There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Celestial Laefêvëši
From: Andrej �uc
2a. Re: If you only had 16 characters per day... (a language for Streetp
From: Mechthild Czapp
2b. Re: If you only had 16 characters per day... (a language for Streetp
From: taliesin the storyteller
2c. Re: If you only had 16 characters per day... (a language for Streetp
From: taliesin the storyteller
3. More Logic & Semantics
From: Logan Kearsley
4a. Re: In Defense of Monster Raving Loony Alignment
From: Logan Kearsley
5a. Re: Allophony in Siye
From: Anthony Miles
5b. Re: Allophony in Siye
From: Roger Mills
5c. Re: Allophony in Siye
From: Alex Fink
6a. Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
From: Anthony Miles
6b. Re: Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
From: Logan Kearsley
6c. Re: Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
6d. Re: Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
From: Alex Fink
7a. Re: Conjunction Curiosity
From: Anthony Miles
7b. Re: Conjunction Curiosity
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Messages
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1. Celestial Laefêvëši
Posted by: "Andrej �uc" ashu...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 1:38 pm ((PDT))
Hey everyone!
This my first post on the list, even though I've subscribed to it quite a
while ago, and I have to say, I really like reading some of the interesting
topics that have appeared here and I'm jsut sorry I didn't subscribe to the
list before. :)
In any case, I've decided to finally post here because after all the years
I've spent on my main conlang, some of you may know it under the name
Laefêvëši, I have now created (or rather, I'm creating) a new version of
the language which I really like, for the first time, actually. The
language so far known as Laefêvëši now goes under the name Classical
Laefêvëši and the new version is called Ascended or Celestial Laefêvëši.
The mean reason why I decided to redesign the language is because Classical
Laefêvëši did not fit with the culture of its speakers anymore (the main
problem were genders, but also a few other minor things, both grammar and
vocabularywise). Celestial Laefêvëši doesn't have any genders, and it
doesn't distinguish between words like mother and father, brother and
sister, or daughter and son.
But moving to my point now. I've made a short video, an introduction to
Celestial Laefêvëši, and I would really like to hear your comments/thoughts
and maybe get some feedback, regarding both the video and the language.
Here's the link to the video: http://www.youtu.be/qPuujTQoiWw
And the link to my wiki: http://olilowiki.jumpwiki.com (you can find here
all my conlangs, although not everything is online and some things need
some major revising, but I'm working on that)
Thanks and any feedback/comments/thoughts/questions are really appreciated.
:)
Cheers,
Andrej
<http://www.youtu.be/qPuujTQoiWw>--
The future is predetermined by the character of those who shape it.
Prihodnost vnaprej določajo karakterji tistih, ki jo oblikujejo.
Messages in this topic (1)
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2a. Re: If you only had 16 characters per day... (a language for Streetp
Posted by: "Mechthild Czapp" rejista...@me.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 1:45 pm ((PDT))
Yeah, a code would be easiest probably, but OTOH, I used Streetpass greetings
for months to just chat with a neighbor who had a very different schedule than
me and we did not just talk about game related things, as you can guess. So a
limited set of expressions is IMHO a bit too limited.
Am 08.08.2012 um 21:19 schrieb taliesin the storyteller
<taliesin-conl...@nvg.org>:
> On 2012-08-02 10:03, Mechthild Czapp wrote:
>> I have yet another insane idea for a constructed language (after
>> having stricken fear and confusion on the minds of the recent relay
>> ring 2 with Neoquux): A language which is exclusively written and
>> used to communicate on Streetpass for the Nintendo 3DS. Now what is
>> Streetpass? It is a way how 3DSes can "see" each other wirelessly
>> just by being near each other. Among the things which are possible
>> is to exchange a 16 letter long greeting.
>>
>> Any suggestions for this? Is a number base of 360 feasible /../
>
> I would have made an encoder and a decoder. There would be a webpage with a
> "keyboard" and a "grammar" and example sentences.
>
> The keyboard would have symbols like "mii", the mii colors, the games that
> have street pass like mario kart and some verbs, like "need", "meet", ways to
> give a date (same year should be enough) etc.
>
> "Play MK library 5th of november"
> "Play MK online 8 oclock"
> "Need green mii"
>
> The symbols would be encoded for compactness and keyed in as the greeting.
> Then the receiver would go to the same page and decode the message (which
> would look like gobbledygook when encoded). Should probably start with a
> version code so that it can be updated (new version) later on.
>
> It would spread by spreading the url in a street pass greeting, so the url
> would need to be short.
>
> And of course my brain is already coming up with ways to use this to spam.
> Meh, stop thinking about work, brain.
>
>
> t., hopelessly practical and pragmatic, I know...
Messages in this topic (13)
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2b. Re: If you only had 16 characters per day... (a language for Streetp
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" taliesin-conl...@nvg.org
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 1:46 pm ((PDT))
On 2012-08-02 10:03, Mechthild Czapp wrote:
> I have yet another insane idea for a constructed language (after
> having stricken fear and confusion on the minds of the recent relay
> ring 2 with Neoquux): A language which is exclusively written and
> used to communicate on Streetpass for the Nintendo 3DS. Now what is
> Streetpass? It is a way how 3DSes can "see" each other wirelessly
> just by being near each other. Among the things which are possible
> is to exchange a 16 letter long greeting.
>
> Any suggestions for this? Is a number base of 360 feasible /../
I would have made an encoder and a decoder. There would be a webpage
with a "keyboard" and a "grammar" and example sentences.
The keyboard would have symbols like "mii", the mii colors, the games
that have street pass like mario kart and some verbs, like "need",
"meet", ways to give a date (same year should be enough) etc.
"Play MK library 5th of november"
"Play MK online 8 oclock"
"Need green mii"
The symbols would be encoded for compactness and keyed in as the
greeting. Then the receiver would go to the same page and decode the
message (which would look like gobbledygook when encoded). Should
probably start with a version code so that it can be updated (new
version) later on.
It would spread by spreading the url in a street pass greeting, so the
url would need to be short.
And of course my brain is already coming up with ways to use this to
spam. Meh, stop thinking about work, brain.
t., hopelessly practical and pragmatic, I know...
Messages in this topic (13)
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2c. Re: If you only had 16 characters per day... (a language for Streetp
Posted by: "taliesin the storyteller" taliesin-conl...@nvg.org
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 11:43 pm ((PDT))
On 2012-08-08 22:44, Mechthild Czapp wrote:
> Yeah, a code would be easiest probably, but OTOH, I used Streetpass
> greetings for months to just chat with a neighbor who had a very
> different schedule than me and we did not just talk about game
> related things, as you can guess. So a limited set of expressions is
> IMHO a bit too limited.
Less chance of Nintendo trying to block it if it is limited. "Protect
the children" and all that.
HM
Messages in this topic (13)
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3. More Logic & Semantics
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 4:42 pm ((PDT))
I've had a PDF about type-directed natural language syntax parsing
sitting on my desktop for quite a while, and finally got around to
reading it. I thought it would have something to do with coding
selectional features of predicates as types to do POS tagging and
binding disambiguation; turns out somebody just accidentally
reinvented Categorial Grammar to produce a syntax parser
(incidentally, they did it entirely in Haskell, which I found neat
because I've been contemplating the grammar of Haskell as I try to
figure out how to handle parentheses-less binding disambiguation in
Palno; also incidentally, that means that what I thought it was going
to be about is still a potential open area for new research). This
reminded me of my prior complaints about how introducing types into
Palno in order to allow unambiguous usage of higher-order predicates
would be horribly unwieldy, as I realized that the complex types of
lexemes in Categorial Grammar were exactly isomorphic to the complex
recursive function types that would be required for resolving binding
ambiguities with typed predicates in Palno.
My review of Categorial Grammar has made me more pessimistic about the
prospects of successfully implementing higher-order operations in a
human-usable language; there is no provision for parametric types in
Categorial Grammar, and clearly human brains can only handle explicit
selectional types of finite complexity, which means there must be a
fixed limit to the possible complexity of a type and thus a limit on
the number of types available in a language (which may correspond to
the creation of different lexical classes). And that means no
nth-order operators.
That's slightly disappointing, if true; in trying to create a
minimalist language with applicative semantics based on predicate
calculus, it's one thing to disallow something or to allow arbitrary
quantities of it, but quite another to have to specify "up to exactly
x fixed number". Of course, that being true depends on it actually
being a cognitive linguistic universal that humans can't handle
parametric types, which I think will be rather difficult to prove;
just because they happen not to be accounted for in Categorial Grammar
doesn't necessarily mean that they're impossible, and I have no idea
how to even start analyzing natural languages with that idea in mind.
In the meantime, I've been giving more thought to Palno's semantics
without higher order operators; much of my new thought can be
integrated into the interpretation of Palno's syntactic &
morphological structures without having to actually change those
structures, which is nice.
The only major morphological change that's needed is the introduction
of a bit of morphology to say "this is a logical predicate", i.e.,
asserts a truth value. Without that, we can interpret all predicates
as returning some sort of nominal- usually, the Davidsonian event
argument. Since Palno predicates are in fact, most of the time, no
longer interpreted as actual logical predicates after this change, I
am motivated to change the name of that particular lexical class; I am
not sure if it would be more useful to call them "operators" or
something like that as distinct from atoms, or to just group all Palno
open-class words into a single class of roots, some of which happen to
be 0-arity and return substantives and qualities and such.
Now I also recently re-read "Predicates and Pronominal Arguments in
Straits Salish" (Jelinek & Demers, 1994), since I've been toying with
doing a Salish-inspired language anyway, and I noticed a rather odd
claim:
"Pronominal arguments are a necessary but not a sufficient condition
for the lack of a noun/verb contrast; there are pronominal argument
languages that have nouns [...]. But for a language to lack a
noun/verb contrast, it must have only pronominal affixes and clitics
in A-positions (i.e. argument positions). Otherwise, if each root
heads its own clause, there would be an infinite regress in argument
structure."
with footnote:
"We thank an anonymous reviewer for raising the question of whether
there might be a language just like Straits Salish, except for having
DetPs in A-positions. In such a language, the predicates on which the
argumental DetP would be based would in turn have their own DetP
argument structure, and so on ad infinitum."
It seems to me they missed a rather obvious intermediate case; Salish
apparently only allow 1-depth trees, where a language that
*prohibited* pronominal arguments with no N/V distinction would
clearly have infinite trees, which is not practical for communication;
but one could still have a language with no nouns that allows *either*
subordinate clauses *or* pronominals as arguments, with pronominals
acting as terminals. I suspect that is what I shall end up doing if I
get around to my Salish-inspired language, but in the meantime, an
applicative language like Palno does nearly the same thing, with
0-arity roots serving as terminals; of course, one could argue that
their ability to serve as syntactic terminals is a good argument for
keeping a separate lexical class of atoms/nouns as distinct from
operators/verbs, but that could be circumvented by introducing
pronouns/variables as an explicit semantic class in Palno (which would
be a much bigger change than what I've contemplated so far), with
operators having arity of at least 1.
This gets me onto another topic which has long bugged me about Palno's
structure, which inspiration from Salish might actually help to fix.
Relative clauses in Palno have so far been handled either by an
internally-headed structure with morphology to indicate that an
internal argument is returned/projected rather than the usual value
for that predicate, or with a hacky adjunction-with-coreference thing.
The first option is now made to fit much better into the rest of the
language by my change in the interpretation of predicate/operator
applications (the predicate morphology could be seen as just one case
of a set of inflections that specify which argument of an operator to
use as the syntactic projection / return value), but is still a little
annoying because the syntactic structure does not exactly match my
conception of the final interpreted semantic structure, and the second
is just gross because there is no other occurrence of adjunction
anywhere in Palno's grammar. What would be very nice is to have some
way of encoding the logical proposition "x such that P1(x) & P2(x) &
P3(x) ...", etc., without having to introduce the capacity to bind
arbitrary variables in what is supposed to be a speakable language.
Salish languages *have* to do something like that in order to achieve
the implication of a nominal argument in a syntax that only allows
pronominal arguments by ensuring that the same referent is bound to
multiple argument positions in the main and subordinate-adjoined
clauses. They do this by having strict rules about what pronouns in
different clauses must or must not be coreferential with each other,
which sometimes disallow certain logically possible sentence types
(for which they have voice transformations to make up). Something
similar could be done with Palno, avoiding disallowed sentence types
by providing a sufficiently rich set of pronouns with agreement
features to handle the proper coindexing. A closed class of pronouns
would not be powerful enough to produce all of the logical semantic
structures that could be expressed in predicate calculus with
arbitrary variable binding, but should be able to nicely handle all of
the practical communicative needs of a human language. Without the
matrix/subordinate distinction available in Salish, a pronoun with no
agreement morphology could be seen as a variable binding which is then
referenced in a further series of conjoined clauses containing
agreeing pronouns until shadowed by another non-agreeing pronoun
indicating a new binding. Exactly what kind of agreement morphology to
use is something I shall have to think about.
That would somewhat complicate the grammar and make it no longer 100%
purely applicative, but the better structural match to semantics might
just be worth it.
With all of those changes implemented, Palno could still be used with
the purely applicative postfix grammar (still the simplest grammar for
any language that I know of), or slightly more complicated with
conjunctions and reduction of repeated arguments as it was before, or
at yet a third level with explicit coreferencing, which I expect to be
the most easily human-usable and still capable of fitting on a
postcard (for real, not like Esperanto is supposed to).
No, back to thinking about how to manage higher-order operators....
-l.
Messages in this topic (1)
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4a. Re: In Defense of Monster Raving Loony Alignment
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 4:49 pm ((PDT))
On 1 August 2012 15:13, Logan Kearsley <chronosur...@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
> On 1 August 2012 06:17, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Oh, and I meant to mention that when suggesting this phrasal verb origin I
>> was also somewhat thinking of languages with verbal templates like the
>> Athabaskan, where there are many "themes" formed on any given stem, and a
>> theme can include any of various sorts of calcified stuff between the object
>> and the subject marker. Some of this stuff is calcified directionals, I
>> think, some calcified shape-classifiers for the object, some calcified
>> adverbials of other sorts... do that with my "phrasal verb" proposal and
>> it's even more flexible.
>
> Aha, object classifiers could help with the variability. Especially if
> semantic shifts result in what were originally real classifiers with
> strict semantic selectional requirements on the object end up causing
> the selectional restrictions to erode away. Might have to do some
> research on Athabaskan etymology to come up with more possible
> derivational routes for multipartite verbs.
I think I have found yet another route, potentially natlang-attested,
by which one could accomplish Monster Raving Loony Alignment. Salish
languages typically disallow two 3rd-person nominal arguments adjoined
to the same clause. Those which do are assumed to do so only due to
contact with English or other non-Salish languages, and there is
ambiguity in that case over which adjoined nominal is associated with
which argument position (which is probably why the situation is
usually disallowed). So, a heavy contact situation that results in
those kinds of clauses becoming exceedingly common in a
pidginization/creolization scenario might provide another nice
starting place for going off in all kinds of weird directions with
different ambiguity resolution strategies (of course, the most obvious
and most likely is that you just start using word order, but
especially with all of the nominalization and subordination morphology
that Salish languages provide, I'm sure a more interesting resolution
can be found).
-l.
Messages in this topic (10)
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5a. Re: Allophony in Siye
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" mamercu...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 8:43 pm ((PDT))
My initial model for Siye allophony was Japanese, but I didn't want [p] to
become [h], so I did think of French. Perhaps one of the dialects other than
Standard or Far Western uses [h]? When I was beginning to study linguistics on
my own, the change from "cambiare" to "changer" baffled me!
Just out of curiousity, what does happen when the percentage of plosives dips
too low? Is there a natlang that illustrates such a change?
Messages in this topic (8)
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5b. Re: Allophony in Siye
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Thu Aug 9, 2012 8:53 am ((PDT))
--- On Wed, 8/8/12, Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com> wrote:
My initial model for Siye allophony was Japanese, but I didn't want [p] to
become [h], so I did think of French. Perhaps one of the dialects other than
Standard or Far Western uses [h]? When I was beginning to study linguistics on
my own, the change from "cambiare" to "changer" baffled me!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've wondered about that too... Is it possible that "changer" descends from
something other than *cambiare? Is "cambiare" actually the Vulgar Latin form,
or was it something else in Classical? And I seem to recall reading somewhere
that "cambiare"is ult. a Greek loan (?)
Christophe will probably know about the French history of "changer"; Ray Brown
will undoubtedly be able to answer my questions regarding "cambiare".....
It just seems difficult to see how the presumed cluster
**...-[nasal]+bj-...ended up as nasal+[Z]. Could **-bj- somehow have gone
through a **[g] stage??? IMO both are high unnatural, no? Are there any other
French exs. of the same/similar change??
Messages in this topic (8)
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5c. Re: Allophony in Siye
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 9, 2012 9:26 am ((PDT))
On Wed, 8 Aug 2012 23:43:07 -0400, Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Just out of curiousity, what does happen when the percentage of plosives dips
>too low? Is there a natlang that illustrates such a change?
Fortition, I imagine. But I can't really think of a good example...
I wonder if something like the Germanic relapse of *bh dh gh > [B D G] into [b
d g] counts. It's complete to different degrees in the various langs: e.g.
many of the daughters (but not e.g. OHG) kept them fricated intervocalically;
Dutch didn't harden [G]; except after nasals, no-one hardened [G_w] which >
[w]. (And Greek did nothing like this. There were more PIE stops of the *t
than the *d series, weren't there?)
On Thu, 9 Aug 2012 08:52:59 -0700, Roger Mills <romi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>It just seems difficult to see how the presumed cluster
>**...-[nasal]+bj-...ended up as nasal+[Z]. Could **-bj- somehow have gone
>through a **[g] stage??? IMO both are high unnatural, no? Are there any other
>French exs. of the same/similar change??
Yes, many. Fr. _rage_ < Lat. _rabies_, OF _cage_ < Lat. _cavea_, subjunctive
forms _sache_ etc. of _savoir_ < forms _sapiat_ etc. of Lat. _sapiō_, ...
I'll also call attention to Siswati again, which had a palatalisation change
affecting labials but *leaving velars untouched*, and only partially affecting
alveolars:
http://books.google.com/books?id=IV2qnBMI3FgC&lpg=PA138&ots=3h3grghEx8&pg=PA138#v=onepage&q&f=false
Alex
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6a. Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" mamercu...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 9:28 pm ((PDT))
In addition to Siye, I have a proto-conlang that is still a sytactical
skeleton. This proto-conlang (which will call C080812 hereafter) is, among
other things, predominately nominative-accusative and uses preposed particles
derived from prepositions to mark case. C080812 has the following basic syntax
for common nouns (i.e., anything that does not involve the first or second
person in the most agent-like role (T= theme, R = recipient, D = donor):
VS/VPA/VTRD
"3-eat ACC mouse NOM cat" "The cat ate the mouse"
"3-give ACC gift DAT girl NOM man" "The man gave the gift to the girl"
The case of S in VS varies on an active/stative basis.
"3-Walk NOM man" "The man walked"
"3-Sleep DAT man" "The man slept"
The problem, however, which I now bring before the court of CONLANG-L, is that
the first and second pronouns are prefixed to the verb. Thus, whereas the
sentences "3-Walk NOM man" and "3-Sleep DAT man" are active and stative (the
presumption is that stative verbs still benefit the subject, which is why it is
dative rather than accusative), technically "1-walk" "I walked" and "1-sleep"
"I slept" do not contrast grammatically. This seems wrong, but I'm not sure.
One solution, of course, is to not distinguish active and stative in the 1st
and 2nd persons. Another is to forsake the prefixed pronouns altogether, and
make all verb forms 3rd person. The third option is to keep "1-walk" and
"1-sleep" but expand them to "1-walk NOM 1" and "1-sleep DAT 1".
Messages in this topic (4)
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6b. Re: Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 9:39 pm ((PDT))
On 8 August 2012 22:28, Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In addition to Siye, I have a proto-conlang that is still a sytactical
> skeleton. This proto-conlang (which will call C080812 hereafter) is, among
> other things, predominately nominative-accusative and uses preposed particles
> derived from prepositions to mark case. C080812 has the following basic
> syntax for common nouns (i.e., anything that does not involve the first or
> second person in the most agent-like role (T= theme, R = recipient, D =
> donor):
> VS/VPA/VTRD
> "3-eat ACC mouse NOM cat" "The cat ate the mouse"
> "3-give ACC gift DAT girl NOM man" "The man gave the gift to the girl"
> The case of S in VS varies on an active/stative basis.
> "3-Walk NOM man" "The man walked"
> "3-Sleep DAT man" "The man slept"
> The problem, however, which I now bring before the court of CONLANG-L, is
> that the first and second pronouns are prefixed to the verb. Thus, whereas
> the sentences "3-Walk NOM man" and "3-Sleep DAT man" are active and stative
> (the presumption is that stative verbs still benefit the subject, which is
> why it is dative rather than accusative), technically "1-walk" "I walked" and
> "1-sleep" "I slept" do not contrast grammatically. This seems wrong, but I'm
> not sure. One solution, of course, is to not distinguish active and stative
> in the 1st and 2nd persons. Another is to forsake the prefixed pronouns
> altogether, and make all verb forms 3rd person. The third option is to keep
> "1-walk" and "1-sleep" but expand them to "1-walk NOM 1" and "1-sleep DAT 1".
A fourth is to have different case forms for the 1st & 2nd prefixes. A
fifth might be to disallow 1st & 2nd pronouns as subjects of statives
and require some kind of voice-changing operation to license them.
-l.
Messages in this topic (4)
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6c. Re: Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" joerg_rhieme...@web.de
Date: Thu Aug 9, 2012 7:52 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Thursday 09 August 2012 06:28:42 Anthony Miles wrote:
> In addition to Siye, I have a proto-conlang that is still a sytactical
> skeleton. This proto-conlang (which will call C080812 hereafter) is, among
> other things, predominately nominative-accusative and uses preposed
> particles derived from prepositions to mark case. C080812 has the
> following basic syntax for common nouns (i.e., anything that does not
> involve the first or second person in the most agent-like role (T= theme,
> R = recipient, D = donor): VS/VPA/VTRD
> "3-eat ACC mouse NOM cat" "The cat ate the mouse"
> "3-give ACC gift DAT girl NOM man" "The man gave the gift to the girl"
> The case of S in VS varies on an active/stative basis.
> "3-Walk NOM man" "The man walked"
> "3-Sleep DAT man" "The man slept"
> The problem, however, which I now bring before the court of CONLANG-L, is
> that the first and second pronouns are prefixed to the verb. Thus, whereas
> the sentences "3-Walk NOM man" and "3-Sleep DAT man" are active and
> stative (the presumption is that stative verbs still benefit the subject,
> which is why it is dative rather than accusative), technically "1-walk" "I
> walked" and "1-sleep" "I slept" do not contrast grammatically. This seems
> wrong, but I'm not sure. One solution, of course, is to not distinguish
> active and stative in the 1st and 2nd persons. Another is to forsake the
> prefixed pronouns altogether, and make all verb forms 3rd person. The
> third option is to keep "1-walk" and "1-sleep" but expand them to "1-walk
> NOM 1" and "1-sleep DAT 1".
My own active-stative conlang, Old Albic, uses pronominal suffixes,
and it has two distinct sets for agents and patients, such that
"I walked" and "I slept" use different suffixes. This is, as far
as I know, the usual state of affairs in such languages.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (4)
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6d. Re: Active/Stative Distinctions and Pronominal Prefixes
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 9, 2012 8:22 am ((PDT))
On Thu, 9 Aug 2012 00:28:42 -0400, Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>In addition to Siye, I have a proto-conlang that is still a sytactical
>skeleton. This proto-conlang (which will call C080812 hereafter) is, among
>other things, predominately nominative-accusative and uses preposed particles
>derived from prepositions to mark case. C080812 has the following basic syntax
>for common nouns (i.e., anything that does not involve the first or second
>person in the most agent-like role (T= theme, R = recipient, D = donor):
>VS/VPA/VTRD
>"3-eat ACC mouse NOM cat" "The cat ate the mouse"
>"3-give ACC gift DAT girl NOM man" "The man gave the gift to the girl"
>The case of S in VS varies on an active/stative basis.
>"3-Walk NOM man" "The man walked"
>"3-Sleep DAT man" "The man slept"
>The problem, however, which I now bring before the court of CONLANG-L, is that
>the first and second pronouns are prefixed to the verb. Thus, whereas the
>sentences "3-Walk NOM man" and "3-Sleep DAT man" are active and stative (the
>presumption is that stative verbs still benefit the subject, which is why it
>is dative rather than accusative), technically "1-walk" "I walked" and
>"1-sleep" "I slept" do not contrast grammatically. This seems wrong, but I'm
>not sure.
As Joerg says, it's an uncommon way about things. But perhaps your verbal
agreement markers predate the onset of the active/stative system.
>One solution, of course, is to not distinguish active and stative in the 1st
>and 2nd persons.
That works.
>Another is to forsake the prefixed pronouns altogether, and make all verb
>forms 3rd person.
That is, forsake person marking on the verb -- they're hardly 3rd person if
they don't contrast with anything. Eh, you could, but it feels cutting off
your nose to spite your face-ish.
>The third option is to keep "1-walk" and "1-sleep" but expand them to "1-walk
>NOM 1" and "1-sleep DAT 1".
If you want to do something like this, I'd bear in mind that languages like
getting away with omitting things. Rather than contrast "1-V NOM 1" and "1-V
DAT 1", I'd build in an assumption that first and second person subjects
default to being active (they're high up the animacy hierarchy so active is the
likely default), and contrast active "1-V" and stative "1-V DAT 1". Done that
way, this might be my favourite of your suggestions.
And Logan's idea of not allowing SAPs of subjects as statives is fun, if you're
willing to have things like "I sleep" be a tad morphosyntactically ungainly to
express. (And it could evolve interestingly.)
Alex
Messages in this topic (4)
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7a. Re: Conjunction Curiosity
Posted by: "Anthony Miles" mamercu...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2012 9:54 pm ((PDT))
The part of my brain that I have allotted to things Siye is screaming "That
ain't right!". All of the vocabulary items exist in Siye, but the already
complex phrase would require this further consideration: is the relationship of
the priest and the house alienable or inalienable. If alienable, the phrase
"the priest of the house of our lady" would be "kutum sili laye sili
le-me-me-ne" ("laye sili-me" means "lady"; if not "le-me-me-me". I think a Siye
speaker would have to rephrase it as "laye sili le-me-me kutum sili-me". In
this case, if the lady were ruler, it would become "laye sili le-me-me-me
kumayam lusili me-pu kutum sili-me", where the "me" of "lusili me" is "this",
not the possessive marker. If the priest were the ruler, then it would be "laye
sili-me-me-me kutum sili-me kumayam lusili me-pu". Of course a better solution
would be to make a relative clause "kutum sili laye sili le-me-me lusili me
ekupumame-ne" "The priest of the house of our lady who rules this city" or
"laye sili le-me-me-me kutum sili ekupumame-ne" "The priest of the house of our
lady, who (i.e. the priest) rules this city. Suffixaufnahme is a real pain to
work with!
Messages in this topic (17)
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7b. Re: Conjunction Curiosity
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Thu Aug 9, 2012 4:24 am ((PDT))
On 1 August 2012 23:23, David Brumbley <davidbrumb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I ran across this proverb recently and thought it would make for a
> quick and fun translation exercise. I came across a few constructions
> I hadn't yet been forced to address in Hsassiens, and I'm curious as
> to whether other con- or nat-langs behave similarly in one aspect.
>
> I've been using two versions of the coordinating conjunction in
> Hsassiens without really thinking too much about it. In the case of
> one subject linked to two different verbs, the conjunction is 'sin.'
> When two or more nouns, adjectives or adverbs are being listed, the
> conjunction is 'zem.' So, to HsassiEnglish an example, "He is walking
> SIN talking at the same time," but "Tommy ZEM Rebecca are fighting
> again." Just curious if other languages distinguish in the same way,
> and if so, how.
>
>
>
A very interesting thread, and an interesting proverb. Looking at how to
translate it in Moten prompted me to look even deeper into how coordination
is handled in that language.
As I've described in this blog post:
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.nl/2012/02/moten-part-vii-particles.html,
Moten has a bunch of coordinating clitics, which function somewhat but not
exactly like coordinating conjunctions. The relevant ones here are _opa_
(described in the post) and _de_ (a particle I discovered a few weeks ago
that helped me solve a years-old headache). When used to coordinate noun
phrases, they can both be translated by "and", but with a different
connotation:
- _opa_ has a connotation of "also", and indicates that the two noun
phrases refer to separate entities. E.g.: _mjan opa badej_: the cat and the
dog (notice how the definite infix -e- only appears on the last noun yet
both are definite. This is a strict syntactic rule in Moten: when noun
phrases are coordinated, only the last one takes marks of case, number and
definition, and those extend to all coordinated phrases in meaning);
- _de_ has a connotation of "that is" and indicates that the two noun
phrases refer to a single entity. E.g.: _olnesif de vajagzif_: expert and
student (refers here to a single person who is considered both an expert
and a student, for some reason :) ). _de_ is also used wherever English
uses appositions to refer to one entity with more than one noun, including
with titles. E.g.: _plisif de Beatliksi_: Queen Beatrix (could also be
_Beatliksi de plisejf_, since _de_ is commutative :) . The definite infix
-e- reappears in this word order because the last noun is a common noun
rather than a proper noun). This was the afore-mentioned headache (in Moten
apposition has a different function, so I couldn't use it for those cases).
They are similar to A. de Mek's _wa_ and _wu_, although I developed them
independently (my _de_ is actually influenced by the Wardwesân particle
_ab_, although their uses are not exactly the same).
They can also both be used to coordinate verbs, but only in the sense of
your _sin_, and very strictly so: verbs coordinated using a coordinating
clitic not only share exactly the same arguments (*all* of them, i.e. not
only the subject, so you can't use a coordinating clitic for a sentence
like "he left the bar and went home", but you can for a sentence like "he
took a piece of bread and buttered it" -- and you don't need the resumptive
"it" when doing so! --), but also the same tense, aspect, mood and voice!
(so you cannot use a coordinating clitic for a sentence like "he did it
before and will do it again") The reason is similar to the reason why
coordinated noun phrases share the same case, number and definition: only
the last coordinated element takes the morphological markings, and their
meaning extend to all coordinated elements.
When coordinating verbs, _opa_ and _de_ keep their connotations:
- _opa_ indicates that the coordinated verbs correspond to different
actions. E.g.: _bdan pe|laz opa eze|s ige_: I can see and hear you.
- _de_ indicates that the coordinated verbs correspond to a single action,
i.e. the second one is meant as a rephrasing or clarification of the first
one. E.g.: _gobvuda|n vajaguz de oknestuluz ito_: I know about you, that's
to say I've read about you ("to know" here is translated as "to have
learned", so the second verb can also be in the perfect).
While they can be used to coordinate noun phrases and verbs, the
coordinating clitics *cannot* be used to coordinate clauses. In fact there
is no such thing as clause-level coordination in Moten. However, this
doesn't mean that they can't be used at clause-level at all. In fact they
can (like all clitics, when they are put in front of the auxiliary verb,
their meaning encompasses the whole clause). It's just that when used that
way, they lose their coordinating function, and become more like
clause-level adverbs (they can do that at the phrase level too, by the
way). In that case, _opa_ becomes equivalent to "also" or "moreover"
(indicating the clause is additional, separate information), while _de_ is
more like "in other words" or "that's to say" (indicating that the clause
is a rephrasing or clarification of the previous one).
Now onto the proverb itself!
>
> He who knows not and knows not he knows not
> He is a fool. Shun him.
> He who knows not and knows he knows not
> He is a student. Teach him.
> He who knows and knows not he knows
> He is asleep. Wake him.
> He who knows and knows he knows
> He is wise. Follow him.
>
OK, my problem is not so much vocabulary (although I do miss a couple of
vocabulary items to translate it), but the constructions themselves. You
see, we have here coordinated relative subclauses, and as I've explained
about Moten doesn't have clause-level coordination. And you can't use
verbal phrase-level coordination here as the different parts have different
objects. I could possibly have a nominal completed by two separate relative
subclauses corresponding to the two elements of the coordination, but I'm
wondering whether it's possible (Moten is strictly head-last, with relative
subclauses always in front of their heads, and I'm not sure separating a
relative subclause from its head with *another* relative subclause is
pragmatically possible). Before deciding on how something works
syntactically in Moten, I usually check first how Basque and Japanese do
it (in terms of syntax, Moten is quite close to both those languages), but
I've been unable to find a translation of this proverb in either language.
Has anyone got one? It'd help me greatly to figure out how Moten will
handle it!
All in all, great food for thought!
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (17)
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