CONLANG Digest - 1 Nov 2000

> From:    Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
> Subject: Re: CHAT:  Keyboard (Was: YAC: or more exactly: yetanotherconlang
>          sketch)
>
> <thinking>  ObConlang, I think you *could* design a typewriter for
> Chevraqis, it'd just be a pain in the butt.
Aaack, now I have to wonder what an Atlantic keyboard layout would look
like.

> From:    Amanda Babcock <langs@...>
> Subject: Re: CHAT:  Keyboard (Was: YAC: or more exactly: yetanotherconlang
>          sketch)
>
> (And I used to use ANSI escape sequences to remap my keyboard in DOS - but
> Wordperfect ignored the remapping :)
There's supposed to be a country= (?) setting you put in one of the dos
config files, but it's been so long since I've dealt with the innards of DOS
that I forget.

> From:    Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
> Subject: Permissable /IN/ (was: [i:]=[ij]?)
>
> >Permissible pontification: (?) there is no tense/lax contrast in English
> >before /N/ or /r/ (at least in monosyllables).  The vowel is neither [i]
nor
> >[I], but somewhere in-between-- usually closer to [I] I think (it is for
> >me).
>
> Actually, /IN/ is quite permissable in English, and I suspect in Nik's
> dialect as well. The thing is, /I/ is raised so that it resembles [i].
> Hence, the lack of the tense/lax contrast before /N/ that Roger pointed
> out. *BUT*... there is still a length contrast so that one can still
> phonologically speak of a contrast between /IN/ and /iN/.
For me the [N] in /iN/ or /IN/ is halfway between /J/ (palatal nasal) and
/N/.  I think that's why /i/ and /I/ sounds tend to mutate toward it.  It
might be vice versa, but I say [IN] and it sounds much different than what
would be English /IN/.   (All the people talking about the effect of N on
the vowel, and nobody mentioned the effect of the vowel on the N...)

> From:    Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
> Subject: Re: [i:]=[ij]? (was Re: Pronouncing "Boreanesia")
[snip]
> >> For instance, words like
> >> "no/know" get rendered as [no-y].
> >
> >I've heard visiting Americans claim that we tend to say 'noi' for 'no',
> >but that's obviously just an overactive imagination on their part :-)
> >although I'm willing to believe a Queenslander might say anything.
[snip]
> Well, Queenslanders don't say *[noi]~[noj], but it may sound like that to
> most Americans who would not be able recognize front-rounded vowels. What
> I heard in Brisbane was [no-y].
"Might it be," Muke shouted in sudden amazement, "that we have [now] and
Brisbane has [noH]?"

(Even if you don't, I think I have just discovered how, really, to pronounce
/H/!)

> From:    Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
> Subject: Re: Permissable /IN/ (was: [i:]=[ij]?)
>
> >Actually, /IN/ is quite permissable in English, and I suspect in Nik's
> >dialect as well. The thing is, /I/ is raised so that it resembles [i].
> >Hence, the lack of the tense/lax contrast before /N/ that Roger pointed
> >out. *BUT*... there is still a length contrast so that one can still
> >phonologically speak of a contrast between /IN/ and /iN/.
>
> I may have to take that back. I can't for the life of me think of any
> examples of English words that have this contrast other than perhaps
> "being" and "bingo".
How about "sing" /sIN/ and "seeing" /si:N/ ?

> From:    Daniel Seriff <microtonal@...>
> Subject: Re: Permissable /IN/ (was: [i:]=[ij]?)
>
> Kristian Jensen wrote:
>
> > I may have to take that back. I can't for the life of me think of any
> > examples of English words that have this contrast other than perhaps
> > "being" and "bingo".
>
> For me, "being" is two syllables /bi.IN/. The /I/ is only very slightly
> raised, not enough that I could call it something other than /I/. I
> always pronounce our wonderful participle "-ing" as /IN/.
I think in emphatic speech I could make "being" two syllables.
(But it'd probably be ['bI 'IN] or somesuch)

It's very odd.  Participle -ing always feels like a sort of half-syllable to
me.  As if, perhaps, it might be something like [J=_G] or [N=_A].   (You
know what would be really nice?  An IPA-to-speech thingy that could even
make the sounds with any of the funky diacritics, so I could tell
immediately whether I'm being a complete raving loony bin at the moment.)

> ObConlang: I recently discovered the joys of participles in English,
> Greek, Latin, and German. Latin especially has some spiffy participle
> constructions (gerunds & gerundives, too). I'm going to have to fiddle
> with my languages to make them used far more often. Sorry, no specifics,
> just conlangian (or is it conlangesque? or conlangous? conlangal? ah,
> the multitudinous English adjectival suffixes!) musings.
(Conlinguistic?)

Speaking of adjectival affixes...
Does anybody know the rules of the choice of negative prefixes between in-
and un-?  I know them, as it were, by instinct, but I can't quite analyze
why.  The odd idea has occurred to me that it might have something to do
with vowel harmony, or some other process?  Or is it really random and I
just don't know it?

> From:    Elliott Lash <AL260@...>
> Subject: Languages
>
>    1995 A whole gamut of languages supposedly derived from a common
language,
> though the sound changes were more codelike than actual phonetic changes.
> (ie.  /b/ became /t/ blah blah) (what was I thinking!)
Another aside: _How_, just how, do things like Proto-IE *dw and *bhr become
Armenian *rk and *lb?

> From:    Elliott Lash <AL260@...>
> Subject: Re: Silindion
>
>   Too bad I didn't think of a rule like this a long time ago,
> to implement it now would mean going through at least 500+
> words in my dictionary.
I *hate* when that happens!
(Working, days, on a lexicon, and deciding, 'you know, perhaps I can allow
<ns> clusters after all' and then having to go back and look at all the
etymologies and then realizing you were letting them through half the
time... it's second only to realizing about halfway through that you forgot
one of your transform rules so half your words are broken)

> From:    Eric Christopherson <raccoon@...>
> Subject: Re: [i:]=[ij]? (was Re: Pronouncing "Boreanesia")
>
> The phonetics book I mentioned earlier uses /y/ for a palatal fricative,
used in
> Spanish (it's a Spanish phonetics book). I'm not sure really how a palatal
> approximant and a palatal fricative would sound in comparison with each
> other, though.
Well, take the 'y' in English "yes" and bring it closer to your palate (or,
imagine a stereotypical Spanish accent in English).  It should sound
something like "zh" /Z/ (which is, incidentally, how I misclassified it
myself a while back).

> > And unfortunately for me, Qwerty isn't particularly good at preventing
jams.
>
> But wasn't the whole point of Qwerty to prevent jams? I'm sure that when
> one is proficient enough, not much can prevent jams. Last time I used a
> manual typewriter I could only type at about 25 WPM, so jamming wasn't a
> problem.
Of course, IIRC, when these keyboards were invented, the idea of 80 wpm
touch typists didn't quite exist...

> From:    Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>
> Subject: Re: Languages
>
> >   1995 Flavin:  My first language. Really just an a priori lexicon with
bits
> >and pieces french and english grammar. I don't remember anything except
that
> >to form the 1st person present tense of a verb you chopp of the first
letter
> >and do a few other strange transformations. Example  caiyar "to be"  aiya
"I
> >am" (or something, whatever)
>
> Actually, I find that a rather curious form of conjugation.
Hmm, one might envision that the protolanguage had something like '@caiyar'
as infinitive and 'caiya' is 1s, (having the @ as infinitive marker) and
where the initial sounds regularly dropped, leaving 'caiyar' infinitive and
'aiya' 1s.

> From:    Robert Hailman <robert@...>
> Subject: Re: CONLANG Digest - 31 Oct 2000 to 1 Nov 2000 (#2000-299)
>
> > In Hadwan/Atlantic I have:
> >
> >       /s/ - s         (Hadwan, Atlantic)
> >       /z/ - z         (Hadwan, Atlantic)
> >      /ts/ - c<dot>    (Hadwan)
> >      /dz/ - z<dot>    (Hadwan)
> >      /tS/ - c<acute>  (Atlantic)
> >      /dZ/ - j         (Hadwan, Atlantic)
> >       /S/ - s<acute>  (Hadwan, Atlantic)
> >       /Z/ - z<acute>  (Atlantic)
>
> Ooh, I like this system. I like putting accents on consonants. :o)
Yup.  I had to go through several systems to find actual accented consonants
available in common fonts (all those letters are in Times New Roman, Arial,
etc)--I have Unicode fonts on my computer, but not everybody has...

> > I come to think, however, that I don't like <j> for /dZ/.  (and
"dz<acute>"
> > is unappetizing)
> > If I wanted a _regular_ system, it'd be z<acute>, and then /S/ and /Z/
could
> > be s-caron and z-caron or somesuch...  But I don't really like carons.
> > (Suggestions?)
>
> No suggestions, but carons are our friends. :o)
I had carons for them before.  But the shape just seemed so complex compared
to the dot and the acute.

I think I will be keeping <j> for /dZ/.  However, the concultural
explanation will be that they couldn't find a good Romanization of /dZ/
either and borrowed the old alphabet's /dZ/ letter (which, descended from a
kind of zayin, looks already quite like a j...)  I already have a habit of
not dotting the i's and j's when writing Atlantic, so it's all right.

(Why the habit?  Probably because in the native Hadwan script the dot
indicates the stress accent.)

> > > I've never come across an abcdefg... keyboard, or heard of one. I do
> > > know of the Dvorak layout, but I've never seen a Dvorak keyboard
> > > anywhere.
> >
> > I made my own (basically I dismantled my qwerty and rearranged the
keycaps).
>
> How'd you get the computer to interperet the keystrokes as their new
> vowels? I wouldn't mind dowing this, on the computer in my room.
In windows, there's a setting under language under keyboard under the
control panel.  On X, you can find a Dvorak .xmodmap if you search the web
(you may have one already).  I don't know how to do it for the Linux command
line, but they gave me the option when I installed the OS.  (No, I'm back on
W95 now.)

> From:    Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> Subject: Re: The Combos [hj] [hw] and [gw] in Conlangs
>
> Roger Mills wrote:
> > Very interesting.  So Proto-PN *f > Maori /wh/ > Maori /f/.  Sound
changes
> > are supposed to be irreversible!!
>
> Says who?  Sound changes simply happen without referrence to the past!
Indeed.  I've noticed some later Atlantic words should assume forms
disturbingly close to their proto-forms.

<actual conlang content, not related to the above>

I've been thinking about syntax very little, but I am getting to the point
where I'll have to.  (Running out of the other basics, y'see.)

I think Hadwan might be pretty much SOV, but: I was thinking of V2
languages.  Is it feasible, in any sense, to have a V-minus-2, say, where
the verb must be penultimate?  Because this has been coming up.  (<c> = /ts/
here)

           Is    Pavlus.
           is    pavlu-s
           be.2S Paul.NOM
           "You are Paul."

           Pavlus   isc   vinjius
           pavlu-s  is-c  vinji:u-s
           Paul.NOM be.3S prisoner.NOM
           "Paul is a prisoner."

(Not, say, Pavlus is / Pavlus vinjius isc.  Verb-finalness just leaves me so
_unfulfilled_.)

           Pavlus   Timutheum   waihic   Romai
           pavlu-s  timutheu-m  waih-ic  roma:-i
           Paul.NOM Timothy.ACC fight.3S Rome.DAT
           "Paul is fighting Timothy for Rome"

           Waihic   Pavlus   Timutheum   isc   Roma?
           waih-ic  pavlu-s  timutheu-m  is-c  roma:
           Fight.3S Paul.NOM Timothy.ACC be.3S Rome.LOC
           "Is Paul fighting Timothy in Rome?"

(I have just discovered what "helping verbs" are for.)

           Pavlus   vracir      isc   Timutheus
           pavlu-s  vra:cir     is-c  timuthe-u:s
           Paul.NOM brother.NOM be.3S Timothy.GEN
           "Paul is Timothy's brother."

Would it make sense to require verbs that otherwise would be solo to have a
"helping" pronoun for extra  "V-2ness"?  Say,

           Sem   Timutheus.
           sem   timutheu-s
           be.1s Timothy.NOM
           "I am Timothy." (without pronoun)

BUT:
           Sem   i.
           sem   i:
           be.1s I.nom
           "I am." (with pronoun)

[Yes, "I" is <i> in Hadwan. (IE *eg [Hitt. uk, Go. ik] > PH *egh, ey > Hadw
iy, i:) By the modern Atlantic stage it can be pronounced just like it is in
English, to boot.]

Now to think of the Atlantic typewriter keyboard... all those extra
diacriticked letters (n-acute, l-acute, r-acute, s-acute, z-acute, c-acute,
possibly m-acute and n-grave [for /N/]...)  On the other hand, maybe use a
"combining" acute and grave for all the vowels, which might use on the
consonants--but that's bad conceptually, plus the fact that it won't line up
on the l or capitals without looking _really_ ugly--so it'll have to be
separate keys for the consonants.  Maybe even keep the dot accent instead.

The punctuation marks would have to be different too--mark like a low dash
(like __ but not _that_ low) for pauses, semicolon-like question mark,
etc...   Aiiie!

Um.  I'm finishing this message _now_ (four hours after I sit down) because
everything closes in twenty minutes and I need to get money and lunch.


     *Muke!
--
http://muke.twu.net/