LINGUIST List 12.236

Mon Jan 29 2001

Qs: Calendrical System Terms, Prolonged Sp Sounds

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karenlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Pascale Jacq, Calendrical systems & plant/animal terms
2. Robert Eklund, Elongated/prolonged speech sounds

To the members of Linguist list. 

I wonder if anyone is aware of another language which uses plant terms
for naming the years/months of the calendrical system.

The language I am researching is Jruq (Loven) a West Bahnaric language
of the Mon-Khmer/Austroasiatic phylum. It has the following calendrical
system:

8 watches = 1 day
10 days = 1 week
3 weeks = 1 month
12 months = 1 year (360 days)
12 years = 1 cycle

(+ a few extra days every so often to add the missing 4/5 days of every
year)

The 12 years of the cycle are, as expected, named after animals like the
Chinese 'year of the tiger' etc. but with more unusual animals such as
the 'civet cat', 'elephant', 'crow', 'rabbit', etc.

In addition to these animal terms a tree species is added (e.g.
'persimmon', 'areca', 'wild lime', 'fig', 'rambeh' etc.). 

Please let me know if other calendrical systems are like this or if
anyone can explain the use of tree terms (is it true that some
constellations are named after trees in southeast Asia?)

Regards,

Pascale Jacq

I am currently working on disfluent speech, and would like 
to know if anything is done on elongated speech sounds as
a means of hesitation in spontaneous speech, e.g., 

 "I'll sssssssee what I can do about it."

I am familiar with Carl Rubino's and J�rgen Streeck's work
on Ilokano and Tagalog, but anything that has been done on
any language would be of interest.

Robert 


Robert Eklund Tel: +46 (0)8 713 83 54
Telia Research AB Fax: +46 (0)8 713 83 10
Vitsandsgatan 9, B 325 Mobile: +46 (0)70 594 73 32
S-123 86 Farsta Mailto:Robert.H.Eklundtelia.se
Sweden http://www.ling.su.se/staff/robert/index.html