands to the Americas. We believe they were directed to build ships and sail to the Americas by revelation before destruction and captivation of their native lands. There are two of these crossings of the ocean in the Book of Mormon. One by the Jeraditedes that date back to the time of the Tower of Babel. It is recorded that the language of the Jeridites was not confounded as were the other languages at that time. ( I read in an earlier message that someone cited Aymara as the closest thing to the Adamic langrage? Certainly have no proof by me but if aymara is a remnant of the jeradite language, and it was not confounded at the time of the tower of Babel th
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
>Otra precision: lo que ahora puede ser algo >"eficiente" manhana puede dejar de serlo. Ciertamente! Las lenguas oscilan entre lo eficiente y lo comprensible. Los datos parecen apoyar que las longitudes de las palabras y la morfología de las lenguas se expande y contrae por ciclos. En los tiempos de máxima expansión tenemos una lengua muy comprensible y en general menos eficiente, mientras que en los casos de mínima contracción tenemos más eficiencia y menos comprensibilidad. Ejemplos de expansión-compresión los dan las lenguas con registros históricos largos: el egipcio antiguo tiene palabras más largas y la información más diseminada el egipcio clásico (la lengua de la egiptología) ha sufrido una importante contracción con respecto a su antecesor. Como las raices quedan tan abreviadas, la fase siguiente el copto demótico presenta aglutinación de palabras y remorfologización (es decir expansión de nuevo). El mismo caso se da con las lenguas chinas. El chino clásico (s. II a.C.) se empieza a contraer progresivamente hasta el siglo XVII o XVIII a partir de entonces se observan tímidos ejemplos de expansión, más evidentes en el chino actual. > El cambio linguistico es impredecible No estoy de acuerdo del todo, precisamente yo llevo bastante tiempo trabajando en una teoría que formule claramente cuando los cambios en una determinada dirección (que en principio se asemejan mucho a fluctuaciones al azar) se ven favorecidos y como se ven desfavorecidos en la dirección contraria. Una lengua sobre contraida necesariamente tiende a expandirse mientras que una lengua muy comprensible y sobre expandida tiende a contraerse haciendose más eficiente. Cierto que le cambio no lleva a ningún fin concreto pero a medio-largo plazo las tendencias se ven marcadas por la estructura presente de la lengua. > y no tiende a ninguna evolucion en los terminos relevantes (i.e. que hay si >el japones se vuelve como el espanhol...se vuelve mas "ineficiente". Cierto, que los sistemas de honoríficos de algunas lenguas, pueden volverse ineficientes con el tiempo. Eso está sucediendo en balinés y en javanés, pero eso se debe a que los hablantes con la igualación social tienden a desvalorar el sistema. Me gustaría pensar que (y no tengo los datos que lo afirmen) que en las lenguas una parte de la misma se vuelve ineficiente a costa de hacer algo más eficiente otra parte de la misma creo que esa es la base de algunas regramaticalizaciones y reanálisis en las lenguas! un saludo cordial, Omar david sánchez
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> For the Aymara Book of Mormon selections, try contacting > Stuart Newton [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > He might be able to help. > > I'm exploring some other possible avenues. > > Best wishes, I deeply thank you, Ken yours Alex
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> In reply to book of Mormon translation in Aymara, Yes is the answer, at > least in part. I was serving as a missionary in the altiplano of Bolivia( > Achicachi) while portions of the Book of Mormon were being translated by my > fellow missionaries and later published before I came home ( Oregon) > September 1978. The translation was very arduous and a very serious > undertaking by hand with much personal "research" in the form of consulting > with very old Aymaristas to seek out "correct form and grammar expressions > etc." in old aymara form. I brought back home a copy of that book. I do > not know if the translation was ever completed on the whole book however. I'd love to know such translation. We are not very plenty of written texts in aymara. > I was taught Aymara in LaPaz. Certainly? Is there any institution that teaches it? Since you seem to be a LDS (a Mormon, for outsiders), I'd like to cast a question in the air, you don't have to answer if you don't want to: What is the position we aymaras have in the history of the Americas, according to the latter-saints view? thanx Alex
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> > Well, perhaps we are far from reliable Bible > > machine-translations yet (I think that a man-made > > Book of Mormon translation is available in > > Aymara, am I right?) > > I've seen a partial translation, in the old CALA orthography. Do you know somewhere I could get this or other translation into aymara? Althouugh I am not a big CALA alphabet fan, I understand it would be a highly valuable text for me. behave yourselves, Alex
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture (David)
.. > Por cierto > poniedo los pies sobre la tierra de nuevo, son sencillos de encontrar > ejemplos de > proposiciones semánticamente diferentes en una lengua L1 que se expresen > igual en > Aymara. > > un saludo, jilata (está bien que un gringo le hable así aun jilata? :-) > david sánchez -- Eso es lo que promete el trabajo de Guzman de Rojas. Con el aymara que manejo, te diria que no es nada sencillo. >un saludo, jilata (está bien que un gringo le hable así aun jilata? :-) Ortodoxamente hablando, creo que no. Pero tu por estar en esta lista, para mi, te considero mi Jilata y espero serlo también para tí. Yaqha urkama Jilata. Jorge
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Well, well, well! Mr. Beesley appears rather more tractable than at first appeared. Sorry I was so rude to you, Ken. On the other hand I must warn you against attributing religious affiliations and motivations to people when your information is - at best - second hand. But as of now all is forgiven and forgotten, only please just don't do it again. I am drawing up a proposal for a machine translation project using Aymara as a transitional megalanguage, based on my Logos experience. (Another thing, Ken, I must warn you that I have very thin skin and very high blood pressure which I am currently trying to get lowered, and I really do not like to be talked down to. Actually, I think it could be a useful spiritual discipline for you to make the effort to show some respect for people of age - I will be 70 in less than a month - and considerable experience in languages and in machine translation.) So I am drawing up a proposal to use Aymara in this way, since Logos was and is so successful, and since I was one of the main architects of it, I think you can safely assume that my proposal will be eminently feasible. If there is a Bible already done in Aymara this would be pure gold, as we could use it as the transitional document to be used in the manner of the Hovy-style translation system to be generated by the computer itself. And, Ken dear, please also do not tell me I did not correctly hear or understand what Prof. Hovy told me. They don't even pretend that this manner of generating a system has very sophisticated grammatical resolution. This is not always necessary, after all. I have used computer systems out there which were quite elementary, one that I had was German, the software only cost about $25, at least compared to Logos it was primitive in the extreme, but quite serviceable for, say a businessman. Currently I have on my computer a Russian translation system. While I know how Russian is structured, and can use the language, I read it rather slowly so this way I can speed read Russian articles to get information that is of value to me. I don't know how much it cost because you know the Russians pirate these kinds of things. But, again, although linguistically certainly imperfect (although all this discussion on Aymara and western culture has for all intents and purposes deprived the word "perfect" of any meaning I nevertheless take the liberty of using it because I don't know of a substitute, perhaps our work will restore the proper meaning of linguistic perfection) so this Russian system is primitive, but eminently useful to me, the Russians do some very interesting thinking. So you can let me know, Ken, if on his basis you think tentatively that some form of collaboration might eventually be possible once we get things set up and funded. A lot of people find me too intractable to deal with, if you do, fine, no problem, I deal with this all the time, it's one of the reasons my blood pressure is so high. But I am *very* successful at what I do, and I have friends in *very* high places. None of them are Jesuits, but if you look at the e-mail I sent to my usual chat group you will see the name "Father Timothy Radcliffe". He is the Master General of the Dominican Order (I don't know if you are aware that there is a traditional rivalry between the Jesuits and Domicans; our community was Dominican, and even though I am Russian Orthodox, I am still recognized by the Dominicans as a Dominican tertiary), anyhow, Fr. Radcliffe is my direct e-mail connection to Pope John Paul. Regards to all, Laura - Original Message - From: Ken Beesley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 4:49 AM Subject: RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > > > Resent-Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:59:57 -0500 > > X-Authentication-Warning: host4.the-web-host.com: arpasi set sender to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] using -f > > From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > I'm from a religious background myself (Mormon) and I worked > > > for a company (ALPS, later ALPNET) that, though quite secular itself, > > > grew out of an earlier machine-translation project at Brigham Young > > > University that had definite religious motivation. > > > > Did not the Brigham Young University develop a > > proficiency test on aymara for foreigners, or > > something alike? > > Alex, > > At one time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints > (Mormons) sent missionaries to the Aymaras. And they > translated some books into the language. I do not know if they > are still active in this area. I'll try to find out. I don't > know anything about a proficiency test. > > > > > > > So I am sincerely interested in religious motivations behind > > > a variety o
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Alex wrote: > > Did not the Brigham Young University develop a > > proficiency test on aymara for foreigners, or > > something alike? Alex, It now occurs to me that you might be referring to a language "aptitude" test that was and probably still is given to prospective missionaries. Twenty or thirty years ago, about half of Mormon missionaries from the USA were sent to English-speaking areas, and the rest were taught a second language. The percentages may have changed radically by now (with more emphasis on Spanish and Portuguese particularly). The language aptitude test was used to identify those who were more likely to succeed in learning a new language. Ken ** Kenneth R. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Xerox Research Centre EuropeTel from France:04 76 61 50 64 6, chemin de Maupertuis Tel from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 64 38240 MEYLANFax from France:04 76 61 50 99 France Fax from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 99 XRCE page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com Personal page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley/beesley.html **
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> Resent-Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:59:57 -0500 > X-Authentication-Warning: host4.the-web-host.com: arpasi set sender to [EMAIL PROTECTED] using -f > From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > I'm from a religious background myself (Mormon) and I worked > > for a company (ALPS, later ALPNET) that, though quite secular itself, > > grew out of an earlier machine-translation project at Brigham Young > > University that had definite religious motivation. > > Did not the Brigham Young University develop a > proficiency test on aymara for foreigners, or > something alike? Alex, At one time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) sent missionaries to the Aymaras. And they translated some books into the language. I do not know if they are still active in this area. I'll try to find out. I don't know anything about a proficiency test. > > > So I am sincerely interested in religious motivations behind > > a variety of machine-translation projects. > > Well, perhaps we are far from reliable Bible > machine-translations yet (I think that a man-made > Book of Mormon translation is available in > Aymara, am I right?) I've seen a partial translation, in the old CALA orthography. Ken ** Kenneth R. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Xerox Research Centre EuropeTel from France:04 76 61 50 64 6, chemin de Maupertuis Tel from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 64 38240 MEYLANFax from France:04 76 61 50 99 France Fax from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 99 XRCE page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com Personal page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley/beesley.html **
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
In reply to book of Mormon translation in Aymara, Yes is the answer, at least in part. I was serving as a missionary in the altiplano of Bolivia( Achicachi) while portions of the Book of Mormon were being translated by my fellow missionaries and later published before I came home ( Oregon) September 1978. The translation was very arduous and a very serious undertaking by hand with much personal "research" in the form of consulting with very old Aymaristas to seek out "correct form and grammar expressions etc." in old aymara form. I brought back home a copy of that book. I do not know if the translation was ever completed on the whole book however. I was taught Aymara in LaPaz. Near BYU is a Missionary traning center where new missionaries are taught the language and customs of the country they will be serving in. For a time while I was in Bolivia, they attempted to teach Aymara in that setting. At the training center each new missionary was tested on a regualr basis with a "profency " test to gauge progress. Such a test is given in each lnaguage tought there. I have no personal experience with such a test as I learned Aymara in Bolivia before it was taught in USA. However, Aymara was too difficult to learn there away from the true aymaristas to be successful. We did so much better where we could speak with the aymaristas, make fools of ourselves learning from them and even listening to the radio. I found the language totally fascinating, a very literal and accurate language. Unlike English which I find vague and easily misunderstood party to party. As missionaries in Bolivia, we used a book left in the country by the Peace Corps "Se Puede Aprender Aymara" by E.A. Nida It is a pretty good grammar text and a decent vocabulary appendix. It has lessons written both in Spanish and English. another possible point of Jesuit interest; I have a photocopy of a book "copacbana de los Incas" Documentos Auto-linguisticos e isografiados del Aymaru-Aymara Protogonos de los Pre-americanos copyright 1901 It is largely excerpts from Jesuit Priests in the 1600's very interesting. But alas I have had little time to study it and my Spanish is failing let alone "ancient" Spanish. Don - Original Message - From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 1:04 PM Subject: RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > "Ken Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > And did not Ludovico Bertonio happened to be a JESUIT > > > himself? And, of course, his work on Aymara was > > > developed on a misionary basis. > > > > > > It must be a Jesuitic conspiration :) > > > > > > Alex, > > > > You're joking, of course, but I really didn't mean to imply > > that there was anything like a conspiracy. > > Yes indeed, I was joking. In fact, I have nothing > against the Sons of Loyola. And what is more, > I acknowledge the huge language-related work they > did all over the Americas. Most early native grammars > in the Spanish America had jesuitic authorship. > > > I'm from a religious background myself (Mormon) and I worked > > for a company (ALPS, later ALPNET) that, though quite secular itself, > > grew out of an earlier machine-translation project at Brigham Young > > University that had definite religious motivation. > > Did not the Brigham Young University develop a > proficiency test on aymara for foreigners, or > something alike? > > > So I am sincerely interested in religious motivations behind > > a variety of machine-translation projects. > > Well, perhaps we are far from reliable Bible > machine-translations yet (I think that a man-made > Book of Mormon translation is available in > Aymara, am I right?) > > waliki > > Alex > >
[aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
De acuerdo con todos los argumentos aportados, con los cuales lo desconcertante deja de serlo. Omar > En efecto, algo desconcertante. En quechua y aymara > respectivamente > tenemos _qillqay_ y _qillqaña_ que se traducen como > _escribir_ > > Hecho numero uno: esto nos desconcierta porque bien > es > sabido que los pueblos andinos, a diferencia de los > mesoamerianos, no conocian la escritura. > > Hecho número dos: al igual que hizo el español, > las lenguas amerindias adoptaron palabras > extranjeras > para denotar realidades no conocidas hasta entonces. > Así tenemos (vaca/waka), (oveja/iwisa), > (caballo/kawallu) > Incluso se adoptaron préstamos para sustituir > palabras > ya existentes (hablar/parlaña) (tiempo/timpu), con > lo cual encontramos muy curioso que escribir, siendo > una actividad importada, no hubiera resultado > (escribir/iskirwiña) > > Hecho numero tres: la pervivencia de una palabra > indigena para denotar el acto de escribir nos > hace asumir ciertas interrogantes sobre el > porqué una palabra nativa denota una actividad > impropia de un pueblo agrafo. Nos plantea > interrogantes, sí, pero en ningun caso constituye > explicacion por si sola para afirmar que > los incas escribian, aunque nos sugiere > levemente esa posibilidad. > > Un asunto sospechoso, > > portense bien > > Alex > ___ Do You Yahoo!? Envía mensajes instantáneos y recibe alertas de correo con Yahoo! Messenger - http://messenger.yahoo.es
[aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Hola David! Disculpa si no entendi bien tus ideas y siempre vale la aclaracion y el llamdo de atencion. Quizas fue por el contexto de los mensajes. Lo mas importante, sin embargo se mantiene: respeto tus ideas y opiniones. Claro, eso no evita que debatamos y compartamos nuestras ideas. Perfecto entonces! No te enojes si discuto aspectos que te parecen secundarios. Tambien es una manera de dar a conocer mi punto de vista y que otros discrepen tambien. Volviendo a Aymara Uta, aun no me queda claro entonces en que se diferencia "la eficiencia de las lenguas" con el tema de la perfeccion. A mi modo de ver todos son versiones del mismo problema. Otra precision: lo que ahora puede ser algo "eficiente" manhana puede dejar de serlo. El cambio linguistico es impredecible y no tiende a ninguna evolucion en los terminos relevantes (i.e. que hay si el japones se vuelve como el espanhol...se vuelve mas "ineficiente". Las lenguas son ineficientes, imperfectas?). Lo de las diferencias esta claro. Si tienes algo de tiempo y te interesa, por favor escribe sobre esos puntos. A lo mejor estamos hablando de lo mismo, hermanito! Tengo que confesar que muchas veces mis mensajes no son todo lo claro que deberia, por favor reclamen! Saludos, Omar > >NO ESTA EN DISCUSION EL QUE LAS LENGUAS DIFIERAN O > QUE > >PUEDAN EXPRESAR N-ENUNCIADOS. LO QUE ESTA EN > >ENTREDICHO ES QUE SE INFIERA DE ESTE HECHO QUE > EXISTE > >UNA RAZON INHERENTE (DIGAMOS GRAMATICAL) Y UNICA > >(ESPECIAL) QUE CALIFIQUE A TAL LENGUA COMO "MAS > >PERFECTA", O ETC. > > Eso lo dices tu Omar, yo no me referí a ese hecho > sólo discutía que ciertos > sistemas tienen maneras más eficientes de expresar > ciertas oposiciones y > matices. Para nada me refería al absurdo de tema del > "más perfecto"!!! > > >EN OTRAS PALABRAS, LA PREGUNTA SERIA... EL HECHO DE > >QUE EL JAPONES O EL KAWI (O EL TIBETANO AGREGARIA A > LA > >LISTA)DENOTE DIEZ, QUINCE O VEINTE MANERAS > DIFERENTES > >DE EXPRESAR RESPETO, HACE DIFERENTES A DICHAS > LENGUAS? > > A las lenguas en sí no, pero desde el punto de vista > de los elementos > necesarios > para marcar diferencias son lenguas más "económicas" > o "eficientes" en el > sentido > de que requieren un menor tiempo del habla para > expresar "respeto" debido a > sus > formas especializadas para esa labor. > > >HACE DIFERENTE A LA LENGUA DE LOS ESQUIMALES EL > HECHO > >DE QUE DISTINGUEN LEXICAMENTE INFINIDAD DE MATICES > >PARA EL COLOR BLANCO DE LA NIEVE (EN OTRAS > LENGUAS)? > > A la lengua no, pero su sistema de calificación de > la "nieve" es más > eficiente claramente. > Todas mis afirmaciones debían entenderse en ese > sentido restringido!!! > > >ES IMPOSIBLE ACASO QUE EL ESPANHOL, EL AYMARA O EL > >QUECHUA, DESARROLLEN UN SISTEMA COMO EL DEL > JAPONES, > >TIBETANO, O AUN EL ESQUIMAL? LA RESPUESTA ES OTRA > VEZ, > >NO. NO ES IMPOSIBLE. > > Cuando eso suceda diremos que el español el tan > eficiente como el japonés! > No > hay ningún problema con eso. > > >Volviendo sobre aspectos más generales y menos > >culturales, yo creo que no todas las lenguas son > >iguales. > >OBVIO. EN CIERTO NIVEL DE ANALISIS, ES UN HECHO > >SIMPLEMENTE OBVIO QUE LAS LENGUAS NATURALES > DIFIEREN. > >SIN EMBARGO, TAMBIEN PERMITEME DARLE LA VUELTA A TU > >AFIRMACION: EN CIERTO NIVEL DE ANALISIS PODEMOS > >AFIRMAR QUE SI, QUE LAS LENGUAS (O PARA EMPLEAR EL > >TERMINO TECNICO ADECUADO, LAS GRAMATICAS...)SON > >"IGUALES". > > Pero si estamos de acuerdo y entendiste > correctamente mis afirmaciones > porqué discutes las ideas secundarias no esenciales > de mi mensaje? > > >SIN EMBARGO AMBAS USAN SILABAS (Y ACENTO, Y RASGOS > >SUPRASEGMENTALES, DEPENDENCIA ESTRUCTURAL, > >CONSTITUYENTES, RESTRICCIONES EN LA FORMACION DE > >PREGUNTAS, PROPIEDADES REFERENCIALES, ETC). > > Sí, yo no dije que ninguno de los sitemas era > superior, simplemente > diferentes > en los detalles!!! > > > ___ Do You Yahoo!? Envía mensajes instantáneos y recibe alertas de correo con Yahoo! Messenger - http://messenger.yahoo.es
[aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> >En cuanto a qué es superior no lo sé, aunque tiendo > a pensar que desde el > >punto de vista de un computador o un programa que > intente enseñar a hablar > >a las computadoras está bastante claro qué tipo de > lenguas son superiores. > > No superiores simplemente -no se como lo diria en > español- ¿parseable? Digamos que el aymara > facilita la tarea del programador. No sé si > Ken estaría de acuerdo conmigo en esta afirmacion. > Desde luego, tener la informacion separada y > ordenadita parece mas ventajoso para > segun que cosas. > > pórtense bien > > Alex > TOTALMENTE DE ACUERDO Y ADEMAS MUY BIEN EXPRESADO. SE ME OLVIDO ESA PARTE DEL ARGUMENTO POR EL APURO DE LA RESPUESTA, PERO CONCUERDO QUE LA NOCION DE "PERFECCION" EN ESTE CONTEXTO NO DEJA DE SER MAS QUE UNA ILUSION OPTICA, UNA VERSION MAS DEL PARA QUE USAMOS LAS LENGUAS NATURALES, ETC. OMAR ___ Do You Yahoo!? Envía mensajes instantáneos y recibe alertas de correo con Yahoo! Messenger - http://messenger.yahoo.es
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> y un pregunta para lo quenes tiennen interes en esso : > como es que el idioma Aymara tienen este palabra de escriber "quilqana" y > disculpa que no se poner mi ~ accento al lettro n. por lo que se yo, dicen > que el idioma aymara nunca tienian un mannera de escriber, avesas mi parece > que la tejidoria viejo de los aymara con sus designos tan complicados mi an > parecido como un mannera de esciber no tan preciso como ya estamos > escribiendo, y disculpas ha mi aymara/castellano gringonizado, ma jicha > zuma aromtawaw taki pachan jake. sincerely, aymar ccopacatty En efecto, algo desconcertante. En quechua y aymara respectivamente tenemos _qillqay_ y _qillqaña_ que se traducen como _escribir_ Hecho numero uno: esto nos desconcierta porque bien es sabido que los pueblos andinos, a diferencia de los mesoamerianos, no conocian la escritura. Hecho número dos: al igual que hizo el español, las lenguas amerindias adoptaron palabras extranjeras para denotar realidades no conocidas hasta entonces. Así tenemos (vaca/waka), (oveja/iwisa), (caballo/kawallu) Incluso se adoptaron préstamos para sustituir palabras ya existentes (hablar/parlaña) (tiempo/timpu), con lo cual encontramos muy curioso que escribir, siendo una actividad importada, no hubiera resultado (escribir/iskirwiña) Hecho numero tres: la pervivencia de una palabra indigena para denotar el acto de escribir nos hace asumir ciertas interrogantes sobre el porqué una palabra nativa denota una actividad impropia de un pueblo agrafo. Nos plantea interrogantes, sí, pero en ningun caso constituye explicacion por si sola para afirmar que los incas escribian, aunque nos sugiere levemente esa posibilidad. Un asunto sospechoso, portense bien Alex
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
>NO ESTA EN DISCUSION EL QUE LAS LENGUAS DIFIERAN O QUE >PUEDAN EXPRESAR N-ENUNCIADOS. LO QUE ESTA EN >ENTREDICHO ES QUE SE INFIERA DE ESTE HECHO QUE EXISTE >UNA RAZON INHERENTE (DIGAMOS GRAMATICAL) Y UNICA >(ESPECIAL) QUE CALIFIQUE A TAL LENGUA COMO "MAS >PERFECTA", O ETC. Eso lo dices tu Omar, yo no me referí a ese hecho sólo discutía que ciertos sistemas tienen maneras más eficientes de expresar ciertas oposiciones y matices. Para nada me refería al absurdo de tema del "más perfecto"!!! >EN OTRAS PALABRAS, LA PREGUNTA SERIA... EL HECHO DE >QUE EL JAPONES O EL KAWI (O EL TIBETANO AGREGARIA A LA >LISTA)DENOTE DIEZ, QUINCE O VEINTE MANERAS DIFERENTES >DE EXPRESAR RESPETO, HACE DIFERENTES A DICHAS LENGUAS? A las lenguas en sí no, pero desde el punto de vista de los elementos necesarios para marcar diferencias son lenguas más "económicas" o "eficientes" en el sentido de que requieren un menor tiempo del habla para expresar "respeto" debido a sus formas especializadas para esa labor. >HACE DIFERENTE A LA LENGUA DE LOS ESQUIMALES EL HECHO >DE QUE DISTINGUEN LEXICAMENTE INFINIDAD DE MATICES >PARA EL COLOR BLANCO DE LA NIEVE (EN OTRAS LENGUAS)? A la lengua no, pero su sistema de calificación de la "nieve" es más eficiente claramente. Todas mis afirmaciones debían entenderse en ese sentido restringido!!! >ES IMPOSIBLE ACASO QUE EL ESPANHOL, EL AYMARA O EL >QUECHUA, DESARROLLEN UN SISTEMA COMO EL DEL JAPONES, >TIBETANO, O AUN EL ESQUIMAL? LA RESPUESTA ES OTRA VEZ, >NO. NO ES IMPOSIBLE. Cuando eso suceda diremos que el español el tan eficiente como el japonés! No hay ningún problema con eso. >Volviendo sobre aspectos más generales y menos >culturales, yo creo que no todas las lenguas son >iguales. >OBVIO. EN CIERTO NIVEL DE ANALISIS, ES UN HECHO >SIMPLEMENTE OBVIO QUE LAS LENGUAS NATURALES DIFIEREN. >SIN EMBARGO, TAMBIEN PERMITEME DARLE LA VUELTA A TU >AFIRMACION: EN CIERTO NIVEL DE ANALISIS PODEMOS >AFIRMAR QUE SI, QUE LAS LENGUAS (O PARA EMPLEAR EL >TERMINO TECNICO ADECUADO, LAS GRAMATICAS...)SON >"IGUALES". Pero si estamos de acuerdo y entendiste correctamente mis afirmaciones porqué discutes las ideas secundarias no esenciales de mi mensaje? >SIN EMBARGO AMBAS USAN SILABAS (Y ACENTO, Y RASGOS >SUPRASEGMENTALES, DEPENDENCIA ESTRUCTURAL, >CONSTITUYENTES, RESTRICCIONES EN LA FORMACION DE >PREGUNTAS, PROPIEDADES REFERENCIALES, ETC). Sí, yo no dije que ninguno de los sitemas era superior, simplemente diferentes en los detalles!!!
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
"Ken Beesley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > And did not Ludovico Bertonio happened to be a JESUIT > > himself? And, of course, his work on Aymara was > > developed on a misionary basis. > > > > It must be a Jesuitic conspiration :) > > > Alex, > > You're joking, of course, but I really didn't mean to imply > that there was anything like a conspiracy. Yes indeed, I was joking. In fact, I have nothing against the Sons of Loyola. And what is more, I acknowledge the huge language-related work they did all over the Americas. Most early native grammars in the Spanish America had jesuitic authorship. > I'm from a religious background myself (Mormon) and I worked > for a company (ALPS, later ALPNET) that, though quite secular itself, > grew out of an earlier machine-translation project at Brigham Young > University that had definite religious motivation. Did not the Brigham Young University develop a proficiency test on aymara for foreigners, or something alike? > So I am sincerely interested in religious motivations behind > a variety of machine-translation projects. Well, perhaps we are far from reliable Bible machine-translations yet (I think that a man-made Book of Mormon translation is available in Aymara, am I right?) waliki Alex
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture (Jorge)
>"Dados dos lenguajes cualesquiera L1 y L2 hagamos que SL1={proposiciones
de la
>lengua L1}, SL2={proposiciones de la lengua L2} y SAy={proposiciones del
>aymara}.
>En esta condiciones siempre existirían fuciones(mappings) de
>asignación de equivalentes semánticos f1:SL1-->SAy, f2:SL2-->SA "
>Y digo 'exitirían' porque los mappings f1 y f2 no estarían bien
>definidos, pues no habría como garantizar la unicidad de imágenes para
cada
>proposición de SL1 ó SL2.
Pues es cierto, no había pensado en que f1 y f2 podían no ser inyectivas.
Por cierto
poniedo los pies sobre la tierra de nuevo, son sencillos de encontrar
ejemplos de
proposiciones semánticamente diferentes en una lengua L1 que se expresen
igual en
Aymara.
un saludo, jilata (está bien que un gringo le hable así aun jilata? :-)
david sánchez
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
DE RESALTAR ES QUE AUN NO SE ENCUENTRA UNA EXPLICACION A ESTE RESPECTO EN EL CASO JUSTAMENTE DEL AIMARA DONDE ES POSIBLE ENCONTRAR SEQUENCIAS *CC, ALTAMENTE MARCADAS Y PRODUCTO DE UNA MORFOFONEMICA COMPLEJA, LO CUAL HACE COLAPSAR LO QUE SABEMOS ACERCA DE LA FORMA EN QUE ORGANIZAN LAS SILABAS EN LAS LENGUAS HUMANAS). Sí bueno los ejemplos son abundantísimo en las lenguas mayas. En las lenguas Salish: mnmnk 'animal' (Bela Kula) donde la palabra no manifiesta límites silábicos (no puedo ser más específico porque nunca he oído ningua grabación en esta lengua). O uno de mis ejemplos favoritos el chinanteco (F. otomangue), también parece desafiar la estructura asumida para las sílabas que tiene /m?/ 'hormiga', /m:/ 'sandalia', /hm?/ 'tomate', /?mm?/ 'pellizcáis', /m:m?m/ 'tú y yo pellizcamos' [/?/: glottal stop]. >En gramática, creo que sucede lo mismo, hay lenguas >que tienden a hacer compuestos muy transparentes >como el aymara o el náhuatl y otras como las lenguas >indoeuropeas que no son nada transparentes y toman >una raíz completamente nueva para expresar nuevos >matices de un concepto. >BUEN EJEMPLO DE CUAN DIFERENTE PUEDE SER UNA SOLUCION >A TRAVES DE DIVERSAS LENGUAS. Diferente pero además desde un punto de vista de la minimalidad de recursos, más eficiente (ojo!: no estoy diciendo "más perfecto" :-) ) >PRIMERO, SUPONGO QUE NO QUERRAS PROPONER COMO >ARGUMENTO A FAVOR DE LA RIQUEZA/POBREZA=>SUPERIORIDAD >EL ESTADO DE SIMPLIFICACION DE LOS PIDGINS, NO ES >CIERTO? No no iba por ahí, solo pretendía señalar el número de oposiciones marcadas. Cuando con un pidgin uno trata de expresar finos matices se ve obligado a alargar excesivamente el discurso. Eso es claramente ineficiente. >EL PUNTO ESTA JUSTAMENTE EN LO QUE MENCIONAS LUEGO, >ACERCA DE LAS LENGUAS CRIOLLAS, DONDE YA LA HISTORIA >ES DIFERENTE. LO RESALTANTE DEL CASO ES QUE EN EL PASO >DE PIDGINS A CRIOLLOS, MUCHAS DE LAS OPCIONES NO >PERMITIDAS PARA LAS LENGUAS HUMANAS, SON "CORREGIDAS", >POR LA SEGUNDA GENERACION DE HABLANTES (Y EN ESE >SENTIDO "ENRIQUECIDAS") nO DICE ESO ALGO ACERCA DE LA >CONSTITUCION COGNITIVA DE LOS SERES HUMANOS RESPECTO >AL LENGUAJE, POR LA QUE SOMOS "IGUALES"? Por supuesto y es una evidencia débil (nada concluyente, por supuesto) de otro de mis temas lingüísticos favoritos: la posibilidad de que ciertas estructuras lingüísticas sean innatas!!! un cordial saludo OMAR ___ Do You Yahoo!? Envía mensajes instantáneos y recibe alertas de correo con Yahoo! Messenger - http://messenger.yahoo.es
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
David wrote: >En gramática, creo que sucede lo mismo, hay lenguas que tienden a hacer >compuestos muy transparentes como el aymara o el náhuatl y otras como >las lenguas indoeuropeas que no son nada transparentes y toman una raíz >completamente nueva para expresar nuevos matices de un concepto. En esto el aymara es una lengua que, en este sentido, tiende a disgregarlo todo, como buena aglutinante. De hecho, es un idioma que no escatima "espacio": primero -segun mi opinion- en sus raices lexicas no parecen predominar las especialmente cortas, sino de longitud mediana (tampoco abundan las largas, ya que su buena cantidad de consonantes permite muchas oposiciones); en segundo lugar, la abundancia de afijos (en realidad sufijos, todavia no vi prefijos), y algunos no tan cortos como, -chuki- o -kipa- o -pacha-, sumados a la facilidad para "enganchar" unos a otros como vagones de tren (con las logicas restricciones debidas a la categoria de cada sufijo)... todo esto da como resultado que no sea muy dificil hacernos con palabras larguisimas, que quizá en otros idiomas irian "compactadas" tanto a nivel léxico como morfologico, aunque desde luego los lexemas aymaras no pueden compararse ni de lejos a la dispersion que parece haber en nahuatl. No me viene a la cabeza otra ilustracion mejor que ese ya tipico ejemplo que utiliza esa palabra tan larga, y tantas veces repetida acá y allá que encontré citada por Hardman, por Yapita y por no se sabe quién mas. Uso el analizador de Ken Beesley para las glosas (1) parlakipasipxañanakasakipunirakïspawa parla [verb] +kipa[side_to_side] +si[reflexive] +p[plural] -xa[perfective] +ña[V2N_infinitive] +naka[plural] +sa[4P_possessive] +ki[limited/only] +puni[emphatic] +raki[also] :[N2V] +spa![3-3_Desiderative] #wa[affirmative/absolute] Root gloss: parla speak "debemos dialogar (es imprescindible, ojalá así sea)" En realidad no se porqué a la gente le gusta esta palabra, puede haberlas mas largas como . Lo cierto es que la "version oficial" es algo diferente pero no me parece que sea equivalente de , al menos en aymara moderno. Hay muchas lenguas que permiten construcciones igualmente largas; puede que el turco, el nahuatl intuyo que tambien, y muchas otras. En español esta informacion probablemente vendria fusionada en morfemas y lexemas menos abundantes y con estructuras silabicas más complejas, y usando varias palabras, ya que es una oracion con significado completo. Alguien podria decir que el aymara es antieconomico, pero en realidad es simplemente otra "filosofia de la lengua". Ni más ni menos perfecta. >En cuanto a qué es superior no lo sé, aunque tiendo a pensar que desde el >punto de vista de un computador o un programa que intente enseñar a hablar >a las computadoras está bastante claro qué tipo de lenguas son superiores. No superiores simplemente -no se como lo diria en español- ¿parseable? Digamos que el aymara facilita la tarea del programador. No sé si Ken estaría de acuerdo conmigo en esta afirmacion. Desde luego, tener la informacion separada y ordenadita parece mas ventajoso para segun que cosas. pórtense bien Alex
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Estoy de acuerdo con Ken y Omar sobre la imposibilidad de cuantificar objetivamente la perfeccion o imperfeccion de cualquier lengua. Tal lengua me puede parecer bella u horrible, pero incluso eso nos remite a una estetica, que no es otra cosa que una categoria subjetiva producto de preconcepciones culturales o expectativas sobre tal lengua. >las ideologias traen sobre todo asunciones acerca de >las personas, en el caso de las lenguas, acerca de sus >hablantes. (Caso por mencionar es el debate de hace >unos años en el lado quechua por el asunto de las >cinco vocales/tres vocales). Ese sí que ha sido un genuino debate ideologico plagado de valoraciones que nada tuvieron que ver con la lingüística. Totalmente esteril la disquisicion sobre el penta/trivocalismo que llegó a versar sobre si la escritura fonémica era adecuada o inadecuada, algo que en otras circunstancias los lingüistas considerarian un asunto trivial en sí mismo. Esto muestra los extremos que puede alcanzar la subjetividad en cuestiones aparentemente objetivas, como la fonetica. cuidense Alex Condori
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> Resent-Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 16:18:55 -0500 > X-Authentication-Warning: host4.the-web-host.com: arpasi set sender to [EMAIL PROTECTED] using -f > Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 22:18:50 +0100 (CET) > From: Omar Beas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I agree with Ken Beesley. > > Jorge: > > El problema no es que podamos o no decir que una > "lengua" es o no mas perfecta. De hecho tenemos casos > conocidos tales como "el quechua es la lengua mas > dulce", "el quechua cuzqueño es el verdadero quechua" > o "el frances es la lengua mas apta para la > literatura" o las clasicas afirmaciones de la no > intertraducibilidad de tal o cual lengua nativa o la > pureza de alguna de ellas (el quechua inca, p.e.); Omar, Estoy de acuerdo. Según todos los lingüistas modernos, es imposible juzgar que una lengua humana es mejor que otra. Suspechosamente, cuando se dice que "el quechua es la lengua mas dulce", es un quechua-hablante que habla, y cuando se dice que "el frances es la lengua mas apta para la literatura", es un francés, etc. Que decide la cualidad de la literatura o poesia es la cualidad de los autores, narradores y poetas, no importa la lengua. > o > aun, la posesion de la escritura como instrumento de > superioridad. La escritura (ortografía) es una tecnología cultural, como la agricultura o la metalurgía. Frecuentemente, la maestría de la ortografía es limitada a una clase de escribas profesionales. El profeta Mohamed, y muchos de los reyes europeos de la Edad Media, eran analfabetos. Cuando era necesario escribir o leer, se llamaba un secretario/escriba (i.e. un sirviente). En las culturas europeas, tenemos una tendencia a sobreestimar la importancia de la escritura. La Ilíada, por ejemplo, fue probablement transmitida oralmente durante generaciones antes de ser escrita. Il Corán lo fue. Yo me imagino que hay poetas y narradores de alta cualidad en los Andes, creando y transmitindo una literatura oral. > > Ninguna lengua es mas o menos que otra porque -como > creo Ken Beesley sugiere- NO HAY CRITERIOS OBJETIVOS > PARA DETERMINAR lo uno u lo otro. Perfecto. (Podemos sí decir que "el español de Ken es una barbaridad", pero esto es otro asunto completamente.) Ken ** Kenneth R. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Xerox Research Centre EuropeTel from France:04 76 61 50 64 6, chemin de Maupertuis Tel from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 64 38240 MEYLANFax from France:04 76 61 50 99 France Fax from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 99 XRCE page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com Personal page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley/beesley.html **
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> From: "Alex Condori" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > From Ken Beesley > >The history of Logos is potentially interesting > > >To begin, it would seem that the founders Bud Scott and > >Charlie Byrne, and their first workers, belonged to a "Jesuit > >sect" that lived on a "commune" somewhere near Middletown, > >New York, USA. Presumably their primary motivation was > >to support missionary work. > > >Another popular machine-translation group, Globalink, _may_ > >have connections to Georgetown University (again Jesuit). > >Again, corrections and more information would be welcome. > >Very early MT work at Georgetown also led to the Systran MT system. > > And did not Ludovico Bertonio happened to be a JESUIT > himself? And, of course, his work on Aymara was > developed on a misionary basis. > > It must be a Jesuitic conspiration :) Alex, You're joking, of course, but I really didn't mean to imply that there was anything like a conspiracy. I'm from a religious background myself (Mormon) and I worked for a company (ALPS, later ALPNET) that, though quite secular itself, grew out of an earlier machine-translation project at Brigham Young University that had definite religious motivation. So I am sincerely interested in religious motivations behind a variety of machine-translation projects. Correction: By the way, my information about "Jesuits" behind Logos came from a former Logos employee, and he was mistaken. I am now in contact with Bud Scott himself, who very kindly sent me an unfinished document describing the beginnings of Logos. Scott and Charlie Byrne were indeed the founders. Their lay community (or "commune" or "Catholic kibbutz" in Scott's words) was led by a remarkable man named Herbert, a Third Order (lay) Dominican. The commune also included three Dominican priests, a number of nuns who left their orders after Vatican II, and lay people from all walks of life. The first contract for this company was to build an English-to-Vietnamese translation system. According to Scott, all the early workers at Logos Corporation, except for the Vietnamese linguists, came from this Catholic lay community. It had (in 1969) about 200 people of all ages, including lots of children; and it was, indeed, located near Middletown, New York, in a little township called Mount Hope. I'm still trying to find more information about this community. It sounds like Laura Jones (who is so angry at me for questioning her linguistic ideas) may in fact be a member (she refers to "our community"). I'm not angry with her, and I'd love to hear her perspective. Really. If the list is interested I'll report again on what I find. It should not be too much of a surprise to find religious motivations behind this, and several other, machine translation efforts. Most of the linguistics in the world is, and always has been, done by religious missionaries, including remarkable linguists like Bertonio, to whom anyone studying Aymara owes a great debt. Ken ** Kenneth R. Beesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Xerox Research Centre EuropeTel from France:04 76 61 50 64 6, chemin de Maupertuis Tel from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 64 38240 MEYLANFax from France:04 76 61 50 99 France Fax from Abroad: +33 4 76 61 50 99 XRCE page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com Personal page: http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley/beesley.html **
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture(David)
Em qua, 21 fev 2001, David Sanchez escreveu:
> Dos preguntas, Jorge:
>
> >Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that
> >the Aymara would greatly facilitate the translation of any other
> >idiom into its own terms, but not the other way around. Thus, because
> >of its perfection, Aymara can render every thought expressed in other
> >mutually untranslatable languages, but the price to pay for it is that
> >(once the perfect language has resolved these thoughts into its own
> >terms), they cannot be translated back into our natural native idioms.
> >Aymara is a Black Hole.
>
> Admitamos que exista una función f: L->Ay definida sobre el conjunto
> de proposiciones de la lengua L y le asigna un equivalente semántico en
> Aymara.
> En estos términos podríamos decir acaso que el hecho de que "Aymara can
> render
> every thought expressed in other mutually untranslatable languages" es
> equivalente
> a que existe una función f como la anterior tal que (es una pregunta no una
> afirmación):
>
> (i) f es suprayectiva (one-one)
> (ii) f no es inyectiva (one-to-one) y por tanto no admite inversa.
>
> Podría ser esta una buena caracterización de los problemas de
> intraductibilidad
> del Aymara a otras lenguas? O los problemas no van por ahí?
>
> david sanchez
David
Respondo a tus preguntas basado en mi entendimiento de lo que sugiere U. Eco,
quien por su vez esta basado en Guzman de Rojas. Mi interpretación
formal/esquemática de la condición de 'agujero negro' sugerida por Eco
es la siguiente:
"Dados dos lenguajes cualesquiera L1 y L2 hagamos que SL1={proposiciones de la
lengua L1}, SL2={proposiciones de la lengua L2} y SAy={proposiciones del
aymara}.
En esta condiciones siempre existirían fuciones(mappings) de
asignación de equivalentes semánticos f1:SL1-->SAy, f2:SL2-->SA "
Y digo 'exitirían' porque los mappings f1 y f2 no estarían bien
definidos, pues no habría como garantizar la unicidad de imágenes para cada
proposición de SL1 ó SL2. Yo sé que en matemática surgieron problemas
semejantes anteriormente, siendo el más famoso "el delta de Dirac" que dió
muchos dolores de cabeza durante un buen tiempo hasta la aparición de la teoría
de la "funciones generalizadas" de Schwartz. Se podría esperar alguna solución
parecida a este problema?
Por otro lado, estos mappings tendrían que ser, al menos mayoritariamente,
NO-SUPRAYECTIVOS. Pues en caso contrario la cardinalidad de SL1 ó SL2 sería
mayor ó igual a SAy y consiguientemente el aymara tendría competidores en su
condición de "agujero negro" :-).
Recíprocamente, habrían problemas de carencia de "buena definición" para los
posibles inversos g1:SAy-->SL1 y g2:SAy-->SL2. Ahora bien, de existir estos, si
tendrían que ser suprayectivos.
Jorge
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> Admitiendo que no sea admisible la relación "más perfecto que" entre dos > lenguajes dados, no crees que de todos modos existe algún criterio de > clasificación/jerarquización? En aspectos concretos yo apostaría que sí. Creo que los infinitos matices del japonés o el kawi (old javanese) para denotar los diferentes de respeto es insuperable :-) Volviendo sobre aspectos más generales y menos culturales, yo creo que no todas las lenguas son iguales. Se me ocurren ejemplos en fonología como el comparar lenguas cercanas como el castellano y el catalán (el primero tiende no concentrar la información haciendo que las sílabas tónicas y átonas tengan las mismas opciones mientras que el segundo tiende a concentrar la información en las tónicas, esto también sucede en inglés donde en sílaba tónica hay más contrastes). En gramática, creo que sucede lo mismo, hay lenguas que tienden a hacer compuestos muy transparentes como el aymara o el náhuatl y otras como las lenguas indoeuropeas que no son nada transparentes y toman una raíz completamente nueva para expresar nuevos matices de un concepto. En cuanto a qué es superior no lo sé, aunque tiendo a pensar que desde el punto de vista de un computador o un programa que intente enseñar a hablar a las computadoras está bastante claro qué tipo de lenguas son superiores. > Por ejemplo, en una discusión de tí y David, en > esta misma lista, ustedes concordaban que el aymara (gramatica) era > "alucinante". De esto entiendo que el aymara es, por lo menos, "más alucinante > que" algunas otras lenguas, pues no todas las lenguas pueden ser "alucinantes". Algunos pidgins tienen en ese sentido muy poco de alucinantes, lo interesante de los pidgins no es tanto su estado original sino su regramaticalización y enriquecimiento a medida que empiezan a ser la lengua nativa algunos grupos convirtiendose en "criollos".
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Actually, David, while I certainly do not value my opinion over yours, my Logos experience is that once you have thoroughly parsed the source sentence, you can get pretty much whatever you want for the target sentence. That is, if it is a "rule based" system. In Vietnamese which was the first language we did, the books were instructions for the military, and there were a number of things in English that the Vietnamese did not like. One thing that I remember in particular was that they did not like all the passive constructions in our manuals "the hatch must be locked" and other such. It was really no big problem to find these passives, since they were "commands" they usually came at the beginning of a sentence or clause, and we found an acceptable Vietnamese expression and used it. I would make the point that such translations are not going to be either perfectly nuanced or poetic. Logos sold its system with the caveat that some post-editing would be needed. And for in-house needs, when they just wanted to get information, not compose letters to send to their most honored customers, a number of Logos customers were satisfied with raw output. In the very beginning, we had to decide what kinds of texts we would translate, and our first choice was newspaper articles, because we figured people would want to be able to get the news from all around the world right away, so they would be satisfied with unedited output. But in the end because of the contracts we were able to land, at first they were all for our government, we ended up translating technical manuals. Even there, however, there was quite a bit of "customization." We had, for instance, Siemens, the IBM of Germany for a customer, also Deutsche Banke, a chemical company, BMW was also our customer, and we devised a dictionary system whereby either they could get a dictionary tailored to their vocabulary or else they could throw a switch and get, I think we had a choice of 3 available. I had my own dictionary when I had my own French system, it had the name of my initials, and since I know French fairly well, I did a number of customized things. For one thing, our customers for French were Canadian, not French, so for the technical words, or food like hot dog, etc., I used the non-French term. So as I say, I appreciate your approach, and this is not an argument on my part, but just an attempt to put my experience at your service so as to suggest that once you really get into such a system, there is quite a lot more that you can do than you might think. We had only one competitor in the beginning, a company called Systran that got all the BIG government contracts, NASA, for instance. And they had to report on the great big government reports, and of course we read their report. And every time they got more money from the government, they added another module to their already huge system. Whereas whenever we had a breakthrough, we would *eliminate* lots of rules, which would be replaced by simplified rules that "saw" it all from a higher viewpoint, so to speak, and could do more with less. So I hope you will find this somewhat helpful, because there does seem a good possibility of getting some kind of a project going. Much love to all, Laura - Original Message - From: David Sanchez <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 4:33 PM Subject: RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > Dos preguntas, Jorge: > > >Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that > >the Aymara would greatly facilitate the translation of any other > >idiom into its own terms, but not the other way around. Thus, because > >of its perfection, Aymara can render every thought expressed in other > >mutually untranslatable languages, but the price to pay for it is that > >(once the perfect language has resolved these thoughts into its own > >terms), they cannot be translated back into our natural native idioms. > >Aymara is a Black Hole. > > Admitamos que exista una función f: L->Ay definida sobre el conjunto > de proposiciones de la lengua L y le asigna un equivalente semántico en > Aymara. > En estos términos podríamos decir acaso que el hecho de que "Aymara can > render > every thought expressed in other mutually untranslatable languages" es > equivalente > a que existe una función f como la anterior tal que (es una pregunta no una > afirmación): > > (i) f es suprayectiva (one-one) > (ii) f no es inyectiva (one-to-one) y por tanto no admite inversa. > > Podría ser esta una buena caracterización de los problemas de > intraductibilidad > del Aymara a otras lenguas? O los problemas no van por ahí? > > david sanchez > >
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Dos preguntas, Jorge: >Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that >the Aymara would greatly facilitate the translation of any other >idiom into its own terms, but not the other way around. Thus, because >of its perfection, Aymara can render every thought expressed in other >mutually untranslatable languages, but the price to pay for it is that >(once the perfect language has resolved these thoughts into its own >terms), they cannot be translated back into our natural native idioms. >Aymara is a Black Hole. Admitamos que exista una función f: L->Ay definida sobre el conjunto de proposiciones de la lengua L y le asigna un equivalente semántico en Aymara. En estos términos podríamos decir acaso que el hecho de que "Aymara can render every thought expressed in other mutually untranslatable languages" es equivalente a que existe una función f como la anterior tal que (es una pregunta no una afirmación): (i) f es suprayectiva (one-one) (ii) f no es inyectiva (one-to-one) y por tanto no admite inversa. Podría ser esta una buena caracterización de los problemas de intraductibilidad del Aymara a otras lenguas? O los problemas no van por ahí? david sanchez
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
alex condori, engesa ma walli cusawa yachttaja, jicha honey na wali aymar aru palkiti, hone tiempos ot jiti, locuwa jam acan estados unidos sarnaqana, wali chamawa.estoy wpriendido que escribe tan bueno engles jilata, dime por lo vista eres linguista? ha mi y mi papa nos facina de pensar en esos cosas profundos como el communicacion basica de los seres humanos del mundo. para todos lo jake del lista aymara, disculpa ha mi silencio, ya tengo nuevo computadora que es mucho mas rapido que lo anterior, ya no vas ha esperar tanto para mi opinion sobre todo los cosas facinantes que escribe, es un buen exercizo para el cerebro, okam tantiachana, lupisctana pekempi, zumawa niatakiw, jichaha acan computadorampi jakisiskanani jilatanaka juliakitanaka, pamisctawjitu nan hon wali quelqata aymara, y un pregunta para lo quenes tiennen interes en esso : como es que el idioma Aymara tienen este palabra de escriber "quilqana" y disculpa que no se poner mi ~ accento al lettro n. por lo que se yo, dicen que el idioma aymara nunca tienian un mannera de escriber, avesas mi parece que la tejidoria viejo de los aymara con sus designos tan complicados mi an parecido como un mannera de esciber no tan preciso como ya estamos escribiendo, y disculpas ha mi aymara/castellano gringonizado, ma jicha zuma aromtawaw taki pachan jake. sincerely, aymar ccopacatty
[aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> Admitiendo que no sea admisible la relación "más > perfecto que" entre dos lenguajes dados, no crees >que de todos modos> existe algún criterio de >clasificación/jerarquización? > En aspectos concretos yo apostaría que sí. Creo que > los infinitos matices del japonés o el kawi (old >javanese) para denotar los diferentes de respeto es > insuperable :-) BUENO, LA TEORIA LINGUISTICA NO ES MENOS CONCRETA POR SER TEORIA. ES JUSTAMENTE TEORIA PORQUE SE BASA EN OBSERVACIONES EMPIRICAS, COMPROBABLES Y FALSEABLES, QUE TIENEN SUSTENTO EN DATOS OBJETIVOS. NO ESTA EN DISCUSION EL QUE LAS LENGUAS DIFIERAN O QUE PUEDAN EXPRESAR N-ENUNCIADOS. LO QUE ESTA EN ENTREDICHO ES QUE SE INFIERA DE ESTE HECHO QUE EXISTE UNA RAZON INHERENTE (DIGAMOS GRAMATICAL) Y UNICA (ESPECIAL) QUE CALIFIQUE A TAL LENGUA COMO "MAS PERFECTA", O ETC. EN OTRAS PALABRAS, LA PREGUNTA SERIA... EL HECHO DE QUE EL JAPONES O EL KAWI (O EL TIBETANO AGREGARIA A LA LISTA)DENOTE DIEZ, QUINCE O VEINTE MANERAS DIFERENTES DE EXPRESAR RESPETO, HACE DIFERENTES A DICHAS LENGUAS? HACE DIFERENTE A LA LENGUA DE LOS ESQUIMALES EL HECHO DE QUE DISTINGUEN LEXICAMENTE INFINIDAD DE MATICES PARA EL COLOR BLANCO DE LA NIEVE (EN OTRAS LENGUAS)? LA RESPUESTA ES SI Y NO. SI, EN UN SENTIDO TRIVIAL, POR EL CUAL DECIMOS QUE EFECTIVAMENTE HAY DIFERENCIAS ENTRE LAS LENGUAS. PERO AL MISMO TIEMPO NO, PORQUE EL DESARROLLO LINGUISTICO QUE PUEDE ALCANZAR UNA GRAMATICA ES INDEPENDIENTE DE PARA QUE MOTIVOS SE USE. AMBAS SON COSAS DIFERENTES. ES IMPOSIBLE ACASO QUE EL ESPANHOL, EL AYMARA O EL QUECHUA, DESARROLLEN UN SISTEMA COMO EL DEL JAPONES, TIBETANO, O AUN EL ESQUIMAL? LA RESPUESTA ES OTRA VEZ, NO. NO ES IMPOSIBLE. >Volviendo sobre aspectos más generales y menos >culturales, yo creo que no todas las lenguas son >iguales. OBVIO. EN CIERTO NIVEL DE ANALISIS, ES UN HECHO SIMPLEMENTE OBVIO QUE LAS LENGUAS NATURALES DIFIEREN. SIN EMBARGO, TAMBIEN PERMITEME DARLE LA VUELTA A TU AFIRMACION: EN CIERTO NIVEL DE ANALISIS PODEMOS AFIRMAR QUE SI, QUE LAS LENGUAS (O PARA EMPLEAR EL TERMINO TECNICO ADECUADO, LAS GRAMATICAS...)SON "IGUALES". > Se me ocurren ejemplos en fonología como el comparar > lenguas cercanas como el castellano y el catalán (el >primero tiende no concentrar la información haciendo >que las sílabas tónicas y átonas tengan las mismas >opciones mientras que el segundo tiende a concentrar >la información en las tónicas, esto también sucede en >inglés donde en sílaba tónica hay más contrastes). SIN EMBARGO AMBAS USAN SILABAS (Y ACENTO, Y RASGOS SUPRASEGMENTALES, DEPENDENCIA ESTRUCTURAL, CONSTITUYENTES, RESTRICCIONES EN LA FORMACION DE PREGUNTAS, PROPIEDADES REFERENCIALES, ETC). ESTOS SON ASPECTOS QUE NO SON NADA TRIVIALES Y QUE RESULTAN POR LO MENOS SORPRENDENTES EN TERMINOS COMPUTACIONALES, CUANDO UNO QUIERE CONSTRUIR UN "LENGUAJE". UN SISTEMA COMO EL DE LAS LENGUAS NATURALES ES ALTAMENTE RESTRINGIDO EN SUS OPCIONES Y NO SE PARECE EN NADA (O EN POCO) A SISTEMAS COMO LOS DE LA LOGICA Y LAS MATEMATICAS. POR EJEMPLO, ES CONOCIDO QUE EL TIPO DE SILABA MAS AMPLIAMENTE REGISTRADO A LO LARGO DE LAS LENGUAS ES EL CV. OTROS ESQUEMAS SON CVC, CCV, V, VC, ETC. ESTOS HECHOS NO PUEDEN SER MENOS QUE SORPRENDENTES, PUES PARECIERA COMO SI LAS GRAMATICAS DE LAS LENGUAS HUMANAS ESTUVIERAN DISENHADAS PARA ADMITIR SOLO CIERTAS OPCIONES Y NO OTRAS. DE RESALTAR ES QUE AUN NO SE ENCUENTRA UNA EXPLICACION A ESTE RESPECTO EN EL CASO JUSTAMENTE DEL AIMARA DONDE ES POSIBLE ENCONTRAR SEQUENCIAS *CC, ALTAMENTE MARCADAS Y PRODUCTO DE UNA MORFOFONEMICA COMPLEJA, LO CUAL HACE COLAPSAR LO QUE SABEMOS ACERCA DE LA FORMA EN QUE ORGANIZAN LAS SILABAS EN LAS LENGUAS HUMANAS). ESTO NO QUIERE DECIR SIN EMBARGO QUE HAY ALGO MAGICO O MISTERIOSAMENTE PECULIAR (DE HECHO EN ALGUNAS LENGUAS MAYAS OCURRE UN FENOMENO SIMILAR, EN EL CUAL TAMBIEN RESTA UNA EXPLICACION) >En gramática, creo que sucede lo mismo, hay lenguas >que tienden a hacer compuestos muy transparentes >como el aymara o el náhuatl y otras como las lenguas >indoeuropeas que no son nada transparentes y toman >una raíz completamente nueva para expresar nuevos >matices de un concepto. BUEN EJEMPLO DE CUAN DIFERENTE PUEDE SER UNA SOLUCION A TRAVES DE DIVERSAS LENGUAS. >En cuanto a qué es superior no lo sé, aunque tiendo a >pensar que desde el punto de vista de un computador o >un programa que intente enseñar a hablar a las >computadoras está bastante claro qué tipo de lenguas >son superiores. LA VERDAD QUE NO LO TENGO CLARO. MAS BIEN ESO ME INDICA LAS DEBILIDADES DE ALGUNOS DE LOS METODOS COMPUTACIONALES AL ENFRENTAR EL RETO DE LA COMPLEJIDAD QUE PLANTEAN CADA UNA DE LAS GRAMATICAS > Algunos pidgins tienen en ese sentido muy poco de > alucinantes, lo interesante de los pidgins no es >tanto su estado original sino su regramaticalización y > enriquecimiento a medida que empiezan a ser la >lengua nativa algunos grupos convirtiendose >en "criollos". NUEVAMENTE CREO QUE ES UN EXCELENTE EJEMPLO EL QUE MENCIONAS. HAY QUE DESLINDAR, SIN EMBARGO A
[aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
I agree with Ken Beesley. Jorge: El problema no es que podamos o no decir que una "lengua" es o no mas perfecta. De hecho tenemos casos conocidos tales como "el quechua es la lengua mas dulce", "el quechua cuzqueño es el verdadero quechua" o "el frances es la lengua mas apta para la literatura" o las clasicas afirmaciones de la no intertraducibilidad de tal o cual lengua nativa o la pureza de alguna de ellas (el quechua inca, p.e.); o aun, la posesion de la escritura como instrumento de superioridad. Ninguna lengua es mas o menos que otra porque -como creo Ken Beesley sugiere- NO HAY CRITERIOS OBJETIVOS PARA DETERMINAR lo uno u lo otro. Asi como a uno le puede parecer que el quechua (p.e) es una lengua sagrada, a otros no. No hay tales criterios porque simplemente son valoraciones no objetivas, subjetivas o en el peor de los casos prejuicios como en el caso del castellano andino (se dice que es "mal hablado"). Creo que dichas afirmaciones en todo caso tienen interes sociologico o como parte del estudio de las ideas, porque traen eso: una ideologia, una preconcepcion acerca de los hechos. Y en la vida real las ideologias traen sobre todo asunciones acerca de las personas, en el caso de las lenguas, acerca de sus hablantes. (Caso por mencionar es el debate de hace unos años en el lado quechua por el asunto de las cinco vocales/tres vocales). Dos ultimos comentarios: <> Que se clasifique las lenguas en grupos o familias ling. no implica "mas/menos perfecto que". <>. Bueno, el como califiquemos tal o cual lengua no tiene una relacion necesaria con el trabajo linguistico que hagamos, pues simplemente es lo primero es producto del contraste entre lo que "encontramos" y nuestra experiencia pasada. Si es que en nuestro trabajo linguistico encontramos una lengua que tiene rasgos peculiares, necesariamente tenemos que hacernos la pregunta de por que esto es asi. Omar ___ Do You Yahoo!? Envía mensajes instantáneos y recibe alertas de correo con Yahoo! Messenger - http://messenger.yahoo.es
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
>The history of Logos is potentially interesting >To begin, it would seem that the founders Bud Scott and >Charlie Byrne, and their first workers, belonged to a "Jesuit >sect" that lived on a "commune" somewhere near Middletown, >New York, USA. Presumably their primary motivation was >to support missionary work. >Another popular machine-translation group, Globalink, _may_ >have connections to Georgetown University (again Jesuit). >Again, corrections and more information would be welcome. >Very early MT work at Georgetown also led to the Systran MT system. And did not Ludovico Bertonio happened to be a JESUIT himself? And, of course, his work on Aymara was developed on a misionary basis. It must be a Jesuitic conspiration :) Alex
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
ecial January issue on machine translation, several years back, but what he wrote had little to do with the system), so when I got down to the bottom of the pile, there was the write-up I was doing at the time we quit working, it was still in my handwriting, the girl who did the typing hadn't get gotten around to it! I mean, you can see the problem from an operational point of view, because it was hit or miss whether the linguists knew what the programs based on which they wrote their rules were doing! It took me a while but I got the pieces of paper all sorted out, I worked with all the programmers to make sure my write-ups reflected the actual programs, and I put a footer on each page saying when the write-up was programmer verified, and got the responsible programmer to initial it. Then at the next meeting of all the linguists, I asked who would maintain the write-ups thereafter - and everyone refused! Since it was their company and I was to have my own system after that, so I could maintain my own write-ups, I just reported it to the manager and went on to the next thing! I really don't think anyone else at Logos was interested in the truth of the grammar that we were uncovering, they just wanted the money we - didn't even *make*, but got from venture capitalists! So hopefully now this experience will bear fruit for a beautiful people and their native culture. Thanks again for your interest, Alex, and I'll get on to addressing the materials you pointed me to. Much love to all, Laura - Original Message - From: Alex Condori <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 7:31 PM Subject: RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > Wow, Laura
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> > Dear Ms. Jones, > > With respect, I must urge caution about talk of "perfection" in > natural languages, whether for Greek, Latin, Aymara or anything else. > To a professional linguist, all languages are potentially > interesting, and none is more "perfect" than another. > Ken: Admitiendo que no sea admisible la relación "más perfecto que" entre dos lenguajes dados, no crees que de todos modos existe algún criterio de clasificación/jerarquización?. Por ejemplo, en una discusión de tí y David, en esta misma lista, ustedes concordaban que el aymara (gramatica) era "alucinante". De esto entiendo que el aymara es, por lo menos, "más alucinante que" algunas otras lenguas, pues no todas las lenguas pueden ser "alucinantes". Si todas las lenguas fueran alucinantes, sería irrelevante calificar por tal a una de ellas. Un abrazo. Jorge
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
> From: "Laura Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Hi Jorge! This is tremendously interesting - I bet that quote led to the > first mention I saw of the perfection of Aymara. Dear Ms. Jones, With respect, I must urge caution about talk of "perfection" in natural languages, whether for Greek, Latin, Aymara or anything else. To a professional linguist, all languages are potentially interesting, and none is more "perfect" than another. One used to hear a lot about the supposed perfection of ancient Greek and Latin, and about the "degeneration" of their descendents, from old classics masters. Such claims are rejected by all trained linguists today, not from political correctness but because they simply do not hold up under any objective criteria. As for claims for the perfection of Aymara, coming notably from Iván Guzmán de Rojas and picked up by Umberto Eco, the same cautions apply. Aymara deserves more serious linguistic attention and less mysticism. > > I worked at Logos only intermittently, so whether they finally got > it straightened out or not I don't know, but another thing was that after I > left the system degraded terribly, I came back for a special job several > years later. > So this is my history, just > how it would apply to the possibility of Aymara serving as an interim > language I'm not sure but certainly the precision of expression Aymara > allows is a very remarkable feature. There have been several attempts to use a natural language as an intermediate language for machine translation, notably the BSO project, which used Esperanto, and Guzmán's Atamiri, supposedly based on Aymara. In fact, Esperanto has its own quirks and ambiguities, so the BSO project in fact used a modified form of the language, with extra bracketing, for example, to show what modified what. Whether Guzmán's project really used an Aymara interlingua has been questioned. > And I know that my > Logos experience would be very valuable, because we were the first to > actually do this. > There were other people getting into computerized > language translation, but no one else came up with so much and such complex > resolution as we did. Considering the long and varied history of machine translation (a field in which I worked for six years) this is highly unlikely. Logos is a typical second-generation machine translation company that has had its ups and downs. I'm not saying that people at Logos did not do good work, but just that claims about Logos being first are going to be very difficult to defend. The Logos webpages are at http://www.logos-usa.com/ Do not confuse it with another Logos in Italy www.logos.it The history of Logos is potentially interesting, and I have been trying for some time to get more reliable information. To begin, it would seem that the founders Bud Scott and Charlie Byrne, and their first workers, belonged to a "Jesuit sect" that lived on a "commune" somewhere near Middletown, New York, USA. Presumably their primary motivation was to support missionary work. I have this information second-hand, so it needs further checking. Corrections and additions to this account would be welcome. Another popular machine-translation group, Globalink, _may_ have connections to Georgetown University (again Jesuit). Again, corrections and more information would be welcome. Very early MT work at Georgetown also led to the Systran MT system. > so I contacted the name, a Professor > Hovy, and learned from him that nowadays they let the computer do the > translating. They have to start with a source document and a target > translation of it, which they feed to the computer, which says to itself, > whenever I see this word "four" in English, for instance, it is "quatre" in > French. But of course this isn't really "translation" it's just a > dictionary lookup, with no grammatical resolution. This is almost certainly _not_ what Hovy said or meant. He is a very well informed and sophisticated scholar of machine translation. Older MT systems/projects like Weidner, Logos, METAL/T1, TAUM-METEO, Eurotra, etc. tried to do syntactic and semantic analysis and generation using hand-written linguistic rules. This approach proved generally "brittle", producing systems that failed to analyze many real sentences found in real corpora, and producing rather disappointing output. (I say this with some regret, because my own training and inclination is towards rule-writing.) The newer approaches, which was what Hovy was probably describing, are based on "translation by example" and use statistical techniques. The rules to be followed when translating from French to English, for example, are automatically derived from extensive aligned bilingual French-English corpora. Right now, in natural language processing in general, the statisticians have the upper hand over the more traditional rule-writers (like me). Advances in web-search technology and especially speech recognition came abo
RE: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Wow, Laura, your message left me fully amazed. Your machine translation experience sounds catching to me. A question arises to my mind (out of curiosity): When did you started your Logos project? the 80's? You probably do not ignore the machine translation project that was carried out by Guzmán de Rojas. He called it ATAMIRI and it even become operative but it had to be put aside due to financial problems. Well, you probably know the work of Guzman because it constituted some machine translation pioneering (well, so to say, this researching field has so much to achieve in the future that everything is pioneering until now). It was real translation, not just dictionary mapping. The sistem had some degree of sophistication as to code semantical (not just lexical) information to build its outputs. In this way, the program did not mistake homonym words. The remarkable thing here (to me, at least) is the fact that Atamiri is developed on the theoretical basis that Guzman created around the Aymara language (or so is what he states). Jorge's Aymara Page keeps an online copy of some Guzman's texts, out of which I find most interesting that about logical sufixes in Aymara. I consider that Guzman's logical sufixes (3-valued ones)are actually modal suffixes, and yes, verb modalities seem quite powerful in aymara. You can take a look at Guzman's paper here: http://www.aymara.org/biblio/igr/igr4.html I have some links also to information on the ATAMIRI project. Unfortunately, this articles don't have an Enlish language mirror. I'd translate 'em by myself but I'm not very plenty of time lately. El sistema Atamiri http://cconfidencial.intercosmos.com/atamirisp.html El sistema Atamiri (II) http://cconfidencial.intercosmos.com/atamirisp2.html take care, Alex (Awful English supplied by Alex Condori) > Hi Jorge! This is tremendously interesting - I bet that quote led to the > first mention I saw of the perfection of Aymara. As to the tertiary > language, I think I can shed a little bit of light there. Also as to where > the actual "translation" is done. What we did in our system is first of all > totally parse the source sentence. You know, decide which words are nouns, > verbs, or what - another thing I was interested in in Aymaran is that the > nouns are organized according to what they are. We had such an > organization, and our "semanto syntactic codes" that we gave to every word > that went into our dictionary had a tremendous lot of information. The codes > told if the item was human, information, a machine, etc. Then based on these > codes, which in effect *were* the meaning of the sentence, but in code-form, > not as a natural language, we would make about 4 passes over the sentence, > increasingly transforming it into the target sentence. For instance, in the > first pass we would get related elements together, such as prepositional > phrases, which we would then group into a whole so the system would not > again see that phrase as separate words, it would see it as a single > element, identified as to its part of speech, whether it was adverbial or > adjectival, for instance, and either at that time or in the next pass it > would get stored with whatever it modified, so that in each pass the > sentence became more and more schematic. In the last pass about all you > would see was SVO, but each of these elements would contain modifiers, > phrases, even clauses, although I remember we found relative clauses a real > headache, I worked at Logos only intermittently, so whether they finally got > it straightened out or not I don't know, but another thing was that after I > left the system degraded terribly, I came back for a special job several > years later. It was actually an interesting job in terms of this > discussion, because what I had to do was "break up" every grammatical rule, > into source information/code and target information/code. My son said that > in the end they never utilized the work because it was too complex to keep > the information in some place separate from yet related to its "partner" > information. I certainly think that had to be the case with the system as > it was then, because I used to almost break down and weep at what they had > done - I was like, my baby, my precious baby, what have they done to you? > But theoretically physically separating source and target material would > make it easier to develop many systems. So what we thought at the time and > what I also think now is that this process of resolving the source sentence > (I think we did that in 2 passes) and then transforming it into its target > equivalent in several passes (and in each pass there was also included a > "side trip" so to speak out to a semantic module so if you had a word like > "block" for instance we would figure out from the environment of the word > whether it was a wooden block, a city block, a block of data, etc., and the > code for the correct term would be put in) so I think this pro
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
hey have to start with a source document and a target translation of it, which they feed to the computer, which says to itself, whenever I see this word "four" in English, for instance, it is "quatre" in French. But of course this isn't really "translation" it's just a dictionary lookup, with no grammatical resolution. Say hi to Omar for me, he is also a very fine correspondent, I'd like to work with him also. Love to everyone, Laura (And PS I'm going to order Eco's book from Amazon-dot-com) Post post scriptum, I'm also interested in the Semitic connection. What would this suggest as to where Americans come from? I am not interested in order to answer this question with finality, but again because of the way our books tend to denigrate Native Americans. And I mean the Incas and others in that area performed feats of building, etc., that rival the Egyptian pyramids. We need to find out about these things and get the word out! ----- Original Message - From: Jorge P. Arpasi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 1:35 PM Subject: Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > Laura: > > About a possible relation between the Translation Problem and the Aymara I would > like to do the following quotation from "The Search for a Perfect Language" > (Blackwell Pub. 1995), pp 346-347, by the renowmed italian writter Umberto > Eco. > """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" >In many of the most notable projects for mechanical translation, >there exists a notion of a parameter language, which does share many >of the characteristics of the a priori languages. There must, it is >argued, exist a tertium comparationis which might allow us to shift >from an expression in language A to an expression in language B by >deciding that both are equivalent to an expression of a metalaguage C. >If such a tertium really existed, it would be a perfect language. > >The only alternative would be to discover a natural language which is >so "perfect" (so flexible and powerful) to serve as tertium >comparationis. In 1603, the Jesuit Ludovico Bertonio (Arte de la >lengua Aymara) described the Aymara language (still partially >spoken by Indians living between Bolivia and Peru) as endowed with an >immense flexibility and capability of accommodating neologisms, >particularly adapted to the expression of abstract concepts, so much >so as to raise a suspicion that it was an artificial invention. Later this >language was described as the language of Adam, founded upon >necessary and immutable ideas", a philosophical language if ever there >were, and obviously somebody discovered that it had Semitic roots. > >Recent studies have established Aymara is not based on an Aristotelian >two-valued logic (either True or False), but on a three-valued logic it >is, therefore, capable of expressing modal subtleties which other >languages can only capture through complex circumlocutions. Thus >there have been proposals to use Aymara to resolve all problems of >computer translation. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that >the Aymara would greatly facilitate the translation of any other >idiom into its own terms, but not the other way around. Thus, because >of its perfection, Aymara can render every thought expressed in other >mutually untranslatable languages, but the price to pay for it is that >(once the perfect language has resolved these thoughts into its own >terms), they cannot be translated back into our natural native idioms. >Aymara is a Black Hole. > > One way out of this dilemma is to assume, as certain authors have recently > done, that translation is a matter to be resolved entirely within the > destination(or target) language, according to the context. > > """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" > The above ideas of Eco are based on the work of Guzman de Rojas. But as it is > known for some members of this list, the main critics to the work of Guzman is > its lack of a serious peer review. Since the Guzman's work use > results of both mathematical and linguistical branches, in this case, who can be > considered a valid peer? > > Jorge > >
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Laura: About a possible relation between the Translation Problem and the Aymara I would like to do the following quotation from "The Search for a Perfect Language" (Blackwell Pub. 1995), pp 346-347, by the renowmed italian writter Umberto Eco. "" In many of the most notable projects for mechanical translation, there exists a notion of a parameter language, which does share many of the characteristics of the a priori languages. There must, it is argued, exist a tertium comparationis which might allow us to shift from an expression in language A to an expression in language B by deciding that both are equivalent to an expression of a metalaguage C. If such a tertium really existed, it would be a perfect language. The only alternative would be to discover a natural language which is so "perfect" (so flexible and powerful) to serve as tertium comparationis. In 1603, the Jesuit Ludovico Bertonio (Arte de la lengua Aymara) described the Aymara language (still partially spoken by Indians living between Bolivia and Peru) as endowed with an immense flexibility and capability of accommodating neologisms, particularly adapted to the expression of abstract concepts, so much so as to raise a suspicion that it was an artificial invention. Later this language was described as the language of Adam, founded upon necessary and immutable ideas", a philosophical language if ever there were, and obviously somebody discovered that it had Semitic roots. Recent studies have established Aymara is not based on an Aristotelian two-valued logic (either True or False), but on a three-valued logic it is, therefore, capable of expressing modal subtleties which other languages can only capture through complex circumlocutions. Thus there have been proposals to use Aymara to resolve all problems of computer translation. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that the Aymara would greatly facilitate the translation of any other idiom into its own terms, but not the other way around. Thus, because of its perfection, Aymara can render every thought expressed in other mutually untranslatable languages, but the price to pay for it is that (once the perfect language has resolved these thoughts into its own terms), they cannot be translated back into our natural native idioms. Aymara is a Black Hole. One way out of this dilemma is to assume, as certain authors have recently done, that translation is a matter to be resolved entirely within the destination(or target) language, according to the context. "" The above ideas of Eco are based on the work of Guzman de Rojas. But as it is known for some members of this list, the main critics to the work of Guzman is its lack of a serious peer review. Since the Guzman's work use results of both mathematical and linguistical branches, in this case, who can be considered a valid peer? Jorge
Re: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
erica live and think, and this is because of the influence of the aboriginal Americans. Pope John Paul understands this, in the latest new cardinals, 11 are Latin American. So, yes, I don't think anyone needs to be shy about talking about Aymaran and all the others in the same category as Greek and Sanskrit. I would be interested to know how much commonality there is among the various languages you mentioned. For instance, take the Slavic languages: Bulgarian remains today basically the same as the Church Slavonic - and Slavonic is much more like present day spoken Russian than, for instance, Shakespeare is like modern English. I always know what Gospel they are reading in the services, for instance. (I'm Russian Orthodox) On the other hand, with the epistles and the Psalms, etc., I usually don't know what it is, the language is less simple. Russians who go to Poland or what used to be Czechoslovakia can communicate with no problem. So thanks for sharing with me - I even manage somewhat with the Spanish, tho it's slow going! Lots of love to all my new friends - Laura - Original Message - From: Omar Beas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 3:38 PM Subject: [aymara] Aymara and Western Culture > Hola amigos de Aymara Uta: > > Algunos comentarios rapidos sobre lo ultimo que nos > plantean, Jorge y Laura: > > Ustedes consideran factible el paralelismo de los > analfabetismos de la mayoria de los griegos y > sanscritos y el pueblo aymara? > > < hay una posicion ideologica de por medio. En todo caso > aunque es interesante hacer comparaciones, creo que > ellas no deben llevarnos a mayores conclusiones (a una > "explicacion" o algo misterioso como ello en este > caso) que la descripcion misma de los hechos. Quiza en > este contexto sea igual de importante poner de relieve > las diferencias>. > > I'm a little surprised that when the language is so > tremendously sophisticate, I don't see anything about > a > literature or a writing system. > > < Is it in the sense of the grammar? Which aspects? If > so, what about another languages?> > > Of course, the literature can be oral, Greek > literature was transmitted orally for a long time, and > even when the great tragedians, etc., came along, I > never researched it because I never before was > interested in the issue, but I bet most of the Greeks > were still illiterate and knew the literature orally. > > > < you establish. In case of Quechua and Aymara cultures > (that are closely related), we could suppose that > there was a kind of "literature" (in the western > sense)that was transmitted orally (Comentarios Reales > and Cronicas could give a clue to make such > conjecture). Since literature and education have > always been related, we could say that Inka family and > relatives had some access to oral traditions in the > "standard version". Peruvian history, however, has > been extremely violent to our native cultures and > Spanish Conquest is a proof. > Another important difference could be the diversity of > cultures during the Inka Empire, which is stronger > than in the case of Greeks (we had different > "kingdoms" with different customs and > languages/dialects (!!)Cuzco Quechua, Quiteño Quechua, > Mochica language, Culle language, Puquina language, > Mochica language, Quingnam language, etc)the tendency > was, however, to a functional multiculturalism / > multilinguism where a dialect of quechua worked as a > koine. > > I guess, come to think of it, that having a good > grammar would be one way to preserve the purity of a > language so it would not degenerate as the vernacular > changed, already with koine Greek, the Greek language > is linguistically declining > > < that "having a good grammar..." and definitively > Bertonio was a genius. I say that because he could > make an excelent and accurate description of Aymara > despite of the limitations fo this period. He has not > comparison in the Aymara world and perhaps Domingo de > Santo Tomas/Gonzales Holguin are only comparable in > the Quechua side. So, Bertonio's grammar is not only > important because of its prescriptive role (that is > how "to speak correctly"), but -I think- because of > its descriptive power (how Aymara is spoken in...). > I think we could say that there was a koine here but > -which is obvious- with different functions and roles. > During the Spanish Conquer and colony, Quechua, > Aymara, Mochica, Puquina (in a first stage) were taken > as a way to spread the Catholic religion. They were > "lenguas generales", that is, languages that had a > wide range of influe
[aymara] Aymara and Western Culture
Hola amigos de Aymara Uta: Algunos comentarios rapidos sobre lo ultimo que nos plantean, Jorge y Laura: Ustedes consideran factible el paralelismo de los analfabetismos de la mayoria de los griegos y sanscritos y el pueblo aymara? <. I'm a little surprised that when the language is so tremendously sophisticate, I don't see anything about a literature or a writing system. < Of course, the literature can be oral, Greek literature was transmitted orally for a long time, and even when the great tragedians, etc., came along, I never researched it because I never before was interested in the issue, but I bet most of the Greeks were still illiterate and knew the literature orally.
