Search found 110 matches
- Thu Jan 05, 2017 12:13 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Obscure etymologies
- Replies: 16
- Views: 5899
Re: Obscure etymologies
Going over some recent threads, this one caught my interest. When I was developing the vocabulary of Tundrian, I was aware of the fact that it is not realistic to derive all words in a conlang from its putative ancestor – in this case, Vulgar Latin. I of course did borrow some words from Celtic and ...
- Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:26 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
- Replies: 31
- Views: 6287
Re: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
Thank you guys. It's always nice to feel welcome. I may not have made it to Prague, but I did manage to spend 5 days in London. Among the treasures I found in its bookshops (ex-Dillons, Foyles and that of the London Transport Museum) were the 2nd ed. of Beekes's Comparative IE grammar, the Little Pr...
- Mon Jun 24, 2013 10:09 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
- Replies: 31
- Views: 6287
Re: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
This is not the place to analyze all the data, but let me just give a quick overview of the situation of *k before (original) *a. On a quick count in Pokorny, there are 50 PIE etyma beginning with *ka- and 11 beginning with *k'a (palatal). Only 5 of these 11 have no alternate explanations: *k'ad- '...
- Mon Jun 24, 2013 9:44 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
- Replies: 31
- Views: 6287
Re: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
Why would these branches have the uniform change *H^we > *Ho, when *k^we is retained in the same branches (with Grimm's law *k^we > *x^we in Germanic)? But isn't this a reason against having a labiovelar sibilant series at all? I am referring to attempts at identifying the phonetic nature of laryng...
- Sun Jun 23, 2013 11:40 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
- Replies: 31
- Views: 6287
Re: Gabor's Reconstruction of PIE
Hello, everyone. Oh, I haven't been lurking (much) - if I visit, I usually say something. I am not known for my reticence. :) It's just that life in retirement, in beautiful (if somewhat rainy) Vancouver BC, has turned out to be busier in some ways than work in Geneva. I do many things, and visiting...
- Wed May 25, 2011 2:22 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Latest language family proven?
- Replies: 44
- Views: 8896
Re: Latest language family proven?
I'm a Nostraticist of a sort, but I think most stuff out there is pure fantasy. A big problem, IMO, is that they try to force Afro-Asiatic and Dravidian into it. IMO there is, at the very least a grouping WeepingElf has called "Mitian", so-called because so many of the languages in Northern Eurasia...
- Wed May 25, 2011 11:00 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Learn Northern Germanic the exciting way
- Replies: 93
- Views: 16016
Re: Learn Northern Germanic the exciting way
This is a great idea. I certainly intend to come back and learn more about the North Germanic languages, especially as I find insights from a native speaker of one of the languages in a family (or subfamily) more useful than those from outsiders, no matter how well they know a language. One question...
- Sat May 21, 2011 10:41 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Substituting Diacritics
- Replies: 30
- Views: 5363
Re: Substituting Diacritics
Hungarians tend to leave of diacritics in e-mails, which can make reading their e-mails idfficult, but rarely incomprehensible. Context helps enormously. They may leave off diacritics even if most are available (the ones that are hardest to locate are the long umlauts: Ő ő Ű ű), as there is a proble...
- Tue Oct 05, 2010 4:03 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Language revival
- Replies: 16
- Views: 3799
It didn't have state backing when there wasn't a state. Plus, so far as I know most of the settlers were Yiddish speakers from Russia, so Yiddish might easily have won out instead. Were they predominantly Russian? I thought Russia tried to prevent Jewish emigration. Czarist (imperial) Russia? The m...
- Sat Aug 21, 2010 2:28 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Ellision of intervocalic voiced stops
- Replies: 16
- Views: 4486
Re: Ellision of intervocalic voiced stops
5. In Irish, intervocalic d and g often disappear, although occasionally a weakly articulated /G/ is pronounced. The original consonant is retained in the spelling <dh>, <gh>. This is part of the process of lenition, and affects even initial consonants, when they follow a word formerly ending in a ...
- Sat Aug 21, 2010 2:17 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Ellision of intervocalic voiced stops
- Replies: 16
- Views: 4486
There's also a few irregulars, like "sé" where we would expect *sabo, from Latin sapere. If anything, we'd expect * sepo since the Latin 1S.PRS was SAPIO and the parallel form CAPIO yielded quepo . Quoth Penny "The form sé is best explained as analogical imitation of he ." It may well be so, but th...
- Fri Aug 20, 2010 4:22 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Swearwords in Japanese
- Replies: 19
- Views: 4090
Of course the Japanese have swearwords, although I was never close enough to the kind of crowd who would use them (or if they did, I probably wouldn't catch on). But Japanese people are certainly aware that other languages have such words, which suggest to me that their own must too. On my first tri...
- Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:52 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Ellision of intervocalic voiced stops
- Replies: 16
- Views: 4486
EB: haha. :D gsandi: Yes - thanks! It seemed strange to me because I only ever heard of fricatization of voiced stops (as in Modern Greek and Spanish), but not of complete ellision. And I should have thought of août , really :roll: The interesting thing is that the -g- in Spanish agosto (1) was ret...
- Thu Aug 19, 2010 7:23 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Ellision of intervocalic voiced stops
- Replies: 16
- Views: 4486
Re: Ellision of intervocalic voiced stops
Is this a widespread phonetic process? I'm asking because it seems to be happening quite a lot in certain Slovene speech styles, It's quite a widespread phenomenon in fact. It is also correlated with the parallel voicing of intervocalic voiceless stops, but it doesn't have to be. Examples: 1. Inter...
- Tue Aug 10, 2010 12:35 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Yet another question about PIE
- Replies: 12
- Views: 3276
Re: Yet another question about PIE
I usually trust Sihler, so give me chapter & verse so that I can see what he actually says in context. The relevant passage is on page 91 of his New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin ; it's a commentary on item 2 in section 93: a resonant is syllabic "between a resonant and a following obstrue...
- Mon Aug 09, 2010 9:27 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Yet another question about PIE
- Replies: 12
- Views: 3276
Re: Yet another question about PIE
Sihler says that in a sequence of two resonants between non-resonants, the second is always syllabic. This means that, say, dwrt is realised as /dwr.t/ rather than /durt/, which strikes me as strange since [r] is less vocalic than [w] and so /durt/ would be more natural. Where's the flaw? I usually...
- Sun Aug 08, 2010 5:21 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Adjacent laryngeals in PIE
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2428
Re: Adjacent laryngeals in PIE
In the case of the "mouth" word, why does it begin with H2, by the way? It could just as well be *H3oH1-, *H3eH1- and who knows what else. Sorry, typo. It was probably H1 (if it started with a laryngeal at all). Hittite doesn't retain the laryngeal in the mouth word ( ais ). On H1 I actually agree ...
- Sun Aug 08, 2010 8:58 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Adjacent laryngeals in PIE
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2428
Re: Adjacent laryngeals in PIE
There wouldn't be two adjacent laryngeals within a root, Theoretically, in zero grade there could be. Some roots are reconstructed with two laryngeals, e.g. *H2eHs-eH2 ashes, hearth and *H2oH1-(e)s- mouth . At least in Hittite I've seen a zero grade reconstructed for the genitive hassas, possibly f...
- Sun Aug 08, 2010 2:42 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Adjacent laryngeals in PIE
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2428
Re: Adjacent laryngeals in PIE
Is there any regular development of adjacent laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European? There wouldn't be two adjacent laryngeals within a root, but it is certainly possible to have a cluster of two laryngeals across a morpheme boundary. Take the verb "to give", whose root is probably *deh3. Make it into t...
- Mon Aug 02, 2010 9:30 am
- Forum: L&L Museum
- Topic: The Suppletion Thread
- Replies: 81
- Views: 36028
The verb "to be" has suppletion in many, many languages, IE and not. In my native, Uralic, Hungarian the infinitive is lenni , from which are also formed the future leszek, leszel, lesz etc. and the imperative légy, legyetek . Other forms are from another stem altogether, beginning with v-: Present ...
- Mon May 17, 2010 1:58 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Subjunctive
- Replies: 48
- Views: 8704
Wouldn't this be in Spanish Hasta que me llamas, quedo en casa?. Ungrammatical to me. I'd say "Hasta que me llam e s (thus using the subjunctive), me quedaré/quedo (both are possible, it depends on the context) en casa." Thanks. Yes, I asked a Spanish colleague, and she (of course) she said the sam...
- Sun May 16, 2010 4:30 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Subjunctive
- Replies: 48
- Views: 8704
I am studying (Brazilian) Portuguese right now, and the subjunctive is causing me quite a lot of headache, as often I just don't see why it is used at all. The past subjunctive is the least problematic, because it seems to be used similarly to what I was taught in Spanish: Se tivesse dinheiro, compr...
- Wed Apr 21, 2010 1:23 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Hmong
- Replies: 17
- Views: 5681
There seems to be only one author who has published grammars of the two main Hmong languages: Thomas Lyman. I have no way to know if they are any good, but both books are available in my favourite university library (UBC, Vancouver), according to its online catalogue: Grammar of Mong Njua (Green Mia...
- Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:33 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: WeepingElf's Europic thread
- Replies: 274
- Views: 61073
Discussion is over. This is now WE's Europic thread. Right. This thread is for discussing my Europic hypothesis. There is another thread for discussing Vasco-Caucasian, which is a matter whose relevance for Europic remains questionable. At least you must recognize they're partly competing theories,...
- Fri Feb 19, 2010 1:23 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: WeepingElf's Europic thread
- Replies: 274
- Views: 61073
Unfortunately, he's on the crackpot side as he follows Vennemann in thinking Basque is a descendant of OEH. It's a review paper, and doesn't claim anything . I think it's a very good summary of current thinking, and it gives the pros and cons of the ideas it covers. Most importantly, it insists on ...