There are 3 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Anthropomorphized Abstractions in Animacy-Sensitive Languages
From: David McCann
1b. Re: Anthropomorphized Abstractions in Animacy-Sensitive Languages
From: Roger Mills
2.1. Re: Speedtalks and briefscripts (was: Hemingway story
From: R A Brown
Messages
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1a. Re: Anthropomorphized Abstractions in Animacy-Sensitive Languages
Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com
Date: Sun Jul 15, 2012 9:32 am ((PDT))
On Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:56:24 -0400
Anthony Miles <mamercu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Death is an inanimate noun, and therefore should not be able to
> govern an intransitive verb such as 'to die' nor the the 3rd person
> animate prefix /i-/. Death is personified here (abstracts are not
> items to which mortality applies), so it is possible that the
> zero-marking of /like/ indicates the nominative case. I am still
> uncomfortable, however, with this: promoting abstracts, the bottom of
> the animacy hierarchy, seems strange, and although Siye's neighbor
> Ulok (or the Ulok-influences Far Western dialect of Siye) would be
> perfectly happy with this construction, it still triggers my
> anglo-relexophobia. How do ergative and mixed-ergative
> animacy-sensitive languages handle personified abstractions?
I don't think there's a problem. Once something is personified, it
ceases to be inanimate. You see this in gender. Tamil has a strict
classification of rational male, rational female, irrational; hence a
cow is referred to as 'it', not 'she'. But a talking cow in a fable
becomes 'she' — an honorary person, as it were. Similarly in English:
'Virtue could se to do what virtue would by her own radiant light...'
Messages in this topic (5)
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1b. Re: Anthropomorphized Abstractions in Animacy-Sensitive Languages
Posted by: "Roger Mills" romi...@yahoo.com
Date: Sun Jul 15, 2012 12:17 pm ((PDT))
Kash has a way of "specifying" things that can also be used to conceptualize
(perhaps personify) abstracts-- the article _e_; I don't know whether the
abstract would become animate,as the occasion has never arisen IIRC :-) e.g.
kundri 'truth', e kundri 'truth, as e.g.a philosophical concept'
kombra 'death', e kombra 'death, personified, or " " "
kanak 'claw', e kanak 'name of a long, claw-shaped peninsula/province.'
yukat 'to turn over', eyukat 'spatula' (the article can be joined to a
V-initial word) etc. etc.
There's also an article _o_ that is used to anthopomorphize inanimate things
or spirits and their kin, usually in folk tales....'ende o anacangar yakata...'
then ( the) Stone-child said....' I think they would remain inanimate in
gender but maybe not (the occasion hasn't arisen--the spirits etc. would be
animate, maybe even M or F depending). It's a little obsolete and would not be
used with kombra, kundri, unlikely kanak; it might could be used with eyukat
if you had a story involving talking kitchen tools :-))
Messages in this topic (5)
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2.1. Re: Speedtalks and briefscripts (was: Hemingway story
Posted by: "R A Brown" r...@carolandray.plus.com
Date: Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:39 am ((PDT))
On 14/07/2012 23:33, MorphemeAddict wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 4:17 PM, J. 'Mach' Wust
> <j_mach_w...@yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:56:41 +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier
>> wrote:
>>> On Friday 13 July 2012 09:25:29 R A Brown wrote:
>>>> But I have long come to the conclusion that if a
>>>> writing system is interested in brevity, then
>>>> using geometrical shapes as in Gregg or Pitman
>>>> shorthand systems is a better way to go. I think
>>>> this the sort of way that one might achieve the
>>>> sort of writing system Virginia was asking about.
>>>
>>> Yes. And it is not a particularly recent ideas:
>>> many 17th- century "universal language" schemes used
>>> such writing systems.
>>
>> It's a rather English idea, I would say, geometry
>> being a feature of shorthand scripts developed in
>> England since the 17th century.
Certainly such systems were used in England (and, indeed,
Pitman is still used), but there are also the _French_
Prévost-Delaunay and Duployé systems; the latter has been
adapted for several other languages besides French. There
is, I believe, a German version of it.
>> German shorthand systems resemble script (connected
>> slanted handwriting), and so does Gregg.
Gregg was born in Ireland, so I guess he doesn't count as
English ;)
He actually began by trying to improve Sloan's adaptation of
the Duployé system to English, but eventually developed his
own system using the ellipse rather than a circle, to give
shapes more like those of normal handwriting (but I still
regard ellipses as geometric). He emigrated to the US
where he published his system and where, I believe, it is
still widely used.
Long years ago when I was an undergraduate I took down my
university notes in Gregg shorthand and then typed them up
later. Alas, something I could not do now :(
But shorthands based on Roman script are also known in the
anglophone world. Possibly the most common is TeeLine which
is widely taught in the UK.
>> Arabic, which also can be used like a stenography, is
>> not geometric either, and in contrast to Western
>> shorthands, it is beautiful.
>>
>
> A script is a script. Arabic writing is no more
> beautiful than cursive English or Russian or Greek.
AMEN!
Arabic can, indeed, look beautiful; but I have also seen it
look anything but beautiful - horrible scrawls like marks
made by spiders with inky feet.
Western shorthands can be written carefully and neatly to
give beautiful calligraphic effects. They are, of course,
not normally so written because the aim is to write at the
speed of normal speech. Try writing Arabic script at that
speed; the result will not be beautiful!
IME any cursive script may be written to give beautiful,
calligraphic results or written as (almost) eligible scrawls
- and, in practice, a whole load of variants in
between.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (55)
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