October 2004 Weblog

October 2004 Weblog

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This Month's Posts: How Not To · Lector Hector · Spellbound · Rosy Fields of Conlangs · Strange Fish · Labial Majority · Folks & Yolks · Building on Oðblgshezi · Sounding out a Phonology · Liff, the Universe & Everything · Pro & Con Genitive · Suite Sixteen · Beyond Compare · Kali-sise Class in Session · Don't be Shocked by the Tone of my Voice · Kiss Kiss Say: Kali-sise Grammar Updated · At the Sound of the Tone · Home-Spoozle Language · Logging More Loglangs

Next Month's Entries

How Not To - 10/30/04 - 12:20 pm

With National Novel Writing Month almost upon us, maybe some times it is easier to learn how not to do something than how to do it: check how not to write a bestselling fantasy novel (link courtesy of Fantasist's Scroll). Since that article only touches on languages, this would make a good companion piece to it: how not to create a language.

Lector Hector - 10/28/04 - 3:55 pm

John Hui writes, "I am very impressed with your website and its list of science-fiction books. I am particularly interested in the following book on your website: Linguistics And Language In Science Fiction/Fantasy. Do you have any idea where I can get this book? Amazon does not have it."

Actually, David Solly deserves the credit. He contributed his Bibliotheca Sagittari to the site, which listed 141 of the ~180 books now in the directory. Out of all the directories we maintain, the Books/Media directory has the fewest contributions from others. Please take a moment to add one of your favorite novels featuring a conlang.

You can find copies of the book from these sites.

Spellbound - 10/27/04 - 3:24 pm

GoldDust53kt writes, "This question may sound stupid, but I must know the answer. In a language that has a written form, will sound change affect spelling? For example, if /p/ changes to /t/ would the word 'pala' turn into to 'tala' or would 'pala' be spelled the same, but pronounced /tala/? Thank you for your time."

Well, the answer is up to you, depending on what makes sense for your conculture.

Maybe, for your language's speakers, spellings aren't standardized. For instance, speakers of English in Shakespeare's day were lax about how they spelled their own names, let alone others: Shackespeare, Shackespere, Shackspeare, Shackspere, Shakespear, Shakespeare, Shakespere, Shakspeare, Shakspere, Shaxspere and Shexpere have all been attested multiple times among Shakespeare's contemporaries.

Alternatively, maybe the spelling is more important than the pronunciation: the word we spell cupboard is pronounced /kubberd/, nation is pronounced /nash@n/. And the English -ti- is a good example: it is almost always pronounced /-sh-/ these days, though it was once pronounced /-ti-/. Similarly, in hiragana, the symbol that stood for /si/ now stands for /shi/, as the sound has changed but the symbol hasn't.

So you can the answer the question as you desire: either the spelling is bound to the sound, to an approximation of the sound or to the historic sound. Do as you wish!

Rosy Fields of Conlangs - 10/26/04 - 4:14 pm

If you haven't checked out any of Mark Rosenfelder's conlangs, you're missing out on some of the most meticulously detailed languages on the Web. If you are new to Mark's languages, start out with Verdurian, #64 of the Top 100 Conlangs by popularity. Verduria is a country in the world of Almea, for which Mark has created many conlangs. If you've seen Mark's languages before, then check out Axunain, begun in 1994 but just recently posted to Zompist.com.

Strange Fish - 10/25/04 - 4:37 pm

The Múra-Pirahã language, spoken by the 150 members of the Pirahã people in Brazil, is a unique language, with the smallest known phonology (10 sounds) and without many grammatical features that were considered "universal" (common to all human languages). No wonder professional linguists have attacked the language like piranha.

Wikipedia also says, "The culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory."

From an evolutionary standpoint, it is clear that speakers of Pirahã are at a dramatic disadvantage compared to cultures that do prize history (see Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies) - those other cultures can learn from the distant past, where speakers of Pirahã don't have that opportunity.

This makes me wonder if Pirahã is the coelacanth of human languages. Once many human languages were like Pirahã, but their speakers were wiped out or assimilated by speakers of more modern languages. Then this strange fish of a language was pulled out of the Amazon basin, offering us a glimpse into what the distant past of human language may have looked like.

Labial Majority - 10/24/04 - 4:24 pm

Sprogisc wrote, "I found this site about a year ago, and it got me started on conlanging. It has been a very satisfying hobby for me, although I am just now beginning to thoroughly formalize my disconnected ideas into my first conlang. However, I have a question that I think you might have the human resources to answer. Are there any living languages in which there are no labials? I would like to create my conlang without labials, but I think that this might be unnatural in a language, since labials are so easy to make, especially for infants. Of course, I could go ahead and do it anyway, but I want to make my conlang believable. Some guidance, please?"

I'm glad Langmaker played a small part in getting you started in this hobby. I couldn't find any languages in UPSID without labials, bilabials or labialized sounds. But that doesn't mean there isn't one -- it's just not one in the UPSID database.

Folks & Yolks - 10/23/04 - 5:21 pm

Recently I've found myself answering questions about Dublex from four different people.

On CONLANG-L, Henrik Theiling wrote, "Have a look at the lexicon of Jeffrey's Kali-sise, which has 400 roots but an enormously large lexicon with compounds. It's a similar system, but more elaborate and not pidgin. Actually, Kali-sise has a lexicon that large that it blows my head off. When did Jeffrey have the time to do that??"

Kali-sise is based on the Dublex compounding system, which was a collaborative effort supported by many visitors to this site and CONLANG subscribers. There's an Excel spreadsheet that will allow you to enter 400 roots and have your own compounds generated.

As for finding the time, the average American watches 4 hours of TV a day: as an unaverage American, I only watch sporting events (my "reality TV"!) and some kid shows, so on average I watch a half hour of TV a day (which most weeks is just a 3.5-hour football game). I try to spend at least 15 minutes a day on Langmaker.com, and then odd moments as I find them on my own conlangs -- at least an evening a week. My other time-saver is that I have automated Langmaker.com, so it is no longer tedious to maintain. (Of course, since first writing this, I've just watched 35 hours of baseball this past week, but the Red Sox beating the Yankees for the pennant can't be considered an average week!)

In the same thread, Trebor Jung said, "I am not insulting Dublex, Jeffrey; I like that project and would definitely be disappointed if you ever scrapped it!"

It will never be scrapped; in fact, inspired by the Lojban etymological dictionary, I placed the Dublex materials in the public domain, which means I renounce all copyright to it and anyone can use it however they wish. Dublex is intended as a framework that others can use to develop their own languages. As an example, I've used it in such a way with Kali-sise.

BPJ asks, "How come there are no verbs in the Dublex Lexical Outline?"

Because Dublex, like most of my languages, derives all other parts of speech, including verbs, from nouns.

Sally Caves and I corresponded about Dublex as well.

Hi, Jeffrey... I love pig for "buttock"
Me: I liked it too -- pronounced /peeg/. But it's become /galuta/ in the unnamed eclectic stepchild of Dublex I'm working on these days.
Sally: How interesting... it's gallohs in Teonaht: /ga'luS/. Timgalohs for both of them. :) And I borrowed vov for "egg" in Teonaht.
Me: That's great! I'm glad you liked it. The word vov was a pictograph to me as well:
vOv - an egg in a bird's nest
Sally: Yes. But it also has a very round sound!

Let me wrap up by egging you on to create a language using Dublex compounds.

Building on Oðblgshezi - 10/23/04 - 2:16 pm

Thanks to Kirsten Roche for suggesting LEGO for Oðblgshezi (Calculator Words), a subset of English words that can be spelled upside-down on a calculator. I added LEGOES and LEGOS as well.

LEGO 0.637
LEGOES 530637
LEGOS 50637

Lego®, by the way, is a truncation of the Danish leg godt, "play well", not -- as is sometimes claimed -- a borrowing of the Latin lego, "I gather".

Sounding out a Phonology - 10/20/04 - 3:46 pm

Play Those Funky Jams says, "I am a big fan of Langmaker, and I was wondering if you could give me some advice for developing sound in a conlang. I'm trying to make mine smooth, like French or Arabic."

Arabic is smooth sounding? I don't really have an ear for good phonologies. In fact, And Rosta, author of Livagian, just reacted to one of my vowel systems by saying, "Ouch! The asymmetry is picturesque but palpably painful." So I'd recommend you consult the good folks of CONLANG-L, who revel in phonologies. I do have an essay from 1996 you can check out that addresses this very issue: Emulating Tolkien.

Liff, the Universe & Everything - 10/13/04 - 1:05 pm

Regarding Douglas Adams's definition Aasleagh, Coolbeans_uh_02 asks, "Actually it is originally derived from Gaelic and is the name of a waterfall in the county of Mayo in Ireland...so doesn't that disqualify it from being a neologism???"

While you are right that the word Aasleagh is of ancient origin, what is neo about this neologism is its post-Cana definition: "A liqueur made only for drinking at the end of a revoltingly long bottle party when all the drinkable drink has been drunk." In fact, what distinguishes Adams' book The Deeper Meaning of Liff: A Dictionary of Things That There Aren't Any Words for Yet from Rich Hall's Sniglets (Snig'lit : Any Word That Doesn't Appear in the Dictionary, But Should) is that all the words in Liff are place names given new meanings.

Pro & Con Genitive - 10/12/04 - 1:02 pm

David J. Peterson writes,

You mentioned that you eliminated the genitive case because it's not a core case. While I agree with your reasoning for the purposes of Minhyan, you should know it's not that simple. The genitive is the one thing that continues to puzzle linguists--so much so that it's all but ignored (this probably has a lot to do with the fact that everyone's a syntactician in America, and morphology, typology and historical linguistics are all but taboo).

The thing is, the genitive shows up as a core case in just about every language that has it (i.e., it's treated more like the nominative and accusative as opposed to, say, the prepositional, ablative, etc.). There's no real reason why it should, though, and in this your logic is sound, and many others have said as much. But the fact remains that the genitive seems to constantly participate in VPs (Verb Phrases) in unexpected ways. For example, the genitive will often mark a direct object (usually only a certain type--it's never the main method for marking a direct object), and sometimes even the subject of a sentence, for a certain class of verbs (this is true of Latin). Further, once you've left the main clause, the genitive is frequently used to mark the subject or object (or both) of an embedded VP. Take English, for example:
I ate the cake.
I beat the man in a race.
My eating of the cake was appreciated by all.
The man's beating in the big race was witnessed by all.
The one part of this that actually has interested syntacticians is the uncanny resemblance an NP bears to a sentence as a whole. Most languages can take an entire verbal sentence (like "I ate the cake") and turn it into an NP using the genitive or some kind of possessive construction (like "My eating of the cake"). It's really a sticky issue that hasn't gotten enough attention, and I think what's behind it is the question: Are one's actions one's own?

Suite Sixteen - 10/11/04 - 10:24 pm

I extended the Kali-sise lessons to sixteen. I also corrected an error in the first ten lessons: A number followed by an adjective should be translated as an ordinal not cardinal number, since the genitive marker ta is required to count objects.

nu-sese lene-kalane
one-six learning+communication-unit
the sixteenth lesson

nu-sese ta lene-kalane
one-six GEN learning+communication-unit
sixteen lessons

Beyond Compare - 10/11/04 - 11:35 am

While writing lessons for Kali-sise, I added one word to the language, a particle to handle comparisons and to take the role of prepositional phrases of location. The particle pa can also be modified to more precisely specify the nature of the comparison.

Pa lepeti pi. "There is a greater reptile."
Sili pa lepeti pi. "The reptile is greater than the bird."
Sili tuna-pa lepeti pi. "The reptile is bigger than the bird." (Literally: "The reptile is big in comparison to the bird".)
Sili lete-pa lepeti pi. "The reptile is smaller than the bird." (Literally: "The reptile is little in comparison to the bird".)
Sili tupe-pa lepeti pi. "The reptile is atop the bird." (Literally: "The reptile is top in comparison to the bird".)

Kali-sise Class in Session - 10/10/04 - 10:57 pm

Well, in 22 years of conlanging, I've never created a primer for any of my languages. It's something I've been wanting to do for a year or two now, and I finally decided to write some lessons for Kali-sise. The first ten Kali-sise lessons are now up.

Don't be Shocked by the Tone of my Voice - 10/09/04 - 3:36 pm

David J. Peterson, editor of the Neologisms section, chimes in:

I noticed the question about tone and pitch-accent systems. If it helps, I can offer a few of my own pages:
Here's a description of the pitch-accent system of Njaama. It shouldn't be that difficult to understand for the non-linguist.
Additionally, for Sheli, a language I'm working on that's supposed to be an actual tone language, I have two pages that describe how the tone system evolved and how it's used presently. I'm less linguistically certain about these pages than that of the pitch-accent system, but they serve my purposes nicely. Anyone, for someone who doesn't know anything about tone, it might be a kind of soft introduction from the point of view of created languages.

Well, if pitch accent or tones are your new weapon of choice in your battle to construct a language, I encourage you to check out David's pages

Kiss Kiss Say: Kali-sise Grammar Updated - 10/08/04 - 1:05 pm

I did another translation relay for Kali-sise. As much as I try not to, I'm compelled to expand the grammar with each translation exercise [link to past exercises; can't post the new one until everyone else in the relay finishes]. The case markers and syntax have never changed, but this time I found I had to clarify the clause markers and verbs. I don't think I modified the language this time so much as better explained it. I did add a section on acronyms, inspired by an old Dublex practice but changed a bit. PUKU!

At the Sound of the Tone - 10/07/04 - 2:05 pm

GoldDust53kt asks, "What can you tell me about tone? I don't understand how this would sound. I found out about it on the Language Construction Kit website, but it didn't help me much. I also don't understand pitch-accent languages either. I have no knowledge of languages that use tone or pitch-accents. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks."

This is hard to describe in writing. Instead, check out the UCLA Phonetics Lab's recordings and collection of tones. For pitch accent they don't have as much, but check out the Japanese morae. "Thanks for calling. Your message is important to us."

Home-Spoozle Language - 10/05/04 - 8:33 am

John Harper writes, "I'm working on a simple conlang to use with my children to introduce them to language concepts in a home-school situation. I would like the language to be as simple as possible to learn yet very fun. I would like to use words that are inherently funny sounding, like spoozle or narf narf but have run out of ideas. Do you know of any significant lists of funny words, other than just ten or twelve entries? I think I could hijack the grammar from Toki Pona, but if you have any other suggestions, please let me know."

I'd raid Dr. Seuss books for some good ideas for funny words. And you can generate more by taking English words of Anglo-Saxon vintage and ~~tweaking~~ "queaking" them (for example!).

As for grammars, remember: one source is plagiarism, and two sources is research! I'd check out the Kali-sise grammar and the Ta Ti grammar for ideas.

Good luck! I hope you post your language to the Web one day and let us know about it.

Logging More Loglangs - 10/04/04 - 9:05 am

Thanks to Claudio Gnoli for asking me to incorporate his directory of logical languages into the loglang directory here. I added four languages and reclassified or expanded the profiles of five others. Please make sure to check out his own loglang, Liva.

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