English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

23:00

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 You, too. Aren’t some of those lovely?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@tchrist Yes indeedy.

@tchrist isn't that where distinctions from civil twilight start?

tchrist

Wow.

So nice.

I’ve had heavy storms for days and days now.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

-_-

Any more snow?

BRB monitor problems

tchrist

no snow this low

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Nice.

tchrist

23:15

Oh no! No more manswers!

7

A: "kviews" should be "k views"

Starting with the next build (rev 2014.5.23.2267 here on meta and 2014.5.23.1623 elsewhere): P.S. Rest in peace, "manswers".

> Welsh has two systems of grammatical number, singular–plural and collective–singulative.

Cool.

> Welsh has two systems of grammatical number, singular–plural and collective–singulative. Plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways: by adding a suffix to the end of the word (usually -au), as in tad and tadau, through vowel mutation, as in bachgen and bechgyn, or through a combination of the two, as in chwaer and chwiorydd. Other nouns take the singulative suffixes -yn (for masculine nouns) or -en (for feminine nouns). Most nouns which inflect according to this system designate objects that are frequently found in groups, for example adar "birds/flock of birds", aderyn "bird"; …

Tolkien had collective plurals in his languages.

Cerberus

Hello again!

I always type balative myself.

abl is just a weird cluster.

tchrist

That’s what Cain said.

Anonymous

Alan Wood's page for enclosed alphanumerics lists ⓫⓬⓭⓮⓯⓰⓱⓲⓳⓴ but not ❶❷❸❹❺❻❼❽❾❿, which are on his page for dingbats. But I see two sets of "dingbat negative circled digit"s 1-10. One is labeled sans serif. I can't see the difference.

Cerberus

But it means off-faring, so...

(I think those are cognates with au-fero?)

tchrist

@snailboat Yes, the second page certainly dupes those in both columns.

I don’t think they are intended to be different.

Cerberus

23:22

@tchrist It is true that v; can mean videlicet: the semicolon-thingy normally stands for -ed or -et, but, as usual, you can leave out even more letters as long as you keep the ending, so v; can be videlicet.

Come to think of it, it can probably be any vowel + d/t.

So q; is quod, kind of.

tchrist

@snailboat Strike that. I’m confused.

@snailboat Wait, wait. I’m now unconfused.

These are different:

‭ ⓿ 24FF NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO
x (dingbat negative circled digit one - 2776)
‭ ❶ 2776 DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ONE
‭ ❷ 2777 DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT TWO
‭ ❸ 2778 DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT THREE
‭ ❹ 2779 DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT FOUR
‭ ❺ 277A DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT FIVE
‭ ❻ 277B DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT SIX
‭ ❼ 277C DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT SEVEN
‭ ❽ 277D DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT EIGHT

‭ ⓿  24FF       NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO
        x (dingbat negative circled digit one - 2776)
‭ ❶  2776       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT ONE
‭ ❷  2777       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT TWO
‭ ❸  2778       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT THREE
‭ ❹  2779       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT FOUR
‭ ❺  277A       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT FIVE
‭ ❻  277B       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT SIX
‭ ❼  277C       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT SEVEN
‭ ❽  277D       DINGBAT NEGATIVE CIRCLED DIGIT EIGHT

Not the same to me.

Cerberus

@tchrist Yes, Cappelli is the standard work everyone uses in Latin/Italian palaeography. There is a version online that is more searchable, that is, you can go to a letter.

inkunabeln.ub.uni-koeln.de/vdibProduction/handapparat/nachs_w/…

Notice that they also have the Orbis Latinus, where you can look up the Latin names of modern places.

Anonymous

@Cerberus My favorite case word is perlative, although I've never studied a language with a perlative case. At least, not as it's normally analyzed. I first ran across the term in an analysis of Japanese. The accusative case marker -o is sometimes used not to mark a direct object, but to mark a location through/across which something moves, and very occasionally you can find both uses of -o in one sentence, so the author analyzed it as a pair of case markers with the same form.

tchrist

I see.

Anonymous

And they called one accusative, the other perlative. I like saying perlative. Perlative!

tchrist

23:29

I think I’m becoming aroused.

Cerberus

@snailboat Ah, yes, I have heard of that. I thought some other languages also had it...?

Anonymous

@Cerberus I'm sure! There are 7000+ languages I don't know. :-)

tchrist

> perlative /ˈpɝːlətɪv/. Linguistics.

Etymology: f. L. perlatus, pa. pple. of perferre, to carry through, convey + -ive.

A grammatical case signifying movement alongside or means of transportation.

1953 Trans. Philol. Soc. 1952 72 - The use of the perlative case..is of some interest.
1953 Trans. Philol. Soc. 1952, 72 - The perlative would seem to indicate going ‘alongside’ so as to be ‘at’.
1966 G. S. Lane in Birnbaum & Puhvel Anc. Indo-European Dial. 217 - A distinguishes formally between an instrument in -yo and a so-called perlative in -ā.

Cerberus

There is also the illative case, and more...

Anonymous

@Cerberus Ooh, what's that one?

Cerberus

23:30

@snailboat And probably more I don't know!

@snailboat Something with in!

Robusto

I can't draw a bead on the perlative case.

Cerberus

Possibly into.

tchrist

> illative /ɪˈleɪtɪv/, a. and sb.

Etymology: ad. late L. illātīvus, f. illāt-, ppl. stem of inferre (see prec.): cf. Fr. illatif (1617 in Godefroy).

A adj. 1 Of words: Introducing or stating an inference; esp. in illative particle.

1611 W. Sclater Key iii. 20. 328 - First reason..collected from the illatiue particle therefore.
1647 Faringdon Serm. ii. 23 - Which word is not causal, but illative.
A. 1703 Burkitt On N.T., Heb. ii. Pref., - Our apostle draws an inference..as appears by the illative particle ‘therefore’ at the head of the first verse.

Cerberus

Right, into.

Ah, yes, it was Finnish.

tchrist

Funny how the stress is on a different syllable in perlative compared with illative.

Cerberus

23:31

Right, that is rather arbitrary...to be honest, I wouldn't have known.

tchrist

> Quenya nouns are declined. Declining is the process of inflecting nouns; a set of declined forms of the same word is called a declension. Parmaquesta has ten cases (including short variants). These include the four primary cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and instrumental; three adverbial cases: allative (of which the dative is a shortened form), locative (also with a shortened form), and ablative; and an adjectival case.

Anonymous

Oh, I would have pronounced it incorrectly.

tchrist

> Primary cases:
The nominative is the subject of a verb. It is also used with most prepositions.
The accusative is the direct object of a verb. It has the same form as the nominative in Tarquesta, but is distinct in Old Quenya and in Parmaquesta.
The genitive is mainly used to mark origin (e.g. the best painters of France). Its usage sometimes overlaps the ablative, sometimes the adjectival.
The instrumental marks a noun as a means or instrument.

Adverbial cases:
The allative expresses motion towards: elenna, 'toward a star, starward(s)'.

Cerberus

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Lovely! I want.

@tchrist That is strange. I would either call it something like an attributive or qualitative case, or an adjectival suffix...

tchrist

@Cerberus Which one?

Cerberus

23:34

"Adjectival case".

The others are all as in real languages.

tchrist

Yes, that is a strange thing.

Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien = Out of the Great Sea to Middle Earth I am come.

So -ello is the ablative and -enna is the allative.

Cerberus

So are the cases mainly uniform suffixes?

tchrist

(The starting vowel can vary.

Not exactly.

Cerberus

Hmm.

I mean, more uniform than in Greek or Latin or German or Dutch.

tchrist

There is also a Dual set, a Plural-1 set for normal plurals, and a Plural-2 set for collective plurals.

The dual of course uses a -t marker like in Gothic.

Cerberus

23:40

OK so more uniform than Latin, let alone crazy Greek, but not quite suffigal.

tchrist

The Quendi knew how to talk good.

Quendi being Quenya for speakers.

Cerberus

Untarnished by impure later developments.

tchrist

Quenya noun declensions on Wikipedia.

Cerberus

Ah, I seem to remember that. Because neither animals nor plants spoke.

N'est-ce pas?

tchrist

@Cerberus Well . . . Sindarin, the grey-elven tongue, was subject to the wearing away of time.

Cerberus

23:42

But Quenya was pure?

By the way, I think'd really love Greek.

Nobody can know all the forms...except perhaps you...

tchrist

Quenya was the basis, although there were proto radicals.

This is better in some ways.

I dunno, it looks a bit messy in places. Or at least, complicated.

Cerberus

@tchrist Ah, how verisimilous!

Verisimile? Verisimilar?

tchrist

Eh?

Cerberus

@tchrist Messy, yes! There are so many exceptions and alternatives for everything that you will never be out of endings to recognise...but you can use rules of thumb to get almost all of them.

tchrist

> Quenya or High-elven is the most prominent language of the Amanya branch of the Elvish language family. In Aman there were two dialects of Quenya, Vanyarin and Noldorin. For historical reasons, only the latter was used in Middle-earth. The only other Eldarin language spoken in Aman, Telerin, could also be considered a dialect of Quenya, but it was usually held to be a separate language and is not discussed here (see separate article).

There is a very great deal of linguistic material that has never been published.

It is extremely frustrating.

Cerberus

23:49

Ah, the Teleri.

Joseph Weissman

sigh

tchrist

> The Elfconners have now reported that there are some 3000 pages of linguistic material, twice as much as the actual literary material of the type that Christopher Tolkien was using for the HoMe series.

very sighs

Joseph Weissman

I sometimes think the entire series of fantasy works exist in order for the languages to have somewhere they make sense, where they can "exist"

That they're the more important/interesting/urgent work, from a literary perspective

Not only linguistic I mean

At least arguably :)

tchrist

> The ridiculous secrecy that surrounds the study of Tolkien's work continues. It remains that the Elfconners have failed to publish the vast amount of what they are known to have in their possession (now given by them as some 3000 pages), they still refuse to describe exactly what they have, and they refuse to explain why they cannot or will not publish it. They are not presently trying to keep it a secret that they have a great deal of material (they cannot resist bragging about it).

Joseph Weissman

Insofar as constructed languages are "texts"

Oy vey

What a stupid mess

tchrist

23:53

That was written more than a decade ago.

Joseph Weissman

Ugh

tchrist

Nobody I know really understands what the dealio is.

Cerberus

@JosephWeissman Hello! You could say that. But, on the other hand, you could argue that the languages exist to provide a background for the story to stand out against.

Joseph Weissman

They definitely help enrich the world for sure

I just wonder about how that relationship works I guess

It definitely seems reciprocal

That the stories compel Tolkein to "deepen" the language, and vice versa

Cerberus

I think it is somewhere in between. It is like saying: "which is more important in the number 15: is it the factor 3 or the factor 5?"

@JosephWeissman Exactly!

Robusto

23:55

No one got my perlative joke.

Cerberus

@tchrist Who are the Elfconners?

@Robusto Aww what was it?

There were so many text walls.

Robusto

25 mins ago, by Robusto

I can't draw a bead on the perlative case.

tchrist

@Cerberus The tiny set of like 5 people to whom CJRT entrusted all the linguistic material.

@Robusto Untrue!

Robusto

Silent appreciation is no appreciation.

Cerberus

@Robusto Hmm I'm afraid I just don't get it.

My minds are unworthy.

Robusto

23:58

Perhaps Tom will explain it to you.

Cerberus

As in, a bullet moves through the perlative case, "per"?

Robusto

Think German.

Cerberus

@tchrist Oh, I see. I presume they are respectable people? Why are they hiding it? Laziness?

And why the name Elfconners?

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…