There are 17 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Ebb and flow (was Re: Naisek Pages Updated) From: andrew 1b. Re: Ebb and flow From: Henrik Theiling 1c. Re: Ebb and flow From: Daniel Prohaska 1d. Re: Ebb and flow (was Re: Naisek Pages Updated) From: R A Brown 2a. Focus, please From: Yahya Abdal-Aziz 2b. Re: Focus, please From: Alex Fink 2c. Re: Focus, please From: David J. Peterson 2d. Re: Focus, please From: David J. Peterson 2e. Re: Focus, please From: David J. Peterson 3. Case or theta-role term for object of performance? From: Jim Henry 4a. Re: Fifth morphosyntactic category? From: Paul Roser 5a. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage From: Eldin Raigmore 5b. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage From: Eldin Raigmore 5c. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage From: Benct Philip Jonsson 5d. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage From: Jim Henry 5e. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage From: Benct Philip Jonsson 5f. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage From: Jim Henry Messages ________________________________________________________________________ 1a. Re: Ebb and flow (was Re: Naisek Pages Updated) Posted by: "andrew" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 1:42 am ((PDT)) On Mon, 04 Aug 2008, R A Brown wrote: > andrew wrote: > > Hmmm, Thrjotrunn must be something like the great-grandchild of > > Brithenig. I wonder what Romlangs look like plotted out on a flow > > chart? > > I wonder, indeed, if they would all fit on a single flow chart. > Probably not, and I don't think parent-child relations could be proven. I imagine the best result would be a timeline when romlangs were first created. > It's true that /tS/ is found only in recent English loan words in > Welsh - but it does occur with soft mutation /dZ/ in Cornish. > What causes affricates to occur in Cornish? Is it the result of front vowels or are there other environments? > It is indeed, and would probably lead a 'Bethisad' schism. My own > view is that Brithenig is now truly embedded into the Bethisad > project it is better to leave it as it is. If you really want to make > significant changes to Brithenig it would, in my opinion, be better > to produce a different conlang as an _alternative_ to Brithenig - as > mine would be if I ever get around to working on it - in a different > conculture to Bethisad (for alternative histories of western Europe > since the Roman period must be truly legion! :) Best to leave it as is. I think if I did get around to working on an alternative Brythonic conlang I should have a go at doing an a priori language. Could be interesting to try. (Although Sindarin already exists! :) At my current rate of conlanging this should take place sometime around about when we achieve technological singularity. Grammatically I consider Brithenig a closed canon. Lexically I'm still researching words and phrases for translation exercises. -- Andrew Smith -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://hobbit.griffler.co.nz/homepage.html "If you are gonna rebell you have to wear our uniform." Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1b. Re: Ebb and flow Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 4:18 am ((PDT)) Hi! andrew writes: > On Mon, 04 Aug 2008, R A Brown wrote: >> andrew wrote: > >> > Hmmm, Thrjotrunn must be something like the great-grandchild of >> > Brithenig. I wonder what Romlangs look like plotted out on a flow >> > chart? >> >> I wonder, indeed, if they would all fit on a single flow chart. >> > Probably not, and I don't think parent-child relations could be proven. > I imagine the best result would be a timeline when romlangs were first > created. Exactly. I think so, too. But there were some romlangs that made me more curious about the whole romlang business than others. They did not necessarily influence my design, but brought me closer to the idea because I just loved their look and feel. The first one I liked very much was Jelbazech. I loved the umlaut, especially in preposition-article words (do they have a special name? German _zum_, _zur_; Italian _della_, _degli_ etc.?). The second trigger was Wenedyk, which looks just so ridiculously like Polish. My approach was a bit different, I think, e.g. Jan had greatly simplified the grammar, which does not really parallel Polish. I tortured myself with a lot of grammar irregularities. As a result, I was unbelievably, unsatisfactorily slow... Anyway, those two romlangs were those that made me start such a type of romlang, too. Interesting stuff! More people should do it today, and I'd hope to see more. E.g. Yoon-Ha Lee's idea of a German-Japanese conlang would be very interesting, but she's not too much into conlanging anymore, unfortunately. **Henrik Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1c. Re: Ebb and flow Posted by: "Daniel Prohaska" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 6:18 am ((PDT)) -----Original Message----- From: andrew Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 10:42 AM "On Mon, 04 Aug 2008, R A Brown wrote: { } > It's true that /tS/ is found only in recent English loan words in > Welsh - but it does occur with soft mutation /dZ/ in Cornish. What causes affricates to occur in Cornish? Is it the result of front vowels or are there other environments? - British nt, -lt had already become sibilants (probably through *[nts] > [ns]) in the late Old Cornish (OC) period (ca. 1100-1200) and were writtem <ns> and <ls>: dans tooth (Brit. *dant; Welsh, Breton dant); als shore (W allt, B aod). - British /d/ in final position had become a sibilant (probably through *[dz] > *[z]) by the Middle Cornish (MC) period (ca. 1200-1500), usually written <s>: tas father (cf. W, B tad); Late Cornish attestations include tâz. - Medially before a front vowel and /w/, /d/ is shifted in Middle Cornish and appears as <s> or <g> or <i> (<j>): MC wose, woge after (cf. W wedi, B goude); MC peswar four (m.) (cf. W pedwar, OB petguar > MB pevar); MC crysy, crygy believe (cf. B kredin). In Late Cornish this is frequently written <g> or <dg>; Lhuyd in his phonetic script spells it <dzh>. - Internally /nt/ had been shifted by the MC period and was written <ns> or <ng>: MC kerense, kerenge love (cf. B karantez, karanté); MC ganso with him (cf. MB gantan, gantaff). - /nt/, /lt/ and /d/ are unaffected medially before the back vowels /O/ and /A/, e.g.: caradow loveable, ledan wide and also if followed in the next syllable by /l/, /n/ or /r/: padel pan, fentenwell, peder four (f.). - in initial position /t/ and /d/ were sometimes shifted because of the preceding /n/ from the article an the in certain frequently occurring words such as chy house (cf. B ti) and in geth in-the day. Dan Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ 1d. Re: Ebb and flow (was Re: Naisek Pages Updated) Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 6:31 am ((PDT)) andrew wrote: > On Mon, 04 Aug 2008, R A Brown wrote: >> andrew wrote: > >>> Hmmm, Thrjotrunn must be something like the great-grandchild of >>> Brithenig. I wonder what Romlangs look like plotted out on a flow >>> chart? >> I wonder, indeed, if they would all fit on a single flow chart. >> > Probably not, and I don't think parent-child relations could be proven. > I imagine the best result would be a timeline when romlangs were first > created. Agreed. >> It's true that /tS/ is found only in recent English loan words in >> Welsh - but it does occur with soft mutation /dZ/ in Cornish. >> > What causes affricates to occur in Cornish? Is it the result of front > vowels or are there other environments? front vowels, cf. Welsh: tÅ· (house) ~ Cornish: chy Also many borrowings from Middle English. >> It is indeed, and would probably lead a 'Bethisad' schism. My own >> view is that Brithenig is now truly embedded into the Bethisad >> project it is better to leave it as it is. [snip] > Best to leave it as is. I think if I did get around to working on an > alternative Brythonic conlang I should have a go at doing an a priori > language. Could be interesting to try. (Although Sindarin already > exists! :) True - but there are other possibilities :) > At my current rate of conlanging this should take place > sometime around about when we achieve technological singularity. > > Grammatically I consider Brithenig a closed canon. Lexically I'm still > researching words and phrases for translation exercises. 'Tis best like that. -- Ray ================================== http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora. [William of Ockham] Messages in this topic (10) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2a. Focus, please Posted by: "Yahya Abdal-Aziz" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 2:07 am ((PDT)) Hallo, you lot! ;-) It's been a while; I've been away playing in sandpits on Mars, and another [exo]planet I'm not yet at liberty to name. Sadly, though "Dark they Were and Golden-Eyed" in Ray Bradbury's telling, the Martians have not left sufficient traces of their languages to have allowed me to collect any useful material in the (Martian) field. As for the other place, well ... can't say too much just yet, but the work is producing some promising results. However! I really should focus on the topic of this message, which is not to"topic", but "focus". Focus, please, Yahya! ;-) Here's an extract from the latest Linguist List digest to land in my email inbox: "-------------------------Message 2 ---------------------------------- Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:31:14 From: Edgar Onea [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Focus Marking Strategies and Focus Interpretation E-mail this message to a friend: http://linguistlist.org/issues/emailmessage/verification.cfm?iss=19-2432.html&submissionid=185904&topicid=3&msgnumber=2 Full Title: Focus Marking Strategies and Focus Interpretation Date: 04-Mar-2009 - 06-Mar-2009 Location: Osnabrueck, Germany Contact Person: Edgar Onea Meeting Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Pragmatics; Semantics; Typology Call Deadline: 15-Aug-2008 Meeting Description: Workshop on 'Focus Marking Strategies and Focus Interpretation' as part of the 31st Annual Meeting of the German Linguistics Society (DGfS 2009), hosted by the University of Osnabrueck/Germany. Call for Papers Extended Submission deadline until 15.08.2008. Focus Marking Strategies and Focus Interpretation The necessity of a strict distinction between focus as a category of information structure related to the presence of alternatives in the interpretation context and focus marking as the grammati-cal coding of focus is widely discussed in the literature (Krifka 2007). Different focus marking strategies may, however, have different effects on the interpretation of focus. A well-known example is Hungarian, in which in-situ and ex-situ focus differ with regard to exhaustivity and contrast (Ã.Kiss 1998). Similar findings have been reported on Finnish, Turk-ish etc. Such findings support the hypothesis that focus interpretation depends on the marking strategy in languages with several strategies of focus marking at their disposal. However, re-search on other languages suggests that this hypothesis may not hold universally. In Hausa (Chadic), for instance, any interpretation available for ex-situ focus is also available for in-situ focus (Hartmann & Zimmermann 2007). Moreover, even for Hungarian it has been argued that the semantic difference between in-situ and ex-situ focus is related to a specific syntactic posi-tion in the left periphery that may actually be independent of focus (Horváth 2007). These observations give rise to the following questions: (i.) Can a general notion of focus as an underspecified information structural category (often associated with prosodic prominence) with a unified semantic interpretation mechanism in terms of alternatives (e.g. Rooth 1992) be maintained? I.e., can we derive the differ-ences in meaning that are observable with different strategies of focus marking from the different grammatical structure of the respective sentences plus pragmatic principles? or (ii.) Do we need more fine-grained notions of information structure, such as e.g. contrast, exhaustivity, newness, that divide the more general notion of focus into subclasses, such that languages would use different marking strategies for expressing them? The workshop invites syntactic, semantic and typological work on different strategies of focus marking and focus interpretation. In addition, we would also encourage the presentation of diachronic data related to the evolution of different strategies of focus marking. The workshop is of interest for researchers working on linguistic interfaces. We are looking forward to applications that provide data on and analyses of the effects of structural encoding on the semantic and/or pragmatic interpretation." In light of these observations and questions, the final paragraph invites actions, many of which (it seems to me) members of this forum would be singularly well-equipped to undertake. I, too, would like to: "encourage the presentation of diachronic data related to the evolution of different strategies of focus marking" "and focus interpretation" - but in the context, not of natlangs, but of conlangs. My particular question to you all at this point is this: How have you chosen to mark and interpret focus, and how and why have these choices evolved? I'm well aware that this list has discussed focus in the past, but right now I'd like to tap your collective wisdom and experience. Hopefully, your replies will enable me to assemble a survey of practice in this area; a second phase might explore the underlying theories. Regards, Yahya _____ Yahya Abdal-Aziz WHEELERS HILL VIC 3150 Share my: * music on the web: http://www.esnips.com/web/yahyas-music * digital paintings: http://www.esnips.com/web/digitalartbyyahya * equation art: http://www.esnips.com/web/Equation-Art-by-Yahya * selected fractals: http://www.esnips.com/web/yahyasselectedfractalpix Discover the 3D artist within you at DAZ3D <http://www.daz3d.com/redirects/daz_current.php?refid=662041450> Save energy, money and the environment - do you need to print this message? This email and any attachment may be confidential and the subject of legal professional privilege. Any disclosure, use, storage or copying of this email without the consent of the sender is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender immediately if you are not the intended recipient and then delete the email from your mailbox, and do not disclose the contents to another person, use, copy or store the information in any medium. Messages in this topic (5) ________________________________________________________________________ 2b. Re: Focus, please Posted by: "Alex Fink" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 10:46 am ((PDT)) On Wed, 6 Aug 2008 19:01:55 +1000, Yahya Abdal-Aziz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >[...] My particular question to you >all at this point is this: > > How have you chosen to mark and interpret focus, > and how and why have these choices evolved? > >I'm well aware that this list has discussed focus in the past, but right now >I'd like to tap your collective wisdom and experience. Hopefully, your replies >will enable me to assemble a survey of practice in this area; a second phase >might explore the underlying theories. My slice of the collective wisdom and experience is, I'm fairly sure, a narrow one. In none of my conlangs do I know anything about the diachronic origin of focus-marking patterns. I'm also uninformed about the potential range of interpretations of focus -- for all I know it's just the abstract property that some part(s) of a sentence contributing new information or being especially contrastive might have. Nonetheless, may as well start the ball rolling. In pjaukra, I think of the word orders SOV and SVO as more or less equally basic. Neither is overwhelmingly more common than the other, at least. The choice between them is influenced to a great degree by information structure: if the O is focussed it's far more likely to come after the verb, if not it's more likely to come before. Pronomial O is invariably preverbal, squaring with the unlikelihood of pronominalised referents to be new information. ForThere are other factors confounding this correlation, though, such as relative weight of the arguments and parallelism and probably even phonological sorts of factors -- I hate to say "euphony" 'cause that's such a cop-out, but something like that. For adjuncts the immediate post-verbal position is also focussing. Note that the neutral position for sentence adverbs is immediately pre-verbal, contravening the more predominant head-modifier order; this might be to keep them out of the focus position when they don't need it. In Sabasasaj, which is SOV and head-final par excellence, the post-verbal position is also focussed. Either of the at most two core arguments of the verb may be postposed, but adjuncts (which are a little uncommon) can't. This postposing is mostly found in the matrix clause, where it's unambiguous that there's something after the main verb; it's disfavoured in subordinate clauses where it's rather likely to be ambiguous with a more canonical clause structure without focussing. Sabasasaj is fond of big long towers of subordinated clauses, whose boundaries mostly go unmarked, and has no case- or role-marking on the noun, so this is more of a concern than it might otherwise be (though, mitigatingly, there's number and class marking in the verb). E.g. an unmarked Na=S1 [Nb=S2 Nc=O2 V2]=O1 V1 upon the postposition of the object in the second clause to Na=S1 [Nb=S2 V2 Nc=O2]=O1 V1 has the more canonical parse as [Na=S2 Nb=O2 V2]=S1 Nc=O1 V1 . I intend to implement in Sabasasaj some standard syntactical dodge that can be used on a subordinate clause to wrap it up a little so its boundaries are better demarcated, so that then focussing can proceed more comfortably. But I haven't decided how to do this yet. (I nearly mistakenly told you about Sabasasaj clefting instead, but whoops, that's a _topicalisation_ strategy, since the topic overwhelmingly prefers to be an argument of the main verb.) In A:jat he-Heloun (where the word order, for what it's worth, is Aux S V O from an earlier V S [nomlsd-V O]), the main burden of focus marking is borne by the prosody. Foci are marked their pitch beginning lower than the clausal intonation contour would have it. This gets a bit messy since AhH is also tonal, but the tones are register tones and their domain of association is the word, so mucking with the pitch doesn't completely smash the distinctions. I'm still working out the consequences of this system, though. Alex Messages in this topic (5) ________________________________________________________________________ 2c. Re: Focus, please Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:35 am ((PDT)) Hey, Yahya! I'm going to guess that most people didn't read all the way to the bottom of your message, and consequently didn't see the question reproduced here (or, if they did, may have failed to notice that it's replying to you, not to the Conlang-L! [Though I see Alex beat me to it!]): Yahya: << In light of these observations and questions, the final paragraph invites actions, many of which (it seems to me) members of this forum would be singularly well-equipped to undertake. I, too, would like to: "encourage the presentation of diachronic data related to the evolution of different strategies of focus marking" "and focus interpretation" - but in the context, not of natlangs, but of conlangs. My particular question to you all at this point is this: How have you chosen to mark and interpret focus, and how and why have these choices evolved? I'm well aware that this list has discussed focus in the past, but right now I'd like to tap your collective wisdom and experience. Hopefully, your replies will enable me to assemble a survey of practice in this area; a second phase might explore the underlying theories. >> I can give you something in at least two of my languages. Kamakawi already marks whether the subject of a sentence is new or old as follows (look at the first word of the sentence): Sentence 1: Ka mata ei i nawa. "I(i) saw a fish(j)." Sentence 2a: Ke mata i ne. "(And then) I(i) saw a segull(k)." Sentence 2b: Ka mata nea i ne. "(And then) she(l) saw a seagull(k)." Sentence 2c: Kae tikili. "(And) it(j) was orange." So those are the three markers. In (2a), the subject is the same, so you use /ke/ and the subject is dropped. In (2b), the subject is new, so you use /ka/ and the subject is specified. In (2c), there's a new subject, but it came from the previous sentence. Since there's only one possible entity that that could be (the fish), the subject is dropped. This mechanism affords one with a number of possibilities where focus is concerned. In a neutral context, there are two strategies, similar to English. Taking Sentence 1 as an example: (1a) Ka mata ei i NAWA. "I saw a FISH." (1b) I NAWA ka mata ei. "It was a FISH I saw." (1c) Ka mata EI i nawa. "*I* saw a fish." (1d?) EI ka mata i nawa. "It was ME who saw a fish." (1d)'s a litlte bizarre. Instead, I would passivize the sentence and front the resulting PP: (1e) Ka mata'u nawa ti'i. (Note: /ti'i/ = /ti ei/) (1f) TI'I ka mata'u nawa. The same would hold for Sentence 2b. With a sentence like 2a, though, subject focus becomes much more simple: (2a) Ke mata i ne. (2a') Ke mata EI i ne. Here, the prominence associated with /ei/ is unnecessary, as the presence of the subject along with the subject status marker is indication enough that the subject is focused. It's a natural side-effect of an argument being focused, though. The end result is the use of one or more of the following strategies: (a) Stress prominence. (b) Fronting. (c) Reintroduction of redundant/non-necessary elements. With Zhyler, it's a bit different; a bit simpler (or more simplistic). In Zhyler, you can do one of two things, depending on what type or level of focus you want. In an ordinary sentence, you can focus any element with the suffix -tFk(i). This is illustrated best by a sentence with a lot of nominal elements: (3) sexa ZijkMS tSelvenejlef amSar ezdZez vesler. /man-nom. woman-ben. dog-plu.-top. book-acc. house-ine. wrote/ "The man wrote a book about dogs for a woman in the house." [Note: The woman isn't in the house.] Given that sentence, you can focus any nominal element by adding the -tFk(i) suffix. (3a) sexatexi ZijkMS tSelvenejlef amSar ezdZez vesler. (Subject) (3b) sexa ZijkMStixi tSelvenejlef amSar ezdZez vesler. (Beneficiary) (3c) sexa ZijkMS tSelvenejleftexi amSar ezdZez vesler. (Topic) (3d) sexa ZijkMS tSelvenejlef amSartexi ezdZez vesler. (Direct Object) (3e) sexa ZijkMS tSelvenejlef amSar ezdZezdexi vesler. (Inessive) That's kind of a preliminary focus--simple focus. If you want to *really* focus on something, though, you strip its case and pull it out front with the -tFk(i) suffix: (3f) EZDZETEXI sexa ZijkMS tSelvenejlef amSar vesler. Now, though, it's up to the hearer to figure out what role that element played in the sentence. You could keep the case suffix on there, but it wouldn't be as usual. *** A separate element for both is emphasizing verbs. Is that the same thing, or is it something different? E.g., "I ATE the eggs; I didn't DYE them." With Kamakawi, it's just stress; with Zhyler, I'm not sure... There are a number of possibilities. -David ******************************************************************* "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a." "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." -Jim Morrison http://dedalvs.free.fr/ Messages in this topic (5) ________________________________________________________________________ 2d. Re: Focus, please Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:46 am ((PDT)) Alex: << In none of my conlangs do I know anything about the diachronic origin of focus-marking patterns. >> Oh, whoops: I neglected the diachronic part of this question. In Kamakawi, the strategy is natural enough. Predicate-level adverbs have always been able to appear either at the end or the beginning of the sentence: (1a) Ka mata ei i nawa kike. "I saw a fish yesterday." (1b) Kike ka mata ei i nawa. "Yesterday I saw a fish." Strategy (1b) lends more prominence to /kike/, "yesterday". This led to the general idea that pulling things out in front of the subject status marker emphasized it. As for stress prominence, it seems natural enough: say it louder to emphasize it. The same principle applies to sign languages, where, instead of vocalizing louder, signs are made larger and faster. As for reintroduction of the dropped subject, it's also a natural progression, similar to Spanish: Time N: Subject is present though its discourse-old status is noted. Time N+1: Since its discourse-old status is marked, the subject may be dropped, if desired. Time N+2: Including the subject is now bizarre in discourse-old situations, since its status is always marked. Time N+3: Since the presence of a subject in discourse-old situation is marked (i.e., unusual), its markedness can be used to signify something. In this case, its focus. With Zhyler, the suffix -tFk(i) was originally (and is still) used to mark the reintroduced agent of a passive verb. Since the agent is usually omitted in passive circumstances, its presence is marked or unusual. The result it that its presence was thought of as important, and so the suffix used to mark reintroduced agents was adopted as a marker of special importance--or focus. Its addition to already case-marked nominals is a result of the already present suffixaufnahme phenomenon of Zhyler. Its caselessness when fronted is an artefact of its original use as a marker of the reintroduced agent of a passive verb (that's where it's placed, and that *is* its case). -David ******************************************************************* "sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze." "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." -Jim Morrison http://dedalvs.free.fr/ Messages in this topic (5) ________________________________________________________________________ 2e. Re: Focus, please Posted by: "David J. Peterson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 12:20 pm ((PDT)) Just in case someone far down the line is looking back at these posts and needs to know, slight mistake: /kipe/ is "yesterday" in Kamakawi, not /kike/. Oops. -David ******************************************************************* "A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a." "No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn." -Jim Morrison http://dedalvs.free.fr/ Messages in this topic (5) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 3. Case or theta-role term for object of performance? Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 6:43 am ((PDT)) In sentences like these, * Kate sang a madrigal. * We played four games of Go. * I read "The Raven" aloud. * The troupe performed "Hamlet". -- it seems to me there's a common element the direct objects have; they're transitory processes called into existence while the action of the verb is being performed. Rick Morneau classes these kinds of verb arguments as "focus" as distinct from "patient"; they certainly aren't patients, but it seems to me they're also different from objects-of-result as in * Kate composed a madrigal. * Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Raven". * What unknown genius invented Go? * If Bacon wrote Hamlet, Shakepeare must have written the Organon. This one seems to be a borderline case: * Tom gave an extempore speech. -- that is, it's a transitory result of a creative act. In gjâ-zym-byn, recently, I've been marking these kinds of objects with the postposition {Äul-i}, from a root word meaning "performance, recital, concert, show, etc." Is there a standard term in linguistics for this theta role or case? Are there natlangs or conlangs that consistently mark this role distinctively from patients, and if so, what other theta roles tend to be marked with the same case? I've been calling it "performative case" in my notes, but some quick research shows that "performative" may be in conflict with uses of the same term in linguistics. The Ithkuil grammar seems to identify the semantic role as "content"; I'm not sure how standard a term that is, and I'm not sure it's specific enough to refer to what I use {Äul-i} for and not much else. I was surprised to see how many semantic roles Ithkuil lumps into the corresponding case, however; I had the impression, from the last time I studied Ithkuil, that its case system was as fine-grained as gzb's postposition system or more so, overall. Probably it is, and this is a local exception. >>In Sentence (2d) "Mary tells the children a story", Mary is a patient who >>initiates the action which she herself undergoes, the telling of a story. The >>children do not undergo an unwilled emotional, sensory, or bodily reaction >>here, but rather are the passive and more or less willing RECIPIENT of >>information, the role of an "indirect object" in Western languages. The >>story, on the other hand, is merely a non-participatory abstract referent, >>whose role is termed CONTENT. The role of CONTENT also applies to the children in Sentence (2e) "Mary wants children", where they function as the "object" of Mary's desire. Since no tangible action is occurring, nor are the children undergoing any result of change of state, nor need they be even aware of Mary's desire, they are, like the story in sentence (2d), merely non-participatory referents. As for Mary's role in (2e), the emotional state of desire, being unwilled, self-activating, and subjectively internal, creates a situation similar to an automatic sensory perception or autonomic body response; thus, Mary's role is again that of EXPERIENCER. ............ The OBLIQUE case ........... identifies the semantic role of CONTENT, whether it is something given to a RECIPIENT, or the non-causal abstract content of an experiential state, e.g., a memory recalled, something desired, something feared. It would thus be used in translating sentences such as Sam gave me a book, The child likes cereal. It is also the case associated with existential identification, what in English would be the subject of the verb 'to be' when referring to the intrinsic identity or static description of a noun as in the English sentences That boy is blind or The house was built of wood. The OBLIQUE, being the semantically most neutral case, is also the citation form of a noun (i.e., the form in which the noun would be listed in a dictionary). << http://home.inreach.com/sl2120/Ch-4%20Case%20Morphology.htm In gzb all the CONTENT or OBLIQUE arguments in the sentences given in the text quoted would be translated with different postpositions: * Mary told the children a story: {Äul-i}, object of performance (Mary: agent, children: target of communication) * Mary wants children: {rjâ-i}, object of quest or desire (Mary: experiencer) * Sam gave me a book: {Ä¥y-i}, patient (Sam: agent, me: target of property-transfer) * The child likes cereal: {mÄ-i}, topic (the child would be experiencer) -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/ Messages in this topic (1) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 4a. Re: Fifth morphosyntactic category? Posted by: "Paul Roser" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 7:31 am ((PDT)) On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 09:57:53 +0200, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 00:30, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Can't remember what you call the ones that make no distinctions... >> >> Agent, Patient, Intransitive... >> >> A!=P!=I Tripartite >> A=P!=I Monster Raving Loony >> A!=P=I Ergative >> A=I!=P Accusative >> A=I=P ? > >"The clairvoyant's option", at least according to >http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/r.html (which is where I >assume you got the label "Monster Raving Loony" from). > >I'm not sure what JBR's F) is called -- is that fluid-S? (Where a >voluntary experiencer is treated like an agent, an involuntary one >like a patient.) Yes, (F) is an example of Fluid-S. Fluid-S is when certain verbs can take either and agentive/intentional/volitional or patientive/unintentional/nonvolitional reading; Split-S is when verbs are divided into two groups on some semantic basis - unergative vs unaccusative being one example. -Pfal *********************************************************** "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll *********************************************************** Messages in this topic (5) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 5a. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:04 am ((PDT)) On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 10:56:11 -0400, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >[snip] >That sounds useful. Do you have or know of a script >to apply this wickelphonic-similarity calculation to a set of words? I wish I did, but I don't. I'd bet there is one somewhere, though; I just don't know how to find it, and haven't gotten around to learning how to make one myself. >However, the vast majority of gzb roots being only 2-4 phonemes long, >it might be less useful for gzb than for other languages. (1) I was talking about "words", not "roots". I hadn't realized you were talking about "roots"; I apologize. I might use something different for "roots" myself; something like what Veoler and Henrik mentioned. (But I'd go for more redundancy; I'd want 225000 to 625000 "legal" phoneme-sequences of appropriate length, to cover 12000 to 50000 roots (though in fact I doubt I'd ever get around to defining more than 2000 to 5000 roots).) I'd use slightly longer roots than are absolutely necessary; require that they differ in at least two places instead of just one; and require that at least one of the phonemes differ in at least two characteristics (PoA and MoA, or PoA and voicing, or MoA and voicing) rather than only one. For instance, if I wanted (C)V(C)(V)(C) roots, I might require that any two roots differ in at least one consonant, and also that they differ in at least one of the first four phonemes. So only one root of, for instance, the form bVdVC would show up. (2) I don't see how you get by with such short roots. I need roots four to six phonemes long; (C)V((C)V((C)V)) for 1-to-3-syllable roots when the syllable structure is (C)V, (C)V(C)((C)V(C)) for 1-to-2-syllable roots when the syllable structure is (C)V(C), (C)(C)V(V)(C)(C) for 1-syllable roots. By straining I can get enough 1-to-5-phoneme roots with the (C)V(C)(V)(C) or (C)(V)(C)V(C) structures. To get enough roots with only up-to-four-phonemes I need to allow all variations; (C)(C)(C)V, (C)(C)V(C), (C)(C)V(V), (C)V(C)(C), (C)V(C)(V), (C)V(V)(C), (C)V(V)(V), V(C)(C)(C), V(C)(C)(V), V(C)(V)(C), V(C)(V)(V), V(V)(C)(C), V(V)(C)(V), V(V)(V)(C), V(V)(V)(V). Do you have a large phoneme inventory? Or phonemic tone or lexical tone? >[snip] >In gzb nearly all morphemes are one syllable, and no syllable >is more than five phonemes (the average is 3.36 phonemes per >root morpheme). So for nearly all words, all phonemes >would be relevant for this kind of similarity calculation. (There's only one >root in the lexicon with more than 8 phonemes, {θrî'sÄ'kjurn} "ibis".) > >My present technique just looks for words that have similar phonemes >in each or any slot in the word. So (simplifying, and using Kalusa >phonology instead of gzb phonology), if I were checking to see if >a potential word "kalu" were too similar to an existing word, I would run it >through a script that turns it into the regex > >/^[kg][ae][lr][uo]$/ > >and then searches the lexicon for words matching that regex, which >would turn up (if they existed) "galu", "gero", "karu", etc., along >with their glosses, and I could decide if any of them really >sounded too similar to "kalu" and also had too-similar meanings. (1) In my conlangs as well morphemes tend to be shorter than 8 phonemes. In those that aren't isolating and analytic, the words tend to be longer than the roots, and the roots tend to be longer than the non-root morphemes; and as I've mentioned the roots tend to be four-to-six-phonemes long. The average word (other than pronouns, adpositions, and conjunctions (possibly also omitting adverbs)) is usually at least two morphemes long counting the root; so the averagee word is probably around two to four syllables long. (In the more highly synthetic conlangs the average word is probably more like four or more morphemes long.) ---- (2) I think I would want at least one phoneme in each root to differ more than minimally from "the phoneme in the same slot" in the other root. Or, have two (or more) slots that are filled by different phonemes in the different roots. (Or both). One problem is, what constitutes "the same slot" when the roots are not the same length? >[snip] >Do you have a script to apply this calculation you describe? Again, I wish I did but I don't. I'm pretty sure there isn't one and won't be one until I, or someone who's read my posts, gets around to making one. Or, at least, not one that implements the actual count I described before. There may be one that implements something that is, in effect, the same or a very similar concept. And maybe it looks at, say, the first three phonemes and the last phoneme, or the first two phonemes and the last two phonemes, or some such thing. And maybe it takes into account syllable-stress, and regards the first stressed syllable and the last stressed syllable in case these aren't the first syllable and the last syllable of the word. Anyway, as described, it works better for words than for roots, at least for my conlangs whose roots usually aren't longer than about six phonemes. I didn't illlustrate what happens when one or both of the words is shorter than eight phonemes, but the maximum score, and hence the denominator of the fraction, would be decreased. I didn't say at all how to handle what happens when one or both of the words is shorter than four phonemes; whoever writes the program could think of something. Messages in this topic (22) ________________________________________________________________________ 5b. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage Posted by: "Eldin Raigmore" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:09 am ((PDT)) On Wed, 6 Aug 2008 14:01:35 -0400, Eldin Raigmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >[snip] >For instance, if I wanted (C)V(C)(V)(C) roots, I might require that any two >roots differ in at least one consonant, and also that they differ in at least >one >of the first four phonemes. So only one root of, for instance, the form bVdVC >would show up. >[snip] Excuse me, my last sentence above contains an error. What I meant was more like this: If badef is a root, then it is the only root of the form bVdVf, and is also the only root of the form badeC. Messages in this topic (22) ________________________________________________________________________ 5c. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:23 am ((PDT)) Henrik Theiling skrev: > Hi! > > Jim Henry writes: >> How do y'all avoid coining new words in your conlangs that are >> too similar to existing ones? ... > > I have used word stems that consist of redundant phonemes: i.e., I add > one phoneme to the minimal number that would be required for > constituing the desired set of stems, and then have the random stem > generator ensure that each stem differs in two phonemes instead of > only one. You describe this exact technique youself: > >> ... >> 2. With säb zjeda, I generated a large list of potential word forms >> with a Perl script that produces phonologically redundant forms >> (no two are minimal pairs), and then partly automatically, partly >> manually assigned meanings to those forms. >> ... > > Quite like this. Would any of you be willing to share such a Perl script? (amply commented of course, so that perpetual crawlers can understand! :-) /BP Messages in this topic (22) ________________________________________________________________________ 5d. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:29 am ((PDT)) On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> 2. With säb zjeda, I generated a large list of potential word forms >>> with a Perl script that produces phonologically redundant forms >>> (no two are minimal pairs), and then partly automatically, partly >>> manually assigned meanings to those forms. > Would any of you be willing to share such a Perl script? (amply > commented of course, so that perpetual crawlers can understand! :-) My scripts to generate redundant vocabulary are linked from here, http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/redundancy.htm http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/redundancy-scripts.zip If anything is unclear, let me know. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/fluency-survey.html Conlang fluency survey -- there's still time to participate before I analyze the results and write the article Messages in this topic (22) ________________________________________________________________________ 5e. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 11:43 am ((PDT)) Jim Henry skrev: > On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:23 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: > >>>> 2. With säb zjeda, I generated a large list of potential word forms >>>> with a Perl script that produces phonologically redundant forms >>>> (no two are minimal pairs), and then partly automatically, partly >>>> manually assigned meanings to those forms. > >> Would any of you be willing to share such a Perl script? (amply >> commented of course, so that perpetual crawlers can understand! :-) > > My scripts to generate redundant vocabulary are linked from here, > > http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/redundancy.htm > > http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang/redundancy-scripts.zip > > If anything is unclear, let me know. > Thanks. I'm sure plenty will be unclear! :-) I've had thoughts on creating a script for identifying minimal pairs in an existing vocabulary but not come up with anything better than sucessively replace every grapheme of every word with \w and compare it with every other word in the dictionary. Any ideas? /BP Messages in this topic (22) ________________________________________________________________________ 5f. Re: Avoiding near-collisions in vocabulary coinage Posted by: "Jim Henry" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed Aug 6, 2008 12:14 pm ((PDT)) On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 2:43 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've had thoughts on creating a script for identifying > minimal pairs in an existing vocabulary but not come up > with anything better than sucessively replace every grapheme > of every word with \w and compare it with every other word > in the dictionary. Any ideas? An adaptation of my findsimilar.pl script, so that it compares every word of the lexicon with every other word instead of comparing its command line argument to every word of the lexicon, would be better than nothing. It has a couple of flaws, though; it fails to find minimal pairs where one morpheme is one phoneme longer or shorter than another (e.g. /ka/ vs /kap/, /an/ vs. /tan/, /pef/ vs. /pwef/, etc.) and it turns up too many false positives, words of the same general pattern but where almost every individual phoneme is different. That's OK when I'm looking for one word at a time, but would be overwhelming when comparing every word to every other. A script to do this properly would need to know not only the orthography of the language involved, but enough about its phonotactics to identify slots where an optional phoneme is missing but could be added, or where a phoneme is present but could be omitted (to catch those pairs I mentioned above). Also, instead of generating one regex to find all similar words, it should probably identify each slot in the word and generate a regex for each slot. E.g, for input /kaf/ where the phonotactic rule is C(S)V(S)(C), you would use regexes like [kgx]af k[jrw]af k[aiu]f ka[jrw]f ka[fvp] I think that would identify all minimal pairs, assuming /k g x f v p b j r w a i u/ is our phoneme inventory. For a broader definition of "minimal pair" you would use [kgxfvpbjrw]af k[jrw]af k[aiu]f ka[jrw]f ka[kgxfvpbjrw] (Also, all those regexes should be wrapped in /^ .... $/, else you would get false positive substring maches like /pikokafitex/.) -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/ Messages in this topic (22) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! 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