The ancient-history site Livius.org has some stuff on the language of ancient
Macedon at http://www.livius.org/maa-mam/macedonia/macedonia.html#Language ,
which I found interesting enough to look for further material, preferably from
professional linguists. However, as one may guess, the modern conflict between
Greece and Macedonia (FYROM) has resulted in alot of partisan nonsense about
the issue on the 'Net*. Could anyone here point me to some reputable sources,
so that I can avoid looking thru the weird stuff?

My preemptory thanks.

                                             Andreas


* My favourite nutty claim on the subject has to be that the modern Macedonian
language is not a Slavic language, but the descendant of ancient Macedonian,
not closely related to either Slavic or Greek.

Andreas Johansson wrote:
> The ancient-history site Livius.org has some stuff on the language of ancient
> Macedon at http://www.livius.org/maa-mam/macedonia/macedonia.html#Language ,
> which I found interesting enough to look for further material, preferably from
> professional linguists. However, as one may guess, the modern conflict between
> Greece and Macedonia (FYROM) has resulted in alot of partisan nonsense about
> the issue on the 'Net*.

Yes, indeed it has. A site which claimed ancient Macedonian was Greek,
period, is to be ignored - even more to be avoided is any site claiming
ancient Macedonian was a (southern) Slavonic language.

The Greeks of old regarded the Macedonians as more 'barbaroi' than
Greek, until of course Philip came and conquered them.

The article seems reasonably balanced to me. Whether ancient Macedonian
is some wayward dialect of Greek - as incomprehensible to their southern
neighbors as certain Lowland Scots dialects are to us southerns - or
whether it should be considered a separate language is not clear in view
of the paucity of the evidence.

Armenian does have some affiliation to Greek, but I would not place on
the same branch as Jona Lendering does. also the inclusion of
Thracian/Phrygian on the same branch must be considered speculative, as
our knowledge of these langs is somewhat limited, due to lack of
evidence, tho what we do have points to their being of IE derivation.

But, as I say, I by and large go along with the article - and I most
certainly agree "it must be stressed that, unlike modern politicians and
some modern scholars argue, language says not much about ethnicity." The
Saami & Finns speak related language, but I understand they are quite
different ethnically.

> Could anyone here point me to some reputable sources,
> so that I can avoid looking thru the weird stuff?

'Fraid not - because I haven't looked.

>
>                                             Andreas
>
>
> * My favourite nutty claim on the subject has to be that the modern Macedonian
> language is not a Slavic language, but the descendant of ancient Macedonian,
> not closely related to either Slavic or Greek.

Good grief!! That's as weird as the claim one sometimes meets that
modern Albanian is essentially the same as ancient Etruscan - or that
all the worlds languages are descended from Basque   ;)

--
Ray
==================================
ray@...
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

On 1/31/06, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
> --- Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:

[talking about Jefferson Wilson's Glyphica Arcana]

> > > His symbols symbolize something like "distinctive
> > features".  His
> > > glyphs symbolize something like compound-complex
> > words and/or simple-
> > > to-medium phrases.

> > *nod* Though 'simple' seems to have a really low bar
> > (viz. the symbol
> > representing God, or Explore, or etc - while these
> > do in fact
> > represent very complex meanings, I think it a major
> > mistake from what
> > I know of category representation, frames, etc., to
> > try to 'write out'
> > these meaning rather than merely point to them.
......
> > > He hadn't, the last time I looked, explained how
> > to derive the
> > > meaning of a glyph from the meanings of the
> > "elementary symbols" of
> > > which it was constructed, and their relationships;
> > nor, given an idea
> > > or concept, how to construct the "glyph" to
> > represent it.  (No
> > > obvious connection, in other words, between a
> > glyph's visual
> > > structure and its semantics.)  That's why I

I think it's relevant to forward here a message Jefferson
sent me off-list a while back, about just this topic:


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...>
Date: Dec 22, 2005 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: (offlist) Re: [CONLANG] Glyphica Arcana Page
To: Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>


Jim Henry wrote:
> On 12/21/05, Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
>>Jim Henry wrote:
>>
>>>You say that glyphs are composed from symbols, and then
>>>you give examples of complete glyphs, but don't explain
>>>how they are composed from their component symbols.
>>>It would help to take one or two of the simpler glyphs like "Explore"
>>>and explain step-by-step how it is composed -- maybe
>>>one example from the common system and one from
>>>the arcane system.
>>
>>I'm not sure I understand.  How does this differ from saying
>>"words are composed of letters in the following pattern . . ."?
>>What more information do you need?
>
> Maybe I misunderstood.  It sounded like the component
> symbols actually contribute to the meaning of the overall
> glyphs in a way the indiviual phonemes of a root
> morpheme do not.

Onomatopoeia may contribute to the meaning of a word, but that
doesn't make word composition any less arbitrary.

> If the composition of glyphs from
> component symbols is purely arbitrary, you should
> make that clearer.  But I had the impression,
> based on the special terms for the various positions the
> components can fit into, etc., that the glyphs are
> like compound words and the components are like
> root morphemes -- not that the glyphs are like root
> morphemes made up of an arbitrary sequence
> of phonemes.  If that is the case, you should give more detail
> about how that works, with examples.

There are two ways of looking at this:

1) Just because you can create green by mixing yellow and blue
doesn't mean that "green" has the meaning of "mixing yellow and
blue."

2) The meaning of the symbols don't define the glyphs, the
meaning of the symbols are defined by the glyphs.

I'm afraid I still don't understand what you're after.

--
Jefferson
http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/

====

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>
Date: Dec 22, 2005 4:54 PM
Subject: Re: (offlist) Re: [CONLANG] Glyphica Arcana Page
To: Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...>


On 12/22/05, Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
> Jim Henry wrote:
> > On 12/21/05, Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
> >>Jim Henry wrote:

> > If the composition of glyphs from
> > component symbols is purely arbitrary, you should
> > make that clearer.  But I had the impression,
> > based on the special terms for the various positions the
> > components can fit into, etc., that the glyphs are
> > like compound words and the components are like
> > root morphemes -- not that the glyphs are like root
> > morphemes made up of an arbitrary sequence
> > of phonemes.  If that is the case, you should give more detail
> > about how that works, with examples.

> There are two ways of looking at this:
>
> 1) Just because you can create green by mixing yellow and blue
> doesn't mean that "green" has the meaning of "mixing yellow and
> blue."
>
> 2) The meaning of the symbols don't define the glyphs, the
> meaning of the symbols are defined by the glyphs.

OK, that's clearer.  Somehow the page section beginning

>For most purposes a glyph has a minimum of five symbols:
>the focus, horizontal, vertical, oblique, and transcendent.

gave me the false impression that the glyphs are like
compound words of which the symbols are component
morphemes.  You might should revise this section
and say there some of the things you've said to me
in the last couple of emails, to make it clearer that
these seven or nine physical positions are more
like possible phoneme slots in a syllable (e.g. CSVN ) than
component morphemes in a compound word.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry

Could y'all please take the "OFFLIST" out of the subject when you
decide to bring a conversation back ON-list? :)

On 1/31/06, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
> --- Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>
> > Tom -
> >
> > > I thought Jeff W's G.A. was a good approximation
> > to a foundation for an
> > > example of what you were looking for.
> > >
> > > I didn't think by any means all examples of what
> > you were looking for
> > > needed to resemble Jeff's much at all, but I
> > thought his is the best-
> > > worked example that's available on the Web.
> > >
> > > If, in fact, his G.A. is something "fundamentally
> > different" than what
> > > you were looking for, I must have misunderstood
> > what you were looking
> > > for.
> > >
> > > Could you explain, better, what you are looking
> > for, so I won't make a
> > > similar mistake again?
> >
> > Sure; I'll try to describe it as a diff, since GA
> > does have some
> > substantially similar features.
> >
> > (Also clause this by saying that while I've read
> > over the GA page and
> > think I understand how it works, I may have
> > misunderstood it.)
> >
> > First, GA is grid-based. In that sense, it is indeed
> > "two-dimensional"
> > - literally. It works as an array. My conception of
> > 2d is not as an
> > array, but freeform; something much more like
> > Ouwiyaru in that sense.
> > (Actually, Ouwiyaru I think is the closest example
> > I've seen to what
> > I'd like.)
>
> Ouwiyaru is hard to find.
> I found it at
> http://www.graffitiweb.org/ouwiyaru/writing.html
>
> > Because of this, GA drastically limits its
> > connectivity. It only
> > allows immediate local connections - not the
> > (nearly) any-to-any
> > connectiveness that I would want.*
>
> Ah.  I think I see.
>
> In my post
> "
> Message number 131804
> From: tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...>
> Date: Sat Jun 4, 2005  3:49 am
> Subject: Re: Non-linear / full-2d writing systems?
> From tomhchappell@... Fri Jun 03 21:34:47 2005
> Message-ID: <d7r8c5+6062@eGroups.com>
> Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2005 03:49:25 -0000
> Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> To: CONLANG@...
> In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.63.0505310936190.14940@acer>
> "
> I mentioned that subordinate clauses might have
> long-distance co-references or long-distance
> dependencies; graphically showing this in a NLF2DWS
> might introduce loops.
>
> The same might also be true of a two-clause sentence
> with an cataphor in the first clause co-refering to a
> noun in the second clause, while an anaphor in the
> second clause co-refers to a noun in the first clause.
>  This type of sentence has a name; but it escapes my
> mind, as do the best examples.  Here is an example
> I've made up;
>
> If that man knows her, he loves Katy.
>
> > Second, there do not seem to be significant
> > differences (other than
> > the connectives) between the 'symbols' in GA. By
> > symbol here, I mean
> > the ones that are usable as characters - not the
> > funadmental parts,
> > which I'd think of more like 'radicals' in
> > Chinese/Japanese (and which
> > in those are indeed psuedo-2d, within their
> > characters). This seems a
> > suboptimal design; I would like the very shape of
> > characters to play a
> > *major* role in its visual and grammatical
> > structure, and indeed in
> > how it can connect.
>
> But, how crucial should this point be?  Is it really
> fair to rule out systems such as Jeff W's Glyphica
> Arcana just because they don't live up to this second
> point as much as you'd like?  I think this is a point
> I would call "aesthetic", as you called the
> lines-mustn't-cross restriction I had referred to when
> talking about flow-charting.
>
> > This point bears a little elaboration. In linear
> > writing, the actual
> > content of symbols is more or less irrelevant; they
> > can be whatever
> > shape you like, since all you care about is that
> > they are symbol
> > #12345 then symbol #12347 then etc. (Imagining that
> > each was
> > serialized, as is in fact done with hanzi/kanji.)
> > Their internal form
> > has nothing to do with anything. And, aside from
> > some small
> > exceptions, they are all moreorless the same size
> > (or treated as if
> > they were).
> >
> > In a 2d system, that would be a *huge* waste.
> > Symbols or meta-symbols
> > that have low content should also be small and
> > simple - e.g. a
> > pluralization 'morpheme' or a causal-connection one.
>
> Ouwiyaru's symbols actually represent phonemes, or
> perhaps syllables, AFAICT.  Maybe some represent
> fundamental, frequent function-particles; I haven't
> read it well enough.
>
> > And I'd like that
> > symbols that are meant to connect to each other in
> > particular ways
> > show that.
>
> Ouwiyaru doesn't satisfy that desideratum.
>
> >
> > As a really really really simplified example:
> >
> >  X-(  *-Y
> >
> > Pretend that X-( is one character (the rightside is
> > an actual chunk of
> > it as written) and *-Y is also. (I just got out of a
> > neuroscience
> > class, so this may be a bit familiar in origin to
> > some of you...)
> >
> > The two connect naturally. Putting two X-figures
> > together (or Ys)
> > simply wouldn't result in a connection, because they
> > don't mate
> > appropriately.
> >
> > That's a non-overlapping example. Ouwiyaru has what
> > I think are some
> > pretty neat examples of overlapping connections -
> > not as extensive as
> > I'd like, but definitely of the kind that I'm
> > talking about.
>
> I didn't catch that on any of my (admittedly
> non-numerous) readings of Ouwiyaru, yet.  Would you
> mind giving me an example?
>
> > Also, that's an example that has no semantics in it,
> > which is an
> > excessive oversimplification. I would like to see
> > the subcomponents,
> > the very graphical form, be semantic and otherwise
> > functional.
> >
> > My 'sketch' paper -
> > http://saizai.livejournal.com/590734.html - is a
> > pre-alpha version of what I mean in this respect -
> > see figures 1-8,
> > the 'commercial transaction' frame -
> > http://pics.livejournal.com/saizai/pic/0007y17b/g14.
> > Note how the form
> > indexes the semantic, even in its subparts [like the
> > 'goods' node
> > travelling within the character to indicate
> > ownership]. It would be
> > better if the *form* was also somewhat ideographic -
> > i.e. looked
> > vaguely like what it is intended to represent - but
> > its *function* is
> > what I'm referring to here. (See the text of the
> > paper for an
> > explanation, since the diagrams aren't completely
> > self-explaining.)
>
> No, I'm sorry, I don't get it.
>
> To me, both your sketch and Ouwiyaru suffer from the
> same deficiency that Carsten and I have complained
> about to Jefferson Wilson concerning Glyphica Arcana.
> Namely:
> 1) There is no explicit way to tell what the semantics
> are of a given way of assembling the elements, nor of
> the semantics of the elements within given
> assemblages.
> 2) There is no explicit way to tell how, given a
> certain semantic notion-or-idea-or-concept, to choose
> which elements to assemble, nor how to connect them,
> to express that concept.
>
> > There are some other points I could add, but I think
> > those two are the
> > major ones that come to mind.
> >
> > > Jeff's _Glyphs_ are not all the same size nor all
> > the same shape.
> > >
> > > The "_symbols_" out of which the glyphs are
> > constructed are all the
> > > same size and all the same shape.
> >
> > See above for what I intended by 'symbol'. You I
> > think are talking of
> > what I called 'radicals'
>
> Yes, the things Jeff uses for elementary symbols could
> be similar somewhat in use to "radicals" and
> "determiners".
>
> What I had in mind to compare them with were the
> "jamo" in Hangul.
> I think they are comparable to the things out of which
> the "jamo" are constructed.  A glyph is comparable to
> a "syllabic block" in Hangul.
>
> But since neither the symbols nor the markers have
> phonological nor phonetic values specified by Jeff,
> and the symbols also have no semantic values specified
> by Jeff, they do _not_ have _precisely_ the functions
> that radicals and determiners have in Chinese and
> Akkadian and so on, nor for that matter that jamo or
> the marks out of which jamo are composed in Korean.
>
> > - they aren't accessible to
> > the larger
> > (between-'word') syntax, so they're not very
> > relevant to it.
>
> True enough, I suppose; except, perhaps, when (if?) he
> gets around to it, agreement and concordance and
> cross-referencing and flagging and indexing.
>
> > > His symbols symbolize something like "distinctive
> > features".  His
> > > glyphs symbolize something like compound-complex
> > words and/or simple-
> > > to-medium phrases.
> >
> > *nod* Though 'simple' seems to have a really low bar
> > (viz. the symbol
> > representing God, or Explore, or etc - while these
> > do in fact
> > represent very complex meanings, I think it a major
> > mistake from what
> > I know of category representation, frames, etc., to
> > try to 'write out'
> > these meaning rather than merely point to them.
>
> Well, at least, it looks like you could tell what I
> meant.
> I think I see what you meant, too, though I don't
> think I see why you said it.  Not that I necessarily
> disagree; I just don't know what convinced you, nor
> why I should agree.
>
> > (I'd point out though that the latter is IMO a
> > separate question, not
> > necessarily related to 2d writing itself. An
> > interesting one, though.)
> >
> > > He hadn't, the last time I looked, explained how
> > to derive the
> > > meaning of a glyph from the meanings of the
> > "elementary symbols" of
> > > which it was constructed, and their relationships;
> > nor, given an idea
> > > or concept, how to construct the "glyph" to
> > represent it.  (No
> > > obvious connection, in other words, between a
> > glyph's visual
> > > structure and its semantics.)  That's why I
> > thought his G.A. was a
> > > good _foundation_ for the sort of NLF2DWS you were
> > looking for, as
> > > opposed to being a full-fledged _example_ of such.
> >  It's still IME
> > > the best-worked-out example available on the web;
> > if you know of a
> > > better one, or even one almost as good, please let
> > me know how to
> > > look at it.
> >
> > I think he was using the same 'derivation' rules as
> > e.g. Leibniz -
> > kludged ones. This is another supporting point for
> > my statement above
> > - like it or not, he's indexing something he's not
> > really writing out.
> > Symbols are arbitrary; I think (but am not certain)
> > that this is an
> > inevitability. Having them be *translucent*
>
> A no-longer-really-a-joke term meaning "Not quite
> transparent, but also not opaque"?
>
> > - that
> > is, have some
> > morphemic or sublexemic in any case regularities
> > that make them more
> > memorable or guessable or whatnot is a Very Good
> > Thing. But trying to
> > have them as a general rule be *derivable* is, in
> > all attempts I have
> > seen, a complete failure.
> >
> > But hey, perhaps he can do it better. More power to
> > him if so. :-)
> >
> > May I suggest that you forward this thread back onto
> > list and respond there?
> >
> >  - Sai
> >
>
> I'll forward my response to your response, without
> snipping anything out of your response.  Do you want
> me to forward my original message to you, as well?
>
> Tom H.C. in MI
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>


--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

I've been a long-time member on here (was on here under a handle prior to
this one), and stopped reading of the posts as well as posting myself except
for very rare situations. So, I've not been following this latest.

While I know that he's not true of everyone here, there some people here who
come off both as harsh and as snobbish. I wasn't  a novice conlanger when I
started here, and have a firm extensive knowledge of linguistics, but I was
sometimes snubbed, ignored, and, in one case, publicly ridiculed here.

>I joined this list in the hope that I would find help with my own
>conlang project and find a community with whom I could discuss
>things of mutual interest.  Since joining this this list I have
>received no help, little support, and found no mutual interests.
>  Now my attempts to present a workable definition in the hopes
>that someone will correct my understanding are described as
>flames.  In the current discussion I have been insulted and
>belittled and responded politely, but with understandable
>frustration.
>
>That is enough.  This list ranks well up in the top 10
>unfriendliness lists I have ever tried to participate in, and I am
>unsubscribing.

Note: forwarded message attached.


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Note: forwarded message attached.

Hello, Sai.

I forwarded to Jefferson Wilson my last response to a
response of yours.

He has responded to that.  Some of his questions seem
directed to me, and some of them seem directed to you.

If I understand him correctly, I have his permission
to forward his response to the Conlang list; but I
thought it would be smarter to forward it to you
first, and ask you to say which parts of it, if not
the whole thing, you think belongs on the list.

So, here it is.

Thanks.

Tom H.C. in MI

(cc to Jefferson Wilson)


__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Tom Chappell wrote:
> --- Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>>Tom -
>>
>>>I thought Jeff W's G.A. was a good approximation
>>>to a foundation for an
>>>example of what you were looking for.
>>>I didn't think by any means all examples of what
>>>you were looking for
>>>needed to resemble Jeff's much at all, but I
>>>thought his is the best-
>>>worked example that's available on the Web.
>>>
>>>If, in fact, his G.A. is something "fundamentally
>>>different" than what
>>>you were looking for, I must have misunderstood
>>>what you were looking for.
>>>
>>>Could you explain, better, what you are looking
>>>for, so I won't make a similar mistake again?
>>
>>Sure; I'll try to describe it as a diff, since GA
>>does have some
>>substantially similar features.
>>
>>(Also clause this by saying that while I've read
>>over the GA page and
>>think I understand how it works, I may have
>>misunderstood it.)
>>
>>First, GA is grid-based. In that sense, it is indeed
>>"two-dimensional" - literally. It works as an array.

This is news to me.  Glyphs can be of different sizes and
positions are limited only by the necessity of clearly delimiting
the relationships between the glyphs.  True, there is a "standard
format," but that's a simplification, not the full system.

>>My conception of 2d is not as an
>>array, but freeform; something much more like
>>Ouwiyaru in that sense.
>>(Actually, Ouwiyaru I think is the closest example
>>I've seen to what I'd like.)
>
> Ouwiyaru is hard to find.
> I found it at
> http://www.graffitiweb.org/ouwiyaru/writing.html
>
>>Because of this, GA drastically limits its
>>connectivity. It only
>>allows immediate local connections - not the
>>(nearly) any-to-any
>>connectiveness that I would want.*

Ouwiyaru has a maximum connectivity of 3.  The Glyphica Arcana
has a maximum connectivity of 6, although in practical terms the
limit is 5, and the standard is 2 (as it is in Ouwiyaru).

Tom pointed out that an open curvature in three dimensions allows
for a general connectivity greater than 6, which I'd overlooked.
   Nevertheless I can see no evidence that a general connectivity
(any to any) greater than 6 is practical.  This isn't to say that
   it might be possible to allow some nodes greater connectivity,
but that is at the expense of any to any connectivity.

I suppose I could add a "carrier" marker to the Glyphica Arcana
to explicitly mark joins through (in addition to the current
joins between) concepts, but I currently fail to see any value in
doing so.

> Ah.  I think I see.
>
> In my post
> "
> Message number 131804
> From: tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...>
> Date: Sat Jun 4, 2005  3:49 am
> Subject: Re: Non-linear / full-2d writing systems?
> From tomhchappell@... Fri Jun 03 21:34:47 2005
> Message-ID: <d7r8c5+6062@eGroups.com>
> Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2005 03:49:25 -0000
> Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> To: CONLANG@...
> In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.63.0505310936190.14940@acer>
> "
> I mentioned that subordinate clauses might have
> long-distance co-references or long-distance
> dependencies; graphically showing this in a NLF2DWS
> might introduce loops.
>
> The same might also be true of a two-clause sentence
> with an cataphor in the first clause co-refering to a
> noun in the second clause, while an anaphor in the
> second clause co-refers to a noun in the first clause.
>  This type of sentence has a name; but it escapes my
> mind, as do the best examples.  Here is an example
> I've made up;
>
> If that man knows her, he loves Katy.
>
>>Second, there do not seem to be significant
>>differences (other than
>>the connectives) between the 'symbols' in GA. By
>>symbol here, I mean
>>the ones that are usable as characters - not the
>>funadmental parts,
>>which I'd think of more like 'radicals' in
>>Chinese/Japanese (and which
>>in those are indeed psuedo-2d, within their
>>characters).

I have no idea what this is trying to convey.  The terms
'symbol,' 'glyph,' and 'marker' are quite clearly defined in GA.
   You seem to be deliberately attempting to muddle something
which is quite clear.

>>This seems a
>>suboptimal design; I would like the very shape of
>>characters to play a
>>*major* role in its visual and grammatical
>>structure,

Such shapes are inherently cultural in nature.  The symbols in
the GA have cultural meanings which are described elsewhere.

>>and indeed in how it can connect.

If a symbol's structure plays a role in how it connects then how
can you talk about any to any connections?

> But, how crucial should this point be?  Is it really
> fair to rule out systems such as Jeff W's Glyphica
> Arcana just because they don't live up to this second
> point as much as you'd like?  I think this is a point
> I would call "aesthetic", as you called the
> lines-mustn't-cross restriction I had referred to when
> talking about flow-charting.
>
>>This point bears a little elaboration. In linear
>>writing, the actual
>>content of symbols is more or less irrelevant; they
>>can be whatever
>>shape you like, since all you care about is that
>>they are symbol
>>#12345 then symbol #12347 then etc. (Imagining that
>>each was
>>serialized, as is in fact done with hanzi/kanji.)
>>Their internal form
>>has nothing to do with anything. And, aside from
>>some small
>>exceptions, they are all moreorless the same size
>>(or treated as if they were).
>>
>>In a 2d system, that would be a *huge* waste.
>>Symbols or meta-symbols
>>that have low content should also be small and
>>simple - e.g. a
>>pluralization 'morpheme' or a causal-connection one.

Which is exactly what the GA with its markers and different size
and complexity of glyphs.

> Ouwiyaru's symbols actually represent phonemes, or
> perhaps syllables, AFAICT.  Maybe some represent
> fundamental, frequent function-particles; I haven't
> read it well enough.
>
>>And I'd like that
>>symbols that are meant to connect to each other in
>>particular ways show that.
>
> Ouwiyaru doesn't satisfy that desideratum.
>
>>As a really really really simplified example:
>>
>> X-(  *-Y
>>
>>Pretend that X-( is one character (the rightside is
>>an actual chunk of
>>it as written) and *-Y is also. (I just got out of a
>>neuroscience
>>class, so this may be a bit familiar in origin to
>>some of you...)
>>
>>The two connect naturally. Putting two X-figures
>>together (or Ys)
>>simply wouldn't result in a connection, because they
>>don't mate appropriately.
>>
>>That's a non-overlapping example. Ouwiyaru has what
>>I think are some
>>pretty neat examples of overlapping connections -
>>not as extensive as
>>I'd like, but definitely of the kind that I'm
>>talking about.
>
> I didn't catch that on any of my (admittedly
> non-numerous) readings of Ouwiyaru, yet.  Would you
> mind giving me an example?

Aren't you limiting connections even further by doing this?  Why
would you want to?

>>Also, that's an example that has no semantics in it,
>>which is an
>>excessive oversimplification. I would like to see
>>the subcomponents,
>>the very graphical form, be semantic and otherwise
>>functional.
>>
>>My 'sketch' paper -
>>http://saizai.livejournal.com/590734.html - is a
>>pre-alpha version of what I mean in this respect -
>>see figures 1-8,
>>the 'commercial transaction' frame -
>>http://pics.livejournal.com/saizai/pic/0007y17b/g14.
>>Note how the form
>>indexes the semantic, even in its subparts [like the
>>'goods' node
>>travelling within the character to indicate
>>ownership]. It would be
>>better if the *form* was also somewhat ideographic -
>>i.e. looked
>>vaguely like what it is intended to represent - but
>>its *function* is
>>what I'm referring to here. (See the text of the
>>paper for an
>>explanation, since the diagrams aren't completely
>>self-explaining.)
>
> No, I'm sorry, I don't get it.
>
> To me, both your sketch and Ouwiyaru suffer from the
> same deficiency that Carsten and I have complained
> about to Jefferson Wilson concerning Glyphica Arcana.
> Namely:
> 1) There is no explicit way to tell what the semantics
> are of a given way of assembling the elements, nor of
> the semantics of the elements within given
> assemblages.
> 2) There is no explicit way to tell how, given a
> certain semantic notion-or-idea-or-concept, to choose
> which elements to assemble, nor how to connect them,
> to express that concept.

Yes, this is a problem with the GA.  The only solution is
producing more vocabulary, which I am behind on.

>>There are some other points I could add, but I think
>>those two are the
>>major ones that come to mind.
>>
>>>Jeff's _Glyphs_ are not all the same size nor all
>>>the same shape.
>>>
>>>The "_symbols_" out of which the glyphs are
>>>constructed are all the
>>>same size and all the same shape.
>>
>>See above for what I intended by 'symbol'. You I
>>think are talking of what I called 'radicals'
>
> Yes, the things Jeff uses for elementary symbols could
> be similar somewhat in use to "radicals" and
> "determiners".
>
> What I had in mind to compare them with were the
> "jamo" in Hangul.
> I think they are comparable to the things out of which
> the "jamo" are constructed.  A glyph is comparable to
> a "syllabic block" in Hangul.
>
> But since neither the symbols nor the markers have
> phonological nor phonetic values specified by Jeff,
> and the symbols also have no semantic values specified
> by Jeff, they do _not_ have _precisely_ the functions
> that radicals and determiners have in Chinese and
> Akkadian and so on, nor for that matter that jamo or
> the marks out of which jamo are composed in Korean.
>
>>- they aren't accessible to the larger
>>(between-'word') syntax, so they're not very
>>relevant to it.
>
> True enough, I suppose; except, perhaps, when (if?) he
> gets around to it, agreement and concordance and
> cross-referencing and flagging and indexing.

Huh?

>>>His symbols symbolize something like "distinctive
>>>features".  His
>>>glyphs symbolize something like compound-complex
>>>words and/or simple-to-medium phrases.
>>
>>*nod* Though 'simple' seems to have a really low bar
>>(viz. the symbol
>>representing God, or Explore, or etc - while these
>>do in fact
>>represent very complex meanings, I think it a major
>>mistake from what
>>I know of category representation, frames, etc., to
>>try to 'write out'
>>these meaning rather than merely point to them.

Again, Huh?

> Well, at least, it looks like you could tell what I
> meant.
> I think I see what you meant, too, though I don't
> think I see why you said it.  Not that I necessarily
> disagree; I just don't know what convinced you, nor
> why I should agree.
>
>>(I'd point out though that the latter is IMO a
>>separate question, not
>>necessarily related to 2d writing itself. An
>>interesting one, though.)
>>
>>>He hadn't, the last time I looked, explained how
>>>to derive the
>>>meaning of a glyph from the meanings of the
>>>"elementary symbols" of
>>>which it was constructed, and their relationships;
>>>nor, given an idea
>>>or concept, how to construct the "glyph" to
>>>represent it.  (No
>>>obvious connection, in other words, between a
>>>glyph's visual
>>>structure and its semantics.)  That's why I
>>>thought his G.A. was a
>>>good _foundation_ for the sort of NLF2DWS you were
>>>looking for, as
>>>opposed to being a full-fledged _example_ of such.
>>> It's still IME
>>>the best-worked-out example available on the web;
>>>if you know of a
>>>better one, or even one almost as good, please let
>>>me know how to
>>>look at it.
>>
>>I think he was using the same 'derivation' rules as
>>e.g. Leibniz -
>>kludged ones. This is another supporting point for
>>my statement above
>>- like it or not, he's indexing something he's not
>>really writing out.
>>Symbols are arbitrary; I think (but am not certain)
>>that this is an
>>inevitability. Having them be *translucent*
>
> A no-longer-really-a-joke term meaning "Not quite
> transparent, but also not opaque"?
>
>>- that is, have some
>>morphemic or sublexemic in any case regularities
>>that make them more
>>memorable or guessable or whatnot is a Very Good
>>Thing. But trying to
>>have them as a general rule be *derivable* is, in
>>all attempts I have
>>seen, a complete failure.
>>
>>But hey, perhaps he can do it better. More power to
>>him if so. :-)

I have no intention of doing so, although the means by which
glyphs are created could be made clearer.

>>May I suggest that you forward this thread back onto
>>list and respond there?
>
> I'll forward my response to your response, without
> snipping anything out of your response.  Do you want
> me to forward my original message to you, as well?

Whatever you prefer.  However, I now see what Sai is trying to
accomplish.  Unfortunately his two goals (unlimited connectivity
and connectivity in meaning) are mutually incompatible.  The GA
has the first without trying to implement the second.  Sai
appears to be trying to implement the first through a system
designed for the second and is doomed to failure.

--
Jefferson

Note: forwarded message attached.


__________________________________________________
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Hi, Jefferson.

Thanks for your response.

This is going to be a partial reply;
only to some of the questions you addressed to me,
not to all of them,
nor to any that you addressed to Sai.

Thanks for writing,

Tom H.C. in MI

---Jefferson Wilson <jeffwilson63@...> wrote:
>Tom Chappell wrote:
>>--- Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>>>Tom -
>>>[snip]
(Sai:)
>>>Sure; I'll try to describe it as a diff, since GA
does have
>>>some substantially similar features. (Also clause
this by
>>>saying that while I've read over the GA page and
think I
>>>understand how it works, I may have misunderstood
it.) First,
>>>GA is grid-based. In that sense, it is indeed
>>>"two-dimensional" - literally. It works as an
array.

(Jeff:)
>This is news to me. Glyphs can be of different sizes
and
>positions are limited only by the necessity of
clearly
>delimiting the relationships between the glyphs.
True, there is
>a "standard format," but that's a simplification, not
the full
>system.

(Tom:)
I worked out that, even if you use only the "common"
method, and even if you allow each symbol to appear in
only two orientations* (each a 180-degree rotation of
the other), and even if you require all spaces to be
filled, there would be
(2^9)*((n!)/((n-9)!)) different glyphs if there were n
different symbols.
In your case, n=81; but, even if n=9, this gives
512*(9!) = 512*(362,880) = 185,794,560
different glyphs.

* If you accept 90-degree rotations as being still the
same symbol, there would be 4 orientations, rather
than only 2.
If you accept left-to-right reflections, as well as
180-degree rotations, as being still the same symbol,
there would be 4 orientations, rather than only two.
If you accept 90-degree rotations as well as
left-to-right reflections as being still the same
symbol, there would be 8 orientations, rather than 4
or 2.

(Sai:)
>>>My conception of 2d is not as an array, but
freeform;
>>>something much more like Ouwiyaru in that sense.
(Actually,
>>>Ouwiyaru I think is the closest example I've seen
to what I'd
>>>like.)

(Tom:)
Sai has recently said he likes Heptapod B even better.

(Tom:)
>>Ouwiyaru is hard to find. I found it at
>>http://www.graffitiweb.org/ouwiyaru/writing.html
(Sai:)
>>>Because of this, GA drastically limits its
connectivity. It
>>>only allows immediate local connections - not the
(nearly) any-
>>>to-any connectiveness that I would want.*

(Jeff:)
>Ouwiyaru has a maximum connectivity of 3. The
Glyphica Arcana
>has a maximum connectivity of 6, although in
practical terms the
>limit is 5, and the standard is 2 (as it is in
Ouwiyaru).

(Tom:)
It is difficult to see why a representation of a
natlang would require an "out-degree" (connection to a
"head") greater than 1 nor an "in-degree" (connection
to a "dependent") greater than 5 (for a total
connectivity of 6); for most natlangs, the "in-degree"
never goes above 3, and for many, never above 2.
Also, in natlangs, only "verbs" seem to require an
in-degree greater than 2; and few lexical categories,
and few specific words in them (other than "verbs"),
seem to require an in-degree greater than 1.

(Jeff:)
>Tom pointed out that an open curvature in three
dimensions

(Tom:)
Note that the writing-surface is still only
two-dimensional; it hasn't changed dimensionality, it
is just no longer "flat".  The only reason you would
need three dimensions is if you intend to imbed the
writing-surface in a "flat" (zero-curvature) or
positively-curved space.  Naturally you can't imbed a
negatively-curved two-dimensional space into any other
two-dimensional space that doesn't have the same
curvature.

(Jeff:)
>allows for a general connectivity greater than 6,
which I'd
>overlooked.

(Tom:)
See John Vertical's post; I had overlooked that, by
making the edges of the polygons shorter and shorter,
you could actually get connectivity M, for any finite
M, with a space-filling "tiling" using polygons all
roughly the same diameter (but not area nor shape).

Method;

Put one node in the center, and draw around it a
circle of radius 1; space M nodes equally on this
circle, and connect the central node to each of them.
(Consecutive nodes on each circle may also be
connected to each other, though that would make most
nodes have M+3 neighbors instead of M+1.)

Now draw a concentric circle of radius 2, and space
M^2 nodes equally around it.  Connect each node on the
1st circle to the M nearest nodes on the 2nd circle.
(Continue to connect consecutive nodes on each circle,
if you will; or continue not doing so, if that's what
you want.)

Now draw a concentric circle of radius 3, and space
M^3 nodes equally around it.  Connect each node on the
2nd circle to the M nearest nodes on the 3rd circle.

Etc.; on each concentric circle of radius n, space M^n
nodes equally around it; connect each node on the
(n-1)st circle to the M nearest nodes on the nth
circle.

Most of the polygons so formed have a diameter of a
little more than 2; as you go out, the diameter
decreases asymptotically towards 2.  As a general rule
the polygons in the (n+1)st layer will be
circumscribed by an isosceles triangle with two sides
a little longer than 2 and the base proportional to
M^(-n).  Each polygon will have M+3 sides; one
connecting to the thicker polygon in the previous
circle, two connecting to the almost-congruent
polygons in the same circle, and M connecting to the
thinner polygons in the next circle.

(Jeff:)
>Nevertheless I can see no evidence that a general
connectivity
>(any to any) greater than 6 is practical.

(Tom:)
IMO it is neither necessary in terms of representing
natlangs, nor practical in terms of human processing
ability.

(Jeff:)
>This isn't to say that it might be possible to allow
some nodes
>greater connectivity, but that is at the expense of
any to any
>connectivity.

1) At least, if the "tiles" are all convex and all
have the same area.

2) Also, I feel that the most highly-connected
elements in each sentence should be "focal" or
"topical" or "nuclear", or otherwise crucial to the
sentence.  The reader should be able to concentrate on
each of the most-highly-connected elements, one at a
time, and "read" the sentence in such a way that
he/she can continually refer back to that element on
which he/she is concentrating.  Therefore there
shouldn't be too many such elements in each sentence;
a case could be made that there should be at most two,
or at most three.
The verb is the "nucleus" of most clauses, and most
clauses have only one verb.  Languages with
serial-verb constructions, in which many verbs taken
together form the "nucleus" of a clause, generally do
not have ditransitive nor other 3-valent verbs; they
express clauses which are ditransitive in other
languages, by clauses having two monotransitive verbs
used together.
It would make sense that a clause could have 1 element
(the verb) of connectivity as much as 6; a limited
number (a high limit might be OK) of elements of
connectivity as much as 3; and all other elements are
of connectivity 2 or 1.

(Jeff:)
>I suppose I could add a "carrier" marker to the
Glyphica Arcana
>to explicitly mark joins through (in addition to the
current
>joins between) concepts, but I currently fail to see
any value
>in doing so.

(Tom:)
Even if you do so, the average glyph (almost all
glyphs, actually) could still connect to at most a
limited number of "neighbors"; it would merely be
enabled to connect to "neighbors" that aren't
close-by.  (Like a telephone wire between houses,
instead of a shared fence.)

(Tom:)
>>Ah.  I think I see. In my post
>>"Message number 131804
>>From: tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...>
>>Date: Sat Jun 4, 2005  3:49 am
>>Subject: Re: Non-linear / full-2d writing systems?
>>From tomhchappell@... Fri Jun 03 21:34:47 2005
>>Message-ID: <d7r8c5+6062@eGroups.com>
>>Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2005 03:49:25 -0000
>>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>>To: CONLANG@...
>>In-Reply-To:
<Pine.WNT.4.63.0505310936190.14940@acer>"
>>I mentioned that subordinate clauses might have
long-distance
>>co-references or long-distance dependencies;
graphically
>>showing this in a NLF2DWS might introduce loops. The
same might
>>also be true of a two-clause sentence with a
cataphor in the
>>first clause co-refering to a noun in the second
clause, while
>>an anaphor in the second clause co-refers to a noun
in the
>>first clause. This type of sentence has a name; but
it escapes
>>my mind, as do the best examples. Here is an example
I've made
>>up;
>>
>>If that man knows her, he loves Katy.
>>
(Sai:)
>>>Second, there do not seem to be significant
differences (other
>>>than the connectives) between the 'symbols' in GA.
By symbol
>>>here, I mean the ones that are usable as characters
- not the
>>>funadmental parts, which I'd think of more like
'radicals' in
>>>Chinese/Japanese (and which in those are indeed
psuedo-2d,
>>>within their characters).

(Jeff:)
>I have no idea what this is trying to convey.

(Tom:)
I'll try to help.  I'll explain "radicals and
determiners" a little further down.

(Jeff:)
>The terms 'symbol,' 'glyph,' and 'marker' are quite
clearly
>defined in GA.

(Tom:)
Yes, they are; and that is a good answer to some
objections, but perhaps beside the point on this one.

(Jeff:)
>You seem to be deliberately attempting to muddle
something which
>is quite clear.

(Tom:)
No he isn't.  He may be muddling something that is
clear to you, but if so, it's because it isn't clear
to him; and it is surely not a deliberate attempt.

---

In "pictographic" writing systems -- aka "logographic"
aka "ideographic" WSs -- not every word that can be
spoken, can be represented by a line-drawing that
unmistakably has one-and-only-one meaning and
pronunciation.

Most such systems solve this problem as follows.  A
word which doesn't have its own unique symbol,
unmistakably having a unique meaning and a unique
pronunciation, will be represented by combining two
symbols; usually, one of these is a guide to the
meaning, and the other is a guide to the
pronunciation.

Such WSs usually either make a systematic habit of
having a semantic "radical" and a phonetic
"determiner", or else make a systematic habit of
having a phonetic "radical" and a semantic
"determiner".

The phonetic element of a monosyllabic word, will be
the symbol (representing a unique meaning and
pronunciation) for another monosyllabic word, which
has a lot in common with the syllable to be
represented.  For instance, it may have the same
rhyme* (the same nucleus* and coda*) (but a possibly
different onset*), or the same onset* and nucleus*
(but a possibly different coda*), or the same onset*
and coda* (but a possibly different nucleus*).

[A syllable is divided into an optional onset and a
mandatory rhyme.  The rhyme is divided into a
mandatory nucleus and an optional coda.]
[The *nucleus of a syllable is, ordinarily, the vowel,
and you won't go far astray thinking of "nucleus of a
syllable" as "vowel of a syllable" (though some
syllables don't have vowels, so a consonant has to
fill in as nucleus; and some syllables have a
diphthong, or even a triphthong, as nucleus.)]
[The *margins of a syllable are the sounds that aren't
part of the nucleus.  A syllable has to have a
nucleus, but it doesn't have to have margins.]
[The *onset of a syllable is all the sounds that come
before its nucleus.  Ordinarily these are all the
consonants before the nucleus; but some close (high)
vowels could be considered to double as approximants
("ee"="y" and "oo"="w" in English), and occur as parts
of the syllable margins -- onset and coda -- in some
syllables with an open vowel as nucleus.  You won't go
far astray thinking of "onset of a syllable" as
"consonants before the nucleus of a syllable".  Most
syllables have onsets, but they don't have to.]
[The *coda of a syllable is all the sounds that come
after its nucleus.  Ordinarily these are all the
consonants after the nucleus; but some close (high)
vowels could be considered to double as approximants
("ee"="y" and "oo"="w" in English), and occur as parts
of the syllable margins -- onset and coda -- in some
syllables with an open vowel as nucleus.  You won't go
far astray thinking of "coda of a syllable" as
"consonants after the nucleus of a syllable".  Most
syllables do not have codas, but they can.]
[The *rhyme of a syllable is all the sounds other than
the onset; i.e. it is the nucleus plus the coda (if
there is a coda).]

Usually the WS will have some systematic favorite
similarity between the phonetic part and the syllable
intended.  That is, either, for almost all words, the
phonetic part of the symbol rhymes with the word
intended; or, for almost all words, the phonetic part
of the symbol shares the onset and nucleus with the
word intended.

In some languages, some syllables can be represented
by two phonetic parts, as opposed to a phonetic part
and a semantic part.  For instance, one phonetic part
may have the same onset and nucleus, and the other
phonetic part may have the same rhyme.

---

As an example of the phonetic radical with the
semantic determiner, consider "hare" vs. "hair".  A
writing system might use a picture of a hare to
represent "hare", and a picture of a hare combined
with a picture of a comb to represent "hair".  The
picture of the hare is the phonetic radical; the
picture of the comb is the semantic determiner.

As an example of the semantic radical with the
phonetic determiner, consider "hare" vs. "rabbit".  A
writing system might uses a picture of a rabbit to
represent "rabbit", and a picture of a rabbit combined
with a picture of a bale of hay to represent "hare".
The picture of the rabbit is the semantic radical; the
picture of the bale of hay is the phonetic determiner.
Or, the writing system could use a picture of a mare
as the phonetic determiner; thus (picture of
rabbit)+(picture of mare) would mean "hare".

(Sai:)
>>>This seems a suboptimal design; I would like the
very shape of
>>>characters to play a *major* role in its visual and

>>>grammatical structure,

(Jeff:)
>Such shapes are inherently cultural in nature.

(Tom:)
I would say, rather, that the connection between the
shape of the character and its semantics, comes about
as a result of the design; it is not something which
can be factored into the design as if it existed ab
initio.

(Jeff:)
>The symbols in the GA have cultural meanings which
are described
>elsewhere.

(Tom:)
Where? Several of us would like to see.

(Sai:)
>>>and indeed in how it can connect.

(Jeff:)
>If a symbol's structure plays a role in how it
connects then how
>can you talk about any to any connections?

(Tom:)
I think you (Jefferson) make a good point here.

Sai's example, of the neurohormone receptor ["("] at
the end of a neuron's dendrite [the "-(" in "X-("] and
the neurohormone emitter ["*"] at the end of a
neuron's axon [the "*-" in "*-Y"], is governed by the
rule that a "(" or ")" can connect only to a
"*", not to another "(" or ")"; and a "*" can connect
only to a "(" or ")", not to another "*"; and each "("
or ")" can connect to at most one "*", and each "*"
can connect to at most one "(" or ")".
So, how a neuron can connect, depends on how many
axons and how many dendrites it has.  Most have just
one axon.  Many have two dendrites.  But there isn't a
reason they can't have more than one axon, nor any
number of dendrites; its just that neurons with
differing numbers of axons or differing numbers of
dendrites, are of distinct neuron-types.

(Tom:)
>>But, how crucial should this point be? Is it really
fair to
>>rule out systems such as Jeff W's Glyphica Arcana
just because
>>they don't live up to this second point as much as
you'd like?
>>I think this is a point I would call "aesthetic", as
you called
>>the lines-mustn't-cross restriction I had referred
to when
>>talking about flow-charting.
(Sai:)
>>>This point bears a little elaboration. In linear
writing, the
>>>actual content of symbols is more or less
irrelevant; they can
>>>be whatever shape you like, since all you care
about is that
>>>they are symbol #12345 then symbol #12347 then etc.
(Imagining
>>>that each was serialized, as is in fact done with
>>>hanzi/kanji.) Their internal form has nothing to do
with
>>>anything. And, aside from some small exceptions,
they are all
>>>moreorless the same size (or treated as if they
were).
>>>In a 2d system, that would be a *huge* waste.
Symbols or meta-
>>>symbols that have low content should also be small
and simple
>>>- e.g. a pluralization 'morpheme' or a
causal-connection one.

(Tom:)
Sai may have a good point here.

(Jeff:)
>Which is exactly what the GA with its markers and
different size
>and complexity of glyphs.

(Tom:)
Jefferson has a good point here.

(Tom:)
>>Ouwiyaru's symbols actually represent phonemes, or
perhaps
>>syllables, AFAICT. Maybe some represent fundamental,
frequent
>>function-particles; I haven't read it well enough.
(Sai:)
>>>And I'd like that symbols that are meant to connect
to each
>>>other in particular ways show that.

(Tom:)
As Jefferson pointed out, that desideratum conflicts
with the "any-to-any-number-of-any" desideratum.

If symbols that are meant to connect to each other in
particular ways show that, then, each symbol can
connect to a limited number of other symbols, and
limited types of other symbols; though both limits may
vary from symbol to symbol.

(Tom:)
>>Ouwiyaru doesn't satisfy that desideratum.
(Sai:)
>>>As a really really really simplified example:
>>>X-(  *-Y
>>>Pretend that X-( is one character (the rightside is
an actual
>>>chunk of it as written) and *-Y is also. (I just
got out of a
>>>neuroscience class, so this may be a bit familiar
in origin to
>>>some of you...)
>>>The two connect naturally. Putting two X-figures
together (or
>>>Ys) simply wouldn't result in a connection, because
they don't
>>>mate appropriately.

(Tom:)
A specific violation of the "any-to-any" desideratum.

(Sai:)
>>>That's a non-overlapping example. Ouwiyaru has what
I think
>>>are some pretty neat examples of overlapping
connections - not
>>>as extensive as I'd like, but definitely of the
kind that I'm
>>>talking about.
(Tom:)
>>I didn't catch that on any of my (admittedly
non-numerous)
>>readings of Ouwiyaru, yet. Would you mind giving me
an example?

(Jeff:)
>Aren't you limiting connections even further by doing
this?

(Tom:)
I don't know about "even further"; but, yes, Sai is
limiting connections by doing "this".

(Jeff:)
>Why would you want to?

(Tom:)
I can think of some good reasons.
A particular verb often cannot take just any old noun
as a particular argument; for instance, "hope" and
"say" and "think" usually have to have clauses or
sentences for objects, and humans for subjects.
Other verbs require plural subjects, or singular
subjects, or plural objects, or singular objects, or
what-not.
Also; prepositions ordinarily require nouns as
objects.

(Sai:)
>>>Also, that's an example that has no semantics in
it, which is
>>>an excessive oversimplification. I would like to
see the
>>>subcomponents, the very graphical form, be

>>>semantic

(Tom:)
This semantics is a result, not a prerequisite, of the
writing system.  It does not exist ab initio to be
incorporated into the design of the system.

(Sai:)
>>>and otherwise functional.

(Tom:)
Up to a point, the grammatical function could be said
to exist ab initio to be incorporated into the design;
but also, up to a point, it is a result of the system,
rather than an ingredient of it.

(Sai:)
>>>My 'sketch' paper -
>>>http://saizai.livejournal.com/590734.html
>>>- is a pre-alpha version of what I mean in this
respect - see

(Tom:)
I couldn't access that yesterday.  I will try again
today or tomorrow.

(Sai:)
>>>figures 1-8, the 'commercial transaction' frame -
>>>http://pics.livejournal.com/saizai/pic/0007y17b/g14

(Tom:)
I couldn't access that yesterday.  I will try again
today or tomorrow.

(Sai:)
>>>. Note how the form indexes the semantic, even in
its subparts
>>>[like the 'goods' node travelling within the
character to
>>>indicate ownership]. It would be better if the
*form* was also
>>>somewhat ideographic - i.e. looked vaguely like
what it is
>>>intended to represent - but its *function* is what
I'm
>>>referring to here. (See the text of the paper for
an
>>>explanation, since the diagrams aren't completely
self-
>>>explaining.)
(Tom:)
>>No, I'm sorry, I don't get it. To me, both your
sketch and
>>Ouwiyaru suffer from the same deficiency that
Carsten and I
>>have complained about to Jefferson Wilson concerning
Glyphica
>>Arcana. Namely:
>>1) There is no explicit way to tell what the
semantics are of a
>>given way of assembling the elements, nor of the
semantics of
>>the elements within given assemblages.
>>2) There is no explicit way to tell how, given a
certain
>>semantic notion-or-idea-or-concept, to choose which
elements to
>>assemble, nor how to connect them, to express that
concept.

(Jeff:)
>Yes, this is a problem with the GA. The onlysolution
is
>producing more vocabulary, which I am behind on.

(Sai:)
>>>There are some other points I could add, but I
think those two
>>>are the major ones that come to mind.
[snip]
>>>See above for what I intended by 'symbol'. You I
>>>think are talking of what I called 'radicals'
(Tom:)
>>Yes, the things Jeff uses for elementary symbols
could be
>>similar somewhat in use to "radicals" and
"determiners".
>>What I had in mind to compare them with were the
"jamo" in
>>Hangul. I think they are comparable to the things
out of which
>>the "jamo" are constructed.  A glyph is comparable
to
>>a "syllabic block" in Hangul.
>>But since neither the symbols nor the markers have
phonological
>>nor phonetic values specified by Jeff, and the
symbols also
>>have no semantic values specified by Jeff, they do
_not_ have
>>_precisely_ the functions that radicals and
determiners have in
>>Chinese and Akkadian and so on, nor for that matter
that jamo
>>or the marks out of which jamo are composed in
Korean.
(Sai:)
>>>- they aren't accessible to the larger
(between-'word')
>>>syntax, so they're not very relevant to it.
(Tom:)
>>True enough, I suppose; except, perhaps, when (if?)
he gets
>>around to it, agreement and concordance and
cross-referencing
>>and flagging and indexing.

(Jeff:)
>Huh?

(Tom:)
In some languages when two words stand in a particular
grammatical relationship to each other -- for instance
a "head-dependent" relationship (of which there are
several kinds) -- it is often grammatically necessary,
in that language, to morphologically mark one of the
words with certain characteristics of the other one.

Also, if two words stand in a particular relationship,
whereas they could have been standing in a different
relationship, it is often grammatically necessary, in
that language, to mark one of the words in such a way
as to indicate which of the several possible
relationships actually obtains.

"Agreement";
A verb often has to "agree" with its subject in one or
more of person, number, gender or noun-class, and/or
definiteness or specificity or referentiality.

Often a verb is required to have "polypersonal
agreement", wherein it must also agree with some
characteristics of its object, or with one or both of
its objects if it has two.

The person, number, and gender or noun-class, of a
noun, is something internal to the noun.  Requiring
the verb to change its internal structure to match, is
a syntactic requirement.

"Cross-Referencing";
Sometimes the agreement takes the form of actually
having a pronoun representing the noun-phrase with
which the verb must agree, actually incorporated into
the verb.  That's called "cross-referencing".
Again, certain internal facts about the noun, are
syntactically required to be internally reflected in
the verb.

"Concordance";
Often, an adjective has to be marked concordant with
the number and/or gender or noun class and/or case of
the noun which it modifies.  That's "concordance".
The adjective has no number nor gender of its own; but
it is syntactically required to morphologically
reflect, in its internal structure, the number and/or
gender of the noun.
The case of the noun concerns its relation with some
other word, not with the adjective; yet the adjective
is required to copy this case.

"Flagging" and "Indexing".
The semantic role played in a clause by certain
nominals (or pronominals or nominal phrases or
pronominal phrases), often needs to be indicated.
Make a sentence out of "Jack" and "Jill" and "dumped".
  How do I know which got dumped and which did the
dumping?
(OK, maybe this is a bad example -- we'll obviously
_never_ know -- but play along with me anyway. ;-) )

"Flagging"
In some languages we flag one of them as Agent and the
other as Patient by some kind of morphological
operation -- affixing an indicator, for instance; or
perhaps by ablaut.
Thus "Dumped Jack-AGT Jill-PAT" could mean "Jack
dumped Jill" in a VAP language; and perhaps this could
be alternately expressed as "Dump Jill-PAT Jack-AGT"
in the same language.  OTOH "Jill dumped Jack" would
be expressed by "Dumped Jill-AGT Jack-PAT" or "Dumped
Jack-PAT Jill-AGT".
That's "Flagging".
This is a syntactic fact -- whether "Jack" is the
agent or the patient of "dump" -- that is reflected by
an internal morphological change carried out on
"Jack".

"Indexing"
In some languages the verb carries markers indicating
what the person and/or number and/or gender etc. of
its participants are.
For instance, the language might have markers for "3rd
person Singular Masculine Agent" (3smA), "3rd person
Singular Feminine Agent" (3sfA), "3rd person Singular
Masculine Patient" (3smP), and "3rd person Singular
Feminine Patient" (3sfA), among others.

Thus, assuming Jack was clearly masculine and Jill was
clearly feminine, "dumped-3smA-3sfP Jack Jill" would
mean "Jack dumped Jill" (masculine Agent, feminine
Patient), while "dumped-3sfA-3smP Jack Jill" would
mean "Jill dumped Jack" (feminine Agent, masculine
Patient).

("Dumped-3smA-3smP Jack Jill" wouldn't make much
sense; possibly it could mean "Jack dumped himself on
Jill", or perhaps not. :-) )

Possibly the distinction between the Agent markers and
the Patient markers could be only what order they
occur on the verb.

For instance, perhaps, as in Swahili, the Agent marker
occurs before the Tense marker, but the Patient marker
occurs after the Tense marker, all three of them
occuring before the lexical nucleus of the verb.

So "3sm-Past-3sf-dump Jack Jill" would mean a
masculine agent and a feminine patient, so "Jack
dumped Jill"; while "3sf-Past-3sm-dump Jack Jill"
would mean a feminine agent and a masculine patient,
so "Jill dumped Jack".

All of those are examples of "Indexing".
"Indexing" syntactically requires facts about nominals
to be reflected in the internal morphology of the
verb.

[snip]
(Sai:)
>>>*nod* Though 'simple' seems to have a really low
bar (viz. the
>>>symbol representing God, or Explore, or etc - while
these do
>>>in fact represent very complex meanings, I think it
a major
>>>mistake from what I know of category
representation, frames,
>>>etc., to try to 'write out' these meaning rather
than merely
>>>point to them.

(Jeff:)
>Again, Huh?

(Tom:)
You'll have to ask Sai.

(Tom:)
>>Well, at least, it looks like you could tell what I
meant. I
>>think I see what you meant, too, though I don't
think I see why
>>you said it. Not that I necessarily disagree; I just
don't know
>>what convinced you, nor why I should agree.
(Sai:)
>>>(I'd point out though that the latter is IMO a
separate
>>>question, not necessarily related to 2d writing
itself. An
>>>interesting one, though.)
[snip]
>>>I think he was using the same 'derivation' rules as
e.g.
>>>Leibniz - kludged ones. This is another supporting
point for
>>>my statement above - like it or not, he's indexing
something
>>>he's not really writing out.

(Tom:)
I don't follow.

(Sai:)
>>>Symbols are arbitrary; I think (but am not certain)
that this
>>>is an inevitability.

(Tom:)
Well, it's both a Universal of language, and one
defining characteristic of language; and that's
commonly accepted.

(Sai:)
>>>Having them be *translucent*
(Tom:)
>>A no-longer-really-a-joke term meaning "Not quite
transparent,
>>but also not opaque"?
(Sai:)
>>>- that is, have some morphemic or sublexemic in any
case
>>>regularities that make them more memorable or
guessable or
>>>whatnot is a Very Good Thing.

(Tom:)
I and many others agree.

(Sai:)
>>>But trying to have them as a general rule be
*derivable* is,
>>>in all attempts I have seen, a complete failure.

(Tom:)
At any rate, it would be very "unnatural", in the
sense that natlangs don't do that.

(Sai:)
>>>But hey, perhaps he can do it better. More power to
him if
>>>so. :-)

(Jeff:)
>I have no intention of doing so, although the means
by which
>glyphs are created could be made clearer.

(Sai:)
>>>May I suggest that you forward this thread back
onto list and
>>>respond there?
(Tom:)
>>I'll forward my response to your response, without
snipping
>>anything out of your response.  Do you want me to
forward my
>>original message to you, as well?

(Jeff:)
>Whatever you prefer. However, I now see what Sai is
trying to
>accomplish. Unfortunately his two goals (unlimited
connectivity
>and connectivity in meaning) are mutually
incompatible.

I think you're right, or at least probably so.

(Jeff:)
>The GA has the first without trying to implement the
second. Sai
>appears to be trying to implement the first through a
system
>designed for the second and is doomed to failure.

Maybe so.

Thanks for writing, Jeff.

Tom H.C. in MI


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Mark J. Reed wrote:
> Could y'all please take the "OFFLIST" out of the subject when you
> decide to bring a conversation back ON-list? :)

AMEN!!

> On 1/31/06, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
>
>>--- Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:

Now we seem to have the bizarre situation where Sai & Jefferson are
corresponding offlist & indirectly via Tom who then puts it all onlist!

It reminds me of those situations you sometimes see in comedy, where
lord & Lady Muck are not talking to one another, but sit at each end of
a long table and communicate via the butler. The may be funny to watch -
but for goodness sake, this is getting surreal!

Also the inordinate amount of quoting and non-cutting is making the
exchanges difficult for me to follow, and I suspect for some others as well.

Cannot we either have a proper exchange onlist, where we exchange views
*directly* with one another, or keep it is offlist. I don't know about
others - except obviously Mark - but when I see "OFFLIST" in the subject
line, I expect a private email.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@...
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

> Now we seem to have the bizarre situation where Sai & Jefferson are
> corresponding offlist & indirectly via Tom who then puts it all onlist!
>
> It reminds me of those situations you sometimes see in comedy, where
> lord & Lady Muck are not talking to one another, but sit at each end of
> a long table and communicate via the butler. The may be funny to watch -
> but for goodness sake, this is getting surreal!

*laugh* I wasn't trying to correspond w/ Jefferson, just with Tom for
a couple emails (not that I object). He then quoted me in his
conversation with Jefferson.

I'm going to be bailing on trying to keep up with this thread (though
wanting to be CCed and still reading it), pending writing / sketching
up a fuller description that will hopefully answer most of the
questions raised both on and off list.

> Also the inordinate amount of quoting and non-cutting is making the
> exchanges difficult for me to follow, and I suspect for some others as well.

Including me. :-P

> Cannot we either have a proper exchange onlist, where we exchange views
> *directly* with one another, or keep it is offlist. I don't know about
> others - except obviously Mark - but when I see "OFFLIST" in the subject
> line, I expect a private email.

/me adds vote of agreement. I see no need to take any of the
discussion that's ontopic offlist - that seems to be a good way to
handle meta stuff (like ensuring that we are all on the same page in
terms of intent and non-insulting and such), but when *content* goes
offlist it just gets too hard to track the threads.

(Perhaps something that would be 2d-able? ;-P)

  - Sai

staving R A Brown:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>Mark J. Reed wrote:
>>Could y'all please take the "OFFLIST" out of the subject when you
>>decide to bring a conversation back ON-list? :)
>
>AMEN!!
>
>>On 1/31/06, Tom Chappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:
>>
>>>--- Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
>
>Now we seem to have the bizarre situation where Sai & Jefferson are
>corresponding offlist & indirectly via Tom who then puts it all onlist!
>
>It reminds me of those situations you sometimes see in comedy, where lord
>& Lady Muck are not talking to one another, but sit at each end of a long
>table and communicate via the butler. The may be funny to watch - but for
>goodness sake, this is getting surreal!
>
>Also the inordinate amount of quoting and non-cutting is making the
>exchanges difficult for me to follow, and I suspect for some others as well.
>
>Cannot we either have a proper exchange onlist, where we exchange views
>*directly* with one another, or keep it is offlist. I don't know about
>others - except obviously Mark - but when I see "OFFLIST" in the subject
>line, I expect a private email.

I've been thinking that it would be a good idea for all concerned to give
the whole subject of 2d scripts a rest for the time being. On what's
normally a very friendly list, its disconcerting to see tempers being
raised so much over a simple matter of geometry.

Pete

Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:

> Cannot we either have a proper exchange onlist, where we exchange views
> *directly* with one another, or keep it is offlist. I don't know about
> others - except obviously Mark - but when I see "OFFLIST" in the subject
> line, I expect a private email.

So do I. Having it in a subject line destined for the list seems an entirely
unnecessary breach of netiquette.

                                               Andreas

Hallo!

R A Brown writes:

> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > Could y'all please take the "OFFLIST" out of the subject when you
> > decide to bring a conversation back ON-list? :)
>
> AMEN!!

Seconded.  Posting to the list with an "OFFLIST" tag in the subject
line is rather self-contradictory.

> > On 1/31/06, Tom Chappell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >>--- Sai Emrys <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Now we seem to have the bizarre situation where Sai & Jefferson are
> corresponding offlist & indirectly via Tom who then puts it all onlist!

Nutty indeed.  Does Tom really think we wish to watch a flamewar
relayed by a third person go on?

But then, I have been dismissing Tom as a nut case for quite a while
for other reasons - he issues long posts that are harrowing to read
and actually say close to nothing, and his ideas about the way
language works are, well, heterodox.  It didn't last long until I began
to discard his posts unread.

> It reminds me of those situations you sometimes see in comedy, where
> lord & Lady Muck are not talking to one another, but sit at each end of
> a long table and communicate via the butler. The may be funny to watch -
> but for goodness sake, this is getting surreal!

Or rather, all we see is the butler, who walks to and fro between two
off-stage rooms relaying what Lord and Lady Muck have to say to each
other, but each time he returns to the stage, shares the message with
the audience.  It is so bizarre.

> Also the inordinate amount of quoting and non-cutting is making the
> exchanges difficult for me to follow, and I suspect for some others as well.
>
> Cannot we either have a proper exchange onlist, where we exchange views
> *directly* with one another, or keep it is offlist.

As it apparently involves a good deal of flaming (I haven't followed it
lately because it looked rather unproductive - but I did notice Jefferson's
"Good-bye" post), it is better kept out of the list, I'd say.  I don't know
why Tom thinks he has to forward all that dross to all of us.

>       I don't know about
> others - except obviously Mark - but when I see "OFFLIST" in the subject
> line, I expect a private email.

So do I.  It looks somewhat as if these people don't have the slightest clue
of how e-mail works, and think they can force a message into being sent
offlist by adding an "OFFLIST" tag to the subject line.

Greetings,

J�rg.

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Hi!

Ok, frankly, up to now I found this thread mildly funny and did not
take it too seriously.  If you think I'm late, then sorry for
intervening late.

Anyway, this does not seem to stop but instead, quickly get much
worse.  Do we now start accusing arbitrary members of arbitrary
events, of breaking netiquette and we tell the list publicly whose
posts we don't read?  NO!  We neither want a flamewar, nor a relayed
flamewar, nor a meta-flamewar flamewar, nor a civil flamewar.

In case there are more on-topic issues about full-2d writing, please
write them down calmly on a piece of paper, put it somewhere were you
don't find it too quickly, and in case you do find it later, start a
new, good on-topic discussion about it.

In short: stop this thread!

(Remember I have a virtual fire-extinguisher against sources of flames.)

**Henrik

Hi!

I'm currently gathering data for my new long-term project S17, which
will be Latin with Icelandic sound changes.  The conhistory will
probably start around 150~200 AD.  I will probably base the conlang on
the Classical Latin vowel system because it particularly fits the
Proto-Norse vowel inventory better than Late/Vulgar Latin.  The time
frame should be ok for this, but the details have not been worked out
since I'm still learning.

I plan to abuse selectively a few of the Proto-Germanic (PG) >
Proto-Norse (PN) changes to adjust the sounds of Latin to what I need
to run my Grand Master Plan.  Yesterday, I ran into a yet-unanswered
(to me) problem in the Proto-Norse sound system:

I gathered that the possible vowels in the ultimate of Proto-Norse are
the following:

Short:  /a/,
         /e/,
         /i/,
         /u/

Long:   /&:/ (_�_),
         /a:/ (in -_�R_ from PG -_ai~z_),
         /e:/,
         /i:/,
         /o:/,
         /y:/ _iu_

I.e., from a symmetric system, /o/ and /u:/ are missing.

PN does have /u:/, but not in the ultimate according to my data.

My question is: why not?

I understand that there is no /o/ due the shift of IE /o/ > PG /a/
(very few /o/ do occur but they are seldom and not in the ultimate),
and all the others I also understand, but my sources mentioned no
sound shift(s) that would remove a long /u:/ from the ultimate.  Did I
oversee anything?  I mean, it may well just be defective accidentally,
but maybe there's an obvious reason.

If there really is no ultimate /u:/, I will have to think about the
Latin u-declension.  There are several alternatives, but I first
wanted to check out whether my phoneme lists are correct.

Bye,
   Henrik

If anyone would like to take part in a collaborative conlanging project,
there's one going on at http://artlangs.com at the moment. It's a
triconsonantal language with a split-S noun system.

Pete

Hi!

I seem to have misphrased my words.

I clearly also disapprove the use of wrong tags in the subject line.

Using the word 'arbitrary' was meant to be a general, maybe
exaggerated description of the thread's current contents.  I am sorry
if that was misunderstood.

Those people who said that 'OFFTOPIC' is a no-no word in a subject
line of posts on the list, are in fact, very right and should not feel
addressed by my words.

Instead, I felt the ongoing relayed off-topic discussion too much (as
many of you, too) and of course, people on the list complained (quite
rightly so).  That discussion should stop.

Moreover, today I read unrelated flaming and *arbitrary* personal
disapproval of list members' style of writing that I found totally
unnecessary.

I hope we can move on now.  For further questions, you may always
contact me privately, of course.

   **Henrik

I was studying Greek's orthography a bit, and I realised that although
it seems to have the letters for voiced stops (beta, gamma, delta) it
seems to be using the combination (nasal+unvoiced plosive), as in "nt"
for "d".  Why is it doing this, or is it just for transliterated
words?

staving veritosproject:
>I was studying Greek's orthography a bit, and I realised that although
>it seems to have the letters for voiced stops (beta, gamma, delta) it
>seems to be using the combination (nasal+unvoiced plosive), as in "nt"
>for "d".  Why is it doing this, or is it just for transliterated
>words?

Classical Greek voiced stops underwent sound change to fricatives, hence
beta, gamma and delta are pronounced [v] [G] and [D] in Modern Greek.

Does anyone know exactly when this took place?

Pete

veritosproject@... wrote:
> I was studying Greek's orthography a bit, and I realised that although
> it seems to have the letters for voiced stops (beta, gamma, delta) it
> seems to be using the combination (nasal+unvoiced plosive), as in "nt"
> for "d".  Why is it doing this, or is it just for transliterated
> words?

To answer the last question: "No, it is not".

But there is a clearly confusion in the above. It is _modern Greek_ that
uses |nt| to transcribe [d] in borrows words, and in modern Greek beta,
gamma and delta are *not* voiced plosives, they are voiced fricatives.

In ancient Greek, when beta, gamma and delta were voiced plosives; then
foreign [d] was indeed written with just plain ol' delta. So the Latin
_denarius_ [de:narIUs] becomes δηνάριος (denarios), and in the
Septuagint the Hebrew name David becomes Δαυΐδ (Dauid) with delta at the
beginning and end.

Interestingly, however, in the New Testament David's name gets written
as Δαβίδ (Dabid) which suggests the shift of beta from /b/ --> /v/ was
already underway. Certainly by the 4th cent CE, the shift of the voiced
plosives to voiced fricatives seems to have become general. (The NT
transcription also seems to me to suggest that the change of Hebrew vau
from [w] to the modern [v] was also underway - but I leave that to
others more knowledgeable than I about Hebrew to comment on if they wish  ;)

The Classical Greek alphabet (actually the Ionian alphabet as adopted at
Athens in the 5th cent BCE) had symbols for _three_ series of plosive
consonants: aspirated voiceless, unaspirated voiceless, (unaspirated)
voiced.

During the Hellenistic period, the aspirated voiceless plosives were
shifting to voiceless fricatives, while the voiced plosives (as I have
said above) were shifting to voiced fricatives. These changes seem to
have become general by the 4th cent CE and were certainly the Byzantine
pronunciation and remain the modern pronunciation.

Modern Greek has only _one_ plosive series, represented by tau, pi and
kappa. They are normally voiceless, but are non-phonemically voiced
after nasals. Thus "the father" is [opa'tera] if nominative, but
[to(m)ba'tera] if accusative. The dialects vary in the treatment of
mu-pi, some say [mb] others just [b]. For that reason, the convention is
to use mu-pi to transcribe [b] in words of foreign origin. A useful
thing for tourists to recognize is ΜΠΑΡ (mpar) = 'bar'    :)

The _modern_ (not ancient) convention is to transcribe foreign [d] as
_nt_, [b] and _mp_ and [g] as _gk_ (remembering that gamma before a
velar denotes /N/ in both the ancient & modern spellings). Finally, it
might be added that the phonemic status of [d], [b] and [g] in modern
Greek is controversial.

I hope this helps.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@...
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

On 2/2/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Thus "the father" is [opa'tera] if nominative, but
> [to(m)ba'tera] if accusative.

Minor quibble: [opa'teras]. (Unless you're speaking Graeca sine flexione.)
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

staving R A Brown:

>During the Hellenistic period, the aspirated voiceless plosives were
>shifting to voiceless fricatives, while the voiced plosives (as I have
>said above) were shifting to voiced fricatives. These changes seem to have
>become general by the 4th cent CE and were certainly the Byzantine
>pronunciation and remain the modern pronunciation.

Presumably the aspirate => voiceless fricative sound change went through an
affricate stage, eg
[t_h] => [th] => [tT] => [T]

Is there any evidence of the affricate stage?

Pete

Hi,

I've been lurking for many months, rare forays excepted.  Now it's not even fun to lurk here any more.

Bye,

Shaul.

Hi Shaul!

Shaul writes:
> Hi,
> I've been lurking for many months, rare forays excepted.  Now it's not
> even fun to lurk here any more.
> Bye,
> Shaul.

This is really sad. :-(

So we're annoying and driving away old members.  I really hope that
the discussions move back to interesting conlang topics.

**Henrik

Philip Newton wrote:
> On 2/2/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>
>>Thus "the father" is [opa'tera] if nominative, but
>>[to(m)ba'tera] if accusative.
>
>
> Minor quibble: [opa'teras].

Absolutely correct! Thanks for pointing it out.

>(Unless you're speaking Graeca sine flexione.)

Ah, but then the definite article wouldn't change either   ;)
=================================

Peter Bleackley wrote:
[snip]
  > Presumably the aspirate => voiceless fricative sound change went through
  > an affricate stage, eg
  > [t_h] => [th] => [tT] => [T]

I don't think there is any need for the affricate stage, IIRC similar
shifts from [th] --> [T] have occurred elsewhere, certainly in the
Celtic langs during the course of their evolution.

  > Is there any evidence of the affricate stage?

No - this does not preclude it, of course, but one might have expected
occasional spellings of |ts| - /ts/ was not a permitted combo in
Classical Greek (tho it is common enough in the modern language), so the
spelling would be unambiguous. But the affricate theory would also imply
that /k_h/ shifted first to  [kx] and /p_h/ shifted first to [pf]. The
latter could clearly be shown in Latin spellings - it is not.

There is some evidence (by no means certain) that the shift to fricative
sound may have started in some dialects as early as the classical period
- but this is controversial. But graffiti & other evidence shows it was
certainly underway by the end of the 1st cent BCE.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@...
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

On 2/2/06, Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:
> If anyone would like to take part in a collaborative conlanging project,
> there's one going on at http://artlangs.com at the moment. It's a
> triconsonantal language with a split-S noun system.

It took some poking around to find it since I'd
not been to artlangs.com before -- it's under
"Forums" > Collaborative Conworld > Collab Lang.
Also, until I created a user account it would only
show me the first message posted in any thread.
After I created an account and logged in I suddenly
saw all the other messages in each thread.

It looks potentially interesting.  I'll read the threads
so far and maybe contribute something.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/conlang.htm

Most of the languages I'm familiar with have just one conjunction
to introduce a subordinate clause, whether that clause is the
subject or the object of the verb in the main clause.  E.g.,

It's interesting that you mention that.
[= "you mention that"-NOM is interesting]

He didn't know that you were coming.
[He-NOM know-NEG "you were coming"-ACC]

English also has another conjunction "whether"
to introduce subordinate clauses with non-indicative
mood (if that's the right term).  Esperanto behaves
roughly the same way with "ke" and "cxu", except
that it doesn't require a dummy subject in the main
clause when the ke/cxu subordinate clause is
the subject of the main verb.

Estas interese, ke vi mencias tion.

Li ne sciis, ke ve venos.

In gj�-zym-byn I recently decided that the old way of
introducing a subordinate clause that's the subject
of the main verb or head of an adjective was clunky,
and I needed a new conjunction.

zqe  miq-i  huw-fwa    nxiqn-i, hoqnx kq ty-o    runx-zox ler tq tu-i.
this TOP-at happy-CAUS CMT-at   that  1  home-to go-V.ACT FUT 2  AGT-at

Estas felicxige, ke vi venos al mia hejmo.

It makes [me] happy that you are coming to my home.

This required a dummy forward-reference pronoun "zqe"
in the main clause to be the topic of "huw-fwa".  I added
"dxoqnx" as a conjunction syntactically similar to "hoqnx",
but a clause introduced by "dxoqnx" is the subject (usually topic)
of the main verb while a clause introduced by "hoqnx" is
the object of the main verb (usually object-of-perception
rather than patient or result).

E.g.,

huw-fwa    nxiqn-i, dxoqnx kq ty-o    runx-zox ler tq tu-i.
happy-CAUS CMT-at   that   1  home-to go-V.ACT FUT 2  AGT-at

means the same thing, but is terser by several syllables.

Do any natlangs y'all know of have a similar distinction
in their subordinate-clause conjunctions?  Can you think
of other case-role distinctions that might be made in
clausal conjunctions?

(This isn't in the online gzb grammar yet.)

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/esp.htm

As a tone-deaf 'Murkin, I have some questions on tone languages,
especially Mandarin.

First, is there still phrasal intonation, as we have in English,
providing a sort of overall tone arc limiting the range within which
the individual tones operate?

Second, do linguistically-untrained/naive native speakers of toned
languages recognize the relationship between differently-toned
versions of the "same" vowel?  That is, does a Mandarin speaker, even
before encountering Pinyin spelling, automatically recognize that a1
and a2 are variations on a common theme?  Or do they hear them as
utterly distinct and require that the relationship be pointed out,
like that between /b/ and /p/ in English?

Thanks!


--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

> So we're annoying and driving away old members.  I really hope that
> the discussions move back to interesting conlang topics.
>

/delurk

I certainly find the discussions here interesting, although I don't
read all of them. I learn a little something new everyday.

It seems to me that this is by natura an intimidating list. The level
of knowledge of most of the regular posters is pretty high, so I don't
feel like I have much to contribute. When I have contributed, I've
been pretty bluntly corrected. I didn't feel insulted or brushed-off,
but I can see how someone might.

(I know that the way people communicate on many forums I'm a member of
would be seen as rude or hostile to people who aren't used to it.
Wasn't there an article on this passed around a while ago?)

It might do for some of the posters here to remember that some of us
are just learning, not used to lists like this, or both. It can be
easy to forget and assume that everyone is on the same page as you
are, so to speak.

--
kutsuwamushi
BEWARE OF GMAIL

Hi!

Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> writes:
>...
> Do any natlangs y'all know of have a similar distinction in their
> subordinate-clause conjunctions?  Can you think of other case-role
> distinctions that might be made in clausal conjunctions?

Maybe Japanese?  I don't know it good enough, though.

I perceive 'that' not as marking case on clauses, but as transforming
a clause into a noun phrase.  Put this way, the clausal noun phrase is
still unmarked for case, yes, and the difference is only maybe one of
view.  IIRC, Japanese then adds case markers after the conjunction.

Further, I think most case roles are possible.  E.g. some German
dialects indeed introduce subordinate clauses with prepositions, and
English can also do so:

    Ich hab  die S�ge f�r ein Loch in den Tisch zu machen.
    I   have the saw  for a   hole in the table to make.
    'I have the saw for making a hole in the table.

Even together with 'that' some dialects allow this.  E.g.
_f�r_ 'for' is used in the sense of 'in order to':

    Ich esse  f�r da�  ich satt   werde.
    I   eat   for that I   filled get.
    'I eat in order to not be hungry anymore.'

In Qthyn|gai, I abstracted this view by allowing case markers on
verbs.  The subordinate clause's verb is marked for the clause's
function in the matrix clause.  (Agent/patient roles are not
dependent-marked, so they are marked on the verb of the matrix clause,
but nevertheless, this is distinguished.)

Da M�tz se Basa, being a posteriori Modern German, works similar by
allowing any preposition together with 'that'.

**Henrik
-- Relay 13 is running:
http://www.conlang.info/relay/relay13.html

Mark --

Those are really interesting questions.  I'm learning
Mandarin currently and their phrases don't use tone
for inflection or have an overall tonal arc like in
English.  I can't answer your second question exactly,
but I would say they do realize the similarities
because tones can be confused and some words are
exactly the same, such as the word "lu" for deer and
road -- it has the same tone and can only be
distinguished with a measure word ("tiao" for road and
I'm blanking on the word for deer right now).  I have
a native Mandarin speaking conversation partner, I
could ask her and see what she says.

                       -- Erika

--- "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> wrote:

> As a tone-deaf 'Murkin, I have some questions on
> tone languages,
> especially Mandarin.
>
> First, is there still phrasal intonation, as we have
> in English,
> providing a sort of overall tone arc limiting the
> range within which
> the individual tones operate?
>
> Second, do linguistically-untrained/naive native
> speakers of toned
> languages recognize the relationship between
> differently-toned
> versions of the "same" vowel?  That is, does a
> Mandarin speaker, even
> before encountering Pinyin spelling, automatically
> recognize that a1
> and a2 are variations on a common theme?  Or do they
> hear them as
> utterly distinct and require that the relationship
> be pointed out,
> like that between /b/ and /p/ in English?
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
>


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