CONLANG Digest - 24 Jan 2000 to 25 Jan 2000 (#2000-26)

Matt Pearson <jmpearson@...> sez:
> Subject: Re: Importance of stress
>
> Barry Garcia wrote:
> >I've always wondered how many other conlangs besides mine lay importance
> >on stress to indicate the correct meanings of words? I found it a nifty
> >feature of  Tagalog when I studied it because it seemed to allow you to
> >stretch out the lexicon.
> Sounds a bit like Tokana.  Tokana has a regular stress rule ("stress the
> final syllable if the word ends in a consonant or a glide, otherwise
> stress the penult"), but there are a handful of exceptions to this,
> consisting of words which end in a vowel, but nevertheless are
> stressed on the final syllable.  (Historically, these words ended in
> an "h" or "f" which has since been deleted, or a geminate vowel which
> has since been shortened.)
Kaðuhanne words tend to have regular stress as well:  stress is on the
second syllable of the root (most are bisyllabic).  The stress moves left
[only once] if there are any prefixes and right [only once] if there are any
suffixes that can carry it.

'hehem'       /hE "hEm/          (home)
'menhehhem'   /m@n "hE h@m/      (homes)
'hehemsahhai' /hE h@m "s{ h{i_^/ (at home)

but 'hehemme' /h@ "hEm @/        (homelike)

("can carry it"... can be written at all.  If the suffix doesn't end in a
consonant, even a silent one, it can't be written (the consonant should be
underlined, or doubled) and there is no stress there.)

The only irregularity is that some words' stress starts elsewhere (most of
these seem to be compounds, names, borrowings, and the occasional
'ugh-I-can't-put-the-stress-THERE').

'terras'    /"tsE r@s/     (Terras person)
'mennteras' /"men ts@ r{s/ (Terras persons)

(Yeah, I'm still working on learning phonetic transcription... x-sampa)

I don't *think* that stress can change the meaning of a word.  It probably
won't.  I know it _does_ affect the vowels, which will make the con-later
versions of it somewhat strange (maybe).


Paul Bennett <paulnkathy@...> sez:
> More new fonts!  It's christmas all over again <GGG>
>
> Sadly, neither file seems to load properly on my machine, hold on...
>
> Nope, Fontlab doesn't like either of them them either.
Rrrr... I need a more reliable truetype editor.  I have windows
Fontographer, and the shareware 'Softy', and the stuff they make works on my
computer but has mixed results elsewhere :\   (Still worse, occasionally one
program can't open the other program's fonts...)

> Still, here are my immediate opinions.
>
> Desoto looks very "sci-fi", and is actually fairly easy on the eye, once
> you get into it.  I'm not surprised you use it a lot.
One thing I like about it is that the letters (not so much the symbols, most
of which were made up on the spot) fit in squares and each can be written
without lifting the pen (no cross-strokes, dots, constructs like x y or k...
though as I found on older texts of mine it wasn't always that way).  That
doesn't necessarily make it easier to write, but I thought it might make it
easier to have a machine recognize.  [e.g., one of those handheld computers
with 'handwriting recognition'.]

> When I saw Bering, my first thought was that it looks like how a
> Goth(icograph (?!?!)) might write Armenian letters.  It's definitely looks
> less "Roman" than the other, but given Desoto as an intermediate step, I'd
> say the relationship to Roman ought to be traceable.
Yeap.  As I was planning it, it reminded me (and others) of Cyrillic.
(I haven't seen Armenian yet.. *quick dash to charts.unicode.org*  Yup, it
does seem very like.)

> Interesting so far, do you have either font available in any other
> format(s)?
Other than GIF? Probably not...
I may still have the Fontographer file for Bering somewhere, dunno if that'd
help.


[a couple of people I accedentally snipped said:]
> >Yes. BTW, the rule is more like "/dZ/ becomes /Z/ in foreign words",
because
> >even Azerbaidzhan (I have to admit I'm not sure how to spell this, but
> >I'm sure there's a <d> in it at least sometimes) is affected.
>
> Yes, 'tis so.  I guess these revered newscasters believe only anglophones
> can pronounce [dZ], others not blest with English as their L1 can manage
> only [Z].   <sigh>
I imagine that [dZ] is considered English's Very Special Sound.  Using [Z]
for [dZ] in foreign words confirms 'Yes, I am not speaking English anymore;
I am being exotic'.

(I'm afraid I may have done this too; I think [Z] is Kaðuhhan's {j}.)


taliesin the storyteller <taliesin@...> sez:
> "Davidian" is not good, brings to mind the "Branch Davidians" [sp?] and
> their standoff with the feds.. maybe in a hundred years, when all is
> forgotten? Hmh, "davidic" is better than "davidite" tho'.
They were 'Branch Dravidians', so it's not too bad.


Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> sez:
> D'oh!  _tika_ means SHE.nom, so I said "She learned Swedish in
> Uppsala".  It should've been
>
> Fapyasúnna ku púpisalav pli taswidansagá
>
> I don't know how I could've made such a simple mistake.
I am occasionally slightly unnerved at creating a language I'm not fluent
in.
[that may be the unmarked state of affairs, but it's _still_ odd.]

    *Muke!