Re: THEORY: more questions

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 14:30:54 +0100, Carsten Becker <post@...>
wrote:

> a.. open/close syllables
Basically:

Open - Ending in a vowel
Closed - Ending in a non-vowel

These guidelines can be modified depending on the language in question, I
think.

> b.. oblique (as an aspect or mood or so)
From Larry Trask's excellent Dictionary Of Grammatical Terms In Linguistics
(ISBN 0415086280):

Denoting an argument [noun] which is neither a subject nor a direct object.
Oblique [noun]s in English are realized as objects of prepositions; in some
other languages, they may be objects of postpositions or case-marked
[noun]s.

Buy Trask's dictionary if you possibly can. Seriously. It has helped me
tremendously in understanding other linguistics books -- and conlang posts.

> c.. in my conlang, there's a special mood for purposes, how could this be
> called with the grammatical term? I mean, something like "permittive" for
> the mood you must use when you ask for something that must be permitted -
> still I'm not sure if "permittive" is right there, but at least it sounds
> Grammticalese...
Optative fits fairly well. The optative form of a verb X means something
like "want to X".

> d.. How can I tell the server to send me all those first "Weekly Vocab"
> mails from 1 to the current number (30)? Or have I to search the archive
> and download that stuff by hand?
I have no idea.

> e.. Seeing where a consonant is pronounced and how it should sound like
> from the chart works pretty well already ... but what about vowels? How
> do I know that e.g. the <i> in <feet> is a front and close? Or that [O]
> is open-mid back?
There's a page at SIL.org Hold on ...

http://www.sil.org/computing/speechtools/softdev2/IPAhelp2/IPAdownloads2.htm

Windows only, and not personally tested, but should help.

> f.. What are "sonorants"?
Consonants that do not involve closure or friction in the airstream. Beyond
that, it's hard for me to explain.

> g.. What is an "umlaut"?
It's where a vowel is modified due to the occurence of another vowel in the
same word.

> I'm German, so there are umlauts in my native language, but I saw this
> already in other contexts than German /a/ > /E/, /o/ > /2/, /u/ > /y/
> (a>ä, o>ö, u>ü). How does umlauting work for other vowels or does it work
> for other vowels at all?
That's a language-dependent question. The umlaut in German is called I-
umlaut, where a following front vowel (in pre-modern German) drags
preceeding back vowels forwards.

> h.. The optional question that I actually should be able to look up on
> the internet myself if I'd know where: Why is German e.g. <ei> pronounced
> [aj], <eu> and <äu> [oj] and <ie> [i:]? Or even more odd, /a_u/ changes
> to /oj/ in the plural: [ha_us] > ["hojz@]. Or sometimes, <chs> is
> pronounced [k_s], and sometimes [xs]. Is it because of some sound changes
> during the middle ages?
That's a big question, but yes, it's due to features in older German that
don't exist in modern German, or exist only incidentally. I'll leave a
fuller description to persons more knowledgeable about the history of
German.

> I'm sure there'll be more things I don't know what they mean or how to
> do... I won't stop annoying you MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH ... now, the last bit
> was just fun ;o)
Keep asking, please. It's good to ask, and I can't think of very many
better places to ask than here.





Paul

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