Re: Translation: Trolls and their Management

On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Christian Thalmann wrote:

> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Tristan McLeay <zsau@F...> wrote:
> > On Sun, 18 Jan 2004, Morgan Palaeo Associates wrote:
> >
> > > Tristan McLeay wrote:
> > >
> > > > (UE)most ne fødef Trållen.
> > > > [JQm'p_haiS       SE:]
> >
> > Actually (not quite like this, but it's close enough),
> >  y: most n@ f2:d@f
> >  wi most n@ xwor@x
> >  wi mOst n@ xwo@x
> >  w@ mOst n@ hwex (o@ > o: > wo > we like Spanish)
> >  w@ mQ:tn@'p\eix
> >  wmQ:nt'p\eiC
> >  m_wQ:m'pp\aiS
> >  m_wQ:m'p_haiS
>
> Coool.
Glad I didn't let you down :)

> I just can't quite imagine how the speakers parse
> that stuff.  I can take something like [m_wQ:] for "you
> must", it's not any stranger than colloquial Englishes:
> ['am@n@] for "I am going to", for example.
Exactly.

>  But it seems
> that the negated phrase /n@ f2:d@f/ ~~> [m'p_haiS] has
> gone through so many stages of degene^H^H^Hevolution that
degevolution? What's that? :P

> it's no longer analyzable (to me) -- you'd have to learn
> the negated forms along with the regular verb forms every
> time...
Yeah, but it'd be a relatively regular process (because, you must
remember, if the negative of any verb beginning with [W] changes the [W]
to [mp_h], then there'll be numerous ways of spelling it. On the other
hand, I'm sure a lot of regularisation process themselves are irregular,
so it'd leave some behind as whatever they would've been if the
regularisation hadn't happened, i.e. all the maggelity).

Not to mention that English gets by just fine with a few hundred irregular
past tenses and plurals. I'm sure negativity is common enough that it's
possible, if not frequent or even attested, to have irregular negatives.

> I mean, surely /f2:d@f/ alone wouldn't yield
> [p_haiS], but [WaiS] or something?
Either that or [p\aiS], I'm not sure. I have notes somewhere, but I've
temporarily mislaid them. This means that these sound changes are all
going by memory, and seeing as this is public knowledge now, I might have
to revise my notes when they turn up :) (I don't think I will; on the
other hand, if I thought I did, wouldn't I've said something else that
meant I didn't think I'd have to? OTOH, I hadn't decided on the st > :t
till the first post (though the Os > Qs was already there), so that'll
need adding.)

> And then, how do you keep up the information content?
> I've been doing some small-scale a priori langmaking for
> a future universe, and even within those constraints
> (modern media and worldwide communication seem to slow
> down language change very much), I'm somewhat timid in
> allowing the loss of information...  though I guess
> that's exactly what real languages bypass by coining new
> idioms and changing the meaning of words.
If I get too many homophones, I do what Chinese did and compound. I even
have special rules hyphenation rules for compounds which can't be analysed
on phonetic content, remember? :) (With a logic like: Whoever heard of
spelling /nOstSr@l/ <nostril>? What absurdity! It should be <nosethyrl>,
damnit! [And to think, I haven't done *that* much metathesis yet... I do
get most (!=all) of my inspiration from natlangs,* I just shove a lot of
it together and forget to update the spelling :) ])

* Anyone got an anadewism for #ACV > CAV where C=consonant, A=approximate,
V=vowel? This is a sound change I used in Etábnanni /ra_Hmn&n/, too
(though it was before orthography was chosen, a very early change that I
think exists only in my notes on derivation from Old Etábnanni).

--
Tristan

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