Re: Methods of Question-Forming

On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 01:23:46PM -0700, Arthaey Angosii wrote:
> Emaelivpeith HS Teoh:
> >You could keep both. Make them both alternative ways of forming a
> >question, perhaps with the option of using both at the same time for
> >emphasis.
>
> Ooo, I like the idea of mixing them.  Thanks!
I used to try to eliminate redundancy in Ebisedian, as part of my control
freak complex; but (un)fortunately, Ebisedian did not end up going the way
of loglangs. Now I enjoy throwing in redundant and contradictory features;
it's my excuse for making Ebisedian "naturalistic". :-P

> >Very nice. This looks like Ebisedian's _a'ne_ ["an&].
>
> How do you use apostrophes?  Sometimes I see a [?] in your transcriptions,
> other times not.
Yeah, actually, it should be ["?an&], but that has nothing to do with the
apostrophe. The apostrophe is just the poor man's acute accent. So _a'ne_
is really a-acute, n, and e. :-)

> For Asha'ille, the aprostrophe doesn't carry any pronunciation.  Its main
> purpose is to allow affixation for things that don't want to fuse totally
> with the rest of the word.  It has a secondary purpose of reallocating
> stress rules to only the second half of the apostrophe'd word.
The closest thing I have to that is the hyphen, which I use to separate
two adjacent identical vowels which might otherwise be misread as a single
long vowel.

> I have noticed in my own speech, though, that sometimes a [?] crops up --
> |te| "and" plus any vowel-initial word.  For example, "and town" would be
> |t'aimenad| [t@_X?ai"mEnAd], while "and home" is |t'cresin| [t@_X"krEsIn].
Ebisedian has a "smooth breathing" for initial vowels, where the vowel is
semivowelized (cf. Tibetan);[1] so I'd expect the glottal stop to be quite
prominent for initial vowels to emphasize the difference.

[1] So _yni_ is [?yni] but _`yni_ is [Hyni]; similarly, _uu'ri_ is
["?u:r`i] but _`uuri'_ is [wu:"r`i]. The backtick (`) is a teardrop-shaped
accent in the orthography.

> >doesn't have any punctuation corresponding with a question mark
>
> Is there a native Ebisedian orthography, apart from LaTeX?  :)
The Ebisedi have several writing systems, the most important of which is
the _sanoki'_, the system that I was referring to here.

_sanoki'_ is a mixture of an abjad and a syllabary; it has elaborate
blocky characters reminiscent of Turkish runes (so people have told me)
for the consonants, and vowels are written as diacritics over, under, or
even overstriking, the consonant character. There are no separate
characters for punctuation, and there are no spaces between words (sorta
like ancient Greek writing). Characters are written left-to-right,
top-to-bottom; lines are indiscriminately wrapped (even in the middle of a
word), because each character corresponds to a syllable.[2]

There are only three kinds of punctuation: the word break, the sentence
break, and the paragraph break. All are indicated by ligatures/serifs
attached to the final consonant; and the next character follows without
spaces. Some Ebisedi writers have picked up the convention of breaking the
line after a paragraph break, but others just write in one continuous
block.


[2] OK, that's a white lie. Some word-terminal characters represent
word-final consonants and have no associated vowels.

> >presence of interrogatives like _a'ne_ or _ghi'_ are the only indications
> >that it is a question. The particles _ji'ne_ and _my'ne_ are used in place
> >of _a'ne_ when anticipating a 'yes' or a 'no', respectively.
>
> What are the words for "yes" and "no"?  Your |ji'ne| has |ji| in it,
> looking suspiciously like my |jhi| [Zi] "yes".  I'd accuse you of
> word-napping if Asha'ille weren't the younger language.  :P
!!!

The Ebisedian words for yes and no are _ji'e_ ["dZi?&] and _my'e_ ["my?&],
respectively. Note, however, that _my'e_ is a no of absence, rather than a
no of opposition.

> >The question above in Ebisedian would be:
> >a'ne jub0' ta'maa 3n3 iachai'li d3 3t3m33'?
a'ne       jub0'   ta'maa      3n3      iachai'li d3  3t3m33'?
-          fem/org instr       plur/cvy loc       cvy plur/cvy
<question> she[3]  speaking[4] [5]      Asha'ille [6] words


[3] Intimate pronoun; could also be translated "you". Ebisedian does not
distinguish between 2nd and 3rd person.

[4] Gerund of _ta'ma_, "to speak".

[5] Introduces a relative clause.

[6] Relative pronoun, also terminates relative clause begun in [5].

> Could you give an interlinear, since you have so many more words than the
> equivalent English sentence?  And am I right that |iachai'li| is your
> version of "Asha'ille"?
Yes.

> How did you go about calq'ing it into Ebisedian?
Very carelessly. :-P

> It's pronounced [ASA"i:l] or [AS@"i:l], depending on how carefully I'm
> enunciating.  :)
!!! So I've been pronouncing it wrong all along. :-/ The closest Ebisedian
equivalent would be _i0sh0ii'l_ [i?ASA"?i:l]. The neuter singular prefix
_i-_ is mandatory because Asha'ille is a proper noun.

> >The answer, obviously, must be an instrumental NP, since it has to match
> >the instrumental case of _gha'_.
>
> Without cases, Asha'ille lets you stick in whichever word you want without
> change.  The |ve'| is understood to be appended before the word, thus
> making it the proper part of speech (adverb).
I see.

> >The conveyant case in Ebisedian centers its vowels toward the schwa[1];
> >sometimes similar-looking words blend into each other in the conveyant
> >case. Sorta like how moving things[2] sorta blur in your vision. :-P
> >In this case, 9 vowels collapse in 3. Other noun cases also exhibit vowel
> >shifts; where 9 vowels collapse into 6. (Hmm, why is Asha'ille so similar
> >to Ebisedian??)
>
> Wow, 9 to 3 is a pretty big collapse.  Since Ebisedian has apparently had
> ablauts longer than Asha'ille has, have you noticed any confusions that the
> collapse can cause?
Yep. It basically means that Ebisedian words that share the same sequence
of consonants are liable to have lookalike forms with each other.

> Perhaps the similarities in our languages reflects a similarity in
> personality and/or other interests [eg, computers]?  Has anyone done a
> survey comparing conlangs to one another than then trying to correlate that
> to the conlangers themselves?
Perhaps... but still, something as obscure as the exact number of vowels
seems a bit odd to have such coincidences.

[snip]
> >This is done in Ebisedian with the focus preposition _iro_. In a normal
> >(non-question) sentence, _iro_ emphasizes a particular noun
>
> I suspect that Asha'ille |jhi| "yes" can sometimes function like that...
> Let me see:
>
>     Vel'vaenih monvpaerdhi canen.        The woman went outside.
>     Vel'vaenih jhi monvpaerdhi canen.    The woman *did go* outside.
>     Jhi vel'vaenih monvpaerdhi canen.    The woman went *outside*.
>     Vel'vaenih monvpaerdhi jhi canen.    *The woman* went outside.
>
> >lyy's iro b3z3t33' loo'ru.      It is the *woman* who went outside.
> >lyy's b3z3t33' iro loo'ru.      It is outside to which the woman went.
>
> So my |jhi| and your |iro| seem similar but slightly different...  In
> Asha'ille, it merely draws more emphasis to the word; in Ebisedian, it
> looks like it becomes the sentence's "subject."  It's not that strong an
> emphasis in Asha'ille.  Do correct me if I'm wrong about Ebisedian.  :)
Actually, it looks like _iro_ and your _jhi_ are more or less the same. I
only worded my English gloss that strongly just to emphasize the change in
empha'sis. :-)

But now that you've mentioned the idea... _iro_ could turn into a subject
marker in one of Ebisedian's descendent langs, and perhaps be the first
step towards a trigger-marked Ebisedic lang. >:-)

[snip]
> >        ghe' jub0' 3n3 iachai'li d3 3t3m33'?
> >        What happens from you to the words of Asha'ille?
> >
> >This one is interesting... the fact that _jub0'_ ("you", fem) is in the
> >originative case, and _3n3 iachai'li d3 3t3m33'_ is in the conveyant case,
> >shows that the person asking the question already has *some* idea about
> >what you do with Asha'ille. So strictly speaking, this question is more
> >like asking, do you speak Asha'ille, teach Asha'ille, or what?
>
> Interesting consequence of your strange case system.  :P
Yep. It encodes a lot of semantic information in the noun cases. I like
it. :-)

[snip]
> >The completely general form of the question (which is also perhaps the
> >least useful) requires changing all NPs to the locative case
> >        ghe' jubi' zo 3ni iachai'li d3 3t3mii'?
> >        What is it between you and the words of Asha'ille?
>
> Locative because ... it shows that you have no prior knowledge of what kind
> of relationship it will turn out to be?
That's right. The locative case is the "anything" case. It serves as the
subject case (although not in the accusative sense of "subject"), the
topical case (we are talking *about X*: X will be in the locative case),
and the vocative case.

[snip]
> >        3n3 ghi' d3 3t3m33' tww'ma jub0'?
> >        The words of whom/what speaketh you?
> >
> >(Hmm, why the sudden OVS lapse here? :-P  Probably 'cos the word being
> >asked about prefers to be fronted.)
>
> Hey!  Is that a remnant of German-influenced verb-in-second-position-ness?
LOL... perhaps, perhaps! :-) But keep in mind that Ebisedian word order is
free; you can randomly front any NP for emphasis.

[snip]
> [ "I've to go" sounds strange, perhaps even British.  ;)  "I have to go" is
> fine, as is "I've got to go" even though "have" and "get" are probably
> redundant.  Such is the way of AmE.  :) ]
You strange 'merrycans. ;-)

> >As a sidenote, [e] is an ugly sound to Ebisedi ears; they cringe at the
> >very thought of it, and stay as far away from it as possible.  They find
> >English such an ugly language because of its especially ugly [eI]'s. :-)
>
> If it makes them feel any better, one way of spelling /e/ [e] or [eI] is
> <ae>, which Asha'illens consider a "harsh" spelling.  <ei> is the "softer"
> one.  (Which is part of my reason for trying to change it from "Cresaea" to
> "Creseia," but my sister doesn't approve and neither does one of my
> friends.  <sigh>  Uncultured loafs. ;)
lol...

[snip]
> I was about to taunt you by pronouncing "Ebisedi" as [eIbeIseIdeI] when it
> struck me that it sounds remarkably like "ABCD" [eIbisidi].  Hm.
[snip]

!!!

I hope you realize that "Ebisedi" is pronounced [@\bi"s@\:di] (!), with
emphaSIS on the third syllaBLE. :-)


T

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