There are 17 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1.1. Re: Fith Texts
From: George Corley
1.2. Re: Fith Texts
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
2a. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
From: Virginia Keys
2b. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
From: Logan Kearsley
2c. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
From: Brian Rice
2d. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
From: Matthew A. Gurevitch
2e. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
From: Matthew Boutilier
2f. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
From: Sai
3a. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Brian Rice
3b. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Brian Rice
3c. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ
3d. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: MorphemeAddict
3e. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Alex Fink
3f. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: Logan Kearsley
3g. Re: Introduction w/conlang
From: MorphemeAddict
4a. Course on conlangs: course material to be available online
From: Armin Buch
4b. Re: Course on conlangs: course material to be available online
From: Sai
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1.1. Re: Fith Texts
Posted by: "George Corley" gacor...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:23 am ((PDT))
On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 4:27 AM, And Rosta <and.ro...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16 April 2012 16:36, Miles Forster<m...@plasmatix.com> wrote:
>
>> Also, if I am to make my own LIFO conlang, will people still believe it
>> to be
>>
>> impossible to learn for humans?
>>
>
> The notion that natlangs are probably not LIFO is a Conlang myth. On the
> contrary, natlangs probably are LIFO. So achieving fluency in a LIFO
> conlang would surprise only those who subscribe to this Conlang myth.
>
> The weirdnesses of Fith are to be found among the stack operators, which
> are documented online. I myself wouldn't claim that those are completely
> unusable, but I would claim that their usability correlates with the
> brainpower (i.e. mental brute-strength) of the user -- which is not true
> for ordinary natlang processing.
>
> --And.
>
How, exactly, could natlangs be LIFO?
Messages in this topic (42)
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1.2. Re: Fith Texts
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" tsela...@gmail.com
Date: Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:17 am ((PDT))
On 17 April 2012 17:23, George Corley <gacor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The notion that natlangs are probably not LIFO is a Conlang myth. On the
> > contrary, natlangs probably are LIFO. So achieving fluency in a LIFO
> > conlang would surprise only those who subscribe to this Conlang myth.
> >
> > The weirdnesses of Fith are to be found among the stack operators, which
> > are documented online. I myself wouldn't claim that those are completely
> > unusable, but I would claim that their usability correlates with the
> > brainpower (i.e. mental brute-strength) of the user -- which is not true
> > for ordinary natlang processing.
> >
> > --And.
> >
>
> How, exactly, could natlangs be LIFO?
>
After reading some more on that issue, my understanding is that if natlangs
are *strictly* context-free, then they can be parsed by a machine equipped
with no more than a LIFO stack (it's a mathematical truth). It doesn't mean
that the human brain itself parses them that way though (there's not a
single piece of evidence that it does, and plenty of indirect evidence that
it *may* not), just that a LIFO stack would be *enough* to do so. So while,
under that condition, And's claim may indeed be correct (that natlangs are
LIFO), it doesn't say anything about how humans *actually* parse natlangs
(And's mistake is to confuse sufficiency with necessity. If there's
something my biology and physiology classes have taught me -I took them at
university level, it was a mandatory part of my curriculum-, it's that
biological systems are *messy*, are almost never exactly fit for purpose,
and are often redundant and overkill compared to what they are supposed to
do. There's no reason to expect our language ability to be otherwise).
The problem is, there's quite a lot of evidence around that shows that
natlangs are *not* strictly context-free. The case of Swiss German, for
example, is difficult to deny (those who tried always resort to arguments
that are equivalent to saying that the native speakers are just wrong,
which to me sounds like prescriptivism gone wild), and led to the
definition of the so-called "mildly context-sensitive languages", which
need a machine with at least a stack of *stacks* to be parsed successfully.
And now it seems that Suffixaufnahme may be another case that doesn't even
fall under those mildly context-sensitive languages.
My own opinion is that trying to describe language using a strict
mathematical framework is bound to fail, because language isn't a
mathematical phenomenon, but a socio-biological one. As I wrote above, such
phenomena are "messy", they don't have strict limits that can be captured
by a theoretical framework. They can be *approached* with one, but never be
*exactly* described by it (which doesn't mean that it's wrong to try :) ).
Moreover, the whole Chomsky hierarchy is based on Turing machines and less
able automatons, and all those parsing mechanisms have one thing in common:
they can't change their own programming. Our brain has one defining quality
that defeats any attempts to compare it to such machines: it is
self-modifying, and its ability for self-modification is *central* to how
it functions! So any theory that doesn't take this ability for
self-modification in mind will never correctly describe how the brains
functions, whatever part of its activities one is looking at.
Personally, I don't know whether the brains actually has an actual language
parsing facility, and even if it does it might not the central part of its
language facility, more a last resort thing, and mostly conscious rather
than subconscious. Rather, I think language understanding is done via a
combination of holistic and fuzzy comparison with bits and pieces of memory
(I've noticed that language fluency seems to come when one stops thinking
of a language as a combination of words and rules, but rather as a
combination of sentences and sentence parts), strong reliance on context
and non-verbal cues, and that actual parsing only happens in an "when all
else fails" situation, and is nearly conscious, although not necessarily
controlled (I know that sometimes, when I failed to understand what someone
said immediately, understanding comes a fraction of a second later, while
I'm busy asking them to repeat, and I can feel myself going over what I
heard all over again, in a nearly conscious manner, trying to understand
what I heard word for word. Immediate understanding, however, probably
doesn't happen word for word, but through comparison with a huge memory
full of words, expressions, sentences bits and full sentences. The brains
massively parallel structure makes this just as fast if not faster than
actual word by word parsing).
All this doesn't mean that we may not be able to describe our language
ability with a framework based on a mathematical parsing facility like
those used by the Chomsky hierarchy (and, although there's some evidence
that seems to point otherwise, maybe natlangs are indeed context-free and
thus only need a LIFO stack for successful parsing), just that such a
framework doesn't necessarily tell us anything about *how we humans do it*.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (42)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
Posted by: "Virginia Keys" virginiak...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:25 am ((PDT))
On Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:09:12 -0400, Matthew A. Gurevitch <mag122...@aol.com>
wrote:
>Dear Conlangers,
>
>I, who am just a beginner, am attempting to create a language that has no
>verbs. Instead of taking the Kēlen route and using some form of verb functions
>divorced from verb meanings, I use two forms based on now-gone verbs in the
>language, specifically it has kept the gerund and the occupational form. For
>example, it would not keep "to eat" as a verb from its proto-Language, but it
>keeps the forms "eating (gerund)" and "eater." It uses these two to create a
>perfect/imperfect (perhaps, still working on it) distinction, and a
>distinction in main clauses and subordinate clauses. To take the example
>sentence "he eats the apple," and show off the glosses used in them, the
>perfect in a main clause and imperfect in a subordinate clause would look like
>"he-nominative eater-role/apposition.to.nominative apple-genitive" and
>imperfect in main clauses would look something like "he-genitive
>eating-instrument apple-dative." I am leaving the word order, morphology,
>phonology, and the like out of this discussion because I want to know how
>plausible this grammar is.
>
>Matthew
Well I'm not by any means an old hand at this myself, but if I understand what
you are saying, your language will have roots which are nouns which may be
inflected to function as either a noun or a verb? At first I wasn't sure what
you meant, but your examples do help somewhat to see what you mean. Not sure I
entirely understand the second one though.
As for plausibility, unless you are trying to make a naturalistic conlang (I'm
guessing not, since you are going verbless), the main things that matter are 1)
if it works, and 2) if you are happy with it. If it seems to fulfill these,
then go for it, see what happens.
When I worked for a little while on a verbless conlang, I allowed an understood
to be, and basically strung nouns together by equating or opposing them.
Now it is someone's turn who knows what they are talking about... lol.
--Virginia K
Messages in this topic (8)
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2b. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:26 am ((PDT))
On 15 April 2012 21:09, Matthew A. Gurevitch <mag122...@aol.com> wrote:
> Dear Conlangers,
>
> I, who am just a beginner, am attempting to create a language that has no
> verbs. Instead of taking the Kēlen route and using some form of verb
> functions divorced from verb meanings, I use two forms based on now-gone
> verbs in the language, specifically it has kept the gerund and the
> occupational form. For example, it would not keep "to eat" as a verb from its
> proto-Language, but it keeps the forms "eating (gerund)" and "eater." It uses
> these two to create a perfect/imperfect (perhaps, still working on it)
> distinction, and a distinction in main clauses and subordinate clauses. To
> take the example sentence "he eats the apple," and show off the glosses used
> in them, the perfect in a main clause and imperfect in a subordinate clause
> would look like "he-nominative eater-role/apposition.to.nominative
> apple-genitive" and imperfect in main clauses would look something like
> "he-genitive eating-instrument apple-dative." I am leaving the word order,
> morphology, phonology, and the like out of this discussion because I want to
> know how plausible this grammar is.
If you have access to JSTOR, or can find it somewhere else, I
recommend reading "Lexical Categories and the Luiseño Absolutive:
Another Perspective on the Universality of "Noun" and "Verb""
(http://www.jstor.org/stable/1265111)
Luiseno among Uto-Aztecan languages and Halkomelem among Salishan
languages seem to have a system in which "noun" and "verb" are not
lexical, but rather inflectional, categories.
-l.
Messages in this topic (8)
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2c. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
Posted by: "Brian Rice" briantr...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 11:54 am ((PDT))
I am also interested in this aspect, and although I have read a decent
amount of grammatical theory, I am no closer than you to a good framework
for this.
I tend to think in terms of verb as process and noun as residual/result of
the process, much as in a formal or functional language, like "applying a
function to get a result" (I hereby betray mathematical bias). "Gerund" is
the closest I could find to a root that could adequately underly both noun
and verb and achieve both purposes by inflection. Most nouns become verbs
that result in the object, like a "constructor" which may describe
different levels of process, that the user can choose for highlight.
For a chair or apple, say, the gerund might be "fruiting" or "assembling"
on a more primitive part (probably left unmentioned to indicate what should
be considered obvious).
I suppose that in this way, one could describe my desire to reduce nouns to
the outcome of process so that the way things are described tends toward
the dynamic and interpretive rather than static and nominative.
"he eats the apple" becomes "<eating>en-by-other <apple-fruit>ing". The
attempt is to retain SVO order at the moment.
I think I used to have an inflectional category solution for "eater" but
that may have been a design gap that I didn't address yet.
On Sun, Apr 15, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Matthew A. Gurevitch <mag122...@aol.com>wrote:
> Dear Conlangers,
>
> I, who am just a beginner, am attempting to create a language that has no
> verbs. Instead of taking the Kēlen route and using some form of verb
> functions divorced from verb meanings, I use two forms based on now-gone
> verbs in the language, specifically it has kept the gerund and the
> occupational form. For example, it would not keep "to eat" as a verb from
> its proto-Language, but it keeps the forms "eating (gerund)" and "eater."
> It uses these two to create a perfect/imperfect (perhaps, still working on
> it) distinction, and a distinction in main clauses and subordinate clauses.
> To take the example sentence "he eats the apple," and show off the glosses
> used in them, the perfect in a main clause and imperfect in a subordinate
> clause would look like "he-nominative eater-role/apposition.to.nominative
> apple-genitive" and imperfect in main clauses would look something like
> "he-genitive eating-instrument apple-dative." I am leaving the word order,
> morphology, phonology, and the like out of this discussion because I want
> to know how plausible this grammar is.
>
> Matthew
>
--
-Brian T. Rice
Messages in this topic (8)
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2d. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
Posted by: "Matthew A. Gurevitch" mag122...@aol.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:25 pm ((PDT))
Thanks for the feedback. The reason I think that there is little distinction
between nouns and verbs is that I can use a noun in the "role" position and use
the gerunds as nouns along with their role as verb-like.
--Matthew
P.S. because you seem to know some Hebrew grammar, what is the English term for
the "smixut" form of a noun. (e.g. "simlat ha-jalda" "the dress of the girl" as
opposed to "simla" "dress" and "jemei pesax" "the days of Passover" as opposed
to "jamim" "days")
-----Original Message-----
From: Iuhan Culmærija <culm...@gmail.com>
To: CONLANG <conl...@listserv.brown.edu>
Sent: Tue, Apr 17, 2012 5:49 pm
Subject: Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
This is really interesting. I am by no means one of the more informed
conlangers, but I have some ideas and comments.
For example, it would not keep "to eat" as a verb from its
> proto-Language, but it keeps the forms "eating (gerund)" and "eater." It
> uses these two to create a perfect/imperfect (perhaps, still working on it)
> distinction, and a distinction in main clauses and subordinate clauses.
The perfect/imperfect distinction reminds me of Semitic - and I will
coincidentally be using Hebrew/Aramaic as my analysis examples.
> To take the example sentence "he eats the apple," and show off the glosses
> used in them, the perfect in a main clause and imperfect in a subordinate
> clause would look like "he-nominative eater-role/apposition.to.nominative
> apple-genitive"
Aramaic uses the construct state to mean "there is a relationship between
these nouns." A derived system could use:
He-nominative eater-construct apple-dative
> and imperfect in main clauses would look something like "he-genitive
> eating-instrument apple-dative."
>
I am leaving the word order, morphology, phonology, and the like out of
> this discussion because I want to know how plausible this grammar is.
>
>
I think it is plausible - my only question is: if this system did exist,
wouldn't the "eater" and "eating" forms just be interpreted as verbs?
Both verbs and nouns are derived from the same root in Semitic. For
example, in Hebrew, "Katab" is 'wrote [3P m]' and "koteb" is 'writer.' But
I imagine one could just as easily interpret "katab" as the past tense
inflection of the adpositional noun 'writer.'
For clarity's sake, what I mean is that there can be two valid
interpretations of "He katab letter"
1. He wrote letter
2. He writer[role/adposition to nom.] letter
Was it Shakespeare who said that "an inflected-adpositional-noun by any
other name would still smell as verb"
- Iuhan
Messages in this topic (8)
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2e. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
Posted by: "Matthew Boutilier" bvticvlar...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:53 pm ((PDT))
>
> P.S. because you seem to know some Hebrew grammar, what is the English
> term for the "smixut" form of a noun. (e.g. "simlat ha-jalda" "the dress of
> the girl" as opposed to "simla" "dress" and "jemei pesax" "the days of
> Passover" as opposed to "jamim" "days")
>
pardon the interception: it's called the "construct" form -- or *status
constructus* in the old grammars. as opposed to *status absolutus*.
matt
On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 7:24 PM, Matthew A. Gurevitch <mag122...@aol.com>wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback. The reason I think that there is little
> distinction between nouns and verbs is that I can use a noun in the "role"
> position and use the gerunds as nouns along with their role as verb-like.
>
> --Matthew
>
> P.S. because you seem to know some Hebrew grammar, what is the English
> term for the "smixut" form of a noun. (e.g. "simlat ha-jalda" "the dress of
> the girl" as opposed to "simla" "dress" and "jemei pesax" "the days of
> Passover" as opposed to "jamim" "days")
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Iuhan Culmærija <culm...@gmail.com>
> To: CONLANG <conl...@listserv.brown.edu>
> Sent: Tue, Apr 17, 2012 5:49 pm
> Subject: Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
>
>
> This is really interesting. I am by no means one of the more informed
> conlangers, but I have some ideas and comments.
>
> For example, it would not keep "to eat" as a verb from its
> > proto-Language, but it keeps the forms "eating (gerund)" and "eater." It
> > uses these two to create a perfect/imperfect (perhaps, still working on
> it)
> > distinction, and a distinction in main clauses and subordinate clauses.
>
>
> The perfect/imperfect distinction reminds me of Semitic - and I will
> coincidentally be using Hebrew/Aramaic as my analysis examples.
>
>
> > To take the example sentence "he eats the apple," and show off the
> glosses
> > used in them, the perfect in a main clause and imperfect in a subordinate
> > clause would look like "he-nominative eater-role/apposition.to.nominative
> > apple-genitive"
>
>
> Aramaic uses the construct state to mean "there is a relationship between
> these nouns." A derived system could use:
> He-nominative eater-construct apple-dative
>
>
> > and imperfect in main clauses would look something like "he-genitive
> > eating-instrument apple-dative."
> >
> I am leaving the word order, morphology, phonology, and the like out of
> > this discussion because I want to know how plausible this grammar is.
> >
> >
> I think it is plausible - my only question is: if this system did exist,
> wouldn't the "eater" and "eating" forms just be interpreted as verbs?
>
> Both verbs and nouns are derived from the same root in Semitic. For
> example, in Hebrew, "Katab" is 'wrote [3P m]' and "koteb" is 'writer.' But
> I imagine one could just as easily interpret "katab" as the past tense
> inflection of the adpositional noun 'writer.'
>
> For clarity's sake, what I mean is that there can be two valid
> interpretations of "He katab letter"
> 1. He wrote letter
> 2. He writer[role/adposition to nom.] letter
>
> Was it Shakespeare who said that "an inflected-adpositional-noun by any
> other name would still smell as verb"
>
> - Iuhan
>
>
>
Messages in this topic (8)
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2f. Re: Destroying the noun/verb distinction
Posted by: "Sai" s...@saizai.com
Date: Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:00 am ((PDT))
FWIW, UNLWS (http://saizai.com/nlws.shtml) lacks word classes
altogether, because it's a predicate-oriented language.
I'm not sure how or even if this would be possible to do in a more
normal language, though; I suspect it might be intrinsically bound up
with the unusual visual properties of a nonlinear written language.
I'd be curious to read thoughts on the matter.
- Sai
Messages in this topic (8)
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3a. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Brian Rice" briantr...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 12:41 pm ((PDT))
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ <
mi...@illte.conlang.org> wrote:
> On 17.04.2012 01:34, Brian Rice wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ<
>> mi...@illte.conlang.org> wrote:
>>
>> By Weloneqi, how do you curse in your language? And would it be possible
>>> to curse so well that the listener would see the aura of Weloneqi's home
>>> appear around your head?
>>>
>>
>> Nice. :-) Short answer: I don't know, but it'd probably be crude
>> Anglo-Saxon single-syllable words in my English-centric conception. When I
>> first came up with this idea, I was not a fluently foul-mouthed person. I
>> eventually got through that, and learned when to do it. Sometimes I curse
>> well, but not when communicating online, in which I've developed a strong
>> tradition of formality even if IRC tests my ability to deal with trolling!
>>
>>
> Might I suggest making foul-language a part of the grammar of the language?
>
That is an interesting suggestion (I assume of special interest to you).
The pidginized applications of the language toolkit might make this moot
(grandfathered cursing). Maybe one grammatical category could include an
"epithet" value.
It wouldn't be the first time some conlang has cursing as a part of the
> grammar. Delang has the possibility to abuse the language hard-wired into
> the grammar, although not every word can be used as a curse. Fамін, The
> Girl, can hardly be taken as foul by anyone, while Малін, The Slide, are a
> more natural curse, and let's not even consider adding the locative ѡе-,
> into, to either of those two.
>
Authorized language abuse? Doesn't that take the fun out of it?
--
-Brian T. Rice
Messages in this topic (17)
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3b. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Brian Rice" briantr...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 12:41 pm ((PDT))
I guess I should add that I'm a little over-aware of the effect of history
on the English language, and how the Norman conquest shaped the idea of
high class and low class even to this day, such that one cannot even
describe the difference without invoking it. Try, say, describing something
dirty and evil (or seeming honest and authentic) in English without using
non-Latin words. So this is a particular concern in the space of political
discourse and rhetoric for the English-speaking world.
On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:34 PM, Brian Rice <briantr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:27 PM, Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ <
> mi...@illte.conlang.org> wrote:
>
>> By Weloneqi, how do you curse in your language? And would it be possible
>> to curse so well that the listener would see the aura of Weloneqi's home
>> appear around your head?
>
>
> Nice. :-) Short answer: I don't know, but it'd probably be crude
> Anglo-Saxon single-syllable words in my English-centric conception. When I
> first came up with this idea, I was not a fluently foul-mouthed person. I
> eventually got through that, and learned when to do it. Sometimes I curse
> well, but not when communicating online, in which I've developed a strong
> tradition of formality even if IRC tests my ability to deal with trolling!
>
> On 17.04.2012 00:58, Brian Rice wrote:
>>
>>> I first formalized this approach in 1993 after a number of discarded
>>> attempts at solving/generalizing the problem of discourse enhancement,
>>> and
>>> then set it aside for years while engaging in self-study of various
>>> textbooks including the efforts corralled by Stanford. This language has
>>> not had a name. I have in the past used the LOZENGE Unicode symbol ◊ for
>>> its association with modal logic to indicate quantification of
>>> possibility,
>>> but could certainly use better suggestions.
>>>
>>> I'll clarify by this symbol that I mean it to be a kind of operator on a
>>> language, so that the pidgin dialect of English and ◊ might be named
>>> "English◊" or "English◊PoliSci" and not be equivalent to say "Turkish◊"
>>> or
>>> "Arabic◊PoliSci"; the effects of pidginization would depend upon the
>>> target
>>> or culture who adopted it.
>>>
>>> I intend to publish online documentation (at a website, with a blog and
>>> discussion forum of some type that I feel like supporting) and tools to
>>> support this idea, and am looking for feedback to help *fix* and
>>> *refine* the
>>>
>>> idea into some kind of viability, no matter how modest. I think the
>>> description above is the best draft so far of a manifesto for it.
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ
>>
>> Δебјані ҩнІљте Ьлеј
>> http://illte.conlang.org/ http://delang.conlang.org/
>> ___
>> «Панемі ƒłе δеьлеј ҩнδеьомеłс» - анƕомі
>>
>
>
>
> --
> -Brian T. Rice
>
--
-Brian T. Rice
Messages in this topic (17)
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3c. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ" mi...@illte.conlang.org
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 1:28 pm ((PDT))
On 17.04.2012 21:40, Brian Rice wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ<
> mi...@illte.conlang.org> wrote:
>
>> Might I suggest making foul-language a part of the grammar of the language?
>>
> That is an interesting suggestion (I assume of special interest to you).
Not specifically, but as Delang is a creole...
> The pidginized applications of the language toolkit might make this moot
> (grandfathered cursing). Maybe one grammatical category could include an
> "epithet" value.
>
> It wouldn't be the first time some conlang has cursing as a part of the
>> grammar. Delang has the possibility to abuse the language hard-wired into
>> the grammar, although not every word can be used as a curse. Fамін, The
>> Girl, can hardly be taken as foul by anyone, while Малін, The Slide, are a
>> more natural curse, and let's not even consider adding the locative ѡе-,
>> into, to either of those two.
>>
> Authorized language abuse? Doesn't that take the fun out of it?
>
I don't know. Does it? It isn't always obvious what word would end up as
a taboo word. Why would the noun "slide" end up being fouled? And why
would nobody but the parents and friends of a 5 year old girl react to
her shouting ѡеδемалін, into the slide, while everyone would go nuts if
she forgot δе, the?
While both Madz, the special declination, and the locative can be used
to enable bad language, neither are bad in their own. It's the noun and
the associations made by their usage that makes the word go bad.
Just take the word "negro". Its meaning in Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
and Galician are just 'black', just as it used to be in English. However
American plantation owners in the southern states started abusing the
word. Its association with the triangle-trades and slavery has dirtied
it in English, while it still retain its neutral state in other language.
Enablers help, but they don't authorize language abuse. Малін went bad
because someone at one point in the history of the language connected it
with its origin, the adjective малін, slippery, and made an "adult"
association between that and the toy..., not because any enablers makes
words go bad.
--
Тоłе МаьіЛеƒіљ МаьіПаніљ
Δебјані ҩнІљте Ьлеј
http://illte.conlang.org/ http://delang.conlang.org/
___
«Панемі ƒłе δеьлеј ҩнδеьомеłс» - анƕомі
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3d. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 1:36 pm ((PDT))
On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <
tsela...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17 April 2012 08:00, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >
> > > How do natural languages deal with this problem?
> >
> >
> They don't. At most, people rely on context and non-verbal cues. In any
> case, it's one of the motors of semantic drift (the extended meaning
> becomes the core meaning if the original core meaning, for some reason,
> stops being used), and one of the reasons why there is always a measure of
> ambiguity in a statement without context.
>
It's hard to accept a simple "They don't" as an answer. Natural languages
that have markers for source of knowledge, a la Lojban and Laadan, (maybe
Turkish?) must have a reason for those markers, and if the markers are
abused, then who would keep using them?
stevo
> --
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3e. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Alex Fink" 000...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:36 pm ((PDT))
On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:36:18 -0400, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <
>tsela...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 17 April 2012 08:00, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > >
>> > > How do natural languages deal with this problem?
>> >
>> >
>> They don't. At most, people rely on context and non-verbal cues. In any
>> case, it's one of the motors of semantic drift (the extended meaning
>> becomes the core meaning if the original core meaning, for some reason,
>> stops being used), and one of the reasons why there is always a measure of
>> ambiguity in a statement without context.
>>
>
>It's hard to accept a simple "They don't" as an answer. Natural languages
>that have markers for source of knowledge, a la Lojban and Laadan, (maybe
>Turkish?) must have a reason for those markers, and if the markers are
>abused, then who would keep using them?
Evidentials? I don't understand why you've drug those in. I think evidentials
get unfairly exoticised, and I fear you've done that here. English has markers
for source of knowledge too, they're just not grammaticalised: "apparently",
"so they say", "I saw [...]", whatever. In some natlangs they have
grammaticalised; I don't know why this happened in the natlangs it did and not
others, but one should beware facile Sapir-Whorf just-so stories about it.
Sure you can stretch the uses of evidentials: just as the good old Russian
_slyshat'_ basally 'hear' has extended uses where it means 'smell', so (ttbomk)
an originally auditory evidential could easily extend to an
any-sense-but-visual evidential, or an
any-actual-evidence-as-opposed-to-secondhand-report one, or ...; and it could
then have its sense differently re-restricted when a new member of the paradigm
arrives on the scene. (Not to mention that you could lie with evidentials, no
differently to how you might lie with verbs! That doesn't endanger the
existence of verbs in natlangs.) Anyway, if an evidential system ceases to be
used with any reliable semantic force, it probably would be dropped, yes. This
could be on account of these sort of extensions alone (and if it were, the
ultimate cause probably wouldn't be recoverable), or of misuse of the system by
second-language learners, or of the whole thing getting so morphologically
complex it's restructured away or abandoned as a lost cause, or of a stray
bullet fired by sound change, or ...
Alex
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3f. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "Logan Kearsley" chronosur...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:47 pm ((PDT))
On 17 April 2012 16:36, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:36:18 -0400, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <
>>tsela...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 17 April 2012 08:00, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > >
>>> > > How do natural languages deal with this problem?
>>> >
>>> >
>>> They don't. At most, people rely on context and non-verbal cues. In any
>>> case, it's one of the motors of semantic drift (the extended meaning
>>> becomes the core meaning if the original core meaning, for some reason,
>>> stops being used), and one of the reasons why there is always a measure of
>>> ambiguity in a statement without context.
>>>
>>
>>It's hard to accept a simple "They don't" as an answer. Natural languages
>>that have markers for source of knowledge, a la Lojban and Laadan, (maybe
>>Turkish?) must have a reason for those markers, and if the markers are
>>abused, then who would keep using them?
>
> Evidentials? I don't understand why you've drug those in. I think
> evidentials get unfairly exoticised, and I fear you've done that here.
> English has markers for source of knowledge too, they're just not
> grammaticalised: "apparently", "so they say", "I saw [...]", whatever. In
> some natlangs they have grammaticalised; I don't know why this happened in
> the natlangs it did and not others, but one should beware facile Sapir-Whorf
> just-so stories about it.
>
> Sure you can stretch the uses of evidentials: just as the good old Russian
> _slyshat'_ basally 'hear' has extended uses where it means 'smell', so
> (ttbomk) an originally auditory evidential could easily extend to an
> any-sense-but-visual evidential, or an
> any-actual-evidence-as-opposed-to-secondhand-report one, or ...; and it could
> then have its sense differently re-restricted when a new member of the
> paradigm arrives on the scene. (Not to mention that you could lie with
> evidentials, no differently to how you might lie with verbs! That doesn't
> endanger the existence of verbs in natlangs.) Anyway, if an evidential
> system ceases to be used with any reliable semantic force, it probably would
> be dropped, yes. This could be on account of these sort of extensions alone
> (and if it were, the ultimate cause probably wouldn't be recoverable), or of
> misuse of the system by second-language learners, or of the whole thing
> getting so morphologically complex it's restructured away or abandoned as a
> lost cause, or of a stray bullet fired by sound change, or ...
And furthermore, natlang evidential systems don't tend to get overly
specific; they are somewhat resistant to smudging because they're
already smudged, as grammaticalized things tend to be. Laadan goes
rather overboard, such that if it were to become a living language I
would expect the evidential system to get rapidly reduced.
-l.
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
3g. Re: Introduction w/conlang
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" lytl...@gmail.com
Date: Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:25 pm ((PDT))
On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 6:36 PM, Alex Fink <000...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:36:18 -0400, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 5:47 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <
> >tsela...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 17 April 2012 08:00, MorphemeAddict <lytl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > >
> >> > > How do natural languages deal with this problem?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> They don't. At most, people rely on context and non-verbal cues. In any
> >> case, it's one of the motors of semantic drift (the extended meaning
> >> becomes the core meaning if the original core meaning, for some reason,
> >> stops being used), and one of the reasons why there is always a measure
> of
> >> ambiguity in a statement without context.
> >>
> >
> >It's hard to accept a simple "They don't" as an answer. Natural languages
> >that have markers for source of knowledge, a la Lojban and Laadan, (maybe
> >Turkish?) must have a reason for those markers, and if the markers are
> >abused, then who would keep using them?
>
> Evidentials? I don't understand why you've drug those in.
Yes, evidentials. I think it was Logan who mentioned the "Laadan problem",
and then described its evidentials, albeit obliquely, or possibly its
system of markers for how a person feels about the topic/sentence.
I think evidentials get unfairly exoticised, and I fear you've done that
> here. English has markers for source of knowledge too, they're just not
> grammaticalised: "apparently", "so they say", "I saw [...]", whatever. In
> some natlangs they have grammaticalised; I don't know why this happened in
> the natlangs it did and not others, but one should beware facile
> Sapir-Whorf just-so stories about it.
>
In languages where the evidentials or other markers are grammaticalized,
it's harder to get away from them or avoid them, whereas in English et al.
you simply don't used them, they're optional.
stevo
>
> Sure you can stretch the uses of evidentials: just as the good old Russian
> _slyshat'_ basally 'hear' has extended uses where it means 'smell', so
> (ttbomk) an originally auditory evidential could easily extend to an
> any-sense-but-visual evidential, or an
> any-actual-evidence-as-opposed-to-secondhand-report one, or ...; and it
> could then have its sense differently re-restricted when a new member of
> the paradigm arrives on the scene. (Not to mention that you could lie with
> evidentials, no differently to how you might lie with verbs! That doesn't
> endanger the existence of verbs in natlangs.) Anyway, if an evidential
> system ceases to be used with any reliable semantic force, it probably
> would be dropped, yes. This could be on account of these sort of
> extensions alone (and if it were, the ultimate cause probably wouldn't be
> recoverable), or of misuse of the system by second-language learners, or of
> the whole thing getting so morphologically complex it's restructured away
> or abandoned as a lost cause, or of a stray bullet fired by sound change,
> or ...
>
> Alex
>
Messages in this topic (17)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
4a. Course on conlangs: course material to be available online
Posted by: "Armin Buch" armin.b...@uni-tuebingen.de
Date: Wed Apr 18, 2012 5:44 am ((PDT))
Hello conlangers,
as announced earlier, I am teaching a course on conlangs ("no cross, no
crown", so it's not about promoting or improving auxlangs) at my
university. All course material will be available here:
https://moodle02.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de/course/view.php?id=115 Currently,
there are the slides of the first session (in German; I - or some
volunteer - might provide translations where needed).
You may need to log in as a guest, using the password "conlang12"; and
this moodle software takes some time to get used to.
The material is licensed under CC-by-sa. This license best fits academic
work, in the tradition of "standing on the shoulders of giants": name
the giant, and allow others to stand on your shoulders. Imho this list
is sort of the acting giant in this small field (conlangs minus
auxlangs).
Any comment, critique, correction, suggestion etc. is welcome!
Armin
PS: More than 30 people showed up to the first session, which is
extraordinary for our linguistics department in general and for the
topic in particular. I'm really looking forward to this.
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
4b. Re: Course on conlangs: course material to be available online
Posted by: "Sai" s...@saizai.com
Date: Wed Apr 18, 2012 5:56 am ((PDT))
Howdy.
FWIW, I taught a similar class twice; the material is all at
http://library.conlang.org/education/ and licensed CC by-nc-sa, so
please feel free to use it. I think David may have some more, from a
class he designed materials for but that never got approved (IIRC).
i hope you to send your materials to Don (CCed) if you can, so that we
have more centrally available teaching materials.
I'd also strongly recommend you videotape your classes if at all
possible, and upload to YouTube. (This can be done with just a laptop
and built-in webcam; don't worry about fancy tech and editing.) It's
really helpful just to see yourself teach (though it'll make you
squeamish for the first few times), and it makes your material much
more widely available.
Congratulations on a successful first start; please do keep us updated
on how it goes.
- Sai
On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 08:44, Armin Buch <armin.b...@uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
> Hello conlangers,
>
> as announced earlier, I am teaching a course on conlangs ("no cross, no
> crown", so it's not about promoting or improving auxlangs) at my
> university. All course material will be available here:
> https://moodle02.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de/course/view.php?id=115 Currently,
> there are the slides of the first session (in German; I - or some
> volunteer - might provide translations where needed).
>
> You may need to log in as a guest, using the password "conlang12"; and
> this moodle software takes some time to get used to.
>
> The material is licensed under CC-by-sa. This license best fits academic
> work, in the tradition of "standing on the shoulders of giants": name
> the giant, and allow others to stand on your shoulders. Imho this list
> is sort of the acting giant in this small field (conlangs minus
> auxlangs).
>
> Any comment, critique, correction, suggestion etc. is welcome!
>
> Armin
>
> PS: More than 30 people showed up to the first session, which is
> extraordinary for our linguistics department in general and for the
> topic in particular. I'm really looking forward to this.
Messages in this topic (2)
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