(L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here [2010-2019]

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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Dormouse559 »

Axiem wrote: 01 Mar 2018 21:44Hm, so is the implication then that the deity/whatever would punish the swear-maker should the statement prove false (or not be followed through)?
Yeah.

Axiem wrote: 01 Mar 2018 21:44How does that apply to oaths related to body parts (e.g. "<I swear> by Jupiter's hand I will end you!") and things like that? (Using <> instead of [] because BBCode)
I'd imagine Jupiter's hand is a metaphor for his power.

Axiem wrote: 01 Mar 2018 21:44So um, what is an "oath" or a "swear", anyway? And why is "swearing" both a thing you do in e.g. court and also to mean a thing you shouldn't say (i.e. roughly synonymous with "cuss" or "obscene/profane language" even though there are subtleties in those)?
Judaism and Christianity have a commandment that creates a taboo (whose interpretations vary in strictness) on pronouncing the name of God. From that point of view, invoking God's name for small matters or to support lies is sinful. And the extension of "swear" from "invoke God" to "invoke God sinfully" and finally to "speak sinfully" isn't so hard to make.

That commandment also gives rise to minced oaths based on "God" and "Jesus Christ".
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Post by Salmoneus »

Axiem wrote: 01 Mar 2018 20:33
Dormouse559 wrote: 01 Mar 2018 19:05 Wiktionary, "by", sense 12 — Indicates an oath: With the authority of.
I'm trying to think of an instance of that meaning outside of oaths, and I'm struggling to think of any. It feels more like "by" gained that meaning as a result of being translated from "pro"—so I'm wondering how it got picked instead of "before" or "for" or anything like that.
Axiem wrote: 01 Mar 2018 18:43But also, what does it mean to swear in front of Jove? Why would that matter?
Jove is the head of the Roman pantheon. If your assertion is endorsed by the king of the gods, that lends some credibility.
I'm aware of who Jove is; that I named him instead of anything else is immaterial to my query. What does it mean to swear in front of [literally anything]? Why would that matter?
Because Jove has the power to smite you with thunderbolts if you displease him.

There's a more general Indo-European (? at least?) cultural phenomenon here of the authoritative witness: the idea that things only have authority when they are witnessed by an authority figure. So, for example, weddings traditionally take place in front of a priest, and even secular weddings now take place in front of a government-appointed witness. In the past, marriages might be conducted in front of a local lord, or a monarch, for example, to aid weight to them. We even say metaphorically that someone is married "in the eyes of God", "in the eyes of the Church", or "in the eyes of the State". Similarly, to stress honesty, you can exclaim "as God is my witness!" and the like. In like fashion, in ye olden times, sometimes other important contracts would be signed (etc) in front of authority figures.

I think the underlying conventions here are that the witness is expected to at the very least tell people about the agreement, and in some cases it seems is expected to try to actually enforce it, and that when you break a promise it's a crime not just against the other party, but against the witness. When you ask someone to stand as a witness for a promise you make, you're leaning on their authority and making them collaborators in the agreement; when you then show that you were lying all along, you at best humiliate the witness (for not having realised you were lying) and at worst dishonour them (because they've been telling people, either actively or just through the fact of their 'endorsement' that you're going to do something, and you've made them unknowingly lie for you).

So calling on someone powerful, like God, as a witness to a promise shows seriousness: if you break the promise, you're showing your contempt for God, and risking divine retribution. Conversely, if you have God as your witness and someone still doubts you, then they're doubting God...

There may also be a reinforcement of this power in English by conflation with instrumental uses of 'by'. For isntance: "By God's love, you are healed!" is an instrumental (/or passive) (God heals you), but can also be reanalysed as an oath or exclamation ("I swear that you are healed").



Then, though, you have the trickier case of swearing by a loved but not necessarily powerful thing. Partly this may be simple bleed-over from swearing by a (presumably beloved, if you're loyal/pious) authority. Partly, I wonder if it's about shame: just as to ask Bob to witness for you when you're intending to lie is an insult to Bob because you are implicating him in your deception, there's probably a sense here that, say, calling your dead grandmother as your witness (or, metonymously, her grave) would disgrace her and insult her if you are in fact lying, because, again, you're implicating her in your crime. Plus, there's also of course the factor that swearing by someone or something you love and lying would shame YOU "in their eyes" - swearing by your children, for instance, and then lying, in this sense would mean them seeing you disgrace yourself.

But pretty clearly there's also a huge conflation going on here between this sense of swearing 'by' (in front of, as a witness), and the alternative of swearing 'on' something, in the sense of them being a hazard at forfeit. Sometimes 'on' has the meaning 'by' here: swearing on the Bible basically just means swearing by, in front of, etc, the Bible. But if you swear "on my life", or "on the lives of my children" or "on my hope of redemption" or whatever, then the idea underlyingly is that if you lie, those things (your life, their lives, etc) are forfeit. This sense of hazard, and more generally a sense of 'X for Y', crops up in many uses of 'on' (a fight that's "two on one", a wager that's "six thousand on red", interest that's "ten percent on the principal, year on year", etc).

There are cases where the boundaries between the two senses (witness and forfeit) blur - "on my honour" (at cost of my honour if I lie) and "by my honour" (my honour stands as my witness), for instance, and I think now basically both words can be used where the other sense originally applied. So "I swear by my children's lives!" probably originates through conflation with swearing ON your children's lives.

Now, of course, "by" has become a simple introduction to an oath, by Vectron's kindly claw, and has been fixed in that sense regardless of the original derivation.




[while we're at it, "for"/"fore" can be used in these cases (often spelled 'fore, but that's probably a hypercorrection like 'till):
Then sware Sir Thomas Howard,
'Fore God, I am no coward
But I cannot meet them here,
For our ships are out of gear,
And half my men are sick.
I must fly, but follow quick.
We are six ships of the line:
Can we fight with fifty-three?

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville,
"I know you are no coward -
You fly them for the moment
But to fight with them again
But I've ninety men and more
Who are lying sick ashore
And I should count myself the coward
If I left them, my Lord Howard,
To those Inquisition dogs
and the devildoms of Spain!

]
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Axiem »

Dormouse559 wrote: 01 Mar 2018 22:06 I'd imagine Jupiter's hand is a metaphor for his power.
To be altogether honest, the point where this sort of thing pinged me and I started wondering at it was a number of years ago when I read a character swear "By Jupiter's hairy balls!" or something along those lines. So...a metaphor for his virility?

Salmoneus wrote: 01 Mar 2018 22:19 There's a more general Indo-European (? at least?) cultural phenomenon here of the authoritative witness
Hm, that makes me wonder what these sorts of oaths/swears end up looking like in cultures that don't have that phenomenon.
by Vectron's kindly claw
Wait, what?



I think I'm starting to see the connection, and evolution from "thing to make serious statement more serious" to "irreverent interjection to impart seriousness of emotion" while still maintaining the grammar/words from when it was more staid.

Now I'm super really curious to learn what sorts of things crop up in other languages around this sort of idea :3
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Post by Salmoneus »

This may repeat myself, and/or dormouse, but for the sake of clarity/completenes...
Axiem wrote: 01 Mar 2018 21:44 How does that apply to oaths related to body parts (e.g. "<I swear> by Jupiter's hand I will end you!") and things like that?
A combination of:
- synecdoche (God's beard being a synecdoche for God)
- metonymy (Jupiter's hand being a metonymy for the power of Jupiter)
- devotion (the Holy Lance has no particular power of authority, but is treated as though it does due to its involvement with God)
- word games (many of these oaths are jocular or sacrilegious in origin - "God's teeth!" may be playful but sincere, but "God's balls!" is intentionally sacrilegious)
So um, what is an "oath"
An oath is a commitment made before a sacred witness (or similar).
It can be distinguished from a promise (a commitment made without a sacred witness), and from a vow (a commitment made to a sacred witness).
"A swear" is a swearword or the act or uttering a swearword.
And why is "swearing" both a thing you do in e.g. court and also to mean a thing you shouldn't say (i.e. roughly synonymous with "cuss" or "obscene/profane language" even though there are subtleties in those)?
"Swearing" was "taking the Lord's Name in vain" - the behaviour of uncouth youths who would constantly be swearing by things. This was taboo because:
- it's annoying
- it's acting without the proper respect toward God. Swearing an oath to be faithful to someone is one thing; swearing a sacred oath to fuck so-and-so's daughter kind of seems like you're not getting into the spirit of the thing properly
- swearing by God himself is in particular not something you're meant to do unless you're really, really, really serious, and even then some people thought it was taboo. Which is partly why metonymies arose for oaths that were serious enough to be made, but where you didn't want to actually offend listeners too much. "By Jehovah" might be OK if you're swearing an oath to expel the heretics from Mercia, but if you're promising to return so-and-so's lawnmower it seems a little much, whereas a more conversational "by the Immaculate Heart of Mary!", "by Our Lady!" or just a "by the cross" or the like is a more proportional oath. Of course, that's a relative thing, which is why oath-metonymies like "tabernacle" and "chalice" have famously become obscene in Quebec.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Salmoneus »

Wait, what?
What, by Vectron?
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Axiem »

Salmoneus wrote: 01 Mar 2018 22:45 What, by Vectron?
I suspect there's an in-joke or some other media reference here that goes over my head, especially with the earlier reference to a claw. Mind explaining the reference? (As I assume it's not the manufacturer of precision oscillators)
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Post by Salmoneus »

Axiem wrote: 01 Mar 2018 23:19
Salmoneus wrote: 01 Mar 2018 22:45 What, by Vectron?
I suspect there's an in-joke or some other media reference here that goes over my head, especially with the earlier reference to a claw. Mind explaining the reference? (As I assume it's not the manufacturer of precision oscillators)
By Vectron! Don't you know about Vectron? I thought everybody knew about Vectron, by Vectron!
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Post by shimobaatar »

That video has been blocked for copyright violation in the US. Is this the same thing?
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Post by Axiem »

Salmoneus wrote: 02 Mar 2018 01:00 By Vectron! Don't you know about Vectron? I thought everybody knew about Vectron, by Vectron!
I have a full-time job and am a parent to three young kids, so my awareness of funny videos and pop culture sorts of things is more limited than it was in my halcyon college days, and largely focused on the sorts of things aiming at my children. I'm not surprised a random comedy sketch from a British comedy duo I'd not heard of before missed my radar ;)

That said, by Vectron's knees that was funny.

I'm trying to recall from my Japanese studies if any sort of oath-taking like this is a thing, and I'm coming up blank. It's also been a while since those halcyon college days, when I studied the language. Even when it comes to the sorts of interjections or intensifiers that would have a similar linguistic role to oaths in English.
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Post by Salmoneus »

Well yeah, I didn't actually think everyone had seen the Vectron sketch, that was just part of the joke.

But having said that: you haven't heard of Mitchell and Webb at all? Oh, you're missing out. There's four seasons of That Mitchell and Webb Look, which follow the first three seasons of radio sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Sound (there have been another two seasons of that since), and there's also one season of The Mitchell and Webb Situation, which isn't as good but has some good moments. The sketch shows do suffer from plenty of bad sketches, and some very love-or-hate recurring sketches, but the good bits are genius (they also do meta-sketches of the two of them just chatting between sketches) - you can browse for hours through their work on youtube. Their greatest creation, however, may be Peep Show, a nine-season sitcom that's considered one of the greatest-ever British comedies. It's hilarious, although for me also unwatchable. [it's about two failures - an office drone and a slacker - who live as housemates. Much of the show is filmed from their own POV, with the actions accompanied by their own inner monologues. I find it impossible to watch too much at a time, because it often leans into agonising social embarrasments, as it dissects the neurosis and self-doubt of the British middle classes. But it's really good.]

They're basically the modern-day Fry and Laurie. Mitchell (the Chancellor in that sketch) has made a name for himself on various panel shows and the like, where his specialties are the wry eyebrow, posh geekiness, and the amusing, intelligent rant, and as a left-wing columnist; he's also written a well-received memoir and a novel. Webb (the guy who was ill one Thursday in that sketch) has recently come out with his own memoirs, How Not to Be a Boy, which as well as discussing his own difficult history is also a consideration of the nature and effects of expectations of masculinity, and has made a lot of waves over here. I don't know what their future projects are, but (like Fry and Laurie before them), I suspect they'll eventually arrive in the American public consciousness one way or another...

Anyway, I know this is all hugely off-topic. But just as a sampler of some of their sketches:
The German Soldiers (probably their best-known sketch; originally in two parts, hence the awkward cut partway through)
A Conspiracy
Homeopathic A&E
Gift Shops (warning: Holocaust jokes)
The Quiz Broadcast, pt 1
Linden Trees
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Parlox »

Does anyone have resources(Reference grammars, dictionaries... etc) on non-European proto-languages, preferably something like proto-Bantu or proto-Algonquian?
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Post by Ælfwine »

Trying to figure out something.

Anyway know why Vegliot Dalmatian has /u/ where /a/ usually is? It's an odd shift.

Examples:

Italian cognato, Romanian comnat, Vegliot comnut

Another curiosity is the shift from a > uo in stressed syllables, and o > ua. I'm curious to know how this would come about regularly. Perhaps it was a > o and then o diphthongized?

tata > tuota (but Ragusian: teta)
long > luang
opto -> guapto (and also the fortition w > g)
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by GrandPiano »

Ælfwine wrote: 04 Mar 2018 08:05Another curiosity is the shift from a > uo in stressed syllables, and o > ua. I'm curious to know how this would come about regularly. Perhaps it was a > o and then o diphthongized?
o > ua resembles the o > oa (/o̯a/) sound change that Romanian had in certain environments, e.g. Latin nostram > Romanian noastră (but nostrum > nostru). Perhaps it’s related to the o > uo change that took place in many other Romance languages? Maybe something like [ɔ] > [u̯ɔ] > [u̯a]... Considering Spanish turned [u̯ɔ] into [u̯e], it doesn’t seem too unlikely.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by shimobaatar »

I've been looking at Austroasiatic languages recently, and the other day I came across one called Bolyu. At least according to Wikipedia, Bolyu apparently has the velarized velar phonemes [kˠ kʰˠ], which I didn't think was possible. Does anyone have any more information about this, or other languages that supposedly have velarized velars? Is this actually possible?

Bolyu also apparently has [hˠ], which isn't velar, but still surprised me.
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Re: (L&N) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

Post by Creyeditor »

Velarization often means that the first part of the following vowel starts out with the tongue in the back of the mouth. For Russian at least, I often hear the velarized (non-palatalized) versions of the velar consonants like this [kɨ̯͡i ] vs. palatalized [ki]. Hope that helps a bit.
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Post by Parlox »

Are there any polysynthetic triconsonantal root natlangs?
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Post by Salmoneus »

shimobaatar wrote: 04 Mar 2018 19:54 I've been looking at Austroasiatic languages recently, and the other day I came across one called Bolyu. At least according to Wikipedia, Bolyu apparently has the velarized velar phonemes [kˠ kʰˠ], which I didn't think was possible. Does anyone have any more information about this, or other languages that supposedly have velarized velars? Is this actually possible?

Bolyu also apparently has [hˠ], which isn't velar, but still surprised me.
I've seen Irish given as having velarized velars.

Wikipedia, however, calls these plain velars (contrasted with palatals) with a short velar offglide, as opposed to the velarized consonants with velar offglides seen at other POAs. However, given the range of realisations across dialects, and the difficulty of actually distinguishing these sounds anyway, it seems like pretty much the same thing.

So yeah, I assume that Bolyu has velars preceded or followed (or both) by velar glides.
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What are the differences between a fusional and an agglutinative language?
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ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 06 Mar 2018 01:58 What are the differences between a fusional and an agglutinative language?
Fusional languages encode multiple meanings in grammatical morphemes, -kio could be present tense, imperfect aspect, conditional mood. Agglutinating languages separate these into multiple morphemes.
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Post by ThatAnalysisGuy »

Parlox wrote: 06 Mar 2018 02:11
ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 06 Mar 2018 01:58 What are the differences between a fusional and an agglutinative language?
Fusional languages encode multiple meanings in grammatical morphemes, -kio could be present tense, imperfect aspect, conditional mood. Agglutinating languages separate these into multiple morphemes.
What else characterizes a fusional language and an agglutinative one? I am planning on making at least one conlang with a fusional morphology.
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