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There are 25 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. Re: Composition of conlanger population From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2. Mooré language sources? From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3. Re: Conlang Indexes From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4. Re: Person distinctions in languages? From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5. Re: Conlang Indexes From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 6. Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 7. Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 8. Re: Person distinctions in languages? From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 9. Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed. From: Donald Boozer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10. The Five-Page Language. From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 11. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 12. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 13. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 14. Re: Person distinctions in languages? From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 15. Re: Mooré language sources? From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 16. Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 17. Re: Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed. From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 18. Re: Person distinctions in languages? From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 19. Tonogenesis From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 20. Re: Person distinctions in languages? From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 21. Re: The Five-Page Language. From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 22. Re: Tonogenesis From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 23. Re: Tonogenesis From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 24. OT: Re: Composition of conlanger population From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 25. Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 15:13:20 +0000 From: Chris Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Composition of conlanger population Yep... it is true that there's a strong tendency for the various areas in the brains of left handed people to be in different places to those of other left handed people and of right handed people. We tend to have non standard brains. ;) I believe the thing I read also claimed that left handed people were more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than right handers, but I'm not sure. For the record, in case someone wants to do another survey, I'm male, left handed, bi, and... well, as far as mental illness is concerned, the university councellors told me at one point that I suffered from an anxiety disorder and depression, but so far no schizophrenia. ;) >Physiologically, most right-handed brains are cut from the same cloth, >as it were, with the major functional areas laid out fairly predictably. >Left-handers, on the other hand, have brain maps which differ not only >from right handers, but from each other. Apparently, if you have a >"normal" brain, you're right-handed; if you're left-handed, that's a >sign that your brain is not "normal", and at that point all bets are >off. > > ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:16:58 +0100 From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mooré language sources? Hi! I'd like to learn a few basic words in the Afrikan language Mooré, probably Ouagadougou dialect, spoken in Burkino Faso. Any sources? I found a few things in the web, but probably someone of you has good pointers! :-) Of course, I'm also interested in a language classification, i.e., phonology and grammar description would be greatly appreciated! :-) Bye, Henrik -- ------------------------------ Dr. Henrik Theiling ------------- Tel: +49 681 83183 04 AbsInt Angewandte Informatik GmbH Fax: +49 681 83183 20 Stuhlsatzenhausweg 69 http://www.AbsInt.com/ D-66123 Saarbruecken Encrypted e-mail preferred. Private: http://www.theiling.de/ 0x9E314CA5 FA 1C 02 C9 58 04 57 6E 53 9C DF 94 B4 45 AE 24 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:22:18 +0100 From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Conlang Indexes --- "Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > Do people think that this approach is a good idea? > Are there any comments, advice and suggestions? > Should I go ahead and ask for submissions? I absolutely _love_ your idea! I'm currently a bit starved for ideas for conlanging myself, and if I had models of other's conlangs to base features on, maybe I could come up with something. Maybe someone could do that for natlangs, too, though the list'd be insanely long and we'd have to weed out a lot of categories we'd think 'weird' (like some dialects of German using the same set of words for pronouns, determiners and articles, which is pretty weird, now that I think of it). ___________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 250MB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:36:15 +0100 From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages? --- joao eugenio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: Both interesting ideas, but they still have to describe things in terms of 'person'. I think I should explain what I have, before anything else. In this new conlang I'm coming up with, I'm trying to figure out a way of dividing pronouns and verbal inflections along the lines of discourse participation and level of animacy; i.e., whether the thing in question is involved in the discourse (1st/2nd person) or not (3rd person) and its level on the animacy hierarchy (deities/humans/predatory animals/prey animals/plants/objects/etc). I'm sorely tempted to scrap the animacy thing altogether and go with a system that sort of mimics the Japanese classifier system, which would be a thousand times less ambiguous. Examples: 'tsnare' - to hear '-nak' - discourse participant, human '-s(a)' - patient marker '-a' - honorific marker 'tsnare nak-a-sa' '[I] hear you' And I disambiguate further using honorifics, something like the Japanese using the '(g)o-' prefix to distinguish between one's own family member and the other's family members in discourse (or something like that?) Someone mentioned that Ebisedian has a strange pronominal system; is there a website where I can see examples? > In portuguese, we have the three usual persons, but > if we want to say something in the 2nd person > (singular or plural), the verbs are conjugated as > 3rd person. For the second person, we use the > conjugation of the 3rd person, but we change the > pronoun. Instead of "ele" and "eles", we use "você" > and "vocês": > --- # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > In Spanish, if you don't use the pronouns and only > use conjugation, using the 3rd person singular > marker can indicates that it is a 3rd person subject > (el, ella) or a respected 2nd person(usted) ___________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 250MB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 17:49:29 +0100 From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Conlang Indexes * Adrian Morgan (aka Flesh-eating Dragon) said on 2005-02-02 07:01:18 +0100 > I had an idea for a Conlang index with a difference ... one that > emphasises the interesting and unusual grammatical approaches that > constructed languages can use, and can therefore be a source of > grammatical ideas for others. > > Here is the prototype: > http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/create/language/twisted.htm > > Do people think that this approach is a good idea? Are there any > comments, advice and suggestions? Should I go ahead and ask for > submissions? Go ahead! I've actually thought of the "opposite", sorting by language but only listing the rare features for each. t. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 6 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:17:45 -0500 From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) Hey everyone, I read the thread about contractions in colloquial German. Very interesting! It made me think that, in the not-so-distant future, German (or (one of) its descendant(s)) may have a more complex system of personal verb endings. I think it's interesting to explore the possibilities now, from a conlanging point of view. Here's an idea of what I'm thinking: haben "to have": habe ich > hasch [hAS] "I have" hast du > haste ['hA.st6] "you have" hat er > hate ['hA.t6] "he has" hat Sie > haze ['hA.ts)6] "she has" hat es > haz [hAts)] "it has" haben wir > hame ['hA.m6] "we have" haben ihr > hanje ['hAn.j6] "y'all have" haben Sie > hanse ['hAn.s6] "they have" Perhaps also there may be direct-object suffixes, like enclitic -n for 'den, ihn': habe ich ihn > haschen ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "I have him/it" hast du ihn > hasten ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "you ' ' " hat er ihn > haten ... hat Sie ihn > hazen hat es ihn > hazen haben wir ihn > hamen haben ihr ihn > hanjen haben Sie ihn > hansen Another verb, gehen "to go": gehe ich > gehsch gehst du > gehste geht er > gehte geht Sie > gehze geht es > gehz (already there, but written "geht's") gehen wir > gehme gehen ihr > gehnje gehen Sie > gehnse There could even be an enclitic negative: haschennisch ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "I don't have it". What do y'all think? - Rob ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 09:37:20 -0800 From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities --- Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 2 Feb 2005, at 6.26 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka > Flesh-eating Dragon) > wrote: > > A few people say "chook" for all purposes, > including references to > > food. My cousin, for one. That's what I love about this group. I'm always hearing odd and obscure words I've never heard before. First it was that champion mushroom thingie and now it's "chook". Where has that word been hiding all my 60 years? I've never heard it before. --gary ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 8 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 11:31:00 -0600 From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages? >From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Are there any languages that break the pattern of >first-second-third-(fourth) person? I'm trying to >model a system that doesn't use such distinctions, but >I can't figure out how to make it coherent or >intelligible without perhaps a model to base it on. There are, of course, a number of languages which are more concerned with the _relative_ position of a noun phrase on that heirarchy than the actual position, but they still distinguish person after a fashion. I'm pretty sure (95%+) that a 1st-2nd-3rd person distinction is universal in natlangs. Of course, where you make that distinction can vary a lot. Many languages make it only in pronouns (or their equivilant: I'm of the school of thought that Japanese doesn't have pronouns), and make entirely different distinctions of verbs. That's probably what you're looking for. Animacy/gender/class, plurality alone, relative importance, proximacy/obviation, definity*, deixis, whether the noun phrase is overt or dropped, and where the noun phrase falls in the sentance are all things I've seen or heard of being marked on the verb in natlangs, although many of those only occur within a personal inflection structure. ObConlang: Þewthaj marks person on the noun, not the verb, and only when it's an argument of the verb. It's the normal 1-2-3 person distinction, though, if with an inclusive/exclusive distinction**. Athey *I like this word. A lot. **In the first person plural, of course. I've seen this somewhere in the second person plural, but I don't remember where. I don't even remember if it was a natlang or a conlang, although I'm mostly sure it was the former. Can anyone help me with that? _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 9 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 09:46:42 -0800 From: Donald Boozer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed. I've decided to take the challenge posed by Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for newer members to take a stab at the phrasebook. Below is my attempt at Section 1 in Elasin. Could someone point me to the remainder of the book on the web? I will apologize for the length of the post, and I would appreciate any feedback my fellow conlangers are willing to give. Be gentle on the X-SAMPA transliterations, it's my first time: A Traveller’s Phrasebook: Pleasantries: Hello! Aulemwatu shemul ebek! [Au.le.mwa”tu Se.mul” e”bEk] Aule-mwa-tu shemu-l ebek Pleasing-is-it seeing-you me (DAT) Seeing you is pleasing to me! Goodbye! If the parting is taking place outside: Maka nitaloth sharinen! [mA”k@ ni.tAl”OT Sa”rinEn] Ma-ka nital-oth sharine-n Walking-IMP light-ACC sun-GEN Walk in the light of the sun! Reply: Avu li’i [A”vu li?i] And you. (the final ‘i is part of the conjunction particle set avu...i) Said to the party staying inside: Shivwagi thelanam ebel. [Sivwa”gi [EMAIL PROTECTED] e”bEl] Shi-vwa-gi thelan-am ebel. Wishing-PRES.-I peace/well-being-ACC you (DAT) I wish peace for you. Yes. No one word for “yes.” Use the positive form of the verb in the question. Vo makwali marva vo? Are you walking to the city? Makwagi. I am walking. No. Hau le. [hAu le] These are the particles used to bracket a negative statement, therefore, used on their own they constitute a negative response. Vo makwali marva vo? Hau le. (Hau makwagi le marva. “I am _not walking_ to the city.” or Makwagi hau marva le. “I am walking [but] _not to the city_.) Please... Kopai aulemuditu ebel ko... [ko”pAi Aulemudi”tu ebEl ko...] Kopai aulemu-di-tu ebel ko... If pleasing-future-it you-DAT (dependent clause particle) If it will be pleasing to you ... Ex. Kopai aulemuditu ebel ko aimuna umadem ebek. If it will be pleasing to you, give the book to me. Thank you. Topalwagit. [topalwA”git] Topal-wa-gi-t. Thanking-present-I-you. I thank you. Do you speak (English, Spanish, French, etc.)? Vo fathwalit (enlish, sapanish, frensh, etc.) vo? [vo fATwA”lit ...vo] Vo fa-thwa-li-t ...vo? (Interrogative particle) speaking-present-you-it...(interrogative particle)? I don’t speak Elasin very well. Fathwagit sohoki elasinam. [fATwA”git soho”ki [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fa-thwa-gi-t so-hoki elasin-am. Speaking-present-I-it intensifer-well/good Elasin-ACC. My name is... Mabwagit manalam ...in. [mAbwA”git [EMAIL PROTECTED] ...in/In] Ma-bwa-gi-t manal-am ....in. (i.e. Mabwagit manalam Donaldin.) Holding-present-I-it name-ACC ...GEN. I hold the name of ..... Names are very important in Elasin society, with long lineages. One’s name is held in trust to both past generations who have held it, as well as future generations who will carry it. What is your name? Vo mabwalit manalam kopathin vo? [vo mAbwA”lit [EMAIL PROTECTED] kopATin vo] Vo ma-bwa-li-t manal-am kopath-in vo? Int. particle holding-present-you-it name-ACC who-GEN Int. particle. Who’s name are you holding? How are you? Vo wali hoki vo? [vo wA”li ho”ki vo] Vo wa-li hoki vo? Int. particle Present tense copula-you good/well vo? Are you well? Alternative: Vo wali thelanoth vo? ...thelan-oth... peace/well-being-LOC (inessive) I am well. Wagi hoki./Wagi thelanoth. [...TelA”n.OT] I am not well. Wagi hau hoki le/Wagi hau thelanoth le. I am the walrus, coo coo ca choo. Wagi salithe haponi, ku ku ka shu. [wA”gi sAli”Te hApo”ni...] I am the ungainly/clumsy animal... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 10 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 10:04:27 -0800 From: Gary Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: The Five-Page Language. First of all, I do not believe in the the whole auxlang concept. I think any auxlang is doomed before it even gets off the ground. That said, it's still interesting to play with "make believe" auxlangs. Here's my idea for what I call a "five-page auxlang." I recently found a copy of the book FRATER (LINGUA SISTEMFRATER) by Pham Xuan Thai and subtitled "The Simplest International Language Ever Constructed". It's a proposed auxlang which uses Latin and Greek roots and a Chinese-like isolating grammar. Since I had already begun an isolating Latin project, the first thing I did was look for ways to modify and improve on "Frater". The grammar consists of 12 rules on two pages, but the vocabulary is "hand made" by picking and choosing from among the available Greek and Latin words and modifying those originals in one way or another. While looking through the glossary it occured to me that what would really make this language "the simplest" would be to have a fixed set of rules for deriving the Frater word from the Latin dictionary entry. Instead of having to build up the glossary word by hand-crafted word, any ordinary Latin dictionary could be used to stand in for a Frater dictionary. My proposal, then, is to completely specify an auxlang in five pages. There would be one page covering orthography and pronunciation, two pages covering all the grammar rules, and two pages covering the rules for deriving words from any Latin dictionary entry. Thus, by learning five pages of material the auxlang would be completely mastered. What could be easier? :) --gary ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 11 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:13:48 +0100 From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:11:58 +0100, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > fallen: du fällst/er fällt but ihr fallt. I just realised that due to the umlaut, du fällst/er fällt is ambiguous as it could mean not only "you fall" but "you fell" :) In that case, it would, of course, be "ihr fällt" in 2pl (infinitive: fällen). Cheers, -- Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Watch the Reply-To! ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 12 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:11:58 +0100 From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:17:45 -0500, Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What do y'all think? a) Why do you put the personal pronoun after the verb in order to fuse it into an ending? The usual position is before the verb. b) Why do you use the 1pl/3pl form also for 2pl? It usually ends in -t, though without the umlaut that may come in 2sg/3sg form (e.g. lesen: du liest/er liest but ihr lest; fallen: du fällst/er fällt but ihr fallt). Cheers, -- Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Watch the Reply-To! ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 13 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:57:54 +0100 From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) --- Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > Hey everyone, > There could even be an enclitic negative: > haschennisch ['[EMAIL PROTECTED] "I > don't have it". > > What do y'all think? Ha! Brilliant! I was trying the same thing, though my knowledge of German colloquial contractions extends only as far as 'haste' for 'hast du' and a few others. I like what you have. ___________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 250MB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 14 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:21:59 -0500 From: John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages? Steven Williams wrote: >In this new conlang I'm coming up with, I'm trying to >figure out a way of dividing pronouns and verbal >inflections along the lines of discourse participation >and level of animacy; i.e., whether the thing in >question is involved in the discourse (1st/2nd person) >or not (3rd person) and its level on the animacy >hierarchy (deities/humans/predatory animals/prey >animals/plants/objects/etc). I'm sorely tempted to >scrap the animacy thing altogether and go with a >system that sort of mimics the Japanese classifier >system, which would be a thousand times less >ambiguous. _____________________ The description of your proposed system sounds somewhat like my system for Ithkuil, where discourse participation plus animacy/inanimacy are two of several parameters which make up the personal reference adjunct system (equivalent to personal pronouns in other languages). For details, see Chapter 8 of the Ithkuil grammar at http://home.inreach.com/sl2120/Ithkuil --John Quijada ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 15 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:24:20 -0500 From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mooré language sources? Henrik Theiling wrote: > I'd like to learn a few basic words in the Afrikan language Mooré, > probably Ouagadougou dialect, spoken in Burkino Faso. Any sources? > > I found a few things in the web, but probably someone of you has good > pointers! :-) > I'll assume you've tried Ethnologue?? Google turned up several refs. too, among them http://www.dcaccess.net/~huhtaman/primer/ French sources ought to have something........ Amazing coincidence: at my first teaching job, there were _two_ Mooré-speaking students from that area-- at least one from Ouagadougou who served as informant in a Field Methods course I taught. Sorry to say, I don't have my notes anymore, but I do recall it had 7 or 8 noun classes, distinguished by how the plural was formed (you get a glimpse of this in the "body parts" section of the Primer); and it turned out to be sort of tonal. One student did find a journal article (probably late-60s/early 70s), but again, I don't have a ref. Sorry. Fascinating language-- good luck. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 16 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 18:18:12 +0000 From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities Gary Shannon wrote: > --- Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > >>On 2 Feb 2005, at 6.26 pm, Adrian Morgan (aka >>Flesh-eating Dragon) >>wrote: >> >>>A few people say "chook" for all purposes, >> >>including references to >> >>>food. My cousin, for one. > > > That's what I love about this group. I'm always > hearing odd and obscure words I've never heard before. > First it was that champion mushroom thingie and now > it's "chook". Where has that word been hiding all my > 60 years? I've never heard it before. Oh, the rest of the English-speaking world outside of North America's heard it before: on blasted awful Aussie soaps like Neighbors and Home and Away. Grrr! K. P.S. I like Australia, just not the soaps. And they're everywhere here! ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 17 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:34:36 -0500 From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Conlangea Multilingual Phrasebook, 2nd Ed. Donald Boozer wrote: > I've decided to take the challenge posed by Roger > Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for newer members to take a > stab at the phrasebook. Below is my attempt at Section > 1 in Elasin. Could someone point me to the remainder > of the book on the web? I should have answered before-- Part 2 never appeared. :-((((( > A Traveller's Phrasebook: > (snip) Well done! ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 18 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:45:40 +0100 From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages? --- John Quijada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > The description of your proposed system sounds > somewhat like my system for Ithkuil, where discourse > participation plus animacy/inanimacy are two of > several parameters which make up the personal > reference adjunct system (equivalent to personal > pronouns in other languages). For details, see > Chapter 8 of the Ithkuil grammar at > http://home.inreach.com/sl2120/Ithkuil Ha! That's twice Ithkuil has been a base for features for my conlangs (the first time was when I asked about the division of theta roles). I'm not sure if I'm borrowing features without realizing it, because I looked at Ithkuil with considerable interest, or if it's because I tried to think of something entirely wacky, and you beat me to the punch. Anyways, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. ___________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 250MB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 19 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:13:02 -0600 From: Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Tonogenesis Can anyone point me to some good sources (website or book) about natlang tonogenesis? I'm particulary but not exclusively interested in tonal systems originating from sources other than loss of stop voicing distinctions (as in Chinese). In a related question, has anyone else dealt with tonogenesis in their conlangs? I try to make my work as natural as possible, which makes diachronic linguistics a terrible pain anyway, and with tonogenesis to boot I'm feeling a little out of my depth. Athey _________________________________________________________________ Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 20 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 11:50:22 -0800 From: "H. S. Teoh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Person distinctions in languages? On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 08:15:53PM -0800, Arthaey Angosii wrote: > Emaelivpeith Steven Williams: > > Are there any languages that break the pattern of > > first-second-third-(fourth) person? I'm trying to > > model a system that doesn't use such distinctions, but > > I can't figure out how to make it coherent or > > intelligible without perhaps a model to base it on. > > My conlang, Asha'ille, uses (long-term) emotional closeness between > speakers to distinguish persons. Check out my description at: > > http://arthaey.mine.nu:8080/~arthaey/conlang/grammar/persons.html > > Teoh's Ebisédian also has an intimate/non-intimate distinction, but > I'll leave that to him to discuss. :) [...] Ebisédian's system is similar to Asha'ille's: there is a set of singular 1st person pronouns, but no plurals. There are no 2nd/3rd person pronouns, but instead a set of intimate and distant pronouns, inflected for gender/number/case. The Ebisédian mode of thought is that there is the speaker himself/herself, then a set of people whom the speaker consider to be intimate (close friends, family, spouse, associate), and then the set of everyone else (acquiantances, strangers, etc.). The intimate pronouns always refer to someone intimate with the speaker, or at least someone the speaker considers to be "on my side". The distant pronouns are used to refer to everyone else. (The distant pronouns are also used for everyone in formal contexts, but we will disregard them for the purposes of this discussion.) Note that this is *independent* of who the speaker is addressing. Because of this, Ebisédian has the unusual property that often the exact same sentence can be spoken to different people, and they will each get a different understanding of it, yet their interpretations are consistent with each other. Take for example, King A speaking with male servant B and his daughter Princess C. King A may say something like this: uso' chi'd0 th0're jobu' uro 3k3'. please DIST:MASC:SG:ORG give INTIM:FEM:SG:RCP this inscription:CVY Now, if King A were addressing servant B, he would understand this to mean that _chi'd0_ referred to him, and _jobu'_ referred to princess C, and that he was to give the inscription to Princess C. If King A were addressing Princess C, she would understand that _chi'd0_ referred to servant B, and _jobu'_ to herself, and that servant B was about to give her the inscription. In fact, the King could be addressing them both at the same time, and each of them would understand correctly which pronoun was referring to whom. The King could in fact be addressing the populace, and not servant B or Princess C directly, and they would understand that he wishes for servant B to hand the inscription to princess C. (The singular distant masculine pronoun _chi'd0_ could not refer to the populace themselves, you see; the King would use a plural epicene distant pronoun for that.) Now, I can hear people in the back objecting that this doesn't quite work in all cases, and that there are many cases where it would be ambiguous to whom the pronouns refer. And I agree, there are many cases of ambiguity, and Ebisédian is highly context-dependent. However, Ebisédian also has what are called "noun association markers" which can be prefixed to pronouns to distinguish between different people referred to by the same pronoun. This is sometimes employed to resolve ambiguities that arise from the pronominal system. There are 3 noun association markers, corresponding with the 3 prefixes ki-, ci-, and ro-. (In the most literal sense, they mean "red", "green", and "blue", but so do many other grammatical morphemes in Ebisédian, so a literal reading is not tenable. In any case, it is useful to think of them as "coloring" pronouns differently in order to disambiguate between different referents.) By convention, ki- is used for the first pronoun referent, roughly meaning "the former", ci- the second, roughly meaning "this one", and ro- the third, roughly meaning "the other". Let's see this at work in a conversation between a party of 4 men, who are therefore considered to be "intimate" by each other. Man A (speaking to Man B): ni ghi' di iso'i le's ki-cw'm3 moo'ju? REL:LOC what AUX:LOC time:LOC go #1-INTIM:MASC:CVY city:RCP When will you [ki- hereby established to refer to Man B] go to the city? Man B: oro ky'ri. next day:LOC Tomorrow. Man C (nodding at Man D): a'ne lyy's iro ro-cw'm3 zo ki-cw'm3? INTERROG go:PERF EMPH #3-INTIM:MASC:CVY and #1-INTIM:MASC:CVY Will he [i.e., Man D, henceforth associated with ro-] go with him [i.e. Man B, associated with ki-] ? (Note that Man C could have addressed this to anyone or everyone in the party and they would get the correct interpretation.) Man D: my'e. Not_so No. eb3' zo uro ro-cw'm3 zokyy' mangu' loo'ru. 1sp:CVY and this #3-INTIM:MASC:CVY follow horse:RCP countryside:RCP I will be with this-him [referring to man A - ro- cannot refer to the 1st person, so it is available to be assigned to man A when man D is speaking] following the horse into the countryside. Man A: ji'e. i're ro-cw'm3 zo eb3'. yes indeed #3-INTIM:MASC:CVY and 1sp:CVY Yes. Indeed he [man D] is with me. Man C: ghe' ebi'? what:ADV 1sp:LOC What about me? Man A (replying to Man C): b0'mu cu-cw'm3 uu'ri. wait #2-INTIM:MASC:CVY here:LOC You wait here. (Or, "he remains here", to the other party members.) Man B: oso cu-cw'm3 zo eb3'. wish #2-INTIM:MASC:CVY and 1sp:CVY I wish him (or "you", if spoken to man C) to come with me. Man A: 0so'. ought_to_be Let it be so. So you can see that the noun association markers can be used to disambiguate up to 4 parties referred to using the same pronoun (the association tag referring to yourself is "free" for you to assign to another party, since it is clear that the same tag cannot refer to yourself when you're speaking). So although this conversation is very contrived (in a more realistic setting, the men would be addressing each other by name), it does work better than it could with, e.g., the English pronominal system under the same circumstances (if you didn't use names, you'd get very confused who "he" refers to after a few lines into this conversation). T -- First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 21 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 20:08:36 +0000 From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: The Five-Page Language. Gary Shannon wrote: > My proposal, then, is to completely specify an auxlang > in five pages. There would be one page covering > orthography and pronunciation, two pages covering all > the grammar rules, and two pages covering the rules > for deriving words from any Latin dictionary entry. > Thus, by learning five pages of material the auxlang > would be completely mastered. What could be easier? > :) And I am, of course, prepared to reveal my far superior system that fits on to just *four* pages, it being a streamlined and more logical variant upon your own. :-) K. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 22 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:32:20 +0100 From: Steven Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Tonogenesis --- Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> schrieb: > In a related question, has anyone else dealt with > tonogenesis in their > conlangs? I try to make my work as natural as > possible, which makes > diachronic linguistics a terrible pain anyway, and > with tonogenesis to boot > I'm feeling a little out of my depth. In my most recent conlang, Gi-nàin, there existed three tones (rising, high and low), which were the remnants of a previous pitch-accent system. There was also quite significant tone sandhi. Basically, the rising tone was the result of a LH word collapsing into a single syllable, giving a rising tone in the process. A collapsed HL word would just give a low tone; it just 'seems' the more logical thing, from me actually pronouncing these words. High and low tones were still present, but since most polysyllabic words collapsed, only those words that started out with level or falling tone contours remained level. Examples (circumflex represents high tone): nâgin -> nàin kânu -> kàn anâ -> ná ...and so on. That's pretty simple tonogenesis; I'm sure some language out there has a more complex, involved process. ___________________________________________________________ Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 250MB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 23 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 21:38:02 +0100 From: Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Tonogenesis On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 13:13:02 -0600, Kevin Athey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Can anyone point me to some good sources (website or book) about natlang > tonogenesis? I'm particulary but not exclusively interested in tonal > systems originating from sources other than loss of stop voicing > distinctions (as in Chinese). Google "tonogenesis Tibetan"? Cheers, -- Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Watch the Reply-To! ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 24 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:18:41 -0500 From: # 1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: OT: Re: Composition of conlanger population >Yep... it is true that there's a strong tendency for the various areas in >the brains of left handed people to be in different places to those of >other left handed people and of right handed people. We tend to have non >standard brains. ;) I believe the thing I read also claimed that left >handed people were more likely to suffer from schizophrenia than right >handers, but I'm not sure. But the question all experts ask: Are these differencies in the left-handers brain the cause of the left-handing or its result? The fact that the brain works in a different and inegual way could only be a consequence of manipulating the world by the hand controlled by the right side of the brain that is more imaginative instead of the left side that is logic and analysing. The fact of using a hand makes the brain half who controls it more important than the other And if a side is more important, it is responsible of the division of the roles in the brain parts So, it is simply that the the right side of the brain will divide the tasks in a imprevisible way contrarily to the left side an imprevisible way to divide the tasks and roles in the brain makes that there's more chance that the brain takes the form that produces mental illness That's what I know about it but it is only a theory - Max ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 25 Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:26:50 -0500 From: Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Personal Verb Endings in Future German (was CHAT: Contractions in colloquial German) On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 19:11:58 +0100, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:17:45 -0500, Rob Haden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> What do y'all think? > >a) Why do you put the personal pronoun after the verb in order to fuse >it into an ending? The usual position is before the verb. I guess I assumed that, at a later date, the VSO word-order for interrogative and imperative sentences would also become default (at least colloquially) for declarative sentences as well. >b) Why do you use the 1pl/3pl form also for 2pl? It usually ends in >-t, though without the umlaut that may come in 2sg/3sg form (e.g. >lesen: du liest/er liest but ihr lest; fallen: du fällst/er fällt but >ihr fallt). My bad, I meant to use the standard 2pl form. Do any colloquial German dialects use the 1pl/3pl form for the 2pl also? - Rob ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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