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
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* selected fractals: http://www.esnips.com/web/yahyasselectedfractalpix
Discover the 3D artist within you at DAZ3D
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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