Conlangery Podcast (Latest Ep: #94: Face and Politeness)

[Ollock]

Conlangery #67: Alũbetah

[brandrinn]

Bianca!

[Ossicone]

Bianca!

Hello!

[Melteor]

Comment On Reader Letter:
That's sort of like when English does it with words like 'anime' or 'manga' (see, American comics would be called American manga; I'm guessing); the word gains a particularity it didn't originally have, it's not so general.

I think it's called Europeans pointing at stuff, trying to elicit an answer because they're so used to ostension and pointing going together, that they get tripped up when the speaker doesn't know what they're saying, gives them a generic noun or descriptive phrase, and the European goes on his way thinking he got a name for the place. The best one I can think of is Yucatan, which I've heard actually means "I don't know what you're saying."

Lots of Indian names in America aren't really even place names, they're just descriptive phrases like Hockanum "bend in the river"; settlers still liked the name, and sometimes moved and took it with them. Indians would just use the name until it faded from memory or changed and make up a new one. Not so settlers, who keep names like the Oxbow even though geographically they've changed (except when it's extreme, like what was the Old Man on the Mountain.) Or so I've read.

I guess there should be a word for it made, like nonostension or something for the pointing/elicitation mistakes. But with the English examples, really, what's going on? We're taking the spandrel to be a component of the meaning. Logically, it's associating incidental features to a general term that perhaps occur frequently; a logical and then semantic connection is made, where all X are also Y, so you are conscious of Y when talking about X. Ogden Nash said that Europeans believe in "word magic", that there should be one word for any identifiable concept, and a name for any identifiable thing. It's something those explorers and people today have in common.

[Ollock]

Comment On Reader Letter:
That's sort of like when English does it with words like 'anime' or 'manga' (see, American comics would be called American manga; I'm guessing); the word gains a particularity it didn't originally have, it's not so general.

I think it's called Europeans pointing at stuff, trying to elicit an answer because they're so used to ostension and pointing going together, that they get tripped up when the speaker doesn't know what they're saying, gives them a generic noun or descriptive phrase, and the European goes on his way thinking he got a name for the place. The best one I can think of is Yucatan, which I've heard actually means "I don't know what you're saying."

It's not like non-European languages are immune to reanalysis. In an odd reversal, I have heard some people say that the Chinese word for America (美国 mei3guo2) means "beautiful country" -- several times, from Chinese people. Historically, that 美 is a truncation of the phonetic loans 亚美利加 or 美利坚. Or, a more relevant example: "high" has been borrowed into Chinese to mean "good, cool; very happy". Some more straight-forward examples, Japanese has things like アルバイト (arubaito) "part-time job", from German Arbeit "work", and バーゲン (baagen) "sale at the store", from bargain. I haven't yet found an example of someone using a generic term to refer to something specific to Western culture, but that may be because other countries are more in tune with Western culture than we are of their cultures. Japanese will even put two English words together into a phrase that does not have any conventional meaning in English (cf. アメリカンドッグ amerikandoggu "corn dog" < American dog)

Lots of Indian names in America aren't really even place names, they're just descriptive phrases like Hockanum "bend in the river"; settlers still liked the name, and sometimes moved and took it with them. Indians would just use the name until it faded from memory or changed and make up a new one. Not so settlers, who keep names like the Oxbow even though geographically they've changed (except when it's extreme, like what was the Old Man on the Mountain.) Or so I've read.

Lots of native names for places are just descriptive terms. It's just that those meanings are often lost in European languages because the written form of the name gets frozen while the spoken language moves on. Chinese has more obvious examples, since the meaning in preserved in the writing system. Thus you can clearly see 北京 Beijing = "North Captial", 上海 Shanghai = "upon the sea", 四川 Sichuan = "four rivers".

I guess there should be a word for it made, like nonostension or something for the pointing/elicitation mistakes. But with the English examples, really, what's going on? We're taking the spandrel to be a component of the meaning. Logically, it's associating incidental features to a general term that perhaps occur frequently; a logical and then semantic connection is made, where all X are also Y, so you are conscious of Y when talking about X. Ogden Nash said that Europeans believe in "word magic", that there should be one word for any identifiable concept, and a name for any identifiable thing. It's something those explorers and people today have in common.

Or it's just linguistic reanalysis -- we are borrowing words and assigning them to different meanings than the original. As I have noted above, this is pretty much the norm in borrowing situations.

[clawgrip]

I haven't yet found an example of someone using a generic term to refer to something specific to Western culture, but that may be because other countries are more in tune with Western culture than we are of their cultures.

I'll try here:
ソース sōsu (from English 'sauce'): without any additional qualification, this refers specifically to Worcestershire sauce.
ミシン mishin (from English 'machine'): this refers specifically to a sewing machine, though it may very easily just be an abbreviation of 'sewing machine'.
ミルク miruku (from English 'milk'): refers specifically to baby formula. I'm not sure if this one counts, since I'm not sure if baby formula was something specific to Western culture at the time it was borrowed.

I really feel like I am forgetting some obvious ones here but I can't think of anything else right now.

[Ollock]

I haven't yet found an example of someone using a generic term to refer to something specific to Western culture, but that may be because other countries are more in tune with Western culture than we are of their cultures.

I'll try here:
ソース sōsu (from English 'sauce'): without any additional qualification, this refers specifically to Worcestershire sauce.
ミシン mishin (from English 'machine'): this refers specifically to a sewing machine, though it may very easily just be an abbreviation of 'sewing machine'.
ミルク miruku (from English 'milk'): refers specifically to baby formula. I'm not sure if this one counts, since I'm not sure if baby formula was something specific to Western culture at the time it was borrowed.

I really feel like I am forgetting some obvious ones here but I can't think of anything else right now.

Oh, cool. Yeah, mishin is questionable, I guess. I'd still call miruku relevant, even if baby formula was present in Japan before it was loaned -- it at least shows how a loan word can get much more specific in the way anime and manga did, even if it's not a culture-specific concept.

[brandrinn]

These are great examples, except "so:su," which certainly doesn't imply worchester sauce. It's used as a generic word for any kind of sauce. Constantly. All over the place. But yeah, there's plenty of other examples for Japanese terms for European things, like Clawgrip pointed out.

[clawgrip]

Oh, but it does very often imply Worcestershire sauce. I'm not saying the word is used exclusively for this one type of sauce, only that, by itself, without any other words to qualify it, (i.e. not "gravy sauce" or "salsa sauce" or "sauce béchamel" etc.) that's what it is strongly implies. Take a look at a Google images search for ソース http://www.google.com/search?q=ソース ([URL] tag doesn't like the Japanese). Practically every single image is variations of Worcestershire sauce.

Edit: URL fixed, kind of

[finlay]

the url doesn't like japanese and most of that is junk telling google about your session ID or preferences or something.

you can safely shorten it to
http://www.google.com/search?q=ソース

[Pinetree]

Comment On Reader Letter:I think it's called Europeans pointing at stuff, trying to elicit an answer because they're so used to ostension and pointing going together, that they get tripped up when the speaker doesn't know what they're saying, gives them a generic noun or descriptive phrase, and the European goes on his way thinking he got a name for the place. The best one I can think of is Yucatan, which I've heard actually means "I don't know what you're saying."

What, like this?

[Ollock]

Conlangery #68: Agglutination

[Vuvuzela]

I forget almost everything I used to know about Inuktitut, so, like, half of your examples were frustratingly vaguely familiar.

[Xephyr]

I think it's called Europeans pointing at stuff, trying to elicit an answer because they're so used to ostension and pointing going together, that they get tripped up when the speaker doesn't know what they're saying, gives them a generic noun or descriptive phrase, and the European goes on his way thinking he got a name for the place. The best one I can think of is Yucatan, which I've heard actually means "I don't know what you're saying."

This is probably an urban myth. It apparently comes from a letter Cortéz wrote back to the crown, narrating his exploits (which, if memory serves me right, is also the letter in which he straight up invents the story of the Aztecs believing him to be a god, and so an all-pervasive 500-year-old myth is born...). Problem is, it doesn't hold up to etymological scrutiny. The only explanation of the name I can find from a source that seems like they at all know what the fuck they're talking about is this, from Bolles' grammar of Yucatec:

The name for Yucatan may well come from Nahuatl. The name seems not to be Mayan in any case because most Mayan place names have recognizable meanings and Yucatan does not, although there have been various attempts to explain it as a Mayan word. The reason for supposing that Yucatan is a Nahuatl word is because of the suffix -tan. The Nahuatl suffixes -tla and -tlan both indicate "the place of", although it seems that -tla indicates more precisely "the place where there is an abundance of". Both the Maya and the Spanish were not very good about writing, and thus presumably pronouncing, Nahuatl words, especially those with the tl in them. Normally the tl is turned into a t. Thus the suffix -tlan would become -tan in Mayan.

Yuhcatla is given in Simeon's Diccionario de la Lengua Nahuatl as meaning "deserted place, solitude, vacant space". On the other hand, yuca is given in Molina's dictionary as "to be of another". Thus there seems to be at least two possibilities in Nahuatl for a word which is similar to Yucatan: Yuhcatlan or Yucatlan. Either of these two words could have been the basis for Yucatan's name. There is also the Spanish word yuca (the yucca plant called tuc in Mayan) which is derived from some Native American language, although we have not been able to trace the origins. While the yucca plant is different from the various agave plants which grow and are cultivated in Yucatan (ci is the Mayan name for the cultivated henequen plant and cħelem is the Mayan name for the smaller and hardier wild plant) the yucca and agave plants share many visual characteristics. As a long shot it could be that the name Yucatan is derived from a name meaning "place of the yucca", but we have seen nothing in the Nahuatl dictionaries which would support this reading.

On page 63 of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel there is a line which might indicate that for the Mayan of Yucatan the word Yucatan is a foreign word: uay ti luum Yucal Peten, Yucatan tu than maya ah Itzaob lae ("here in the land Yucal Peten, Yucatan in the mayan language of the Itzas" or as Roys translates this line "here in the land Yucalpeten, Yucatan in the speech of the Maya Itza"). The word Yucal Peten can be looked at as a composite of u (collar), cal (neck), and peten (island, province, region, from the root word pet (round)). Given that yucal che, meaning "yoke", is in fact "neck wood" (u, cal, che) one could say that yucal peten is "neck region" or "neck island" which yields "peninsula", a recognition by the Maya that their land is a peninsula. Roys maintains that Yucal Peten is a Mayan imitation of the name Yucatan, but the reverse could also be true. In the Mayan language peten is not used to the same extent that the Nahuatl language uses -tlan, but they are somewhat equivalent. In any case, we have not found in the various pieces of literature written by the Maya any explanation for the name Yucatan, so we will leave this problem inconclusively.

Note that, while he doesn't arrive on a definite conclusion as to the origin of the name, he doesn't even consider the "I don't know" etymology. Which he is surely at least aware of as a hypothesis/myth/whatever. Which, since he studies Yucatec for a living, is telling.

[finlay]

oh damn there was something you were getting tied up in knots over that I wanted to correct, but I've forgotten it already...

[Melteor]

What, like this?

This is funny as hell.

@Xephyr: Yeah, it's a little too good to be true. Even if Cortez did mean it to show the Indians were stupid, it really is a European thing. OK another example I'm going to pull out from behind: Japanese mothers don't produce or bring attention to things their kids are supposed to notice in order to name them--they expect them to make a comment on it. Hence topic-comment structure. But really this is getting tangential and I can't find the damn paper. The other examples of Indian place-"names" are better than 'Yucatan', which I can ignore as contentious.

[Xephyr]

Japanese mothers don't produce or bring attention to things their kids are supposed to notice in order to name them--they expect them to make a comment on it. Hence topic-comment structure.

... uh-huh

[Melteor]

Japanese mothers don't produce or bring attention to things their kids are supposed to notice in order to name them--they expect them to make a comment on it. Hence topic-comment structure.

... uh-huh

I don't make this shit up!

(This is the best I could come up with; not the same paper, but I think it was similar research. It's based on Austinian theory, which I don't know how much currency it has around here.)

"...The data reveals that both ga- and wa- can mark the subject of a sentence, children initially hypothesize an association between -ga and -wa and certain kinds of speech acts. Specifically, -ga is linked to statements and -wa to questions..."

[clawgrip]

Japanese mothers don't produce or bring attention to things their kids are supposed to notice in order to name them--they expect them to make a comment on it. Hence topic-comment structure.

I'm not so sure what you mean by this. Are you are saying a Japanese mother will, for example, pick up a banana and expect her child not to say 'banana' but rather 'yellow' or 'yummy' or something? Because I can assure you Japanese mothers ask a lot of "What is this?" and "Who is this?" questions, which would seem to oppose this premise.

And although I agree that young children may overuse ga in situations where wa would be more appropriate (sometimes resulting in sentences with grammatically inaccurate double subjects), I am not clear how exactly children's acquisition of wa, ga, and other particles relates to what Japanese mothers allegedly hope their children will say when presented with "things" they are "supposed to notice". Perhaps you can expand on this?

[Aurora Rossa]

The podcast raises some good points regarding the length of affixes and the resulting sense of naturalism. I would speculate, though, that the appropriate length for affixes depends on the phonology of the language as well. Japanese features many affixes with two syllables like -masu and -sase[ru] and happens to have rather simple phonotactics and limited possibilities for syllables. More phonologically complicated languages like Georgian and the Salish family seem to feature shorter morphemes, with one-segment affixes occurring rather frequently.

[Ollock]

The podcast raises some good points regarding the length of affixes and the resulting sense of naturalism. I would speculate, though, that the appropriate length for affixes depends on the phonology of the language as well. Japanese features many affixes with two syllables like -masu and -sase[ru] and happens to have rather simple phonotactics and limited possibilities for syllables. More phonologically complicated languages like Georgian and the Salish family seem to feature shorter morphemes, with one-segment affixes occurring rather frequently.

Yes, absolutely. I should have made clearer that single-segment affixes require some complexity in your syllable structure, unless you have some phonomorphological process that resolves the phonotactics (such as an empenthetic vowel when two single consonants come together). The point is -- think about it as you are making affixes, so you don't end up with all monosyllables.

[Melteor]

Japanese mothers don't produce or bring attention to things their kids are supposed to notice in order to name them--they expect them to make a comment on it. Hence topic-comment structure.

I'm not so sure what you mean by this. Are you are saying a Japanese mother will, for example, pick up a banana and expect her child not to say 'banana' but rather 'yellow' or 'yummy' or something? Because I can assure you Japanese mothers ask a lot of "What is this?" and "Who is this?" questions, which would seem to oppose this premise.

And although I agree that young children may overuse ga in situations where wa would be more appropriate (sometimes resulting in sentences with grammatically inaccurate double subjects), I am not clear how exactly children's acquisition of wa, ga, and other particles relates to what Japanese mothers allegedly hope their children will say when presented with "things" they are "supposed to notice". Perhaps you can expand on this?

The theory is that the mothers use 'wa' to point out things, using a noun or a demonstrative, with the expectation of the kid producing a comment i.e. "Kore wa..?" (Leading questions, this was the exact structure given.) Then the kid starts to produce complete questions, like "Is that a banana?" or "Is that yummy?" Finally they use 'wa' to make statements not just questions. I forget exactly how 'ga' is used but supposedly that's the theory of how they learn from their mom.

@Ollock: It's boring because people aren't entirely sure what is optional and what isn't. I like some of the Middle-Eastern languages, or Romani, which use suffixing on the verb.

It's also really hard to have conlangs that aren't too long-winded you know? Like that was always my beef with say Esperanto or Interlingua...Every word is too darn long! If you want to look at a kind of interesting example, Saiwosh is a kind of revived dialect of Chinook Jargon, which is strongly fusional, he gives some good examples of how it works pragmatically on the site here.

[clawgrip]

The theory is that the mothers use 'wa' to point out things, using a noun or a demonstrative, with the expectation of the kid producing a comment i.e. "Kore wa..?" (Leading questions, this was the exact structure given.) Then the kid starts to produce complete questions, like "Is that a banana?" or "Is that yummy?" Finally they use 'wa' to make statements not just questions. I forget exactly how 'ga' is used but supposedly that's the theory of how they learn from their mom.

I think incomplete questions like "Kore wa?" generally occur subsequent to more definite questions that have established what sort of answer is expected, e.g. "Kore wa nani?" Similarly, a question like "Banana wa?" is likely only to follow some other question that established what type of response was expected, such as "Ringo wa doko?"

In my experience, wa will occur in incomplete questions, e.g. "Mama wa?" but it tends to be dropped in complete questions, e.g. "Koko itai no?" This seems to mimic how adults speak informally anyway. On the other hand, in statements, wa may occur, but ga is much more common, as the article you linked to suggests.

Still, I don't really see any fundamental difference here. Japanese mothers quite clearly do ask their children questions with the specific intention of receiving as an answer the name of the object or person indicated. "Kore wa?" is of course entirely open-ended, but I don't think it occurs without previously-established context that makes it quite clear what is being asked.

[Ollock]

@Ollock: It's boring because people aren't entirely sure what is optional and what isn't. I like some of the Middle-Eastern languages, or Romani, which use suffixing on the verb.

What's boring? I am not getting the specific thing you are referring to.

[finlay]

I dunno how to relate this into what you're saying about Japanese particles, but I've run into, from children and adults, students who, when constructing an English sentence, will directly translate 'wa' as 'is'. This kinda makes sense because in basic sentences you often get things like リンゴは赤い, which directly translates as リンゴ:the apple; は:is; 赤い:red.