There are 10 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Exquisite corpse
From: Jim Henry
1b. Re: Exquisite corpse
From: Alex Fink
1c. Re: Exquisite corpse
From: Logan Kearsley
1d. Re: Exquisite corpse
From: Jim Henry
2a. 30-Day Conlang: Day 27
From: Gary Shannon
2b. Re: 30-Day Conlang: Day 27
From: Philip Newton
2c. Re: 30-Day Conlang: Day 27
From: Larry Sulky
3a. Re: Diacritics
From: Lars Finsen
3b. Re: Diacritics
From: Douglas Koller
4a. Re: Verbs-of-motion-centric language
From: kechpaja
Messages
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1a. Re: Exquisite corpse
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 9:21 am ((PST))
On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 4:02 PM, John Campbell <campbell.2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What if your conlang isn't publicly documented? Could you use someone
> else's?
I you could write a mini-grammar and lexicon like we do for
translation relays, just enough documentation to translate the one
sentence.
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (21)
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1b. Re: Exquisite corpse
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 9:26 am ((PST))
On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:08:34 -0500, Roman Rausch <ara...@mail.ru> wrote:
>>Anyone for a game of Conlang Exquisite Corpse?
>
>Count me in. Just please, organize humanely timed intervals between
>translations. Postings on this list sometimes seem incredibly rapid.
I don't think there's a need to organise any manner of set interval: the
sentence will only pass through your hands once, and you can take your time
with it. I assume the passing will be done offlist, to prevent everyone
knowing all the preceding sentences, and then there'll be a big reveal at
the end, per the usual procedure for Exquisite Corpse. So you won't be flooded.
Alex
Messages in this topic (21)
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1c. Re: Exquisite corpse
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 9:35 am ((PST))
On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Peter Bleackley
<peter.bleack...@rd.bbc.co.uk> wrote:
> Anyone for a game of Conlang Exquisite Corpse?
>
> I'll send a sentence in Khangaþyagon to somebody. Each person in turn
> translates the sentence they receive, writes a new sentence that would
> follow on from it, and translates the followon sentence into their own
> conlang. They then send the followon sentence to the next participant.
>
> Pete
>
This sounds fun. Count me in, but I should probably be somewhere
nearer the end of the chain, 'cause I'll be absolutely swamped with
work next week. It all comes of not getting anything done on a
holiday....
-l.
Messages in this topic (21)
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1d. Re: Exquisite corpse
Posted by: "Jim Henry" jimhenry1...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 9:38 am ((PST))
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think there's a need to organise any manner of set interval: the
> sentence will only pass through your hands once, and you can take your time
> with it. I assume the passing will be done offlist, to prevent everyone
We should have some way of noticing when it gets stuck, though.
Probably have people post a brief message here, or on the relay list,
when they send their sentence to the next person, and if we go a few
days without such a post, ask the last person who got a sentence if
they've passed their own sentence to someone else yet...?
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (21)
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2a. 30-Day Conlang: Day 27
Posted by: "Gary Shannon" fizi...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 11:57 am ((PST))
Almost done with the 30 days. The McGuffey;s translation now has 117
sentences. This morning I discovered that Txtana has a vocative case
marker, and that it can also do double duty as an alternate type of
imperative construction.
The dictionary is up to 478 Txtana words, and today I also fixed a
couple of typos in the pronoun inflection table.
--gary
Messages in this topic (3)
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2b. Re: 30-Day Conlang: Day 27
Posted by: "Philip Newton" philip.new...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 1:18 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 20:55, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This morning I discovered that Txtana has a vocative case
> marker, and that it can also do double duty as an alternate type of
> imperative construction.
Reminds me of the Toki Pona particle "o", which also has those two
functions - sometimes even both at the same time:
jan Meri o, mi kama "Mary, I'm coming!"
o kama! "Come!"
jan Meri o kama! "Mary, come!"
(At least, that's how I understand it - it's possible that the last
should be "jan Meri o, o kama!", but I think not. Does anyone know for
sure?)
Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
Messages in this topic (3)
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2c. Re: 30-Day Conlang: Day 27
Posted by: "Larry Sulky" larrysu...@gmail.com
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 1:45 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Gary Shannon <fizi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Almost done with the 30 days. The McGuffey;s translation now has 117
> sentences. This morning I discovered that Txtana has a vocative case
> marker, and that it can also do double duty as an alternate type of
> imperative construction.
>
>
Cool! Remember that from your ilomi days?!
> The dictionary is up to 478 Txtana words, and today I also fixed a
> couple of typos in the pronoun inflection table.
>
> --gary
>
Gary, you squeeze so much fun out of conlanging!
---L
Messages in this topic (3)
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3a. Re: Diacritics
Posted by: "Lars Finsen" lars.fin...@ortygia.no
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 12:14 pm ((PST))
Den 27. nov. 2010 kl. 07.18 skreiv Jean-François Colson:
>
> I don't understand what you find wrong in the Vietnamese spelling.
> IMO it's a very well thought system.
So maybe they aren't quite out of control after all?
> The breve is used to distinguish two values commonly associated to
> the letter a: a = /É/, Ä = /a/.
> The circumflex means the vowel is closer: a = /É/, â = /É/; e = /
> É/, ê = /e/; o = /É/, ô = /o/.
> The horn means a back vowel is unrounded: o = /É/, Æ¡ = /ɤ/; u = /
> u/, ư = /ɯ/.
But are all these independent phonemes, or are they all or some of
them just allophonic variations? If the latter, why not just let the
condition triggering the allophony be its marker as well?
> And finally there are five diacritics to mark five of the six tones:
> - an acute for the high rising tone (/˧˥/),
> - a grave for the low falling tone (/˧˩/),
> - a hook above for the dipping tone (/˧˩˧/),
> - a tilde for the glottalized rizing tone (/˧˥Ë/),
> - a dot below for the glottalized falling tone (/˧˩Ë/).
> The mid tone (/˧/) is left unmarked.
But are they really needed? Won't native speakers know which tone to
use? Or are there too many minimal pairs that can be confused in
reading?
> That's clear, neat, easy to master.
Neat isn't exactly the first word coming to my mind. But I agree that
there is some logic to it.
LEF
Messages in this topic (21)
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3b. Re: Diacritics
Posted by: "Douglas Koller" lao...@comcast.net
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 2:35 pm ((PST))
----- Original Message -----
From: "R A Brown" <r...@carolandray.plus.com>
To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2010 3:40:46 AM
Subject: Re: Diacritics
On 27/11/2010 07:04, Douglas Koller wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jean-François
> Colson"<j...@colson.eu> To: conl...@listserv.brown.edu
> Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2010 1:18:11 AM Subject: Re:
> Diacritics
Exactly. I did *not* say the system was illogical or that it
doesn't work. Of course it does. But IMO it has resulted in
a system where diacritics are overloaded and, again in my
opinion, I think things could have been done more elegantly.
I speak not a word of Vietnamese, which supposedly has lots of Chinese cognates
(I speak Chinese). But whenever I've seen a Vietnamese text it looks like so
much gobbledy-gook. Ploughing through that (seeking those cognates) is rough
going for us, but if you've teethed on the system, it's second nature.
I was intending to comment specifically on their
_invention_. Indeed, my "I agree that having a new letter
is the preferred option for denoting a different sound"
shows, I think, that I am not over-impressed at the later
used that has often been made of them.
Of course, in a language that uses only one diacritic, e.g.
Italian, there ain't a problem; we know what the "smudge"
over the letter is! Even in Spanish, which does have three
of the critters, there's not a great problem because of the
way they are used. But if a language does meaningfully use
two or three different diacritics over the same letters,
then I think Gary has a very valid point.
My point is that the _invention_ itself was not "a bad
thing" - but the application of the invention has often been
less than satisfactory (nothing new in that, alas).
The diacritic in Géarthnuns is the same as the acute (not so imaginative, it
was high-school) (but considered two different beasts). On a consonant, it's
called a "sekens" and marks voicing for a set of seven consonants, (not all
accurately), (like the Japanese marker, before I knew Japanese, I swear); on a
vowel, it's called a "shumats", and as English, the long/short distinction
thing is misleading (again, high-school). a/ai, u/ü, I/i, ö/o, E/e, å/au,
öi/oi.
So with a word like "bdorgen" (feel bad) or "bzébef" (have a (commercial) share
in), in the native script, it's acute accents a go-go. I'm not going back to
revise. I think in terms of elegance, things could have been handled otherwise.
But it is what it is. And isn't quirkiness fun?
Kou
Messages in this topic (21)
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4a. Re: Verbs-of-motion-centric language
Posted by: "kechpaja" kechp...@comcast.net
Date: Sat Nov 27, 2010 9:54 pm ((PST))
> I would rather say that emotional and stative verbs which lack a kinetic
> component are more difficult to paraphrase motionally, unless one does
> things like using 'shake' instead of 'be afraid'.
Or "be in terror", which is widely used in English...
On a related but different note, the present progressive tense in Irish Gaelic
is formed by means of a construction which translated literally as "be at
Xing".
Messages in this topic (4)
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