Talk:Damin

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[edit] Non ASCII and the Yankaal

Hello First thanks for the recover of the non-ascii symbols, could you tell me what I have to do in order not to destroy them. How did you generate them? Now a question: your wrote

  The Yangkaal of Denham and Forsyth Islands, who spoke the Tangkic
  language Nyangga, also used Demiin, which had the same root words
  as Lardil Demiin but used Nyangga grammar.

where did you find that information? Could you please add a reference. Do you know whether there exist any research articles, grammars or the alike of that language? UB PS Are you sure about the name Nyangga??, I just checked. According to my information, the article of Hale and McKnights book, the Tangkic group is formed by Lardil,Yangkaal, Kangkalitha and Kaidadil. Morever Lardil is the odd one there, since they others are mutually comprehensible while Lardil is not. Another important point is that bi or multilinguism was widely distributed, so that's why I thought that the Yangkaal would use Damin vocabulary and Lardil grammar!? Are you really sure of what you corrected, please give a reference

[edit] Non ASCII and the Yankaal

Hello

First thanks for the recover of the non-ascii symbols, could you tell me what I have to do in order not to destroy them. How did you generate them?

Now a question: your wrote

  The Yangkaal of Denham and Forsyth Islands, who spoke the Tangkic
  language Nyangga, also used Demiin, which had the same root words
  as Lardil Demiin but used Nyangga grammar.

where did you find that information? Could you please add a reference. Do you know whether there exist any research articles, grammars or the alike of that language?

UB

PS Are you sure about the name Nyangga??, I just checked. According to my information, the article of Hale and McKnights book, the Tangkic group is formed by Lardil,Yangkaal, Kangkalitha and Kaidadil. Morever Lardil is the odd one there, since they others are mutually comprehensible while Lardil is not. Another important point is that bi or multilinguism was widely distributed, so that's why I thought that the Yangkaal would use Damin vocabulary and Lardil grammar!? Are you really sure of what you corrected, please give a reference

[edit] Re:Non ASCII and the Yankaal

Sorry, no, I should have discussed it here before jumping to conclusions. Nyangga and Yangkaal are (close to?) synonymous, so let's go with Yangkaal. As for which grammar was used, if we don't have any actual information, we shouldn't have either my "correction" or the original statement that it was the same as Lardil Damin. Do you know that Lardil grammar was used, or did people perhaps say that they spoke Damin because they used its lexical vocabulary? It's pretty common for a language to be identified by its nouns, and for its grammar to be ignored in speaker conception.

[edit] Re: Re

Ok, I have my information form the book of McKnight, which I have quoted at the end of the article. He explictly states that Damin used by the Lardil was/is the same as Yangkaal Damin. Both Hale and McKnight state also that the Lerdil grammar was used, however all irregular verb endings were not used. McKnight is an British anthropologist who has worked for 40 years with the Lardil. He is however not a linguist. In any case I propose to turn back to my formulation for the moment being, but since this is an interesting question, I try to find out more about it (I already see that you changed). Another point, as you may be know, the Lerdil don't want to have to much information about Damin spread out to no Lardil people, that is why I hesitate to add more about grammar and the lexical items. Your statement about Damin is not longer known, is not entirely correct, but I think is in the spirit of the Lardil. UB Oct 30, 2005 14:27

[edit] Symbols

As for the symbols, I just type or paste them in. If you're using Internet Explorer, that might be the problem, because it doesn't support fonts very well. I've heard that there are wiki discussion boards that deal with certain browsers turning text to gibberish when you edit, but I haven't run into that problem myself. kwami 20:17, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
This site works like a charm for adding special symbols. — mark ✎ 20:27, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Symbols

thanks for pointing out. I also have to apologise for sometimes destroy certain formating structures. I try to work with an external editor (Xemacs), which is convient for me. However also there is support for wiki language, some things missing, like to get added the signature UB Oct 30, 2005 14:27
The symbols were already there; they seem to have been deleted when UB edited. kwami 20:39, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
This is correct. I most of the time use an external editor I don't know why sometimes these symbols get deleted. Sorry. UB UB Oct 30, 2005 14:27

[edit] Extinction of Damin

Hello

I just want to point out that the exact date, when the last Damin speaker died is unclear. Hale states in 2000 that the last warama ceremony was held half a century ago. McKnight in his book states (in 1965) that the last ceremony has been hold some 10 years ago. The warama was usually done with men in their 20. It is difficult to figure out when the last Demiinkurlda died, I think around mid 70 but I am not sure. Oub 18:50, 9 December 2005 (UTC):

[edit] Re:Extinction of Damin

I have to admit that I was rather hesitant with adding an extinction date at all. Problem is: Damin was quite an unusual language in the sense that it wasn't anybody's native language. "Extinct" means that the last native speaker has died (that's at least the definition used by SIL), which explicitly does not mean that there aren't any people around who know it as a second language. Well, given the role of Damin as a ceremonial language, I thought it not unreasonable to use the year of the last ceremony as its extinction date. Of course, it remains a matter of taste. But if you insist on the 1970s, then in your place I would rather write "1970s" instead of "1975", which is far too precise. --IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 19:22, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Extinction of Damin

Right, I agree that in that circumstances such a date I problematic, the situation is not very clear to me. First of all the studies performed by Hale about Damin was done in the mid 60 when at least some 10 Demiinkurlda were living. McKnight, the author about an anthropological study of the Lardil himself speaks the language or at least has quite detailed knowledge of it, for he thought some Lardil his knowledge. But as a matter of fact, no warama ceremony has been hold in the last years also McKnight has expressed his hopes that it might be the case in the future. So in a way the language is sleeping . May be it is best to delete that date and not to specify any. Oub 21:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC):

[edit] Re:

Yes, I agree that would be best. Since we all agree that the language �s extinct, I think we should keep the extinction box, but without a year. How does it look now? --IJzeren Jan In mij legge alle fogultjes een ij 09:06, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] External Link

Hello

I must say that I am not to happy about the external link: this is basically copied from the book of Dixon (the name of the mystical person is not correct!) And it does not provide more information as the article, well Catford is mentioned fine, but that is all. So I propose to delete that link. Oub 21:25, 10 December 2005 (UTC):

[edit] rhotics

Which are the two rhotics in Lardil that are spelled r and rr, approximant and flap? We should correct the consonant table. kwami 09:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Oub 14:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC): Hi according to the Lardil Dictionary, the Lardil consonants are the following:

bilabials lamino-dental apico-alveolar Apico-domal lamino-alveolar Dorso-velar
stops b th d rd j k
nasals m nh n rn ny ng
laterals l rl (ly)
flap rr
glides w r y



Oub 14:42, 31 January 2006 (UTC):

[edit] RE: rhotics

I hope to obtain soon an article about Damin phonology and therefore be able to answer that question. Oub 11:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC):

[edit] External Link, removed

Hello

As I said in an earlier mail, the link does not contain any new information and even contain an error concerning the mystical founder of Damin, hence I removed that link. Any objections? Oub 11:43, 2 January 2006 (UTC):

[edit] Lateral (voiceless) fricative IPA correct?

Hello,


Are you sure about the IPA symbol for the lateral voiceless fricative? That sound has been described my Hale in his article as /L/ and moreover he adds that

The most spectacular, though by no means most interesting aspect of Damin is its phonology. In addition to an inventory of consonants and vowels rather typical of Australia, it has a number of consonantal segments which are totally lacking elsewhere in Australia. Among these are nasalized clicks (bilabial /ml/, dental /nh!/. apico-alveolar /In!/, apicodomal /n!/), an ingressive lateral fricative (/L/), a glottalized, or ejective. Velar stop (/k'/), and an ejective bilabial stop (/p'/). ...; but I know of no languages which possess (he sounds I have symbolized /L/ and /p'/ (departing from the conventional values for these symbols).

Given that I searched the wiki and the net for the IPA symbol, which is used in our Wikipedia article and I found a sound. However the word in which this sounds appears sounds to me like an example of the Khoisan family. (I have only small examples of Lardil and none of Damin), I very much doubt that there exists a sound example of Damin on the Internet, for the Lardil do not want those sounds available and the linguists/ethnologists who worked with them respect of course that wish.

I hope to obtain soon an article about Damin phonology and therefore clarify that issue.

Uwe Brauer

Hi, not sure what the question is. Are you asking if the IPA symbol should be "L"? It wouldn't be. The belted el is a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, and the down arrow indicates that it is ingressive. You won't find many examples of that symbol because it's normally only used in the speech pathology lit. kwami 03:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Hello,
Sorry for any misunderstanding. It is like this: Hale was an eminent linguist, who had a command over 50 languages. Now he states that he does not know of any language which posses /L/ and /p'/.
In that article there is a IPA for /L/ and I found a sound example. I thought there are 3 possibilities.
  1. The sound example is wrong, that is the sound found in it is not /L/.
  2. Hale was wrong there are more languages with this sound (there are more than 5000 languages, no wonder that Hale did not know an example.
  3. the IPA symbol is wrong (given your explanation that seems unlikely now)
but since you mention it, there is another possibility.
  1. the sound is /L/ but it an example of a speech pathology.
I find the second possibility exciting but I think I have to ask an specialist before running in any premature conclusions. Oub 15:04, 1 February 2006 (UTC):
Sorry, I still don't know what you mean by "In that article there is a IPA for /L/" — which article? and what was the IPA symbol you found?
Hale did not use the IPA when describing Damin. He used a practical ASCII orthography rather like Kirshenbaum. The clicks, for example, are Kirshenbaum transcription. I don't know where his 'L' came from; he might simply have chosen it because it was convenient and much more readable than Kirshenbaum 'K'. The IPA symbol small-capital L (not capital L; there are no regular capital letters in the IPA) has nothing to do with this symbol. kwami 17:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I am sorry for the confusion. By "that" article I meant the wikipedia article about Damin. I cannot copy the IPA symbols for the ingressive lateral fricative (since my editor destroys that symbol). My original question was based on the following observation:
When I mark the symbols within Mozilla and use the right mouse a menu pops up which allows me to search for that symbol in the Internet. I did this a couple of months ago and found an example of that sound, well almost. I repeated that search and to I am pointed to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_lateral_fricative. Since there was a sound example I thought there might be a problem I described above. (either there are more examples of languages with that sound, or I looked for the wrong symbol, which would mean the symbol in the Damin article were wrong. However the point I oversaw is that the sound example is an example of a lateral-fricative, but not an ingressive one!!! So definitely the sound example is not from Damin. So there is no contradiction. Sorry for all the hassle. Oub 17:49, 2 February 2006 (UTC):

[edit] Speech samples of Demiin

Perhaps someone could add a link to an audio file for those intrested in learning correct pronounciation. As this is an language being so unique it would be worth a type of enthographic observation and recording.

Do you mean speech examples of Demiin? Impossible, the Lardil do not want such samples to be available to outsiders. There are speech samples collected by Linguists but of course, these Linguists, understandably, do respect the wish of the Lardil. Oub 13:19, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mythological?

Although the Lardil say that Demiin was invented by a mythological figure in Dreamtime, it would seem that long ago Lardil elders deliberately invented an initiation language. Did the Lardil actually describe the figure as "mythological" themselves? What outsiders label "mythological", the people themselves would usually simply describe as facts. Christians, for example, don't say "Our mythology includes a character called Jesus", they regard Jesus and what he did as being real occurences.

Speaking of real occurences, who's to say it wasn't a real occurence? Maybe the mythological figure was a Lardil elder. R.M.W. Dixon's Australian Languages presents it in a way that doesn't make the two beliefs sound so incompatible:

It is said that Damin style was invented by a legendary ancestor; its unusual features do suggest that it was simply made up by a talented Lardil linguist at some time in the past. I've edited it slightly, but I hope someone can give more information about exactly who this "mythological figure" actually is. --Ptcamn 15:32, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
We are now entering a delicate area, for the Lardil do not want to have too much information about Demiin available to the public. The person in question, which name I hesitate to write down, is a person of dreamtime . The concept of Dreamtime itself is complicated and worth its own article, but roughly Dreamtime is not our time now . So a person in Dreamtime, well is not the same, as say you and me and not say Alexander the great. That legendary ancestor is the same as the inventor of Demiin, but it is on the other hand not a real person as you and me. So this is the difference between Jesus and him. Jesus existed as a real historical person, whether is did all what is described is a question of faith.
Linguists who have worked with the Lardil and the Demiin language presume that the languages was, in reality, created by some Lardil elders. These Lardil elders however must have had an incredible insight of how languages works. I know not much about Demiin, mind you the knowledge is not available to most outsiders, only to trusted linguists. Nevertheless I think Demiin, is one of the most remarkable inventions linguistically.
Oub 1602, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Hello
I forgot to add, I object your change. Now it looks as if the mythological figure might have invented Demiin, while Hale etc all believe is has been invented by real persons. Oub 16:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC):

[edit] The mythological Figure, a fish

I think I should clarify that: the mythological figure is a fish. So I am not sure whether the recent changes make too much sense. Oub 18:05, 10 April 2006 (UTC):

Just copy edited. Two points I'm uncertain about:
  • The previous editor transcribed Lardil as lerdiil, whereas I've only seen it as leerdil.
  • The claim that the Lardil and Yangkaal versions were grammatically nearly the same. This doesn't square with the grammar being that of Lardil but the register being invented by the Yangkaal, and with the languages being divergent enough that Lardil wasn't even recognized as a Tangkic language until recently. kwami 20:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Hi.
  • that is a point which troubles me as well. From the speech examples I have and the form the Lardil dictionary, it seems to me that it should be indeed Lerdiil, since the emphasis is on the second syllable not on the first (depends you count, but it is also Demiin).
  • right that sounds very puzzeling I agree, I have right now only access to the Memott, Eveans paper, not to the article of Eveans itself. But given that he is one of the leading experts I would leave the statement for the moment.
There is another point however, you did not change the statement: the Lardil think that Demiin was introduced my a mythological figure (a fish)... But Hale ..... Given the fact that the figure was a fish, don't you think it is "obvious" that this is a myth and it is safe to presume it were some Y/L elders.
Oub 13:13, 11 April 2006 (UTC):
Dreamtime characters are very often anthropomorphic, aren't they? --Ptcamn 13:56, 11 April 2006 (UTC) ----
Well, I am not sure, besides the Lardil, I know very little about Dreamtime, I know a little about the Walpiri... So what is your point? Oub 16:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC):

[edit] Leerdil or Lerdiil

I checked, the last living full fluent Lardil speaker pronounces it Leerdil ! Oub 08:58, 15 April 2006 (UTC):

[edit] Practical orthography?

What is this "practical orthography" the article talks about? Perhaps that should be explained in the article? Jon Harald Søby 13:11, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: Jon Hello sorry for the delay. As far as I can remember, the term practical orthography appears in some of the Articles of Hale about Demiin and I think also in the Lardil Dictionary, but I am not sure and shall check. Basically what it means is trying to express the phonetics without using IPA symbols, since English is not very suited for that, Hale tried to use well practical orthography in order to express the phonetics of the words in question Oub 19:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC):
Okay, I understand. But perhaps the article should mention it in some way or another, so other people other people aren't confused. Jon Harald Søby 22:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Only language with..

Hello recently somebody added:

In addition, it used all of the grammatical suffixes of Lardil. It is the only language not to make the distinction between second first and third person, as there is no difference between the second and third person.

Well as described in the article, Demiin has just 2 pronouns, so what is said is just a special case. However without a citation I am very skeptical of claim, that it is the only language. I know of at least one other (ceremonial) language with a very small vocabulary, but I am not sure how many pronouns it posses. In any case it should be it is the only KNOWN language since there a lot of unrecorded one, especially in the New Guinea area. Oub 13:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC):

Every natural language I'm aware of has at least three pronouns, two personal (I/we and you) and one demonstrative (this/that). Not to say there can be others with only two, but 3 PN languages are notable in themselves. kwami 22:20, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
Nonetheless, "It is the only language..." is a huge claim to make unreferenced. There are other languages which only make a 1st/non-first in personal pronouns - I don't know whether there are any that only make that distinction everywhere, but it seems perfectly possible... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.245.35.141 (talk) 17:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)