sci.lang FAQ
Jacques Guy
work in a university, what irks Jon Aarbakke (who does)
so much irks me little because GB and all that is
so many light years away from me that it has me utterly
unaffected.
However, there's this business about languages being
equally complex. Now really, folks, this is completely,
but completely, wrong. So I took my keyboard, turned it
seven times in my inkwell, and came up with this:
It is far from true that all languages are equally complex. I suppose
that this strange notion is a throwback, or an offspring, whichever you
prefer, of "politically correct" whereby all languages are equal,
complexity is good, so all languages are equally complex. Now, if you
have tried to learn French, and then Spanish, you might have noticed just
a tad of a difference. Spanish has nowhere as many impossibly difficult
vowels as French, nowhere as many abominably irregular verbs, nowhere as
crazy a spelling... But let's not get personal, so allow me to take as
an example two languages which will not make anyone raise an eyebrow, I
am sure. One is called Tolomako, the other Sakao. Both are spoken in the
same village, called Port-Olry, a place on the island of Espiritu Santo
in Vanuatu. Both languages are closely related, by which I mean that
they might have been one and the same perhaps 1000 years ago, probably
much less.
Noblesse oblige, phonology first.
Tolomako vowels: a, e, i, o, u
consonants: p, t, k, B (<beta>), G (<gamma>), m, n, s, ts, r, l
syllable structure is (C)V(V)
Sakao vowels: a (front unrounded)
a^ (back rounded)
E (<epsilon>)
e
i
O (IPA mirror image of "c")
o
u
oe (i.e. IPA o-with-e as "oe" in French "oeil")
o/ (i.e. IPA o-slash, "eu" as in French "peu")
y (i.e. French "u")
(i) (an always unstressed high vowel, unmarked
for rounding or backing, as elusive as the
infamous French so-called "mute e")
diphthongs: oeE
a^O
consonants: p, t, k, m, n, ng, B(<beta>), D (<delta>),
G (<gamma>), h, s, r, R (unvoiced trill), l
semiconsonants: j, w
syllable structure (that is, if "syllable" makes any sense in that
language, and I suspect it does not): a single vowel, or diphthong,
surrounded by any number of consonants.
Example: i "thou"
mhErtpr "having sung and stopped singing thou kept silent"
(m- 2nd pers. hErt "to sing" -p perfective, -r continuous)
Oh, I forgot: consonants are long or short, e.g. oeBe "drum", oeBBe "bed".
A bit of grammar now. Obligatorily possessed nouns for instance:
Tolomako Sakao
na tsiGoku oes(i)ngoeG my mouth
na tsiGomu oes(i)ngoem thy mouth
na tsiGona Os(i)ngOn his/her/its mouth
na tsiGo... oesoeng... mouth of...
na Buluku ulyG my hair
na Bulumu ulym thy hair
na Buluna uloen his/her/its hair
na Bulu... no/l... hair of...
A tad of verbal phrases now. Sakao has some holophrastic tendencies there,
Tolomako none.
A simple example, to serve to illustrate how that may have developed:
Tolomako
mo losi na poe ne na matsa
3rd pers. hit art. pig prep. art. club
he hits/kills the/a pig with a club (a praiseworthy occupation, leading
to rising in society)
Notice that I said "prep.". Tolomako has only one preposition to make do
for locative (ubi, quo, unde, qua), whether in space and time, and for
the instrumental. Here it's the instrumental.
Sakao
m(i)- jil -(i)n a- ra a- mas
3rd pers. hit +transitive art. pig art. club
Same meaning, same highly regarded sign of social achievement.
What I called +transitive is a suffix that turns an intransive verb into
a transitive one, and a transitive verb into a ditransitive one. Ditransitive?
I made it up. That's a verb that takes two direct objects, one of them
expressing, loosely speaking, the instrumental. When a verb takes two
objects they can occur in any order. Only the meaning can disambiguate. Thus:
m(i)jil(i)n ara amas
m(i)jil(i)n amas ara
mean the same.
Now for a nice example of Sakao's holophrastic tendencies:
mOssOnEshOBr(i)n aDa EDE
he-shoots-fish-follows-continuous aspect+transitive bow sea
he kept on walking along the shore shooting fish with a bow
You can say mOssOnEshObr(i)n EDE aDa equally well, of course.
Broken down into its bits and pieces:
mO- 3rd pers.
sOn to shoot with a bow, but because here it takes an incorporated
object, its initial consonant is long: ssOn
nEs fish. Note the morphophonology: ssOn+nEs > ssOnEs
hoB to follow
-r continuous aspect
-(i)n +transitive
a- article
Da bow, instrumental
E- article
DE sea, direct object. Of what? of hOB "to follow" of course!
Which of the two languages spoken in Port-Olry do you think the
Catholic missionaries learnt and used?
Could that possibly be because it was easier than the other?
Are all languages, then, equally easy, or difficult?
Don HARLOW
>
>However, there's this business about languages being
>equally complex. Now really, folks, this is completely,
>but completely, wrong. So I took my keyboard, turned it
>seven times in my inkwell, and came up with this:
>
>
>It is far from true that all languages are equally complex. I suppose
>that this strange notion is a throwback, or an offspring, whichever you
>prefer, of "politically correct" whereby all languages are equal,
>complexity is good, so all languages are equally complex. Now, if you
>have tried to learn French, and then Spanish, you might have noticed just
>a tad of a difference. Spanish has nowhere as many impossibly difficult
>vowels as French, nowhere as many abominably irregular verbs, nowhere as
>crazy a spelling... But let's not get personal, so allow me to take as
>an example two languages which will not make anyone raise an eyebrow, I
>am sure. One is called Tolomako, the other Sakao. Both are spoken in the
>same village, called Port-Olry, a place on the island of Espiritu Santo
>in Vanuatu. Both languages are closely related, by which I mean that
>they might have been one and the same perhaps 1000 years ago, probably
>much less.
>[Details of Tolomako and Sakao deleted to make space available]
>
>Which of the two languages spoken in Port-Olry do you think the
>Catholic missionaries learnt and used?
>
>Could that possibly be because it was easier than the other?
>
>Are all languages, then, equally easy, or difficult?
>
Jacques, with all due respect you are confusing three separate
concepts here.
It is fairly obvious that all languages are not equally
_complicated_; this does not mean that they are not equally
_complex_. The former is shown by the amount of space needed
to describe the language, the latter by the results of using
the language (ability to communicate whatever is necessary).
A good non-linguistic example of the difference is a ball of
yarn. You can let a cat play with it, or you can knit it into
a sweater. The results are going to be more-or-less equally
complex, but the sweater is nowhere nearly as complicated (note
that it will be much easier to restore the original ball from
the sweater than from the cat's cradle...)
In addition, you then bring in the terms "easy" and "difficult",
which may or may not have any relation whatsoever to "complex"
or "complicated". I am told that Chinese is considerably less
complicated than French. Will it be easier for me to learn?
Somehow, I doubt it. As far as easy and difficult are concerned,
the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the languages themselves...
or at least not completely.
--
Don HARLOW do...@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A. el...@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html Esperanto
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/do/donh/donh.html
Maelstrom
: Which of the two languages spoken in Port-Olry do you think the
: Catholic missionaries learnt and used?
: Could that possibly be because it was easier than the other?
: Are all languages, then, equally easy, or difficult?
How eay or difficult a language is , is not qualified by the language
itself but by the native language of the speaker who is learning it. A
person whose native language is japanese and who has mastered the writing
system (including kanji) will find chinese a lot easier than a
westerner. A speaker of slovak or any other slavic language would find
learning russian easier than someone from France.
As for french and spanish. The reason you find french phonemes (?) so
hard to pronounce is because the one on one corrolation between letter
and sound in english is closer to spanish than french. I find that
Spanish grammar is a bit more complicated that french grammar. IF you do
not beleive me 1) count the tenses and tell me which one has more 2) tell
me which one as more verbs for to be (i.e. ser/estar) 3) as a non-native
speaker of spanish how long it took them to figure out the difference
between por and para. :) Also Spanish has its own spelling v. sound
difficulties. 1) b v. v 2) c v. s 3) ll v. y v. i
ex.
1)
prohivo prohibo is correct , prohivo is not. V and B are confused alot.
prohibo This is tied to the english word prohibit so it may not be that
difficult but it is not always this way.
2)
coser In most dialects of spanish c and s are pronounce close enough to
cocer be confused. Coser = to sow COcer = to cook
3)
hierba hierba and yerba are two alternate spelling created for the word
yerba "grass" Thus showing that the one - on - one correspondence isnt
llamar as concrete as you would think. the "ll" is also confused.
Hope this has helped you a bit.
cris
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L'etat c'est moi! Je pisse sur les droits d'homme!
"Although I disagree with every word you say, to the death I will defend
your right to say it." -Voltaire
How are you?Ni hao ma? Comment ca va? Cristobal Cardona
Come stai? Como estas? Mit{ kuuluu? ccar...@mail.sas.upenn.edu
Wie geht's? Annyong haseyo? Nasilsin? "Mael, Altaic"
Teah sagh tuku sed guille? Li ho-boh? Hoe gaat het? Hvordan har de det?
Kasto cha tapailai? Nong ho? Kak dela? Sut 'dach chi? Hogy vagy? Mizujs?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alan D Corre
(Maelstrom) writes:
[snip]
>As for french and spanish. The reason you find french phonemes (?) so
>hard to pronounce is because the one on one corrolation between letter
Your question mark is in order. A phoneme is really an abstraction, and as
such unpronounceable.
--
Alan D. Corre
Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Studies
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Jacques Guy
>How eay or difficult a language is , is not qualified by the language
>itself but by the native language of the speaker who is learning it. A
>person whose native language is japanese and who has mastered the writing
>system (including kanji) will find chinese a lot easier than a
>westerner. A speaker of slovak or any other slavic language would find
>learning russian easier than someone from France.
Because they are closer, lexically and grammatically, yes. Likewise,
as a native speaker of French, I found Italian and Spanish rather
easy to learn. However, once I got over the hurdle of learning
how to produce the tones of Chinese, and the hurdle constructing
my sentences "backwards" in Japanese, I found both these languages
immensely easier than anything I had learnt so far (English, Latin,
Spanish, Italian, bit of German, bit of Russian, bit of Hebrew).
>As for french and spanish. The reason you find french phonemes (?) so
>hard to pronounce is because the one on one corrolation between letter
>and sound in english is closer to spanish than french.
Ho, ho, ho, ho! The one-to-one correlation of spelling to pronunciation
in English closer to Spanish than <insert anything here>! Where are
you, George Bernard Shaw?
And what is it that makes you think that *I* find French phonemes
hard to pronounce? Not only French is my mother tongue, but I speak
a variety with a full phonemic inventory (e.g. /E~/ != /oe~/)
I have taught French, Latin, and Chinese at high school level.
I have learnt English, Latin, and Spanish at high school myself.
>Hope this has helped you a bit.
Yes, it has helped me realize that the question of the relative
complexity of languages is obscured by pseudo-social concerns,
within which linguistic factors are steadfastly perverted.
But I already knew that.
Mark Rosenfelder
Jacques Guy <j...@newsserver.trl.oz.au> wrote:
>It is far from true that all languages are equally complex. I suppose
>that this strange notion is a throwback, or an offspring, whichever you
>prefer, of "politically correct" whereby all languages are equal,
>complexity is good, so all languages are equally complex.
"Political correctness" has nothing to do with it; Edward Sapir was
preaching this point 70 years ago. It seems pretty clearly to be a reaction
against then-current notions that primitive peoples have primitive
languages, or that there is some sort of scale of perfection in
languages-- isolating, then agglutinating, then inflecting.
>Now, if you
>have tried to learn French, and then Spanish, you might have noticed just
>a tad of a difference. Spanish has nowhere as many impossibly difficult
>vowels as French, nowhere as many abominably irregular verbs, nowhere as
>crazy a spelling... But let's not get personal, so allow me to take as
>an example two languages which will not make anyone raise an eyebrow, I
>am sure. One is called Tolomako, the other Sakao. Both are spoken in the
>same village, called Port-Olry, a place on the island of Espiritu Santo
>in Vanuatu. Both languages are closely related, by which I mean that
>they might have been one and the same perhaps 1000 years ago, probably
>much less.
You make a good case that Tolomako's phonology is much simpler; I'll be
interested to see if any other linguists care to defend the received
wisdom. I do have one quibble:
>Now for a nice example of Sakao's holophrastic tendencies:
>
>mOssOnEshOBr(i)n aDa EDE
>he-shoots-fish-follows-continuous aspect+transitive bow sea
>he kept on walking along the shore shooting fish with a bow
This would have frightened me a lot more before I started learning Quechua.
It has a load of affixes, and it takes time for an English speaker to get
used to them; but on the other hand the verb tho' complex is highly regular,
and word order is very flexible.
I'm reminded of my Russian teacher's contention, that Russian was not
more difficult than English, just different. Not always easy to believe
when memorizing lists of perfective roots; but then, reading McCawley's
_Syntactic Phenomena of English_ one may well wonder how anyone manages
to learn *this* language...
By the way, why are these two languages spoken in the same village?
And what are the speakers' own feelings about the complexity of the two
languages?
Scott Horne
Sakao.
In article <D0CvG...@spss.com>, mark...@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
<In article <3bjmtc$c...@medici.trl.oz.au>,
<Jacques Guy <j...@newsserver.trl.oz.au> wrote:
<
<It seems pretty clearly to be a reaction
<against then-current notions that primitive peoples have primitive
<languages,
What is a primitive people?
<I'm reminded of my Russian teacher's contention, that Russian was not
<more difficult than English, just different. Not always easy to believe
<when memorizing lists of perfective roots; but then, reading McCawley's
<_Syntactic Phenomena of English_ one may well wonder how anyone manages
<to learn *this* language...
Indeed, has anyone managed to learn the language presented in McCawley's
book? I certainly haven't.
--Scott
Hung J Lu
: not beleive me 1) count the tenses and tell me which one has more 2) tell
: speaker of spanish how long it took them to figure out the difference
: between por and para. :) Also Spanish has its own spelling v. sound
: difficulties. 1) b v. v 2) c v. s 3) ll v. y v. i
regarding your points
2) I find it amazing and amusing that so many European languages
cannot distinguish between (ser/estar). A sentence like
"I am home" sounded like "I am a house" when I was learning
English. As a non-native speaker of Spanish when I was a child,
I had no difficulty in using (ser/estar) since the same
distinction exists in Chinese languages.
3) Same with (por) and (para). The arrow direction in Spanish is
very clear. The English usage of (for) often reverses the
direction of causality, as in (For this reason, I did not do it.)
and (this letter is for you).
Of course, English speakers have their laugh when Spanish
speakers cannot distinguish between (to make, to do) and
(to miss, to lose). You hear Spanish/Portuguese speakers saying
all the time: "I lost the bus", "I lost the train", or worse,
"I lost the airplane" :-) :-)
4) When I started to learn Spanish, I was completely puzzled why
my native speaker friends had so much problem spelling words.
But as I became fluent in Spanish, I also began to have problems
with spelling. The correct (sion) and (cion) endings are
particularly hard to remember. Spaniards can rightfully have
their laugh at Latinamericans in this regard, but just remember
that they still have words like (movilizar) and (mobiliario).
-- Ekki
Mark Rosenfelder
Scott Horne <horne...@cs.yale.edu> wrote:
>In article <D0CvG...@spss.com>, mark...@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
><against then-current notions that primitive peoples have primitive
><languages,
>
Oh, how about the Americans for example?
Scott Horne
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. :-)
--Scott
Coby (Jacob) Lubliner
Hung J Lu <h...@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU> wrote:
>
>2) I find it amazing and amusing that so many European languages
> cannot distinguish between (ser/estar). A sentence like
> "I am home" sounded like "I am a house" when I was learning
> English. As a non-native speaker of Spanish when I was a child,
> I had no difficulty in using (ser/estar) since the same
> distinction exists in Chinese languages.
The distinction may be similar but it's far from "the same".
(By the way, what is it? Do you mean shi4/zai4? That would
seem to be quite a stretch, IMHO.)
Even among Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese, the ser/estar
distinctions are not one-to-one. Examples:
Estoy en el hotel / So'c a l'hotel / Estou no hotel
El hotel esta' aqui' / L'hotel esta` aqui' / O hotel e' (fica) aqui
Coby
s...@ctdvx5.priv.ornl.gov
> I find it amazing and amusing that so many European languages
> cannot distinguish between (ser/estar). A sentence like
> "I am home" sounded like "I am a house" when I was learning
> English. As a non-native speaker of Spanish when I was a child,
> I had no difficulty in using (ser/estar) since the same
> distinction exists in Chinese languages.
Ho ho, and I find it amazing and amusing that so many speakers of Asian
languages cannot distinguish between l and r. And that many speakers of
Spanish cannot pronounce a word beginning with "s", without adding an
initial consonant. Nor can they correctly pronounce the i in "this". I
have no difficulty at all in making those sounds, and often laugh
derisively at those who cannot.
Speaking of Spanish, isn't it really hilarious that the language doesn't
have a verb corresponding to English "lock" (as in lock the door)?
Note to the sarcasm-impaired: please ignore this post.
--
JS
Maelstrom
: --Scott
Yep, we americans can't even grasp the concept of the varying
complexities of different languages as well as, let's say, the french.
Neither can spanish speakers as they continue to contend that certain
parts of their language is much more complex that the french. Guy, are
you sure that the fact that french is YOUR native language does not skew
your opinion? I mean for the first year or so I found french spelling
and irregular verbs a problem but it was smooth sailing from there.
Except for intervals where i have to sit down and memorize uses of verbs
which don't corespond exactly to spanish usage (or english) such as
devoir french hasn't been anywhere near as complex as you state. Yet,
when i see the problem of ser/estar hassle people for years on end...i
sorta wonder at your conclusions. There are parts of french grammar
which are more complex that Spanish ...there are parts of Spanish grammar
more complex than the French one. Fact of life. How exactly would you
say one is more complex than the other?? Do you assign points for each part
which is more complex?? Do certain parts get more points than others?
(if this is the case i see spelling gets a really high score!) hehe :)
ALso, i believe that Old French DID have the distinction between ser
estar because i have seen forms in it such as j'estoie and je suis. Can
you clear this up for me?
cris
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L'etat c'est moi! Je pisse sur les droits d'homme!
"Although I disagree with every word you say, to the death I will defend
your right to say it." -Voltaire
How are you?Ni hao ma? Comment ca va? Cristobal Cardona
Come stai? Como estas? Mit{ kuuluu? ccar...@mail.sas.upenn.edu
Wie geht's? Annyong haseyo? Nasilsin? "Mael, Altaic"
Teah sagh tuku sed guille? Li ho-boh? Hoe gaat het? Hvordan har de det?
Kasto cha tapailai? Nong ho? Kak dela? Sut 'dach chi? Hogy vagy? Mizujs?
Ma nishma? Ma inyan? Ma shlomcha/Ma shlomech? Aich margish?/Aich
margishah? O-genki desu ka?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jacques Guy
><It seems pretty clearly to be a reaction
><against then-current notions that primitive peoples have primitive
><languages,
>What is a primitive people?
People who don't have colour TV. Or perhaps again people who speak
primitive languages.
Now you'll ask me: what is a primitive language?
Elementary, my dear Watson: a language spoken by a primitive
people.
And I am not kidding. I remember having read somewhere, in an
oldish book, that Fuegians had a very primitive language.
They had no words, only whole sentences.
But, tongue out of my cheek now, I suppose one could devise
a measure of primitiveness, by summing the distances between
raw materials and finished products/tools. For instance,
hunting and gathering would be more primitive than agriculture
and husbandry (assuming equally labour-costly tools), as the
latter involves more steps in the production of food. I realize
that this definition opens a whole can of worms. For instance:
is a fast-food tray heated in a microwave oven more or less primitive
than lunch at La Perouse (or Lucas-Carton, or Trois-Gros)?
We must bear in mind that the microwave oven does not "consume"
all the technologies on which it relies, and that the fast-food
tray does not "consume" all of the microwave oven -- microwave
ovens were not developed to heat up a particular tray.
They're interesting worms, though. (Ah yes, to whomever it
may concern: spare me your Lord-Kevinian reactions "it could
never work". Like Lord Kevin, we all know and hold, even
one week after the Wright borthers' first flight that "heavier-
than-air cannot and will never fly")
Miguel Carrasquer
<s...@ctdvx5.priv.ornl.gov> wrote:
>
>> I find it amazing and amusing that so many European languages
>> cannot distinguish between (ser/estar). A sentence like
>> "I am home" sounded like "I am a house" when I was learning
>> English. As a non-native speaker of Spanish when I was a child,
>> I had no difficulty in using (ser/estar) since the same
>> distinction exists in Chinese languages.
>
>
>Ho ho, and I find it amazing and amusing that so many speakers of Asian
>languages cannot distinguish between l and r. And that many speakers of
>Spanish cannot pronounce a word beginning with "s", without adding an
>initial consonant.
Correction: that's "a word beginning with _s_ plus consonant", and
"adding an initial vowel" (e, actually).
>Nor can they correctly pronounce the i in "this". I
>have no difficulty at all in making those sounds, and often laugh
>derisively at those who cannot.
>
>Speaking of Spanish, isn't it really hilarious that the language doesn't
>have a verb corresponding to English "lock" (as in lock the door)?
"Cerrar la puerta" has always been adequate. Until Spain recently
entered the 20th century, we didn't need to lock our doors, just close
them. Nowadays, closing them is synonymous with locking them
(assuming we're talking about front doors here). Seemple :-)
>
>Note to the sarcasm-impaired: please ignore this post.
And these one too.
--
Miguel Carrasquer ____________________ ~~~
Amsterdam [ ||]~
m...@inter.NL.net ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
Hung J Lu
: The distinction may be similar but it's far from "the same".
: (By the way, what is it? Do you mean shi4/zai4? That would
: seem to be quite a stretch, IMHO.)
Well, I guess the stretch you are referring to
deals with the use of (ser/estar) as auxiliary verbs.
In their prime meaning (first item in dictionaries),
ser/estar are shi4/zai4 without much to argue about.
(some of my American friends cannot even get this
part right: e.g. soy en la escuela. But I guess most
Americans have trouble with ser/estar only when these
are used as auxiliary verbs.)
Yes, in Chinese one uses intransitive verbs to describe
the state/condition of something/someone, whereas in
Spanish one uses (estar)+(adjective). And for
passive voice there is bei4 in Mandarin to play the role
of (ser) of Spanish. Still, it is interesting to note
that Chinese uses zai4 to indicate action in progress,
much like the use of (estar) in Spanish.
Anyway, why am I saying things that you know well? :-)
: Estoy en el hotel / So'c a l'hotel / Estou no hotel
: El hotel esta' aqui' / L'hotel esta` aqui' / O hotel e' (fica) aqui
Yes, the Portuguese e' sometimes is equivalent
to the Spanish esta'. Like o hotel e' aqui, or
when people say "onde e'...". But, is it my
impression or what? I think I've never heard
"Onde sa~o ..." nor "as casas sa~o aqui".
-- Ekki
Marcelo Bruno
In article <3c83u7$p...@news.CCIT.Arizona.EDU>, h...@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU (Hung J Lu) writes:
|> From: h...@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU (Hung J Lu)
|> Subject: Re: ser/estar (was: sci.lang FAQ)
|> Date: Thu, 8 Dec 94 18:13:11 EST
Definitely we don't use esta'/esta~o in these cases. I think we can use
both e'/ sa~o or fica/ficam with the use of "ficar" being far more
common than "ser". For example,
Onde ficam os melhores hote'is da cidade ?
Na Rua 15 de Novembro.
or
Onde fica (e') a sua casa?
Perto da Prac,a da A'rvore.
etc...
I guess I've never thought of this before. It's just natural!
Maelstrom
: > I find it amazing and amusing that so many European languages
ohh really???? And what does "cerrar la puerta con candado" mean??? To
toast marshmallows???
: Note to the sarcasm-impaired: please ignore this post.
: --
: JS
John
>ohh really???? And what does "cerrar la puerta con candado" mean??? To
>toast marshmallows???
>
you use on a gym locker. I don't have a candado on my front door, what I
have is a chapa. And I've never heard anybody say "cerrar la puerta con
chapa".
Face it dude, Spanish doesn't have a verb corresponding to English "lock".
Y punto. If you want to argue that a phrase like "cerrar con llave" is a
verb, that's a whole different argument. Nobody said it was impossible to
express the concept in Spanish.
John
Maury Merkin
<>What is a primitive people?
SH> <Oh, how about the Americans for example?
SH> Ah, thanks for clearing that up. :-)
Sincerely,
Princess.Summer...@woowoowoowoo.com
... I can see clearly now, the brain is gone....
Scott Horne
<
[to me:]
<Guy, are
<you sure that the fact that french is YOUR native language does not skew
<your opinion?
My native language is not French (not to mention "french"), and I haven't
offered an opinion on this topic.
--Scott
Jacques Guy
>It is fairly obvious that all languages are not equally
>_complicated_; this does not mean that they are not equally
>_complex_. The former is shown by the amount of space needed
>to describe the language, the latter by the results of using
>the language (ability to communicate whatever is necessary).
>A good non-linguistic example of the difference is a ball of
>yarn. You can let a cat play with it, or you can knit it into
>a sweater. The results are going to be more-or-less equally
>complex, but the sweater is nowhere nearly as complicated (note
>that it will be much easier to restore the original ball from
>the sweater than from the cat's cradle...)
Wait, I do not understand you there. You said _complexity_
is shown by the results of using the language, i.e. the
ability to communicate whatever is necessary. Now, turning
to the ball of yarn, the results of using it are, on one
hand, a cat's cradle, on the other a knitted sweater, and
you say that both are roughly equally complex, but the
sweater is a lot less complicated. I agree that the
sweater is a lot less chaotic than the cat's cradle,
in other words, its entropy is low, that of the cat's
cradle is high; in other words again, if you "zipped"
both, the sweater would make a much smaller file.
But what is _complexity_ then? If I try to use the language
analogy I get... in fact I cannot figure this out.
The ability to communicate whatever is necessary (the
result of using the language) is its _functionality_.
If I turn to a dictionary (here, Collins) I see:
complex: 1. made up of various interconnecting parts;
2. intricate or involved
complicated: made up of intricate parts or aspects
that are difficult to understand or analyse
With these, Sakao is definitely far more complicated
than Tolomako. It is also far more complex (second
meaning). But it is also made up of far more
interconnecting parts. More phonemes, more allomorphs,
more morphophonological rules. We could say that
both are roughly equally functional, yes, I suppose.
Even though one might argue that a language that
needs fewer phonemes or syllables to express the
same as another is more functional.
If we turn again to the ball of yarn, perhaps
we can say that the cat's cradle is more
intricate or involved than the sweater (more
complex_2), but can we say it is made of
various interconnecting parts? I think not.
As for the "complicatedness" of cradle and
sweater, the cradle is not made up of "parts";
perhaps we could say "aspects" difficult to
analyse; the sweater is definitely made of
parts, and we could throw aspects in too.
I'd say that "complicatedness" is undefined
for a cat's cradle... All in all the analogy
does not seem to hold well.
Jacques Guy
Scott Horne est visiblement de *tres* mauvais poil. Bon, I'm going to
answer. I discovered that French was complex when I had to
teach it. Then I discovered that French was *unduly* complex when
I learnt Tolomako. Then I discovered that I was not alone in
finding that some languages were more complex than others
when a colleague of mine who so far had been working on
Papuan languages went to investigate a "dying" language
on Choiseul island and came back saying "it was Austronesian,
not Papuan. Jeez, those Austronesian languages *are* easy!
I could chatter away within a week".
On a loosely related topic, I have just been to the bookshop
of the University where I saw on the shelves "Fundamentals
of Language" or is it "Introduction to Language", by Fromkin
and someone else, the very book that Jon Aarbakke was
bitching about recently. So curiosity urging me, I opened it.
There was a page or two listing language universals, quite
a few of them. I had a pen, but no paper, so I did not
jot down the zaniest. One had to do with complexity, all
languages being equally complex; another was the old
saw that speakers can understand an infinite number of
sentences. And more, having to do with the properties
of the model rather than the properties of languages.
Then onto phonology. I stopped there because there
are limits. But fancy introducing phonology with
binary features *as a matter of fact*. As I was
saying, there are limits. Limits to sectarianism.
So I put the book back, after having glanced at the
price label: $42.95 (Australian dollars, about $US28
or $30). Give me the Urantia Book any time.
Benjamin Castellot Melendez
: > I find it amazing and amusing that so many European languages
Have you ever heard of the verb "acerrojar"?. it means in Spanish
the same as to lock.
David Florez
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
David Florez Rodriguez | "But the end of War
| did not mean the
Disclaimer: Benjamin Menendez is only the | beginning of Peace"
owner of the account, and none of the |
opinions of the signer should be | Tacitus, Historiae
charged on him. Any complaints or |
requests should be sent to: |
|
ro...@isdn.tid.es or |
ro...@porfia.tid.es |
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JA...@ukcc.uky.edu
ccar...@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (Maelstrom) writes:
>s...@ctdvx5.priv.ornl.gov wrote:
>
in reply to the following:
>
>: Speaking of Spanish, isn't it really hilarious that the language doesn't
>: have a verb corresponding to English "lock" (as in lock the door)?
>
>ohh really???? And what does "cerrar la puerta con candado" mean??? To
>toast marshmallows???
>
and fairly common "When you leave, just lock the door, but don't close it,
and then I'll close it when I leave." French doesn't do much better.
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Benjamin Castellot Melendez
: In article <3cagfc$t...@netnews.upenn.edu>
Quite easy,
Cuando te vayas, echa el cerrojo, pero no cierres, ya la cerrare yo
cuando me vaya.
Or the more formal one.
Cuando te marches, acerroja la puerta, pero no la cierres, ya la
cerrare yo cuando me vaya.
Jacques Guy
>You make a good case that Tolomako's phonology is much simpler; I'll be
>interested to see if any other linguists care to defend the received
>wisdom. I do have one quibble:
>>Now for a nice example of Sakao's holophrastic tendencies:
>>
>>mOssOnEshOBr(i)n aDa EDE
>>he-shoots-fish-follows-continuous aspect+transitive bow sea
>>he kept on walking along the shore shooting fish with a bow
>This would have frightened me a lot more before I started learning Quechua.
>It has a load of affixes, and it takes time for an English speaker to get
>used to them; but on the other hand the verb tho' complex is highly regular,
>and word order is very flexible.
Why is it a quibble then? I am comparing Sakao with Tolomako, not with
Navaho. To me, Sakao was much less complex than, say, French, but far
more than Tolomako (or most other languages of Espiritu Santo, for that
matter).
>By the way, why are these two languages spoken in the same village?
>And what are the speakers' own feelings about the complexity of the two
>languages?
Tolomako speakers originally lived somewhere on the eastern coast
of Big Bay (found on most maps as St James and St Phillip's Bay,
but known there as just "Big Bay"), not far from the present
village of Tsureviu. The place used to be most unhealthy:
swamps galore, hence malaria, so that the priest in charge
of the mission station decided to shift the whole population
to another catholic station, called Port-Olry (after a French
navigator named Olry -- the Sakao name for the place is LaDamaB).
That was around 1930, if I remember correctly.
The speakers' own feelings about the two languages??? Well, well,
well, Sakao is known almost all over Espiritu Santo as an
impossibly difficult language.
No-one is much surprised to hear a Westerner speak Akei or some
other "easy" language, but Sakao! Since it is quite distinctive,
I always got astonished looks when they heard me speak it: "Yu
save lanwis ya?" ("You know that language?").
Another telling thing. In Sakao the French language is called
a^wa^rpa^kyl, the English language a^wa^na^ttu, which break
down into:
a^- article
wa^r speech
pa^kyl twisted, crooked, involved, complicated
na^ttu straight, correct, easy to see, to comprehend
The case of Sakao and Tolamako is interesting because it
is so clear. The two languages are closely related, but
at the same time one is exceedingly simple phonologically,
morphologically and syntactically, the other complex at
all these three levels. So there is no arguing that
complexity in this makes up for simplicity in that.
Olivier Cremel
In article <1708A1231...@ukcc.uky.edu>, JA...@ukcc.uky.edu writes:
>
> Which brings to my mind the question of how to say the perfectly normal
> and fairly common "When you leave, just lock the door, but don't close it,
> and then I'll close it when I leave." French doesn't do much better.
When you leave, just lock the door, but don't close it, and then I'll close
it when I leave.
En partant, verrouille la porte, mais ne la ferme pas, et je la fermerai en
partant.
Seems shorter to me. What was it you said ?
--
Olivier.
=============================================================================
"Oignez vilain, il vous poindra/Poignez vilain, il vous oindra."