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What does fluency mean in a conlang like Klingon?

Actually “fluency” is something of a misnomer I committed. What does good style mean in a conlang like Klingon? People clearly do differentiate between good Klingon and bad Klingon; on what basis do they do so, when the language is made up, and we don’t have any utterances from its creator longer than a couple of lines of barked orders?

It would be a challenge to get a linguistics department to take it seriously. It would be even more of a challenge to get a literature department to take it seriously, and it would be the kind of thesis that could do with input from someone dealing with rhetoric (which linguists tend to think beneath them). But there’s a PhD in it, for sure. And it spans across mental models of style, and fads in English prose style, and translation theory; in fact, it reaches into the theory of aesthetics.

It’s the question that got me into linguistics, btw (in its Lojban iteration). And I sort of have an answer for it, as the answer linked shows. But it can be filled out a lot more than that.

Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Two sources named:

John Uebersax’s answer to Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Diogenes Laertius, Life of Socrates XVII

And he used to say, that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; “and as they,” said he, “when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with any one else whatever.”

Michael Kambas’ answer to Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Xenophon, Symposium (2.10)

“If that is your view, Socrates,” asked Antisthenes, “how does it come that you don’t practise what you preach by yourself educating Xanthippe, but live with a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be?”

“Because,” he replied, “I observe that men who wish to become expert horsemen do not get the most docile horses but rather those that are high-mettled, believing that if they can manage this kind, they will easily handle any other. My course is similar. Mankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.”

Diogenes Laertius had συνεῖναι τραχείᾳ γυναικὶ “to be with a rough woman”; Xenophon had χρῇ γυναικὶ “you are supplied with a woman”. Neither of them had an explicit word for marrying at all.

Oh, shut up, QCR.

Masiello and Gwin.

Others applaud them. I panic for them. I want it to work out, they are both good souls who have earned respite, and find it in each other; I worry that they may not work out, because the world is a cruel place.

Yes, nothing ventured nothing gained. And at least, they are both old and wise enough to know.

I worry so much, that the first song to pop into my head was this. Lyrics Kostas Tripolitis, Music Mikis Theodorakis, 1981: late Mikis. Lyrics disillusioned and fearful; music soaring and yearning. Αγάπη: Love. stixoi.info: Αγάπη

Love of bread and fire,
Love of brackishness.
Billboards will choke us
and empty beer cans.

Where can I take you away?
Glass and sheet metal
have filled the years
with expired months.

Love of bread and rain,
Love out on the balconies.
You’ll see blood on the asphalt
and plastic containers.

Where can I take you away?
Glass and sheet metal
have filled the years
with expired months.

I worry, too, that you’ll talk each other mad. Too wise to woo, bickering constantly, exasperatingly, charmingly, like Beatrice and her Benedick. But they got to have their day in the sun, in the end. And so do you:

Street or road name – Wikipedia

In Australia and New Zealand, some streets are called parades. Parade: A public promenade or roadway with good pedestrian facilities along the side. Examples: Peace Celebration Parade, Marine Parade, King Edward Parade, Oriental Parade and dozens more. However, this term is not used in North America or Great Britain.

OED parade.n1, meaning 4:

A public square or promenade; (also) a row of shops in a town, or the street on which they are situated. (Frequently in the names of such streets, squares, or promenades.)

That meaning is not at all restricted to Australia, and in fact it is attested since 1697; as a street type, it may be an archaism that is restricted to Oceania.

So:

• 1697, Dampier, New Voyage Around The World: This Square is calcled [sic] the Parade.
• 1775, Sheridan, Rivals: We saunter on the parades [at Bath].
• 1863, Hawthorne, Our Old Home: The smart parades and crescents of the former town.
• 1885, Phone Book, Brighton, England: Vizer E.B…154, Marine-parade.
• 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room: The parade smelt of tar which stuck to the heels.

The 1885 example clearly is an English street name.

I’m putting these links up.

I suggest we not comment on them, given what happened last time.

Just read these. Knowledge… is power.

• How to Turn Quora into a Traffic-Driving Machine for Your Blog
• Easily Growth Hack 1,500+ Visits From Quora

Been A2A’d, but alas, I went through the general linguistics programme 20 years ago, and I haven’t stayed in touch.

Some generalities:

• Melbourne Uni has the Language Testing Research Centre, which means that Language Testing is one of the core strengths of the department.
• The department also has three ESL specialists.
• The department includes Tim Macnamara, who is a reasonably big name, and Paul Gruba and Carsten Roever, who I have found affable and clever.
• The applied linguists and the theoretical linguists got yoked together 20 years ago, while I was there. The two halves didn’t have much to talk to each other about back then, and I doubt they do now either.
• Alastair Pennycook was in the applied program during my time. Alastair is a huge name in the politics of World Englishes. As far as I was concerned though, he was this odd Scotsman who would debate with me whether my teal jacket was blue or green.
• Melbourne Uni in general is a great place to study…
• … but it can be complacent on its laurels; do talk to people from other universities if you can.
• The MA in Applied Linguistics is coursework and minor thesis, and always has been. From the perspective of a PhD student in general linguistics, there were gajillions of you, you did a lot of coursework, and you weren’t as hippy and eccentric as we liked to think we were. Large overseas student representation among them.
• I’m saying that to indicate that I’m not really the right person to A2A. 🙂

I’m not proud to bring up puşt “bottom, male homosexual on the receiving end of anal sex, faggot”, because homophobia is not something to be proud of. But the word has certainly been productive in Greek, as you might expect of an insult.

From the Triantafyllidis Dictionary: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής

• pustis ‘faggot’ (used as insult; used as admiration of someone cunning; used as informal friendly address)
• Diminutives: pustraki, pustrakos
• Augmentatives: pustara, pustaros
• Feminine (used mostly of men): pustra
• pustario ‘group, collective of pustis’
• pustia ‘dishonourable conduct’
• Diminutive: pustitsa
• pustikos ‘adjective of pustis’
• Prefix:
• pustoɣeros ‘derogatory term for old man’
• pustoferno ‘to act like a pustis’

From SLANG.gr, omitting clearly nonce jocular coinings:

• pustrilikia, pustlukia (literally faggothoods, with Turkish suffix): ‘sexual insults’
• pustevo, pustrevo ‘to become gay; to become degenerate, effete’
• xepustevo (‘faggoting out’): ‘to cry out with joy in an effeminate manner’
• pustriði ‘insulting diminutive of pustis’
• pustarikos ‘affectionate diminutive of pustis, someone not fully sexually aware’ (portmanteau with pitsirikos ‘kid’)
• pustosini ‘gayness, gaydom’; deliberately grandiose-sounding, by analogy with ðesposini ‘majesty’, romiosini ‘Greekdom’
• pustraðiko ‘gay shop, gay establishment = Mykonos’
• Lots and lots of prefix instances; puštokalamaras ‘faggot penpusher’ deserves prominence as the default derogatory term Cypriot Greeks apply to Greece Greeks. (‘penpusher’, because they speak Official Greek as distinct from Cypriot dialect.)
• Lots and lots of suffix instances; e.g. xeftilopusta ‘laughing-stock pustis’, poniropustas ‘cunning pustis’, trambukopustas ‘thug pustis’
• If I can be allowed one jocular coinage from slang.gr: [h]eteropustas ‘metrosexual’

It follows the rules alright. They’re just rules that have nothing to do with the original Greek.

Traditional English pronunciation of Latin – Wikipedia

In the middle of a word, a vowel followed by more than one consonant is short, as in Hermippe /hərˈmɪpiː/ hər-MIP-ee, while a vowel with no following consonant is long.

Hence, Hĕrmīone. (Long and short as in Modern English spelling: long i = [aj].)

Endings: … The first class consists of vowels alone, i.e. -a, -e, -æ, -i, -o, -u, -y. In this class, the vowels are generally long, but -a is always /ə/.

Hence, Hĕrmīonē.

Latin stress is predictable. It falls on the penultimate syllable when that is “heavy“, and on the antepenultimate syllable when the penult is “light”. … A syllable is “light” if it ends in a single short vowel.

Hence, Hĕr-mī´-o-nē.

However, when a vowel is followed by a single consonant (or by a cluster of p, t, c/k plus l, r) and then another vowel, it gets more complicated.

• If the syllable is unstressed, it is open, and the vowel is often reduced to schwa.

Hence, Hĕr-mī´-ŏ–nē, [hɜɹˈmajəniː]. As opposed to the Ancient Greek [hermiónɛː], or the Modern Greek [ermiˈoni].

Fascinating question.

I mean, adjectives and nouns have declensions, and so do articles and pronouns. If an article is going to have a declension, better it have a declension that’s strongly associated with genders (since gender signalling is a core function of adjectives), than the third declension, which did not differentiate masculines and feminines. The first declension is feminine, with distinct-looking masculines as a late development in proto-Greek; the second declension is masculine/neuter, with feminines as an occasional exception. So they did correlate with gender strongly.

Of course, most pronouns share the alternation of first and second declension that adjectives have anyway; and the article originated as a pronoun.

There’s probably some Indo-European behind why so many pronouns decline that way, patterning with adjectives and indicating gender overtly; then again, the first declension was a late development in Indo-European.

Perfect? Maybe. But careful with your direction of causation. The first declension appeared probably a millennium before the articles did; the articles had the form they did because the declensions were a good match for gender, and that was something that happened in adjectives way beforehand.

Third declension adjectives do exist, and third declension nouns definitely exist; they don’t differentiate masculine and feminine, and there aren’t as many pronouns in the third declension. (Of course, τίς, τί ‘who’ is hardly an obscure pronoun.) By some criteria, I guess that makes them less perfect. By some, they’re rather more perfect…

Historically, the distinction between adjectives and nouns is a fairly recent one—not entrenched before the 18th century. The classical grammars referred to nominals, which included adjectives and nouns.

In addition, Greek, unlike English but like many other languages, can routinely use adjectives on their own without a noun. In fact, neuter adjectives were how Classical philosophers referred to abstractions: τὸ ἴσον, “the equal”, was how someone like Plato would refer to Equality.

There is only one way in which Ancient Greek adjectives differ morphologically from nouns. Feminine 1st declension nouns that are accented on the penult in the singular are accented on the penult in the plural: κινάρα ‘artichoke’, κινάραι ‘artichokes’. If a feminine adjective is accented on the penult in the singular, it is accented on the antepenult in the plural, by analogy with the masculine plural: δεύτερος, δευτέρα: δεύτεροι, δεύτεραι (not: δευτέραι).

With typical cluelessness, 19th century grammars say that ethnic names are an exception to the accentuation rule for nouns: Ῥοδία “Rhodian woman”, Ῥόδιαι “Rhodian women”, not the expected Ῥοδίαι. But of course, that isn’t an exception at all. That just shows you that to Ancient Greeks, Ῥόδιαι was not a noun but an adjective.