+- The Voynich Ninja (https://www.voynich.ninja)
+-- Forum: Voynich Research (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-27.html)
+--- Forum: Analysis of the text (https://www.voynich.ninja/forum-41.html)
+--- Thread: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? (/thread-2757.html)
Pages:
1
2
What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - ChenZheChina - 26-04-2019
I was reading You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. when I thought about this question:
How can we make sure that a label is sharing stem with another word in paragraphs?
Consider words below:
- Pronounce (prə’naʊns) vs Pronunciation (prə,nʌnsi’eɪʃən)
- Explain (ɪks’pleɪn) vs Explanation (,ɛksplə’neɪʃən)
- Record (rɪ’kɔ:rd) vs Record (’rekərd)
What I want to say is that, it might not be that easy to consider the first two word pairs are actually of the same stem, if we do not know their real meanings in prior. If the last word pair is written not in this form, but in some phonetic spelling (like IPA), it might be not easy to tell them, either.
This reminds me something.
One day, one of my friends told me that, in English, some words change their tone when conjugating. Then he gave me an example, where repeat is split into rě (3rd tone) and pèat (4th tone), while repeated is split into rě (3rd tone), pēa (1st tone) and tèd (4th tone). (Warning: DO NOT take his statement serious. He really thinks so, but we all know that this is not how English actually works. This is just an example that how crazy phonetic spelling systems might be, if they were not designed scientifically)
If tones were not marked by diacritic marks but different letters, I guess it could be much harder to find stem from these words.
Therefore, I think it might be a tough mission to link those labels to “regular” words in paragraphs. It’s hard to prove them to be of same stem, if two words are not exactly the same.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - ReneZ - 26-04-2019
Hello Zhe,
as I am sure you know, English does not really work by tones, but by stress.
However, the tones are very much present. They just have a different function, and the tones for one word may change depending on context (place in the sentence), or other factors, which I would describe as 'emotion'.
A very simple example is the English word 'No'. In most cases, this word has a very distinct tone, but it can be any of the four tones in Mandarin Chinese, and in fact even more, depending on the circumstance.
- Rising (low to high) in case it is a question
- Low or low and falling if it is a curt decision
- Low and slightly rising if it is a tentative decision with an element of doubt
- High if it is like a command
- High and falling is like high, but with more stress (e.g. to repeat a previous No).
This is hardly a consolidated list of course.
With the word 'repeat', the stress is on the second syllable, but the first is not unstressed. In 'repeated' the stress is not changed, but the third syllable is completely unstressed. (Except perhaps in Wales).
The tone of the second syllable in 'repeat' can vary between low(-ish), high(-ish) and high and falling (the one you indicated).
It all very much depends on the speaker as well.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - ChenZheChina - 26-04-2019
Hi René,
Thank you for your detailed examples of emotional tones. They also exist in Chinese, and are much more complicated because they combine with tones of syllables themselves. But, they basically work in the same way — rising tones emphasize questioning, tentativeness and doubt, while high tones emphasize certainty and authority.
And, yeah, I know that the third syllable of repeated is unstressed, but this is exactly what amazing: for someone who has few knowledge of another language but has to remember them, they might end in a phonetic system that is very natural to themselves, but very ridiculous to native speakers.
Wade—Giles romanization system of Mandarin Chinese is also an example, but that’s another story. Anyway, it seems that confirming two words to be of the same stem is not an easy task.
Again, thank you for your explanation on repeat.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - ReneZ - 26-04-2019
Indeed, the same happens in Thai (which I know much better than Mandarin). There is a second layer of 'tones' to indicate these 'emotions'. But the related variations are slower.
The most fascinating part of this for me is how people learn and forget this aspect of language. At childhood, we necessarily have the capacity to understand this. But then, in some areas of the world, we learn that the tone (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) is used to distinguish meaning of individual words, while in other areas it is entirely related to emotion. The latter applies to almost all of Europe, and certainly the area in which the Voynich MS was most probably written.
The notion that tones are used to distinguish words that are otherwise similar is quite foreign to European ears. The capacity to understand this, that must have been there at childhood, is lost while growing up. For me, I had to 'learn it again'.
There is a classical example in the Thai language, that the words for 'nearby' and 'far away', which are opposites to each other, are the same except for the tone. They are a minimal pair in that sense. When explaining this to European friends, the (quite obvious to me) difference was not noticed.
So, while this is surely quite off-topic, the relevance w.r.t the Voynich MS is that it seems extremely unlikely that the person or people involved in its production had a notion of tones...
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - davidjackson - 26-04-2019
Interesting about tones. Classical Spanish (Castillian) has three of which only two are commonly used. Go over the pond and the south Americans have as many tones as the Yanks do, which gives them their classical singsong, lackadaisical prosody. Listening to a Madrileño and a Mexican have a conversation, and you'd think they were talking two different languages.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - Antonio García Jiménez - 26-04-2019
You are right David. I am from Madrid and my way of speaking Spanish (Castillian) is very different from a Mexican or any Latin American. They have many tones and speak that they seem to sing. I love how they speak Spanish. In Madrid our accent is too monotonous.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - ReneZ - 26-04-2019
This is intonation. When it comes to that, nobody can beat the Italians, who easily break the octave once they get even slightly emotional. That isn't meant as a criticism, by the way.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - -JKP- - 26-04-2019
I agree about Italian. I love hearing it. One of my favorite languages.
In Scandinavian, Danish is very guttural, Swedish a tad on the sing-songy side, but Norwegian is a very beautiful language. So is Hawaiian. One of the Indonesian dialects (can't remember which one) is one of the most beautiful and musical languages that I have ever heard (there was a clip on Youtube, but unfortunately I didn't save the link).
I also love a couple of the Spanish dialects.
Personally, I like the sound of Cantonese more than Mandarin but, unfortunately, Mandarin is the dominant dialect.
Korean is interesting because it's not tonal, but they use extensive emotional tones.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - Koen G - 27-04-2019
To get back at the subject at hand though... it is true that words with the same stem can look different. This used to be the case in early Germanic languages like Gothic. The word "to fell (a tree)" was derived by a productive system from the main stem "fall". Similarly the past tense "fell" belongs to the same stem "fall".
It all depends on the language family. In some languages the stem will be reliable (like Latin), while in others it won't always be.
RE: What Do We Need to Comfirm Stem? - Emma May Smith - 27-04-2019
I've done a bit of research into something I've taken to calling "[qo] triplets". Basically three words which are the same except one form starts [qo], another [o], and the third with a null/empty "prefix". So a triplet might consist of [qokeedy, okeedy, keedy]. I've put some posts up on my blog about how the different forms seem to be related:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
The outcome seems to be that the levels of the [o] and [qo] forms are reliant on the first glyph of the null form. This suggests some kind of relationship between the forms.
I've discussed this at length with Marco (whom I hope will add to this discussion) but we can't find or agree exactly what's happening here. Though we do believe that there's at least the potential we're looking at one of the forms being the root with one or two of the other forms being a variant/derivative.