Digest 2 Apr

> From:    Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
> Subject: Re: Verb order in Montreiano
>
> I like phonology, but I don't know enough about historical phonology to
> be entirely comfortable with the sound-changes I devise.
Hehe.  My langs tend to have regular but likely-implausible sound changes.

> From:    Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
> Subject: slowness...
>
> For an intelligent man, my dad is pretty thick...I just spent the past 45
> minutes, trying, unsuccessfully, to convince him that English "Father",
> German "Vater", French "Pere", Latin "Pater" and Sanskrit "Pitar" are all
> related...I couldn't get through, it was really aggravating. The only
> place where he saw a connection is the Latin/Sanskrit, where he said that
> this just confirms his suspicion that the Romans were Gypsies...
>
> Is it really that hard to grasp that sounds can change, than [p] can
> become [f]?
An easier viewpoint is to show that sounds can change *within* a language:
dialects.  Assume the dialects are separated over time, and continue
getting, well, more and more dialectal from each other... Which, AFAICT,
isn't too far off an approximation from the kind of thing that actually
happens.

> From:    David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
> Subject: Re: I have an opinion!
>
> In a message dated 4/2/01 3:51:39 PM, fortytwo@GDN.NET writes:
>
> << If "conlang", "auxlang", SciFi, CompSci, PoliSci, etc., count as
> abbreviations, then so does e-mail.  And, if e-mail isn't an
> abbreviation, then neither is conlang, etc. >>
>
> No one person can say whether a conjunction has become accepted; it
depends
> on what most English speakers think.  Most English speakers do NOT have
> "conlang", "auxlang", "compsci", "polisci", and many not "scifi".  Nearly
> everyone has "e-mail", and it's already become a verb.  Just because some
> condensions were formed the same way doesn't mean they have equal billing,
> says I.
"Conlang" is a verb too, for that matter.

If we had to limit ourselves to what "most English speakers" have in their
vocabulary, English would be a lot smaller off.  I mean, we have to have
dictionaries made for our language *in* our language; think how messed up
that really is when you get down to it.

[Somebody else wrote:]
> ><< (is this nom/acc
> >or erg/abs or agt/pat?) >>
> >
> >     What's the last pair?
Agent/Patient.

> From:    Robert Hailman <robert@...>
> Subject: Stress and poetry (was: Re: Verb order in Montreiano)
>
> > > Kash phonology and word structure have barely changed since Day One.
> >
> > You are a fortunate person.  :-)  I don't seem to be able to come up
with
> > something I'm happy with in one go.  OTOH I haven't been doing this for
> > long, so perhaps someday I can aspire to more efficiency.
>
> I've keep Ajuk phonology and word structure pretty much the same, too.
> Just added a bit more leeway with consonant clusters.
I can only think of two major changes in Hadwan
phonology/historical-phonology (well, since the change to actual Hadwan from
the precursor-lang 'Kadhuhhan' that used to occupy the same conceptual
space), and that's relaxing of the rules about adjacent consonants (used to
be, frex, couldn't have two sonorants together, and an imaginary /elme/
would epenthesize a vowel between /l/ and /m/), and the shift from it being
'centum' to being 'satem'.

> From:    David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
> Subject: Re: I have an opinion! (Changing the subject)
>
> But anyway, I was wondering.  My cognitive science
> professor, the other day, mentioned that verbs code things such as tense,
> aspect, person, number, mood, gender et cetera.  But they don't code
things
> such as the color of clothes the speaker wears, whether or not that person
> ate breakfast that morning, how old that person, and other "odd" things
like
> that.  Hence, my question: Does anyone have any odd codings for verbs in
> their language?
Well, some languages encode the gender of the speaker, IIRC, which is kind
of "odd" in itself.

Hmm, an interesting idea...  Mark for comfort, such that say a speaker who's
freezing cold would use a verb form to not-so-subtly indicate that perhaps
the heat could be turned up just a notch...

Actually, I already had in mind that for one of my future planned conlangs
(what starts out conculturally as an invented "children's language") that at
least two age statuses [...stata? statorides? states?] would be
morphologically involved.

So, er, what would be fancy Latinate terms for verb forms that state whether
the speaker (or pronoun forms which state whether the referent) is a child
or an adult?  "Juvenile" and "Senile"? :)


     *Muke!
--
http://www.southern.edu/~alrivera/

Replies