Conlangery #33: Suprasegmentals

Conlangery #33: Suprasegmentals

Published: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 17:00:38 +0000 \

Content from the Conlangery Podcast is licenced as Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share-Alike. You are free to copy, distribute, remix, and create derivative works from the show, so long as you give attribution, your work is not commercial in nature, and you also use a the same license on your own product. The same licence therefore applies to the following transcript.

Transcript

utterance-id1 and then ah <unk> <unk> and the fifth wheel [noise] welcome to <unk> restricted languages and the people who created them i'm towards barley [noise] over in england we have the lovely bianca banged up [noise] no no no richard oh [noise] even i didn't nowadays [laughter] out there richardson and you we also have ah the indispensable william anna hello yes who is speaking in a very awkward awkward leah central voice [noise] right well i've been practicing different phone nation types for today's episodes so yes indeed that is that is uh that is what we're talking about we're talking about uh super <unk> which includes nation types it includes also um <unk> whole bunch of things basically so if you're not totally familiar with the term uh a segment is one individual sound like if you're looking at <unk> sure inscription each ah segment would be like one of the <unk> symbols in a row and then uh super sick mental is something that you apply on <unk> on top of a segment that sort of changes either the just um the that segment or an entire syllable or something right hey <unk> she has a lot get actual speech <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> just a stray they put little <unk> and you see the ten moments actually speak not famous bite south [laughter] which is fine but i'll say okay well yeah it's truly the sounds always blended into each other and such and [noise] i like to <unk> a little bit of that might be relevant as we get into our discussion if we talk a little bit about ten of genesis but that's kind of take this step by step blame you got budget notes here what [noise] what can you tell us about all the different super segment <unk> well i guess the first thing i want to mention is that in any given language all the things are going to discuss today can either be phoney make or condition or both [noise] yeah so you might have a language that has tone but one of the tones might have some different phone asian type [noise] you might have <unk> that always happens when the word has a <unk> with a nasal confidence or it might not [noise] so there's all sorts of different combinations year which we probably don't have time to elaborate on so i just wanted to mentioned that is to keep that at the front of your mind um i remember seeing on we can <unk> uh the viable charged for language that had long battles short vowels they could be either nasal creaky voice or boats and all that and that was here but that was uh no no that was from a previous episode um but at the point is all of those were funny make the contrast mattered so with that i guess do we want to start with stress yes well yeah that's uh it seems like a logical place to start so stresses uh sort of a weird thing 'cause it affects a syllable right but also they're short of a stress powder over an entire word and most like right that use it at least um and what counts distress can be different from language to language english and a lot of western european languages are the ones that have stress at all or the word level [noise] have a combination of intensity that is volume and pitch so the english stress accident has a pitch component to it most of the time yeah it's sort of uh of falling town isn't it [noise] i honestly have no idea i'm sure it's different in different circumstances yeah my voice hours probably i don't [laughter] bianca was flabbergasted by the idea [laughter] [noise] well um and i'm like okay then you might high like like um for me i think of ancient greek invaded but um some languages i always forget if it's checker serbian i think it's check has a <unk> accent and either <unk> which i also always confused kinda big jackson in that case the quote unquote stress syllable happens at a higher pitch um than the other <unk> and the word <unk> [laughter] yes yeah right um what's interesting to notice about languages with a pitch accent is usually what's happening is throughout the course of the word the pitchers slowly going up until you get to the accented syllable and then how you recognized the accent is that the following symbol syllable has a down step is less than the it's not that the syllable vowel is pronounce it higher pitched in the previous syllable instead it's higher than the following syllable [noise] yes i think i heard about that happening in japanese which is uh <unk> right right which has a pitch accents system which i've never fully understood from a theoretical standpoint mhm so see i always kind of in my mind to inflate pitch accent with two tone system so you different yeah mm i'm not uh i i maybe i i i suppose i may be wrong on that so yeah that's sometimes people say oh ancient greek had to had to pick your accent system like chinese [laughter] yes um actually no nothing but how could you write a book [laughter] [laughter] so so beyond just making a joke that i'm sure other <unk> appreciate earlier this week i was in a bookstore and there was the whole post christmas craziness and some slightly distracted mother is walking through the store with her two children and she was saying sort of distracted leap well he doesn't speak english and wonder if your daughter's young very reasonably said how does he writes books yeah anyway it's none of this has anything to do with what we're talking about people understand that in jokes so ignoring for the moment pitch accent mhm another issue of stress is into discussion is a language might be described as stress timed syllable timed or more of a timed now this is an interesting distinction to make and seems intuitively obvious for some languages and yet once you go into the lab and tried to find a proof about what's going on it becomes very slippery both like <unk> <unk> right and there and one or two languages that destroy our concept of what a syllable is any way so somehow like which is yeah um now i remember reading i may try to find this for the show notes i remember reading uh sort of a post on language law where one of the the uh loggers there actually sort of um positive that may be stress timing syllable time art don't really exist but we have sort of the illusion they exist because different languages have syllable structures that cause sort of like a lot of people will think of spanish as a syllable time language <unk> spanish also has a fairly restrictive syllable structure so all the cell phones are roughly the same like that anyway um okay maybe i mean it it occurred to me and thinking about this that there might be a chicken or a problem so let's explain what these terms mean a little bit more in a syllable timed language the idea is that each syllable takes about the same time to say yeah you get a machine gun effect is what the the paper the first paper that describes distinction called it the second one stress timed means that the duration of time from stress to stress is approximately the same the idea is that um the the analogy he used was morse code sound right from stress distressed you might have a different number of syllables between [noise] and then uh more of a time languages something like japanese or ancient greek where you have um long vowels short vowels um open syllabus enclosed syllables are all time differently and so you get a rhythm there that has to do with your your the vowels determine the rhythm not um stress really yeah more or is almost like a sub syllable language component or something right one more ah is one short vote will typically a more as a unit of syllable direction yeah right of hours one more uh uh <unk> is another more ah a long <unk> tomorrow so yeah um and then it appears to be a genuine right it sounds kind of theoretical but there are poetic systems on the planet that to help these distinctions become clear unreal because for example in or do short syllable along syllable and an extra long syllable are all handled the difference in the meter so listeners can attend to to the distinction mhm same thing with hike ooh that's true um it's very interesting this this idea of sort of syllable versus uh more a because both of them are sort of abstract things that there's no you you you can't find any like real physical thing too attached to them too it's it's not um like people have tried to actually find a physical or uh phonetic uh way of distinguishing syllables and that doesn't work well it doesn't work universally um i saw a paper <unk> one guy suggested listen we just need to to cope with definitions of both syllables and words that are as spectra we just have to realize that the definition is going to be fuzzy and the different languages are going to realize things differently because clearly there's something rio to speakers about syllables yeah words because if you ask them to say things very slowly certain kinds of slow distorted speech they make are going to follow along certain kinds of boundaries naturally even for non linguist so there's something going on there even if linguists don't know what it is [noise] so the only reason i brought all of his up was because stress to time languages in front of the time being would just assume that that phrase actually means something and <unk> yeah [noise] it's stress timing seems to be associated with vowels being tortured in english your stress the bowels get their food quality and an stressed about wills are reduced yes my this is a happy life as many people around the wild right spelling nightmare [laughter] right if everything's out you know what about what you're supposed to spell the word with exactly like super stick mental [laughter] you know good luck unless you happen to you know no the the the combination [laughter] so russian does this um biblical hebrew it's my favorite example of this because you could keep adding stuff fixes to hebrew verbs and each new suffix would pull <unk> stress accent along and it would cause collapse of all the bottles upstream in the word [laughter] there are lots of ways of riding <unk> lake sounds in hebrew and i'm pretty sure that the word schwab comes to us from hebrew in fact <unk> possible oh yes <unk> from german from hebrew shaw right now ah um [noise] so we talked about this a little [noise] excuse me we talked about this little bit with much sun wear different <unk> different grammatical processes added new things the word caused a stress shift which also caused changes and bought was all over the place um apparently um this reduction can be conditioned so in mexican spanish and an stressed about we'll near an s. sound might be reduced but not otherwise that's interesting i've never heard any reduction in any form of spanish but that may be because my ears are biased or something [laughter] sure um and [noise] ah what was going to say and it's <unk> yet another case where we're dealing with the spectrum where stress time to versus syllable timed is not you know switch yes or no it's yes we have a little bit or we have a great deal of it mhm [noise] um so i think that's that's quite a bit about um stress to really be talking about um what one thing i might want to mention is that um sort of it the word level you often have a primary and secondary stress in particularly long words this happens in english oh have stressed at all then yet that's possible yes um you don't necessarily have to have stress obviously i think a lot of tonal language just don't have any stress component um yeah sometimes uh linguist getting arguments about that but my guess is is very often they do not mhm ah so you don't even need stress but you know it's sort of it's almost it's not quite a binary decision between stress in town maybe but it's close to it you know um what was i gonna say so yes if you have a stress accent [noise] and you decide that you're gonna use stress timing then you need to consider the possibility that bottles will be tortured has an accent move i've always wanted to do that put it into one of my <unk> [laughter] i was planning on it [noise] i think i would have a hard time i don't usually create languages that do that i have this love of toned languages so uh i don't do as dress very often um i think it'd be tough you'd really need to sit down and think about that a while that flat and <unk> they get out there for <unk> uh-huh you have to you have to figure out how exactly reduced things 'cause like um usually things sort of centralized either they go to trial or they go to something a little bit more central yeah but also there's also the example of uh in some dialects of english e. and and uh a going to <unk> i do that yeah yeah and in russia and you have this important distinction between <unk> and i assume um that this affect sweat the reduced <unk> oh probably yeah i'm i'm i'm sure that i've just been so long since i've moved a russian that i hesitate to say anything you could probably that says that of a lot of these sounds that tend to screw with vowels and the first place like i have no doubt that again i have no <unk> pure quotas for this but i have no doubt that uh the that you've <unk> probably messed with what what reviewed reduced vows end up being so i can say that that's actually true having studied some languages those drag them around like crazy and um <unk> at least i'd get it yes <unk> exactly yeah they can [noise] the 'cause i know that i knew that sort of viewers drag around valves in general just because of the the need to move your tongue around yes uh but uh no that's dressed accent [laughter] yeah that's that's uh that that that ended up being a fairly big part of that that this topic but yeah there's a lot of other so well you you have the list of nation types here i love this so um [noise] <unk> voice is the default normal speaking voice used by me [laughter] [laughter] used by both english speaking people it's like it's true for people all over the planet because <unk> it's not true um <unk> mode of life is a slice <unk> really and and <unk> and <unk> [laughter] but yeah um and these <unk> these voicing types it all has to do with how you are holding your vocal cords and how much you're vibrating them and um tension in the larynx can be involved with some of these as well so so so we all know voice voice list but let's right well i don't know some some people may not realize that there are plenty of languages that deep voice their vowels <unk> uh i know japanese does yes japanese so it looks it sounds like two in english speaker deaths but really it's death right there's your <unk> voicing that sound [noise] at the end of this a little [noise] um a lot of the utah has taken languages especially the um <unk> in that family title <unk> uh do voice [noise] um so we talked before about tricky voice which bianca cause creepy voice so much now i'm likely to call for the end of time and creaky boy sounds like this um there's a a a pronounced sort of <unk> it's also called vocal fry um in english speech you hear it often at the end of a intonation unit mhm um for some reason some writer <unk> saw an article about oh there's creaky voice among women um in california at the end of their clauses now everyone on the internet friends of mine who have no interest in linguistics like have you heard about this vocal fry [noise] ah sounds like a fish fry but worse [laughter] so <unk> is this sort of most people can make it just make it sound like you're tired um speech pathologists talk about the lowest register of human speech as being be um creaky register because when you try to speak that low <unk> boys naturally comes into the question [laughter] um [noise] there's something outside <unk> commenting crashed that once you start hearing your it will <unk> out [laughter] [noise] [laughter] you've gotten your whole life or not not saying i think come out and you know nowadays and you'll have a nightmare <unk> thanks to bianca and boeing boeing [laughter] um i know their voices called the breath the voice which sounds like this i have a hard time hearing this one [noise] um it's kind of like you're sort of half he voicing everything right [laughter] um see to me that sounds creepy <unk> anyway um [noise] there's one that's called not very interesting we harsh or <unk> <unk> harsh voice which sounds like this and that sort of like you got your whole your whole larynx is constricted <unk> i've heard it called the pirate for nation the pirate phoenician that's nice [noise] um [laughter] [noise] um there are a bunch of other if they use which i'm not listed because i'm ashamed to because i cannot produce them [noise] um <unk> and the high <unk> funny i could but i'm not going to um in your list that you gave us you had like um <unk> that's uh yeah i think that so this website we're going to include in the in the notes has a bunch of these <unk> i think it's written written from the standpoint of a speech pathologist i'm not aware of any language which false federal applies unless you're singing yeah or or or your possessed let me say this file and see [noise] oh okay that sounded like our horn [noise] uh right [laughter] yeah um yeah <unk> <unk> in some coy sign language is so there's the languages of africa that have looked like some pops have something a voice voicing type which in fact it's not your vocal cords but your <unk> that is by breathing um which explains why people who speak the language is getting knocked jewels on their vocal cords by the time they're adults trident voice is this what you're talking about let's see how [laughter] yeah i can't i can't take it so i i i don't know i don't know even word might <unk> bought us is exactly you're out of <unk> <unk> when you're swallow okay for her [noise] ah yeah we don't need to sit here and make strange noises into their entire [laughter] um there are other kinds of <unk> these are the main ones um mhm yeah let's just leaves i was there and we can talk about them a little bit more after we've touched tone cause there's something interesting about how tone information relate [noise] yeah so we kind of talked a little about tone before but um basically you have a couple of different choices if you want to have a tonal language in that you can do with something the the more simple systems are two tone or three tone and they are usually purely just pitch based homes when you have two or three times it's it's a little low end high or low mid in high right and then if you go more than three usually have contour towns added into that which uh contour is falling rising you know flat whatever right my favorite example of a simple to tone system is <unk> um that probably accounts for why la done has a two ten system because <unk> her dissertation was an album [noise] um so <unk> example words or something like you spanish besides you know it starts with his low syllable then along high syllable um trying to find wouldn't that has it another contrast hot uh-huh again long low hi short nasal very often when you get so you got the two times system the three towns system which is what you want about has and those those are both systems are pretty common in africa [noise] once you get to tone contours weird things start to happen very often pitch contour is conflicted with a different phone nation type technically these are called to register languages for example burmese has four tones i think two of them use <unk> voice one of them uses breath you've always one of them uses tricky voice so is there any like pattern to which town is likely to take which phoenician type [laughter] well i uh let me find my guess is very <unk> low tones or especially things that go into enter from high into the low tone range are going to have tricky boys 'cause then they mentioned earlier if you move your voice very low <unk> voice is a normal development of that [noise] that drive [noise] with my personal experience because i know that men are in a lot of times third toned will be accompanied by three <unk> voice uh right yeah so that might be right i don't know we'd have to actually do we need to you and and i might be saying that so for example burmese their tricky boys actually starts high end then has a slightly falling pitch mhm um and hi long has a breath and foundation and even if there is some correlation it could be sort of murdered by historical processes right right i mean another source for things like tricky boys are um [noise] a lot of stops especially code a global stops cause all sorts of hanky panky historically okay so since i've i brought this up so this is my favorite example in historical linguistics of all of the planet has to do with the at the baskin languages many of which have to tell them systems mhm what's interesting is when you look at talk nights you will find that the words have opposite toned patterns so if the word is high tone did one language you'll be low tone did another [laughter] if you have low high low it will be high low high and the other language and there's no obvious pattern to which languages <unk> hi which languages go though what happened is they all had in our all responding to having a global stop ending the syllable you mentioned this in a previous episode i can't remember which one it was but you had a while ago so some languages god will stop at the end of a syllable produced a high tone and in other languages that'll stop in the final <unk> at the end of civil produced eighty looked very that's very interesting because short of if you want to get into sort of a little bit of history um and die of context [noise] a lot of times tone come from <unk> wisconsin that's changing the uh the picture of the vowel and then disappeared yeah um but i i sort of uh sort of mentioned that at the at the beginning when we were talking a little bit about this but yeah <unk> um it basically is sort of like several generations start to pay more attention to the tone too and i i mentioned at the top uh that basically sounds are not well <unk> brought up that sound are not sort of isolated from each other that they blended into each other and that's one thing that does happen on his <unk> his bowels get deformed by surrounding consummate right well yeah you see that with the fun and it's like the most obvious <unk> [noise] <unk> and then like <unk> usually i get from florida what's called the <unk> kind of <unk> <unk> it's kind of come together it's kind of hard to explain that <unk> that that's one of the <unk> kind of stop you have <unk> oh yeah for the fame so it makes makes it it just makes things kind of interesting when you when you think about it because basically um you were saying that for some reason i <unk> couldn't make the val go either way right um well different languages differ in how much they chew on that god will stop especially when it's a <unk> in some language is is very light and other languages it's impossible you know you can hear it across the room like not like english bridal stop compared to add like ride all stop <unk> you know you're <unk> <unk> yes when you hear arabic you know you have been exposed to a global stuff [laughter] [noise] <unk> um i hear i hear the outlaw phonic clogged will stop uh the elephant preteen very very hot <unk> typical american <unk> yeah the <unk> yeah <unk> but i i did not even know until recently that a lot of english words have initial wattle stops because i'd never heard it right at all it is very subtle check yet mind uh-huh um [noise] what was going to say i was gonna say something oh uh the same thing happens with things like age active confidence <unk> really chew on that level of stop and others don't [noise] both of these things can introduce either tone stuff as we talked about in other languages <unk> stops caused quickie boys and that makes sense cause you're already starting to constrict things mhm [noise] um so for example in <unk> which is a language spoken in mexico [noise] the only way to recognize the second person conjugation up some verbs is <unk> <unk> that is the only thing left now this language has contrast of tricky boys i i find it very hard to switch between creaky and non creaky from syllable syllable uh-huh so i can't give examples but creaky voice is a distinctive phony make quality in to all the <unk> as far as i can tell so it's kind of surprising how <unk> <unk> <unk> the whole thing [laughter] i can't <unk> kind of looks like a bunch of half ride all stopped all through at night [laughter] yeah [laughter] that's what it looks like and then you look at it and you're like really date [laughter] so so the point i wanted to to raise about that for people who are doing historical language creation is once your language has invented a new sounded distinction whether it is tone but only constrained into certain places or tricky boys only <unk> constrained a certain positions once that contrast exists it now becomes available to being used at other places mhm so what do you mean by like it might shipped over by analogy or it might just ah independently forming other places or what it might independently form and other places okay this is how new constant it sounds <unk> invented and then they become available um for for being the result of other kinds of process you know historical sound changes and so forth so in other words once you invent <unk> voice uh you're you're you <unk> you're more likely to have another sound change that but <unk> right once all of your speakers has been trained to attention that difference it becomes available for example i am pretty sure that all of the high tones and <unk> are not the result of quota bottle stops it's other things have gone on there's kinds of tone assimilation uh all sorts of stuff is going on especially in you know that magnificent i'd if it's of the <unk> [noise] where i'm pretty sure not all of those tones of the result of <unk> the result of gum stops this makes me gives me really interesting ideas for a language family i want to make there you go so that that's why i wanted to make that point is once you got a little change that all of your your speakers they're listening to that that that distinction matters now and so it becomes available for use elsewhere [noise] see this this but basically what i'm thinking is this can make four are really easy way to <unk> one <unk> into a <unk> very distinctive daughter languages because basically if you have could have a lot of stops you can do the thing where one of 'em turned it into a into a high town one turns into a load her town [noise] one of them turns it into tricky voice one turns into <unk> you know <unk> it into a long <unk> yeah you could you could just go like five different directions with just that one sounds yep and <unk> then i end up going ah very interesting directions yep so that's [laughter] so so that started genesis [noise] um and and at the baskin fun um and i guess the last two percent mental i wanted to talk about <unk> the one that i know bianca love so much [laughter] funny okay um so [noise] <unk> usually comes from a historical coated nasal or what i think probably yeah um 'cause i know that english has some <unk> some dialects that comes from his old [laughter] and i know that well it's pretty common <unk> i'm not sure where else it would come from i mean some somebody who knows more historical stuff could tell us but um for example in <unk> which that only has no tone in dallas has names was asian [noise] nasal vowels become normal oral vowels followed by an end when followed by suffix that starts with a viable oh wow that sounds like very similar to what happens with fresh lose all yes except backwards [laughter] yeah [noise] <unk> well not that way and i think it has uh like <unk> like yourself and <unk> <unk> basically ten cap on yeah <unk> that i think uh i don't know i i only heard about because my linguistics professor use it as an example of ordered funnel logical rules i know about the uh <unk> and and um the file a phonics news was asian which also has deletion of the nasal what causes it which is interesting [laughter] right so in that case that nasal is that that nasal constant <unk> appears [noise] them in the in the in certain circumstances uh-huh um yeah um but so what <unk> what what else is interesting about <unk> is there anything other [noise] it it tends to be and this is just based on me looking at lots and lots of native american languages <unk> [noise] it sure seems like certain kinds of vowels don't like to be <unk> very high vowels are let seemed to me to be less likely to be <unk> typically <unk> mid and low vowels [noise] <unk> to get a high <unk> so so easy and who are less likely to be <unk> or ah huh especially those that have phony make rather than um um condition <unk> that's interesting i <unk> and that's just that's just me looking and often noticing that there is no i mean some language and still do have it and like now 'cause i find it hard to pronounce harder to pronounce <unk> than <unk> than to pronounce uh [noise] um that has a high ones [noise] that that is something interesting to point out so um i found your mention in fact of the i found your p._t. article that you like to that was the language with um nasal creaky nasal creaky um let me link to it but what i noticed here is um basically not all vowels will carry a super strict mental at least this language and i think that that may be sort of uh a common thing that sort of if you have <unk> will be <unk> if you have freaky voice not all <unk> right um and this one about uh doesn't take any <unk> mental and then the nasal are restricted ah the nasal cannot apply to oh so it's sort of like um the certain certain vowels have resisted historically the the change or something right and then you have fun language is like um cherokee which has a single <unk> which is of its own quality so the uh sound only ever that vow will sound only ever <unk> and it is the only <unk> yeah that's a really that's a really bizarre when it's uh characteristic of the coin languages but i don't know how come and that is in in other language families um but that's something you might consider you could apply that to other things like vowel length which we didn't even talking about here sure we'd and anything where if you you don't have to make you don't have to make it the the the super <unk> mental symmetrical correct you can just have some bells the sort of not having we've talked [noise] probably enough about this topic [laughter] uh i'll have some resources and the <unk> and you can do some of your own research to figure out what exactly you want to do with your language or you know we haven't even talked about things like <unk> and [laughter] it can be i mean there's so many of these but i i thought i mentioned some of the yeah easy target mostly we're talked about super signals that apply to vowels and yes syllables yes we didn't do anything about constants which kind of ends up in uh different animals too um but why don't we move on to our future <unk> which is <unk> by david g. peters [noise] um i regret telling him about the <unk> [laughter] [noise] well the you can you can click the thing and and fix it now but he should tricks you didn't foul [laughter] so [noise] um it has sort of off [laughter] he is <unk> um certainly as as soon as i look at the hospital and i see that because very very few confidence fear not quite i don't think it's quite is restricted as like hawaiian but it has things like it has no s. right um the vow um possibly slightly more i don't know much about uh oscar news in general i don't know if they usually have schwab [noise] um well his schwab is <unk> only <unk> only [noise] um so i i don't think this is completely weird for austin asian languages which tend to have something central mhm [noise] um so and he invented a script for it [noise] yes he did so the thing about comic how he is he has <unk> words a day on his blog would she keeps up pretty regularly and reliably um which will have new characters um and vocabulary was to meetings in an example sentence or two and frequently a picture of his cat if possible doing something which the streets the example sentence how how how can you make the cat do that well it depends if he happens to catch her doing something interesting then yeah i suppose um the pronouns are interesting and that there are five different um gender categories for the third person pronoun right so you have male female neuter non gender specific in general i presume that he doesn't actually have grammatical gender because he doesn't use the term masculine feminine so right <unk> the business of having singular dual trial in plural pronouns is very <unk> so that yeah the business of all of these different third person pronouns i think it's his own thing and um and he has multiple possessive you were mentioning that that's right that's very <unk> not hawaiian particularly ah i know people compare this like so it's kind of the <unk> the possession is merged with a classify her system mhm so in your classic and and if you actually a google <unk> possession you will find papers on this subject typically you have alien able possession and you know they are you a little section and the <unk> set maybe quite substantial uh-huh and what happens is you save the possess some which is that is the thing was asked [noise] and then the possessive phrase follows it which will have the pronoun and to classify her uh-huh for example i <unk> i wish i could somewhere in my ipod is a grammar of a language that does this and has a bunch of these but i couldn't find it [noise] if you're talking about a food product you will have a special food class so you might get into normal classify her things worse shape is involved um kind of like this um [noise] so he has this word <unk> oh which is sort of literally one of but it has a whole lot of different meanings <unk> usually it's thriving <unk> now i have one meaning and kind of collie translate and kill a lot of <unk> so you end up with <unk> have a drop of blood <unk> late of grass but the interesting thing is it looks this looks like sort of a uh uh and idiomatic thing that he did well they were so ah <unk> one of hand is a finger right so for some reason the possessiveness are on the pronoun page at the bottom so 'cause he's got five of them one of them is to use professional relationships and also to indicate ones relationship to places like i'm from hawaii that's the one [noise] um there's one possessive prefix which is used to mark something that you created yourself so this is a subset of innately double possession that's <unk> well yeah right this is my book refer to a book that i have in my hand or is it a book that i wrote [noise] and then he's got one that appears to be the catchall which that just says this prefix is used what possessed it's something that is inanimate and not a product of the professor [noise] then we have this oh what'd you talked about before and it indicates that the possession would the possessed is an integral part of the possess or a trees leaves the cars paint job a mears reflection that sort of stuff mhm um and then this one is baffling this <unk> <unk> this prefix is using the possess or has a non professional relationship with the possessed so for example the woman's lover the boys pet dog eat the man's father [noise] that's interesting i don't know if he means only families i honestly i would like more examples of these [noise] yeah you might need to figure out what what exactly he means by non professional unprofessional because that could be sort of culturally specific as well and we would have to be um [noise] so actually i think <unk> is a nice introduction to this interesting kind of possessive scheme which occurs all over in in the austin asian languages which can have um you can be fairly elaborated it's pretty unusual that it gets linguist all excited [noise] um [noise] one thing i want to say about this language and uh so far as the way it's presented this is a very good language for beginning con layers look at 'cause he goes through the trouble of sort of <unk> having sort of explanatory things at the beginning of certain sections that are sort of like talk about how english does this and all this kind of stuff [noise] people would do that just in case i feeling people in our staff if <unk> they presented and failing to an audience okay [noise] also i think it's it's interesting that <unk> is also probably a bad hi dan practice but yeah you know um baby names on here [noise] yeah [noise] david has a very women's a cool way of writing things so they get tired grammar of come and tell me which i read over the last few days [noise] has a great deal of silliness which i suppose is helpful if you're reading grammar i don't love grammar [laughter] if you're reading grammar and love grammar then sometimes it's it's a little distracting um my favorite example is he has a section on the <unk> and i'm just gonna read this paragraph because it's hysterical [noise] if you ever want to get a totally neutral reaction out of a linguist type <unk> just excluded ask them about veil and see if you yes you divided up the world into those they care about violence changing operations and those that don't and painted the two groups against each other in a deadly game of dodge balls played with spiked metal balls rather than rubber ones then at the end of the day they're no longer be anyone to lie for cared about vitamins changing operations myself included i put up a hell of a fight [laughter] and that sort of thing he does writing these got examples that does is like a fish was hooked by a woman so [laughter] uh [laughter] right um so he uses cereal verb constructions which we don't need to explain here you can go read them yourself there is another interesting thing that pops up in languages across the world in various ways and then this might be good introduction for beginning congress to see it yeah um also he does a lot of just fun stuff here like the the word of the day you mentioned baby names you has postcards and uh all his relate taxi has lots of pets but he does have lots of text um sadly i can't find any audio samples but um i can't have everything right [laughter] i think we can [laughter] um well he does awesome audio samples for goes rockies right i would i would hope that you would work on get paid <unk> yes he did he get paid for my collie now [laughter] okay [laughter] i think we <unk> does he have more than one or it's harder for <unk> uh he might well looks like he has like in alphabet that's very it's very sequoia ask alphabet um in addition to his odd cliffs [laughter] oh i love that <unk> ah yeah right uh commonplace name that's <unk> <unk> <unk> don't get teeth they often don't get much of anything in fact they tend to <unk> i'm not getting nowadays [laughter] another corpus [laughter] what is that oh yes he does have a <unk> we can get back to that in a second 'cause it makes me cranky so another thing he does with the verbs is he with intense heat in codes a switch reference system um <unk> which reference system is switch reference so when i say a sentence like the man walked into the barn and got kicked by a horse we assume that be second claws and got kicked by a horse that the subject is does same that's how we do an english we assumed the sentence that the subject persists from gloucester clause that are joined it that way that's why we have passive so that we can keep the thing we care about as the subject the men walked into the barn and got kicked by a horse [noise] in a switch reference system your often conjunctions code whether the subject is the same as the previous clause or different from the previous claws oh okay [noise] um and switch reference systems occur all over the world [noise] in the case of <unk> he has the past versus non past marking um in code a switch reference system that makes three distinctions same subject brand new subject new subject from old non subject so i saw the man and he talked to me that and he talked to me would involve a switch reference because what was the direct object to the previous clause is not a subject to this call okay oh i thought the <unk> and then you your your previous example the the men walked in gutsy by horse you you might actually do the brand new subject one and have the man walked in and the horse kicked him if you said it that way yeah i mean so probably has a passive so i assume for discourse reasons you would say at the way we stayed in english mhm right because we care about the man more than we care about the horse horse [laughter] [laughter] i mean maybe we don't i don't know but [laughter] i <unk> i <unk> i don't think the <unk> how it was is is um is ah is this broken by goals horses so right when we talk most of the time when he was talking about human talk they care about humans you know maybe if both rocky had to switch reference system the horse might be more prominent but [laughter] um i don't think it it uses that so i'm not sure that austin asian languages do this very often they might i i've only recently started reading about that but this is a non terrifying introduction to the idea of switch reference if you're not familiar with that mhm yeah um and the other thing that struck me about the language was his relative clauses for two reasons one some of them are built out of the same mechanics that produced those possessive uh-huh that we found some interesting second of all you have different kinds of relatives relatives structures [noise] to account for what role the pivot is playing in the embedded claws mhm in english in many european languages completely lucy goosey we can have the pit of relative cosby anything in the relative caught subject direct object indirect object object <unk> position [noise] but there's lots of languages what you can do in that relative clauses quite restrained you can say i see the man who was running i see the man who the boy is yelling at um but not i see the man who's dog busy is 'cause it's possessive and what he's done with <unk> collie is we have all sorts of interesting i mean he covers all of the possibilities relative i sing locations relative i suggested to blah blah blah all of this stuff um which he did it in interesting way by using other grammer for new purpose and he really thought about all the possibilities so i think it's another case where it's a good introduction and a good education for beginning <unk> here's here's an example of his uh of his <unk> women's a cool way of writing and his conclusion he says and that that's how you do relative clauses and <unk> that's it it's done no more no the only place you'll see them again is when we get back to is when we get to the <unk> section on syntax a wicked syntax [noise] a section which he is yet to right [laughter] [laughter] doesn't exist yet so [laughter] uh so many people don't <unk> yeah i know it's very disappointing although translated they come out and we got the reader yeah there are many text and the language mhm um one thing that drives me bonkers is his dictionary is difficult mm mm [noise] um he has a gloss three um which contains partial definitions but most of his effort seems to have gone into the <unk> corpus which simply has example sentences <unk> <unk> it it doesn't necessarily take you to the definition of the words you would like to see yeah you <unk> it looks like this or trouble but sure but it's still not what i want other <unk> yes well <unk> and what to read them right yeah yeah um i don't know i think in [laughter] [laughter] you would there be hold my dog statue and trembling fear uh-huh uh-huh uh uh you were saying i could say the gloss three sort of covers this and then he he sort of ah thoroughly lists all syllable possibilities and the language and then uh signs definitions when he gets them [noise] um but uh oh so right it's it's not particularly fond interact with anyway yeah uh but i'll say in general this is very good language to look at uh and you know there's a lot of fun stuff to distract you if you get tired of reading through the grammar but yeah um [noise] i'm sorry i just saw postcard that has a picture of a turtle and it has the kamikaze on top and then the english translation is touched me and die [laughter] okay [laughter] uh anyway i think that's about all we can really say about it i think the <unk> my final hot is <unk> <unk> look at it and look at how he <unk> and see and and i think about you know what he's doing 'cause he 'cause he has some interesting explanation of what he's doing and it's good thing for someone who's not exactly use to reading grammar to look at yeah no there's a lot a lot that can be learned i i sort of wish that some of the sentences head a little more glass thing i mean he does it pretty good job of identifying the elements he's paying attention to [noise] um but sometimes he's very much into <unk> long losses he likes to just sort of like underline the relevant part or something yeah it's and then put some vocabulary and <unk> [laughter] or something i mean it's not hard right that morphological either languages that complex so it it should add too much overhead to to find a few words for people yeah uh <unk> what are your thoughts about comic how i did we lose bianca bianca are you there i had it muted <unk> carrying on my <unk> [laughter] um no it's it's good it's not necessarily my my favorite <unk> good thanks and <unk> now [laughter] entertainment value and say hi yeah i like to fly <unk> named <unk> kind of like rocky in english [laughter] all right okay so um i think we can sort of put that aside and go back to feedback uh go to go to feedback sorry just move on feedback um so we had a bunch of <unk> of um comments on episode thirty on our numerals up so and really i think a lot of people might benefit from just going through that whole um comments threat because there was very interesting discussion there yeah i agree um but i'm going to highlight one because it it's sort of directly address is something that we mentioned in the show and um so seem <unk> uh i don't know if that's supposed to be pronounce something weird but i presume seen month um gave us he says uh short introduction to banish numbers in danish half um have five and forgive me for pronouncing these wrong is four thirty uh 'cause i don't know how to <unk> to me and my foot so half five in danish for thirty oh yeah now bianca found swedish [noise] i think he wrote that while he was listening <unk> um and let's let's continue with his there's also a special worked for one and a half in danish it's half i'm dan and thursday rarely and it has really huge counterparts half <unk> half or two point five half your day have four three point five um and this brings me to the <unk> part of the number system the names for the the names of the tens fifty to ninety are derived from the from the number of scores for example sixty is chris <unk> t._v. i have no idea um ah well but three times twenty so this is a concern rather conservative way of saying it and it normally shorten <unk> um for the rest of it i'm just gonna say the numbers and say how they're derived rather than trying to read the danish uh uh he says fifty is basically half third time's twenty so basically two one five times twenties fifty and then seventy is half four times twenty eighty is four times twenty [noise] ninety is half times twenty um so that's even more crazy then i would have guessed so being this this is really interesting though but um basically it has these special word for word and a half two and a half three and a half and then uses those two derive other curves based on of adjust will system yep danish is truly bizarre well the one and a half two and a half three you know the the one half three quarters and and so forth or half worth uh those uh current other languages and they're into european languages have things like a word for one and a half uh-huh um so it's not like that's completely an motivated <unk> coming from someplace weird that's not uncommon but using two point five times twenty to indicate fifty is file daycare i don't know it's ridiculous it's surprising <unk> well [noise] yeah [noise] so thank you for that turned me feedback we had one guy talking about how russian worked as well that was there like flee crazy [laughter] i i'm looking at this comic but uh but yeah <unk> yeah i will warn that there's language but it's not that much language so so the the thing that was interesting about the numbers in russian and i had forgotten about this i sort of i probably knew just wants to long ago is whereas alright so [laughter] where they had to go out yeah not very interesting thing thinking thank god i didn't decide clan russian right so this was crime lab who says that russian is glorious it uses the judge of sitting here with two three and four and a numerals ending and there's <unk> digits yeah and the judge a floral through for five through nine so you get one book too of book three of book fourth book five of books twenty one book twenty to twenty five of books and so on [noise] truly aspiration old that is really awesome [laughter] no that's that's really awesome 'cause you think of you know okay sort of wanting to three doesn't take plural that sort of makes sense and sort of a way of it's not that many of them but then uh apparently had had was sort of analogy fuel um change so that any time that something less than five is who is uh the final digit it doesn't take the floral so you did that turn something sort of maybe logical into something really crazy well no it's kind of uh it's like how we have problems with in english with agreement if you're verb is too far separated from the actual word that determines the number uh-huh like singular <unk> we might pick the wrong verb yeah right <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> so they you're talking you're talking about like the agreement with mirrors that happens in agreement with me wrist and so they decided the russians decided they're gonna do agreement with nearest where the nearest was different defined as the ones unit yes all of their numbers there was also a couple of comments that match and chinese uh that i was interested in [noise] one person shorter was speculating that chinese chinese writing system had could have somehow prevented it from from going crazy what historical changes numerals <unk> kind of came back to them like nah i it doesn't <unk> not really that restrictive because basically if that had if there had been some historical craziness with a new rules and it caught on they would've just invented a new character for it yes 'cause they they did that other times where things got blended <unk> yeah it uh there's there's um you know cases where they've been contractions that just they've made a character for it um [noise] so and the other person i would say yeah and another person it it was all sort of writing system stuff that they mentioned was trying to use somebody mentioned that the uh the banking numerals which are <unk> yeah it's a it's a fraud protection devices people still use those i mean <unk> red bank <unk> putting like terrorists or five thousand or something yeah i think i'd be damned head at nighttime melons changing my check yeah [laughter] that's that's the whole that's the whole idea that's why those those uh numerals exist it's sort of interesting 'cause we didn't even mention written numbers at all but you know if you develop a written <unk> system that that's almost like an entire different episode we could do there's different ways you can go with that that's what i was kind of <unk> and <unk> right on that i was like oh god i've never had to <unk> [laughter] i was like what a pool at my <unk> yeah william are you still there i'm still they're they're woman came up with tricks to make doing <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> yeah i can't imagine it was fun doing math and money and they have [noise] ridiculous stuff [noise] the mind systems so fucking but that can we can say that for another episode yeah yeah that's sort of that's that's sort of an entirely different because like my my only thing was that with that was yeah the writing doesn't really affect it like think about it we use a place value we use when we use the arabic memorable system and it and sort of ah yeah ah sort of um co-opted that none of the european languages changed in order to [noise] more reflect that that particular um position all system so i mean even <unk> change [laughter] german even has still has it backwards from the way it's written oh for the the written numbers oh <unk> oh my god and uh <unk> <unk> <unk> yeah and some of <unk> i mean um [noise] but anyway i think that's about all we can really talk about for that but yeah guys look at that 'cause we we have been involved in that discussion is really interesting stuff that people brought up [noise] i think numerals or an interest uh are sort of an easy topic to start you know talking about because it's so easy to sort of find weird things with them and some people yeah [laughter] [laughter] i'm sorry my brain is still wrapping itself around the um danish system [laughter] i don't think about it <unk> it is it is sort of um <unk> [noise] i think i would have been a language that does that though [laughter] okay [noise] something something like uh so yeah so we've been reporting for a long time like it's going to be a long episode [noise] okay uh we often do you have any <unk> don't get [laughter] [noise] uh william yeah no that's okay i'm going to say happy [noise] thank you for listening to you couldn't find our <unk> dot com [noise] comments questions that can be sent to con winery hadn't seen male dot com [noise] please subscribed to us on high [laughter] maybe leave with a five star review while you're at it [noise] you can also like baseball dot com slash online or he [noise] follow us on <unk> online er bore surplus on google plus by searching pork <unk> [noise] part the music was created by the <unk> [noise] um i'm trying to find uh do do do do it's not here we're or the class fires right uh uh maybe a hundred now [laughter] so we have a little ponds here which george can edit out later ah as i find this doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo [noise] well that's irritating and uh yeah there was that and sorry there's somebody keeps you and me um [noise] but um there was also a couple of comments that mentioned chinese why are tired of it you have to <unk> with like three or four last night i <unk> i was gonna creep george out by putting you in the subject line but that's a fair like random led to even have a words not at now then how come i can hear him but he <unk> he'll matter of <unk> the only email we have is a very long follow up from the guy who said bow down to my office uh less and i <unk> <unk> <unk> attack a phony normal people <unk> <unk> but that makes it sound like something paw [laughter] i know somebody always talked about the pre faces the books that's my ah a really different problem but i had a communications teacher that insisted that the word larynx she'd be pronounced layer next <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> writing a thesis about p._c.s could be a thesis about feces right <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> <unk> well i <unk> i'm <unk> i'm not making any sense at all about <unk> yeah that's not bad <unk> has always been a bit weird in my opinion but that was the standard and we don't want to be <unk> you know i woke up i <unk> i like i said yes i am so hungry when you listen to a a language that you only partially understand it can be funny to listen to radio [noise] particularly listening to the random chinese talk shows the taxi drivers always listen to i i there was one guy i got just enough of what you meant was who to understand that he was ranting about how the mini cooper is not actually that small but i found on one hand in green bay i saw a tiny [laughter] [laughter] i'm only five one and i'm like standing type of a crime like this is never happened to me [laughter] that's true like when you're one of the <unk> <unk> has the basket and walking this how many of these shows have asked a baskin walking <unk> i'm a party with a friend that will involve lots of gay rugby players now i would say <unk> <unk> now that we have covered sick mental sitter super oh ooh ooh bianca i had an idea today for your hate lying oh now that you would code the statements type by forcing the sentence into averse form i don't know what else catches your eye in case [laughter] more on that one out <unk> and last night with my i._d. and i was like if if your husband's name gambling says like what

Tags

  1. Conlangery Podcast
  2. Podcast
  3. conlang
  4. language
  5. linguistics
  6. phonation
  7. stress
  8. suprasegmentals
  9. tone

Conlangery Podcast/Conlangery 33 Suprasegmentals (last edited 2017-09-06 22:24:07 by TranscriBot)