Archive for February, 2008

The Development of Ayola’s Personal Pronouns

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

In developing a new language, choosing the words is a complex process which often requires some time and experimentation before a final choice is made. Because a language is a vast, interconnected web, a word cannot be chosen in isolation but must satisfy some criteria governed by other words. A good illustration of the process of choosing words is provided by the case of the personal pronouns.

 

At the outset it was decided that the words for the personal pronouns should

1.      be short words of the form CV, CyV or CwV

2.      begin with a distinctive consonant for each of the three persons (first, second, third)

3.      not be equal to a syllable which begins a large number of vocabulary words (in order to avoid oronyms)

4.      fit smoothly phonetically into the common contexts for pronouns, eg. following a verb ending in –ts or following a link beginning with j-.

 

The easiest pronoun words to choose were those for the second person. vu, taken from French, is an excellent choice for the singular form because essentially no internationally-used words begin with this syllable. voy, taken from Italian, is also a good choice for the plural form because few words begin with this syllable.

 

Settling on a good choice for the first-person pronouns required somewhat more effort and experimentation. In our list of twenty-nine principal Indo-European languages ‘j’ (usually pronounced as the English ‘y’) is the overwhelming preference for the initial consonant in the nominative case and ‘m’ the nearly universal preference in the accusative case. (Ayola has no cases and uses the same word as subject and object.) Initially we tried ‘mi’, taken from Esperanto, but it proved to be seriously problematic because so many internationally-used words begin with the syllable ‘mi-’. Then we tried ‘jo’, which is close to the words used in Italian and Spanish, but it proved to be awkward following verbs and links in phrases and sentences such as the following:

 

            * la fotografuro ja jo                 the photograph of (owned/used by) me

            * Vu vidits jo.                           You saw me.

 

Recently, we have finally settled on myo as the Ayola word for ‘I/me’. It contains a blend of the characteristic ‘m’ and ‘y’ consonants and fits smoothly in common contexts as illustrated above.

 

            la fotografuro ja myo

            Vu vidits myo.

 

In analogy with voy, moy is a natural choice as the word for ‘we/us’, making m the characteristic beginning consonant of the first person.

 

The characteristic initial consonant d for the third-person pronouns was suggested by Loglan. Natural languages make three distinctions in the third-person pronouns:

 

1.      animate vs. inanimate (e.g., he/she vs. it)

2.      masculine vs. feminine (e.g., he vs. she)

3.      first vs. second mention (done in some Native American languages, etc.)

 

After much discussion and experimentation, we decided that to make all three of these distinctions would make the set of third-person pronouns too large and cumbersome, so we decided on the first and third as the most important. Note that, in modern usage, users of English and other languages are doing away with the gender distinction by using such constructions as he/she.

 

Here is the current list of the personal pronouns in Ayola:

 

1st myo
 I/me
 moy
 we/us
2nd vu
 you (singular)
 voy
 you (plural)
3rd #1 dya
 he/she #1, him/her #1
 dyay
 they (people) #1
  dwa
 it #1
 dway
 they (things) #1
3rd #2 dyo
 he/she #2, him/her #2
 dyoy
 they (people) #2
  dwo
 it #2
 dwoy
 they (things) #2

The second-mention third-person pronouns are sometimes referred to in literature as the fourth-person pronouns.

 

Note also a distinction between the first/second-person and the third-person plural forms. Although the latter are formed regularly from the singular forms, the former are not. There is an underlying reason for this. The first-person plural form may sometimes denote a true plural entity of first persons (members of a group speaking jointly) but more commonly denotes a combination of first and second persons (I/me + you), first and third persons (I/me + he/him/she/her/they/them), or all three persons. Similarly, the second-person plural form may sometimes denote a true plural entity of second persons (members of a group addressed) but may also denote a combination of second and third persons (you + he/him/she/her/they/them). In contrast, the third-person plural forms only denote true plural entities of third persons. Thus, moy and voy, while clearly recognizable in Ayola as denoting plural entities, are elementary words and are not derived by pluralizing singular forms. It is interesting to note that the Romance languages (although not the Germanic ones) essentially follow the same practice, so that at least some natural languages recognize a basic distinction between what is denoted by the first/second-person plural forms and what is denoted by the third-person plural forms.

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A Day in the Life of an Ayola Research Group Member

Thursday, February 28th, 2008

So what exactly do we do all day here in the Ayola headquarters? Well, we often spend painstaking amounts of time building as many as one vocabulary word! For example, this afternoon Professor Stimets and I spent over an hour deciding on the appropriate Ayola translations for the English preposition ‘across.’ Since the commonly occurring combining form, trans- cannot function as an Ayola word on its own, we had to consult all the foreign language dictionaries to find alternative words Ayola might adopt. We found two main meanings of ‘across’: ‘from one side to the other of’ and ‘on the other side of.’ After reviewing the translations of these in several of the Indo-European languages, we selected ‘čez’ from Slovene to make tcezu for ‘on the other side of’ and ‘across’ from English to make krosu for ‘from one side to the other of.’ Though the forms ‘trav-’ and ‘travers-’ were common in the Romance languages, they conflict with preexisting roots in Ayola which have other meanings. To avoid replicating roots and thus confusing meanings, we went with the less popular yet still distinct forms from the Slavic and Germanic categories. Here are the two forms used as prepositions in example sentences:

 

Dya habitats tcezu la rivro.                    He lives across the river.

Dya kurits krosu la strado.                    He ran across the street.
 

In addition, in Ayola, preposition roots may also be used verbally.

 

La dormitoryo tcezats la rivro.              The dormitory is across the river.

La ponto krosats la rivro.                      The bridge is across (spans) the river.  

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Ayolists and Esperantists in conversation?

Wednesday, February 27th, 2008

You say ‘Saluton,’ we say ‘Aloa.’ ‘Saluton!’ ‘Aloa!’ ‘Saluton!’ ‘Aloa!’ Let’s call the whole… – well, you know how the Gershwin song goes. Despite the differences between Esperanto and Ayola, an important event last week showed the Ayola Research Group that speakers of other constructed languages can appreciate a newcomer like Ayola.
 

On Friday, February 15th three of us from the Ayola Research Group attended the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, MA to partake in the session, “English Only Science in a Multi-lingual Society: Costs, Benefits, and Options” which addressed concerns about the dominance of the English language in the communication of scientific research across the globe – something we’ve long believed Ayola might serve to alleviate. Panelists including Esperantists José Antonio Vergara of Puerto Montt Regional Hospital in Chile and Humphrey Tonkin, President Emeritus and Professor of the Humanities at the University of Hartford discussed the problems with this “English only science” and suggested solutions to them, one of which included the use of constructed, international languages like Esperanto to aid in international translation. We had the opportunity to converse with the panelists as well as the other Esperantists in the audience about the problematic usage of English in the contexts of science and translation and were able to share information about Ayola with them. Both groups were interested to hear about the others’ languages, and the Esperantists understood some of the Ayola we shared with them. We exchanged contact information with some of these individuals and hope to maintain correspondence with them in the future.

 

Most importantly, the AAAS session has prompted us to try writing and translating science-related articles in Ayola in order to test its effectiveness at precisely expressing concepts which we presume may be interpreted ambiguously when translated through English and even Esperanto. Though we credit the natural languages and artificial ones like Esperanto with inspiring the Ayola grammar and vocabulary, our chief objective in designing Ayola is to create a language essentially void of ambiguity and thus ideal for international translation, particularly in the broadcasting of scientific information. We plan to publish some such articles in Ayola here in a new section of our website entitled Siensay Nuzoy (Science News). Stay tuned!  

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