Andreas Johansson wrote:
>(He says that Q and S /a/, short and long, sounds like "a" in "machine",

    Really?  The only comment on the vowel sounds I can find in Appendix E
says "the sounds were approximately those represented by i,e,a,o,u in
English machine, were, father, for, brute, irrespective of quantity."

   That is:

	 i = mach_i_ne
	 e =w_e_re
	 a = f_a_ther
	 o = f_o_r
	 u = br_u_te

    (Which is not quite as useful as it looks, since different varieties of
English pronounce these words differently; the e in my version of "were" is
almost certainly not what Tolkien intended.)

     I think that the "machine" example was intended to give the sound of
"i" only.  In my dialect of English, the a in "machine" is mid, central,
unrounded, that is, schwa.  The "a" in "father" is low, back, unrounded.

/\     WISTR LAG WIGS RAIHTS
\/            WRAIQS NU IST                               <> David Salo
<dsalo@...> <>



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> Mae govannen! I have been studying quenya for quite some time right now,
but one thing I never found, not in Ardalambion, nor in any other places,
is this:
>
> How did you count numbers over 10 in quenya? For example, in the Black
Speech, the system is X ten-piece and X, for example 13 is one ten-piece
and three, ash mâgh nam. how does it work in quenya? what is 14, what is
242?

Your Black Speech example does not come from Tolkien, but it somebody's
linguistic "fan fiction" (which is not necessarily a bad thing, but we
cannot use this as authoritative material when analysing Tolkien's own
constructions!) Only the word _ash_ = "1" was made by Tolkien.

In duodecimal counting, 14 may be _atta rasta_, "two [and] twelve" in
Quenya, while 242 *could* be _atta toltorasta hosta_ (two and eight twelves
and 144). However, this is based on the uncertain assumption that _hosta_,
like its Sindarin cognate _host_, can be used for a "gross", 144 (see KHOTH
in the Etymologies). The Qenya Lexicon, page 95, provides an early but
certain word for "gross": _tuksa_, better spelt _tuxa_ in a mature Quenya
context. You can substitute _tuxa_ for _hosta_ if you like.

In normal decimal counting, we could have _canta cainen_ "four [and] ten"
for 14, while 242 is more difficult, since we don't have a certain word for
"hundred". Some INDIRECT evidence could point to _haran_ (or _harna_?) as a
word for 100. If so, we could have, say, _attaharan_ (or _tataran_ for
_tat-haran_) for 200, and _atta can(ta)cainen attaharan_ for 242 (two and
four-ten and two-hundred).

I made a html version of something I have written about numbers for a
Quenya grammar I am preparing, see:

http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/numerals.htm

You won't find a link from my Index page; this was written a couple of
years ago, and I want to revise it a bit before I make it fully "official".

- Helge Fauskanger



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>>(He says that Q and S /a/, short and long, sounds like "a" in
"machine",
>
>   Really?  The only comment on the vowel sounds I can find in Appendix
E
>says "the sounds were approximately those represented by i,e,a,o,u in
>English machine, were, father, for, brute, irrespective of quantity."
>
>  That is:
>
> i = mach_i_ne
> e =w_e_re
> a = f_a_ther
> o = f_o_r
> u = br_u_te
>
>   (Which is not quite as useful as it looks, since different varieties
of
>English pronounce these words differently; the e in my version of
"were" is
>almost certainly not what Tolkien intended.)
>
>    I think that the "machine" example was intended to give the sound
of
>"i" only.  In my dialect of English, the a in "machine" is mid,
central,
>unrounded, that is, schwa.  The "a" in "father" is low, back,
unrounded.

Sorry. I should've written "father", not "machine". But in the variety
of English I learn at school (in Sweden), the a in machine sounds as the
one in father. I hope this also is the case in at least some variant on
native English!

                                  Andreas

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>> Also, how might this be pronounced?  I have always
>> assumed something close to "I^".
>
>I believe "ai" is pronounced like English "eye", "I".
>

If we are taking JRRT completely litterally, the first element in
Khuzdul _ai_ is pronounced a little further back than the first element
in English _eye_, _I_.

(He says that Q and S /a/, short and long, sounds like "a" in "father",
and that the elements in Q and S diphtongs are identical to the
corresponding monophtongs. He also says that the sound values for
Khuzdul are like for Elvish, except for _th_ and _kh_, so the first part
of _ai_ should be the short variant of the "a" in "father", which's
pronounced a little further back than the first element in _eye_.
Not that I think this matters.)

                                        Andreas


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I don't know if you all would find this interesting or not, but I have
been trying to produce an abecedarium, that is a little sentence or so
that contains all the letters of the tengwar used for writing
Sindarin.  The usual English example would be "the quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog" but there are many others.  The best I could
come up with this were these gnomic verses

Drambor anna ndanwedh. 'A clenched fist pays a ransom.'
Miidh ilthonga beng. 'Dew unstrings a bow.'
Cu^m(b) hmalth gweira lhu^g. 'A mound of gold betrays a dragon.'
Fael bessain ha^d rhach. 'A fair-minded lady shatters a curse.'
Bregol hwest to^l ven bain ciirbann. 'A sudden breeze brings us to a
				  fair harbor.'
Hnyf gadar aes.  'Nooses catch dinner.'

These include all the consonants and all the vowels, but not all the
diphthongs.  It is also a lot longer than I had intended so I wondered
if anyone could come up with a shorter text, like one long sentence.
Of course I have a secret motive in suggesting this task--I would like
a short text to practice the different types of calligraphy on.  But
if you will overlook my schemery, I thought some folks might enjoy the
challenge.

Lisa Star

==

** Lisa Star
--not an employee of any secret government agency-- N.P.
** LisaStar at earthling dot net
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9902

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Hi everybody,

	 This is my first message to this mailing list even if I suscribed
last December. I've already bothered some of you many times during the
last months on TolkLang or with private e-mail and now I'm here to start
asking questions (perhaps stupid) again.

	 On Ardalambion I learnt that in Quenya we have to use locative
ending _-sse_ to express English "in", right? If so, when should I use
Quenya preposition _mi_? In article "A Taste of Elvish" _mi_ is glossed
like English "in" and in article "Naamarie" _mi_ is glossed again like
"in". How can I decide, if it's possible, between using _-sse_ or _mi_?


	 Saluti,
	 Emanuele.

	 "He loved maps, as I have told you before; and he also
	 liked runes and letters and cunning handwriting..."
		 -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit


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Vicentini Emanuele wrote:
>
>
> On Ardalambion I learnt that in Quenya we have to use locative
> ending _-sse_ to express English "in", right?

Well, not exactly. The "locative" case expresses the spatial
position of a static item (for instance "the cat is *in* the tree",
but also "John is *at* the butcher's").

In English, the preposition "in" can also imply a motion
(for instance "the cat climbs *in* the tree"). In such a case,
the "allative" case would be required in Quenya.

Moreover, the "locative" case does not necessarily imply a
containment relationship, but just a position. Consider for
instance _mahalmassen_, which is translated as "*on* thrones".

In conclusion, you can't have a one-to-one translation between
the (Quenya) case system and English prepositions. It depends
on the context.

> If so, when should I use Quenya preposition _mi_? In article
> "A Taste of Elvish" _mi_ is glossed like English "in" and in
> article "Naamarie" _mi_ is glossed again like "in". How can
> I decide, if it's possible, between using _-sse_ or _mi_?

It seems that _mi_ means "inside" rather than "in" in _Naamarie_
That is, it seems to have an "inessive" function rather than
"(ad)essive" [*].

So I believe that you should use "mi" when you need to express
that peculiar nuance ("inside"), and use the locative case
otherwise ("in/at/on...").

By the way, note that the preposition is not followed by the
locative case, but by a nominative [**]: _mi oromardi_, not
**_mi oromardessen_.

Didier.
-- -
[*] Cf. "The ball is *in/inside* the box" (inessive function)
     versus "Birds fly *in* the sky" (essive function - they
     do not fly "inside" the sky, actually).
[**] or more conceivably an accusative, I would tend to
      believe.
-- -

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<36b9f2df.e937729-@...> wrote:
Original Article: http://www.egroups.com/list/elfling/?start=340
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Given the time the Great March took, and the general historic situation,
> > it seems very likely that there was language between the point were the
> > speech(es) of the Eldar became different from those of the Avari, and
> > the point were the various Telerin dialects became independent languages
> > different from (old) Quenya. This seems all the more likely since
> > Tolkien explicitly says that some sound-changes occured on this stage.
>
> For a distinct Eldarin to have emerged, the three clans of the Eldar
> must have had a relatively close contact during the march. Several
> sources indicate that they didn't. Here I shall just quote _The Later
> Quenta Silmarillion_ (MR 162-163, the origin of the corresponding text
> in _The Silmarillion_): "[...] the Eldalie were arrayed in three hosts
> [...] The greatest host came last, and they are named the Teleri, for
> they tarried on the road".
>
> suilaid o Mellonath Daeron,
  <36bc5722.1d646fd-@...> wrote:
Original Article: http://www.egroups.com/list/elfling/?start=349
> Mellyn,
>
> I've seen several points worth considering here regarding the
> existence/non-existence of Common Eldarin. I will moderate my diagram
> and comments in _Development_ to take these points into account.
>

The general idea with "*starred" forms in historical linguistics is to indicate
that a form is not attested, but had it existed it would, according to accepted
regular sound-correspondences between related languages have sounded as
indicated.  Thus one may say that IF the Old English word _maed'm_ had survived
to modern English it would have become _*mathom_ (except that due to JRRT the
word is "kind of" attested.

A whole language may be thus reconstructed, so that all words of the language
are hypothesized from forms of related and/or descendant languages.  What is
important to remember in  such cases is

that the starred forms represent the least common denominator of the attested
languages

that there is no way to verify if an actual language identical to the
reconstruction has ever existed

that the reconstruction at best is a possible subset of the whole actual
language.  Features and vocabulary lost by all the related languages may have
been present, but are not possible to reconstruct.  Also forms shared by the
related languages (in particular the daughters) may be shared later innovation
-- e.g. arisen in one of the daughter and spread to the others thru mutual
loans; such material is part of the least common denominator, but may or may not
have been part of the actual ancestor language.

In the case of Common Eldarin, JRRT probably intended it to be the least common
denominator of all the Eldarin languages as computed by the Loremasters in
Beleriand and later by Pengolodh, presumably to the exclusion of some features
common to Avarin languages known to them.  It is, in the case of Eldarin, very
probable that the common language of the Eldar during the March was very close
to the reconstructed CE, but there may have been Telerin innovations that later
spread to the Noldor and Vanyar in Valinor -- e.g. vocabulary for maritime
phenomena, flora and fauna!

The idea that IMMORTAL beings would have had to reconstruct earlier stages of
their languages puzzles me, since at least some gifted individuals could have
recalled how they used to speak and used as informants.  Pengolodh couldd not
very well have walked up to Thingol in Menegroth and asked how the king of the
Teleri used to speak at Kuivieenen -- at least not without risk! --, but one
would think that Feanor could just have asked his dad -- at least asked whom to
ask!

/BP

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__
   Anant' avanaute quettalmar!                       \ \
   __  ____ ____    ____________  ___ __   __ __     / /
   \ \/___ \\__ \  /___  ____/\ \\__ \\ \  \ \\ \   / /
   / /   / /  /  \    / /      \ \_/ // /  / // /  / /
  / /___/ /_ / /\ \  / /Melroch \_  // /__/ // /__/ /
/_________//_/  \_\ \ \    __   / / \___/\_\\___/\_\
I neer Pityancalimeo \ \__/ /ar/ /_atar Mercasso naan
  ~~~~~~~~~Cuinondil~~~\____/~~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~
|| Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda cuivie aiya! ||
"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth"(JRR Tolkien)

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How about something using "alkar" ?

Regards
Graeme

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andreas Johansson [SMTP:and_yo@...]
> Sent: Friday, 12 February 1999 5:30
> To: elfling@egroups.com
> Subject: [elfling] Re: Brightest One
>
>
> >There has been so much activity on this list lately that interesting
> >questions can easily get lost among all the postings. I remember that
> >someone asked how "Bright One" or "Brightest One" (or something like
> that)
> >would sound in Quenya, as a name. The attested names Ancalimon
> (masc.)
> and
> >Ancalime (fem.) would have this meaning.
> >
> >- Helge Fauskanger
>
> Masc name _Ancalimo_ would also seem to be okay.
>
>                                Andreas
>
>
> ______________________________________________________
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/elfling
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>

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>The idea that IMMORTAL beings would have had to reconstruct earlier
stages of their languages puzzles me, since at least some gifted
individuals could have recalled how they used to speak and used as
informants.  Pengolodh couldd not very well have walked up to Thingol in
Menegroth and asked how the king of the Teleri used to speak at
Kuivieenen -- at least not without risk! --, but one would think that
Feanor could just have asked his dad -- at least asked whom to ask!
>
>/BP


It puzzles me a little too. But to what extent would Finwë really
remember how PQ sounded? To what extent would his memories be updated to
the forms he used at the time he was asked?
I newly read some linguistic/psychological material, in which it was
argued that all humans possess a "mind-language" called "Mentalese".
This language would have a grammar of sorts, a "base" grammar to being
the common ground to all natural spoken languages. According to this
theory, English don't thinnk in English, Germans not in German and
Chinese not in Chinese; they all think in Mentalese.
Since the Quenderin languages are so similar to our, the Elves must
possess a dialect of Mentalese (if the theory is correct of course) very
similar (or indentical) to our own. If this is the case, Finwë's (and
anybody else's) memories of how PQ sounded some millenia ago probably
was rather dim.

                              Andreas

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Lotsa people have pointed out that _Aldudénie_ "Lament of the Two Trees"
is an odd form, since Q don't allow intervocalic _d_. Since we have an
independent word _nainie_ "lament", I thought perhaps _Aldudénie_ could
simply be a misspelling of *Aldundénie?
This would require that _nainie is derived from a root like NDAY or NDIN
or similar, and a explanation why _ai_>_é_ in this word (unstressed
_ai_>_e_ is common, but the _-é-_ of Aldudénie/Aldundénie should be
stressed).

Anyone who has any thoughts or better ideas?

                            Andreas

PS How do you pronounce the english word "vowel"? In school I learnt
/vu:l/, but several dictionaries insists on /vauel/.

______________________________________________________

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At 7:52 am -0800 27/2/99, Andreas Johansson wrote:

>PS How do you pronounce the english word "vowel"? In school I learnt
>/vu:l/, but several dictionaries insists on /vauel/.

Normally, /vaul/ but in slow, careful speech /'vau@l/.

Ray.



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-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>


>PS How do you pronounce the english word "vowel"? In school I learnt
>/vu:l/, but several dictionaries insists on /vauel/.


Correctly. I have never heard it pronounced any way other than /vauel/.

Incidentally, there is an English world "voel", a loan-word from the Welsh,
meaning "a bare hill". Tolkien would have known the word, and if his mind
was what I think it is, liked it.

regards


EWB


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>It puzzles me a little too. But to what extent would Finwë really
>remember how PQ sounded? To what extent would his memories be updated to
>the forms he used at the time he was asked?
>I newly read some linguistic/psychological material, in which it was
>argued that all humans possess a "mind-language" called "Mentalese".
>This language would have a grammar of sorts, a "base" grammar to being
>the common ground to all natural spoken languages. According to this
>theory, English don't thinnk in English, Germans not in German and
>Chinese not in Chinese; they all think in Mentalese.
>Since the Quenderin languages are so similar to our, the Elves must
>possess a dialect of Mentalese (if the theory is correct of course) very
>similar (or indentical) to our own. If this is the case, Finwë's (and
>anybody else's) memories of how PQ sounded some millenia ago probably
>was rather dim.


Regarding the problem of language change amongst the immortals Elves
Tolkien addressed this question in a long and quite important essay :
"Dangweth Pengolodh or the answer of Pengolod to Aelfwine who asked him how
came it that the tongues of the Elves changed and were sundered" in Home 12
pp. 396-402.

But as for the "mind-language" or Mentalese I find the entire idea quite
irrelevant (not to say more). Our human "thinking" is chemical exchange in
the brain.
If the author (do you have his name?) of this so called
"linguistic/psychological" paper had a clear understanding of what is the
"thinking in the brain" he would have the Nobel by now.

EJK

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>Lotsa people have pointed out that _Aldudenie_ "Lament of the Two Trees"
>is an odd form, since Q don't allow intervocalic _d_. Since we have an
>independent word _nainie_ "lament", I thought perhaps _Aldudenie_ could
>simply be a misspelling of *Aldundenie?
>This would require that _nainie is derived from a root like NDAY or NDIN
>or similar, and a explanation why _ai_>_e_ in this word (unstressed
>_ai_>_e_ is common, but the _-e-_ of Aldudenie/Aldundenie should be
>stressed).
>
>Anyone who has any thoughts or better ideas?

That Aldudénie has a typographical error (a misspelling) is out of the
question because it is so spelled not only in the 1977 Silmarillion but
also in the HOME books.

Most probably _dénie_ is a valarin loanword made by the Vanyar. They made
many such loans, much more than the Noldor (cf. the "Quendi and Eldar,
Essekenta Eldarinwa"). And Elemmire the maker of the Aldudénie was a Vanya.

EJK

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>Lotsa people have pointed out that _Aldudénie_ "Lament of the Two Trees"
>is an odd form, since Q don't allow intervocalic _d_. Since we have an
[...]
>Anyone who has any thoughts or better ideas?

All that I know is Aldudeenie was composed by Elemmiire of the Vanyar...
So, perhaps the word is Vanyarin, and not Noldorin Quenya. I don't know
a lot of Vanyarin phonetics, but it's possible that Vanyarin accepts
intervocalic D, isn't it?


	 Josu

			 http://www.arrakis.es/~josugp
			 josu@...


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Compounds in Semitic: Strictly speaking there are no compounds in Semitic
with very few exceptions. In Akkadian, names (like Sanherib) are written in
one word by modern scholars. This is however only true if we give the names
in the form we know through the OT. The translitteration of the
abovementioned name would be: Sin-ahhe-eriba. But here too the
hyphenization is due to modern convention. The original (in cuneiform
writing) has none of this. In Hebrew and Aramaic personal names are often
written in one word: Yisra'el, Beelzebub etc..
In Arabic neither names nore anything else are ever written with hyphen or
in one word. In modern Hebrew hyphenization is used, mainly in cases of
prep. +adj./noun: klal-'olamiy `concerning the whole world´ , pro-angliy
`por-English´, but 'antishemiy `antisemitic´. This is however a recent
phenomenon modelled after European languages.

Three-radical patterns: 'h' is always (in all semitic languages) a full
radical. 'Y' is too, but undergoes some special treatment sometimes in some
languages. 'Y' is counted a weak radical.
Glottal stop: It's just what it says: A short closing of the glottis and
then a sudden release of the sound-forming air. In Arabic it is counted a
normal strong radical. In Hebrew and Aramaic it's weak.

Fortification: I believe this refers primarily to the doubling of consonants.

Kh: This is just a 'k' with a breath after it. English 'k' as in 'king' is
spoken with a breath. The same is true for german 'k'. Contrast french or
spanish 'k'.


Hatzlaxa ve brakha


David Kiltz



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Andreas Johansson wrote:

> >The idea that IMMORTAL beings would have had to reconstruct earlier
> stages of their languages puzzles me, since at least some gifted
> individuals could have recalled how they used to speak and used as
> informants.  Pengolodh couldd not very well have walked up to Thingol in
> Menegroth and asked how the king of the Teleri used to speak at
> Kuivieenen -- at least not without risk! --, but one would think that
> Feanor could just have asked his dad -- at least asked whom to ask!

Let's apply this idea to the real world.  Can you recall the exact sounds
you created in an utterance made ten years ago?  Five?  Just three weeks?  I
cannot, and I doubt any of the Elves could remember such details over
hundreds or thousands of years.

People are largely unaware of the exact sounds they are uttering. They
remember things along phonemic lines, rather than phonetic.  Case in point:
I am currently working with a man (Ben) from London.  A couple weeks ago, he
decided to take a look at the transcriptions I was making, and was shocked
to see r's  at the end of words such as Australia, law (the famous RP
intrusive /r/).  He had been saying them his entire life, but was not aware
of them, and still frequently denies their existance when his girlfriend
teases him about it.

We know the Elves were more aware of their speech than we are -- that much
has been explicitly stated by Tolkien.  They even had a greater control over
their usage of language, being able to consciously change entire grammatical
formations.  We have a similar situation in people who move into a new
dialect area.  When they try to eliminate their accent, they are consciously
choosing to alter the way they speak to match those around them.  But even
then, they are not completely aware of when they are successful and when
they are not.  Ben will shift from an American to a London pronunciation
(never the reverse) within the course of a single sentence, even on the same
word.  He is usually unaware of this fact and is quite astounded when it is
pointed out.  It's not that he is unaware of the differences (he is
frequently misunderstood), he is just not focusing his attention on the
actual pronunciation; he ignores pronunciation in favor of semantics.

Now, compare this with the situation the Elves would be in.  Their entire
speech community would be changing.  They would have no one to contrast
their pronunciation against except "outsiders"; i.e. the Vanyar, Teleri,
etc.  In other words, the changes in their pronunciation would be
unimportant to them since there would be no problem communicating with
friends and family.  Most changes would be gradual.  Only intentional,
dramatic changes would be recallable, such as the th ~ s change that Feanor
turned political.

Marcus


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> But as for the "mind-language" or Mentalese I find the entire idea quite
> irrelevant (not to say more). Our human "thinking" is chemical exchange in
> the brain.
> If the author (do you have his name?) of this so called
> "linguistic/psychological" paper had a clear understanding of what is the
> "thinking in the brain" he would have the Nobel by now.

My guess would be that the book in question was "The Language Instinct" by
Stephen Pinker, since that is the only place I have seen the term "Mentalese"
used.  Basically, it is just a creative name for Chompsky's Universal Grammar.
The book contains no specifics on the nature or form of "Mentalese", just the
necessity of its existance.

Marcus


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At 11:28 am -0500 28/2/99, Edward Kloczko wrote:
[....]
>But as for the "mind-language" or Mentalese I find the entire idea quite
>irrelevant (not to say more). Our human "thinking" is chemical exchange in
>the brain.
>If the author (do you have his name?) of this so called
>"linguistic/psychological" paper

Pinker is the author - and I forget off hand the name of the book; my son's
borrowed my copy.

>had a clear understanding of what is the
>"thinking in the brain" he would have the Nobel by now.

Not really - Pinker is at MIT and is a disciple of Chomsky's.  Indeed, his
book is really "Chomsky made accessible to the average reader" so to speak.
The idea that we are all 'hard-wired' in the same way and that the myriads
of natural human languages are different surface realizations of the same
'deep structure' is by no means a new idea.

Personally I am very skeptical about it and, at best, it seems to me "not
proven".  I don't imagine it figured at all in Tolkien's thinking, so I
guess it wouldn't be there in his created world(s) :)



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Marcus Smith wrote:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:

Actually it was I (BP/Philip/Melroch Jonsson) who wrote:
> > >The idea that IMMORTAL beings would have had to reconstruct earlier
> > stages of their languages puzzles me, since at least some gifted
> > individuals could have recalled how they used to speak and used as
> > informants.
[snipping myself]

> Let's apply this idea to the real world.  Can you recall the exact sounds
> you created in an utterance made ten years ago?  Five?  Just three weeks?  I
> cannot, and I doubt any of the Elves could remember such details over
> hundreds or thousands of years.

OK, I was a bit unfair to Tolkien: he SAID, in Quendi and Eldar, that the Elves
"updated" their memories, so that they remembered old utterances as if spoken in
their current every-day speech.  I don't recall if he says anything about how
aware Elves in general were of the fact of this "updating" -- eg in what
language did those of the Noldor, who had switched from Quenya to Sindarin as
their everyday language after comming to Beleriand from Aman, think or dream of
their lives in Aman?  Were their memories "translated" into Sindarin, so that
even persons who never left Aman appeared as Sindarin-speaking in their dreams? 
Did they in general lose proficiency in Quenya unless they made an effort to
maintain it?  JRRT does say in Q&E, tho i don't remember his wording, that at
least some individuals could recall their former speech.  It occurs to me now
that he doesn't say *how* this could be done; would the informant have to get
into some kind of trance or make a mental effort to "log into" the part of their
mind were their memories of past linguistic habits were stored, or did some
people simply have a better memory for such things, just as among us real-world
humans some have better memories for languages/dialects/accents, some are good
at remember long stretches of text verbatim, som are good at remembering the
topography of places, some good at remembering numbers etc.

> People are largely unaware of the exact sounds they are uttering. They
> remember things along phonemic lines, rather than phonetic.  Case in point:
> I am currently working with a man (Ben) from London.  A couple weeks ago, he
> decided to take a look at the transcriptions I was making, and was shocked
> to see r's  at the end of words such as Australia, law (the famous RP
> intrusive /r/).  He had been saying them his entire life, but was not aware
> of them, and still frequently denies their existance when his girlfriend
> teases him about it.

Just as most of the Swedes who realize /r+<dental>/ phoneme strings as single
retroflex phones are unaware of what they are doing, but some are aware. 
Moreover the same person may have several sets of phonemes-to-phones mapping
rules, which they switch between depending on stylistic factors, such as the
formality of the occasion, or the dialect/accent of their interlocutors.  Even
I, who am trained in phonetics, am as a rule not fully aware of the full range
of differences between my various styles of realization, nor are there, of
course, clear-cut boundaries between different styles.  I would certainly
realize my pre-dental /r/s (as retroflection!) when speaking to a university
professor, and just as certainly I would just drop these /r/s when speaking to a
Gothenburg cab driver!  Indeed some instances of [.s] in the professor's accent
correspond to [s] and others to [rx] in the cab drivers accent, and I can handle
that too.  In case you think I'm unique I can tell you it is not so, but I guess
that in the English world this kind of code-switching is most common in Britain
and least common in the US (with the possible exception of the eastern seabord?)

[snip]
> Now, compare this with the situation the Elves would be in.  Their entire
> speech community would be changing.  They would have no one to contrast
> their pronunciation against except "outsiders"; i.e. the Vanyar, Teleri,
> etc.  In other words, the changes in their pronunciation would be
> unimportant to them since there would be no problem communicating with
> friends and family.  Most changes would be gradual.  Only intentional,
> dramatic changes would be recallable, such as the th ~ s change that Feanor
> turned political.

Since my father and his mother died I hardly ever speak their native dialect,
but as a child I used to speak it regularly when visiting their native province,
and I can still switch to it on demand.  Compared to the accent I would use
delivering a formal speech it would inter alia mean distinguishing twelve vowel
phonemes rather than nine.  Moreover my usual informal accent also has the same
twelve-vowel phonology, but with slightly different values, slightly different
rules for lengthening, and very different patterns of mapping compared to the
formal nine-vowel phonology.  My father, who was absolutely no phonetician,
could do these stylistic accent-switches quite as efficiently as I can, BTW. 
(Note for the historico-linguistically curious: these different vowel-systems
are the result of different patterns of merger and split between the long and
short mid and short high vowels of older Swedish.  There is a shift between
phonemic quantity and stress/syllable structure dependent quantity involved too.
People have built whole careers on pinpointing these isoglosses! :)  Of course
mergers and splits are easier to be conscious of than changes in realization of
single phonemes.  Just as many Noldor could recall once having had a /T/ phoneme
in their Quenya, elder generations must have been aware that they once had a
/x/~/h/ (or /x/~/Q/!) distinction, and even older Elves would perhaps remember
having pronounced some /l/s and /r/s as /d/, and having had two different /r/
phonemes, even if they could have lost the ability to reproduce their older
speech.

With grammatical features, these would probably be even easier to be conscious
about: "Back West we used to lengthen the final vowel of the direct object, you
know, and when I was younger we used the genitive a lot less than most people do
nowadays too!" and the youngster would answer: "Have you noticed that you use
the perfect a lot less when you speak Quenya than you do when you write it?"

> Marcus

/BP

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>Reply-To: elfling@egroups.com
>Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 11:28:32 -0500
>From: Edward Kloczko <106065.2071@...>
>To: "INTERNET:elfling@egroups.com" <elfling@egroups.com>
>Subject: [elfling] Re: Common Eldarin
>
>
>>It puzzles me a little too. But to what extent would Finw=EB really =
>
>>remember how PQ sounded? To what extent would his memories be updated
to=
> =
>
>>the forms he used at the time he was asked?
>>I newly read some linguistic/psychological material, in which it was =
>
>>argued that all humans possess a "mind-language" called "Mentalese". =
>
>>This language would have a grammar of sorts, a "base" grammar to being
=
>
>>the common ground to all natural spoken languages. According to this =
>
>>theory, English don't thinnk in English, Germans not in German and =
>
>>Chinese not in Chinese; they all think in Mentalese.
>>Since the Quenderin languages are so similar to our, the Elves must =
>
>>possess a dialect of Mentalese (if the theory is correct of course)
very=
> =
>
>>similar (or indentical) to our own. If this is the case, Finw=EB's
(and =
>
>>anybody else's) memories of how PQ sounded some millenia ago probably
=
>
>>was rather dim.
>
>
>Regarding the problem of language change amongst the immortals Elves
>Tolkien addressed this question in a long and quite important essay :
>"Dangweth Pengolodh or the answer of Pengolod to Aelfwine who asked him
h=
>ow
>came it that the tongues of the Elves changed and were sundered" in
Home =
>12
>pp. 396-402.
>
>But as for the "mind-language" or Mentalese I find the entire idea
quite
>irrelevant (not to say more). Our human "thinking" is chemical exchange
i=
>n
>the brain. =
>
>If the author (do you have his name?) of this so called
>"linguistic/psychological" paper had a clear understanding of what is
the=
>
>"thinking in the brain" he would have the Nobel by now.
>
>EJK
>
I think you just excluded all psychology from Science :-)
But this mentalese would not be more strange than that we place
different things in categories (all cats we sees are stored (in some as
yet not undersood chemical-electromagnetic way) under "cat") as I see
it. We don't know what these categories are (from the
chemical-electromagnetic poin tof view), but they're "real" in some way.

                                            Andreas

PS I'm aware this is more Plato than Tolkien. But 'twasn't my fault!

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>Reply-To: elfling@egroups.com
>Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 12:38:29 -0800
>From: Marcus Smith <smithma@...>
>To: elfling@egroups.com
>Subject: [elfling] Re: Common Eldarin
>
>> But as for the "mind-language" or Mentalese I find the entire idea
quite
>> irrelevant (not to say more). Our human "thinking" is chemical
exchange in
>> the brain.
>> If the author (do you have his name?) of this so called
>> "linguistic/psychological" paper had a clear understanding of what is
the
>> "thinking in the brain" he would have the Nobel by now.
>
>My guess would be that the book in question was "The Language Instinct"
by
>Stephen Pinker, since that is the only place I have seen the term
"Mentalese"
>used.  Basically, it is just a creative name for Chompsky's Universal
Grammar.
>The book contains no specifics on the nature or form of "Mentalese",
just the
>necessity of its existance.
>
>Marcus
>
You happen to be wrong. I got it in the atticle "Vi föds som
sprĺkgenier" (roughly "We are born as language-geniuses") in the Swedish
monthly magazine Ilustrerad Vetenskap (="Ilustrated Science"). But the
article does refer to Pinker, yes.

                                          Andreas

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Everybody who has studied some Elvish has noticed, that there are words in
Elvish, to which there seem to be correspondences in 'real-world' languages.
Besides correspondences in individual languages it occurs to me, that
Elvish shares some 'universal vocabulary' with 'real-world' languages. I'd
like to offer just one example (for now): elvish (e.) SIR- 'to flow' has
the following:
1. Sumerian: shur 'to flow'
2. Basque: isuri, ixuri (=ishuri) 'to flow'
3. Arabic: saraa, yasrii (root SRY) 'to flow, circulate; to spread' etc.
            sariba 'to flow, run out , leak'.
4. Proto-indo-European: *ser-/srew_ 'to flow' (heaps of correspondences in
the
    IE. daughter -languages).
5. Dravidian: Tamil: cura 'to spring forth, stream out, gush, flow' Kannada:
    suri: 'to flow, drop, pour' and many more.
6. Proto-Caucasian: *shorV 'lake, river'
7. Sino-Tibetean: *shur 'to flow, pour'.

These are just a choice of corresponding forms. There are many more! An *
signifies, that the form given is a proto- (reconstructed) form, which
stands for a whole language family. V is = any vowel. For me the fact that
all over the world, there are these universals, i.e. a certain meaning goes
with a specific form, is a most fascinating and exciting find of
linguistics. It would seem that form and meaning (as can be shown elsewhere
too) are by no means arbitrary. I have often found that when reading elvish
words, that there sound-shape fitted particularly well the meaning they are
to convey. Tolkien himself spoke of words in 'real-world' which attracted
him in perhaps a similar way. However that may be, the above phenomenon
exists and it would seem that Tolkien (or, if you will, elvish) has drawn
from a universal language-pool.

David Kiltz



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>Reply-To: elfling@egroups.com
>Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 19:51:25 +0100
>To: elfling@egroups.com
>From: David Kiltz <mail.uni-muenster.de@...>
>Subject: [elfling] Elvish and Universals
>
>Everybody who has studied some Elvish has noticed, that there are words
in
>Elvish, to which there seem to be correspondences in 'real-world'
languages.
>Besides correspondences in individual languages it occurs to me, that
>Elvish shares some 'universal vocabulary' with 'real-world' languages.
I'd
>like to offer just one example (for now): elvish (e.) SIR- 'to flow'
has
>the following:
>1. Sumerian: shur 'to flow'
>2. Basque: isuri, ixuri (=ishuri) 'to flow'
>3. Arabic: saraa, yasrii (root SRY) 'to flow, circulate; to spread'
etc.
>           sariba 'to flow, run out , leak'.
>4. Proto-indo-European: *ser-/srew_ 'to flow' (heaps of correspondences
in
>the
>   IE. daughter -languages).
>5. Dravidian: Tamil: cura 'to spring forth, stream out, gush, flow'
Kannada:
>   suri: 'to flow, drop, pour' and many more.
>6. Proto-Caucasian: *shorV 'lake, river'
>7. Sino-Tibetean: *shur 'to flow, pour'.
>
>These are just a choice of corresponding forms. There are many more! An
*
>signifies, that the form given is a proto- (reconstructed) form, which
>stands for a whole language family. V is = any vowel. For me the fact
that
>all over the world, there are these universals, i.e. a certain meaning
goes
>with a specific form, is a most fascinating and exciting find of
>linguistics. It would seem that form and meaning (as can be shown
elsewhere
>too) are by no means arbitrary. I have often found that when reading
elvish
>words, that there sound-shape fitted particularly well the meaning they
are
>to convey. Tolkien himself spoke of words in 'real-world' which
attracted
>him in perhaps a similar way. However that may be, the above phenomenon
>exists and it would seem that Tolkien (or, if you will, elvish) has
drawn
>from a universal language-pool.
>
>David Kiltz
>
>

It has been argueed that children of every nation spontaneously invents
words on the general theme /mam(a)/ for mother, and similarly on the
theme /pap(a)/ for father. The exact froms and phonemes vary from
language to lanuguage, but the trend is there.

All the few languages I know anything substantial about, has froms
similar to these patterns, and I find it interesting that that the
Germanic languages, who changed /p/ to /f/ long ago, has aquired "p-"
froms later, eg english "pa", Swedish "pappa" (nowadays the usual term,
through the cognate of english Father, _far_ or older _fader_ are also
used) and German "Papi".

______________________________________________________

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From the Ardalambion:

"... the Sindarin name of Tom Bombadil was given as Iarwain, meaning
"Eldest". The ending -wain would seem to be the superlative suffix. Why
not *Iorwain, with the normal monophthongization au > o? (David Salo
answers, "Because you are looking at the direct descendant of a form
like *Yarwanya (perhaps, I am not sure of the exact form of the final
element) in which the vowel was in a closed syllable." I don't feel much
wiser, but then I am not so deep into Eldarin phonology as David is.)"

I'm not sure what a "closed syllable" is, but the idea is that the
consonantal cluster _rw_ prevented the _a_ of the first syllable from
being/getting long, so it was therefor never diphthongized to _au_, but
remained a monophthong all the time. Is this correct?

                                     Andreas

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<Some elvish welcoming wish>

David Kiltz wrote:


> For me the fact that all over the world, there are these universals, i.e. a
certain meaning goes
> with a specific form, is a most fascinating and exciting find of
> linguistics.

Not very elvish, but ever considered the different words for tea?
On writing this I (someone with no linguistic knowledge above standard
language skills) guess Russian, Indian (Hindi?), Turkish and Dutch could
all belong to the same family. ???

--
Thorwald: [mailto:thorkien@...]
Homepage: [http://www.xs4all.nl/~thorkien/]
==============================================
               mupwI' yI'uchtaH!
==============================================


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> Everybody who has studied some Elvish has noticed, that there are words
in Elvish, to which there seem to be correspondences in 'real-world'
languages. Besides correspondences in individual languages it occurs to me,
that Elvish shares some 'universal vocabulary' with 'real-world' languages.
I'd like to offer just one example (for now): elvish (e.) SIR- 'to flow'
has the following:
> 1. Sumerian: shur 'to flow'
> 2. Basque: isuri, ixuri (=ishuri) 'to flow'
> 3. Arabic: saraa, yasrii (root SRY) 'to flow, circulate; to spread' etc.

[snipping] etc. etc. etc. ETC. ... (Norwegian _sirle_ or _sildre_ means
"trickle", if you are interested.) Hm. This is almost uncanny. Some years
ago, I was on holiday in Modalen Valley here in western Norway. My mother
was born there, and it is a beautiful place (picture a fiord without the
water, and you get a fairly good idea of what it looks like - I guess it
actually used to be a fiord once, when the sea level was another). Well,
though there is not now any sea, there is a river running through the
length of the valley, with quite a few tributaries coming down from the
mountains - cold and clear like the ice they flow from. Sitting beside one
of these rivers, I decided that this was the perfect occasion to think of a
word for "river" for a conlang of my own. In my head, I started to play
with various sounds, trying to find a word that somehow captured the soul
of the rushing, foaming water that filled my field of vision. The endless
roar crystalized into a word: SHOR. That was it. That was what this river
would like to be called. Shor! Preferably with a long vowel...

Afterwards, I of course observed its similarity to Tolkien's root SIR and
Elvish words for "river" derived from it (like Quenya _siire_). I also
noted the English word _shore_ as a possible influence: where there is a
river, there are also shores. However, I assumed that above all, _shor_ was
echoic, imitating the sound of the rushing water. But perhaps this
explanation was too simple, and a Language Universal had surfaced from my
sub-conscious?

Of course, it could also be that the Sumerians and the Basques and the
Arabs (etc.) also observed that rushing water sounds a little like
SSSHORRR... :)

- Helge Fauskanger

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Thorwald Peeters <thorkien@...> wrote:

<Some elvish welcoming wish>

David Kiltz wrote:

> For me the fact that all over the world, there are these universals,
i.e. a certain meaning goes
> with a specific form, is a most fascinating and exciting find of
> linguistics.

Not very elvish, but ever considered the different words for tea?
On writing this I (someone with no linguistic knowledge above standard
language skills) guess Russian, Indian (Hindi?), Turkish and Dutch could
all belong to the same family. ???

**So we might argue that there are three different reasons why a
series of words might appear similar in different languages
1) spontaneous development from similar natural sounds, such as the
mumbling sounds that children make (mama, though I really don't get
papa) or the sound that water makes running over something, hence
'sir' or 'shur' sounds
2) an original word that appears in similar forms in various
descendant languages.  The letter m doesn't seem to mutate much
initially, so words that start with m in Indo-european may start with
m in later languages.  Some of these examples are less real than
apparent, because sometimes the same sound has been through several
rounds of changes before returning to its original form.  The words
'tu' for 'you' are cognate in Hindi and French, but I am having
trouble believing that neither one has changed in some 4000 years.
3) a single word borrowed into a series of languages connected in
time, usually due to the introduction of a new product or technology.
Thorwald Peeters' example of 'tea' would be an excellent example of
this.

**Of course it's possible for linguists to tell which words are
borrowed and which are cognate, usually.  But I think Tolkien had a
particular interest in the types of words like the first group which
appear to have similar forms where they should not (according to the
usual theories of historical linguistics, not that they would exclude
onomatopoeia).  I suppose anomalies fascinated him.

--
Thorwald: [mailto:thorkien@...]
Homepage: [http://www.xs4all.nl/~thorkien/]
==============================================
               mupwI' yI'uchtaH!
==============================================

**Uh oh.  Does that mean something in Klingon?  I hope it's not, "It
is a good day to cut off their pointed ears"?

Lisa Star


==

** Lisa Star
--not an employee of any secret government agency-- N.P.
** LisaStar at earthling dot net
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9902

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>Reply-To: elfling@egroups.com
>Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 00:01:31 +0100
>From: Thorwald Peeters <thorkien@...>
>To: elfling@egroups.com
>CC: David Kiltz <mail.uni-muenster.de@...>
>Subject: [elfling] Re: Elvish and Universals
>
><Some elvish welcoming wish>
>
>David Kiltz wrote:
>
>
>> For me the fact that all over the world, there are these universals,
i.e. a certain meaning goes
>> with a specific form, is a most fascinating and exciting find of
>> linguistics.
>
>Not very elvish, but ever considered the different words for tea?
>On writing this I (someone with no linguistic knowledge above standard
>language skills) guess Russian, Indian (Hindi?), Turkish and Dutch
could
>all belong to the same family. ???
>
>

Russian, Dutch and Hindi are all Indo-european languages, that's it,
they belong to the same language family. Turkish, however, is unrelated
(or if there's a relation, which some linguists believe, it's FAR back
in prehistorical times, to far to determine for sure).

I only now the words for "tea" in English, Swedish and German, but I
believe they must be rather late loans, since tea was imported from Asia
not so far ago.

                                        Andreas

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