Search found 364 matches

by Miekko
Sun Jul 03, 2016 3:25 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Estonian is a conlang.
Replies: 17
Views: 4802

Re: Estonian is a conlang.

IIRC Finnish has a few words with similar origins, i.e. inventions of 19th and early 20th century enthusiasts. Alas, I do not recall any specific such words at the moment.
by Miekko
Thu Jun 02, 2016 11:54 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Most Logical Word Order
Replies: 19
Views: 6061

Re: Most Logical Word Order

My conlang is also designed to be what you might call "logical", so I've given this some thought too. As mentioned, VSO is the standard in formal logic, and many other kinds of formal languages. More generally, we tend to write the operation first and the argument later, like f(x), for example. Nat...
by Miekko
Wed Apr 06, 2016 11:01 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
Replies: 161
Views: 63711

Re: Haida and Na-Dene

One thing, though, that I absolutely have to cling to is how "language" in Haida is "kil". I mean, that's some straight-up Ural-Altaic shit right there; Mongolian "хэл", Finnish "kieli", Estonian "keel", Chuvash "чĕлхе", Kazakh "til", Turkish "dil", etc. I know it's probably a coincidence, but I th...
by Miekko
Mon Sep 22, 2014 11:43 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Grammaticalization Quickie Thread
Replies: 94
Views: 39093

Re: Grammaticalization Quickie Thread

How about a definite marker becoming a perfective marker? In Old Albic, I have a definite article a , which is of West Hesperic vintage. The same language also has a perfective prefix, the "augment" °- (a vowel that assimilates to the root vowel). Both reflect Proto-Hesperic *a . I think this could...
by Miekko
Sat Sep 06, 2014 5:53 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Lexical ultra-conservatism
Replies: 53
Views: 17220

Re: Lexical ultra-conservatism

(Who among us is aware of the original meaning 2000 years ago of the word "America" anyway?) Well, "America" wasn't even a word 2,000 years ago. The name is a Latinate derivation from the first name of Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator. A couple of letters allegedly written by him and publis...
by Miekko
Tue Sep 02, 2014 8:06 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Allophones
Replies: 7
Views: 2061

Re: Allophones

Best way of organizing it:

a table of places and manners of articulation. A really blunt stick to point at it with that won't point at less than maybe a dozen cells at a time.
by Miekko
Mon Jul 28, 2014 3:25 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Con-Astronomy for my Con-World
Replies: 6
Views: 2019

Re: Con-Astronomy for my Con-World

An entirely unrelated question, but since gach's here I figure I might as well butt in: is there any chance for a habitable planet to have two or even three moons with visible disks of sufficiently large size that some features could be visible in them from the planet's surface? Say - at least half ...
by Miekko
Thu Jul 03, 2014 4:51 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Swedish färst
Replies: 13
Views: 3077

Re: Swedish färst

I find it hard to believe that (as she claimed) it's a "language hole" in Swedish I think language holes are really a gradual thing. Much like there are very few "real" synonyms, there are very few (useful) things that you really can't say, but there are some things that don't have a convenient wel...
by Miekko
Thu Jul 03, 2014 4:29 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Swedish verb musings
Replies: 25
Views: 5888

Re: Swedish verb musings

I came up with an other one, nyck , thought I only ever used the plural nycker . One translation I found is "ideas" thought it doesn't quite capture the word because it means more like "one who constantly gets strange ideas and the need to do them" with a positive or negative interpretation dependi...
by Miekko
Sun Jun 15, 2014 4:45 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Language Complexity
Replies: 29
Views: 6864

Re: Language Complexity

KathAveara wrote:Many languages express the genitive with neither an adposition or a case, but simply by placing the two nouns next to each other.
There's even more complicated systems in existence.
by Miekko
Wed Jun 11, 2014 1:20 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Regular and Irregular Languages
Replies: 36
Views: 8086

Re: Regular and Irregular Languages

Russian (and Slavic languages in general) put a great emphasis on the aspect system, yet you basically have to learn the aspect-pairs as *pairs*, no single rule can be used to generate the perfect from the imperfect or vice versa. You are talking about the perfective and imperfective . The imperfec...
by Miekko
Wed Jun 11, 2014 7:14 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Regular and Irregular Languages
Replies: 36
Views: 8086

Re: Regular and Irregular Languages

Russian (and Slavic languages in general) put a great emphasis on the aspect system, yet you basically have to learn the aspect-pairs as *pairs*, no single rule can be used to generate the perfect from the imperfect or vice versa. Should we count this or not? Whether we decide to do so or not, we're...
by Miekko
Wed Jun 04, 2014 5:01 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: reflexive verb marking (current: ergative subjects in Hindi)
Replies: 27
Views: 6123

Re: reflexive verb marking origins

With reflexive possession, something a bit like this happens in Finnish: hän romutti autonsa = 3sg trash.past3sg car.his = he trashed his ( own ) car.3sgposs hän romutti hänen autonsa = 3sg.nom trash.past.3sg 3sg.gen car.poss = he trashed his car (where his refers to some other third person) This s...
by Miekko
Wed Jun 04, 2014 7:56 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: reflexive verb marking (current: ergative subjects in Hindi)
Replies: 27
Views: 6123

Re: reflexive verb marking origins

hän romutti hänen autonsa = 3sg.nom trash.past.3sg 3sg.gen car.poss = he trashed his car (where his refers to some other third person) Do people actually use grammar like that in any part of the country? In the Finnish varieties I'm familiar with the 3rd person possessive suffix isn't used for refl...
by Miekko
Wed Jun 04, 2014 3:40 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: reflexive verb marking (current: ergative subjects in Hindi)
Replies: 27
Views: 6123

Re: reflexive verb marking origins

Are there any languages that use a genitive case on pronouns to indicate reflexivity, rather than having a separate set of reflexive pronouns? So, you would have something like this: he.NOM hit.PERF he.ACC = "He hit him (someone else)." he.NOM hit.PERF he.GEN = "He hit himself." With reflexive poss...
by Miekko
Tue Jun 03, 2014 4:15 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Are allophones in big phonological inventories less likely?
Replies: 8
Views: 3192

Re: Are allophones in big phonological inventories less like

You are aware that you'll never perfectly recreate your mouth's setup when uttering the same phoneme twice? That falls under allophony, even though it may be so fine-graded that it's barely measurable.
by Miekko
Tue May 20, 2014 1:22 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Swedish verb musings
Replies: 25
Views: 5888

Re: Swedish verb musings

bre - spread (eg. condiments on a slice of bread) There's the form breda to account for this one, still the form preferred in more formal language. klä - clothe; (clothes) suit someone kläda strö - sprinkle ströa is common enough in some spoken varieties to be worth mentioning (if gothenburg-specif...
by Miekko
Fri May 16, 2014 9:51 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Nationalism and fringe linguistics
Replies: 46
Views: 9585

Re: Nationalism and fringe linguistics

Whatwith the nationalist party having made some gains in the elections in India, it wouldn't surprise me if more money is channelled into fringe linguistics in India :(
by Miekko
Wed May 07, 2014 5:48 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Segment
Replies: 10
Views: 2558

Re: Segment

But given that in consonant mutation in Welsh the mutation is grammatically triggered (and in some cases marks a semantic distinction!) could we even say that it begins with a segment? A more common way of describing this I think is to refer to them as "allomorphs" or "morphologically conditioned a...
by Miekko
Wed Apr 30, 2014 7:25 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Topic markers and adpositions
Replies: 4
Views: 1919

Re: Topic markers and adpositions

I don't know the specific case of Quechua, but I think case affixes usually originate from adpositions and ultimately from adverbs, nouns or verbs as the head of the construction. In any case, Quechua -qa attaches enclitically to the topic and is thus "on the same side" of the case suffixes. Other ...
by Miekko
Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:50 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Topic markers and adpositions
Replies: 4
Views: 1919

Re: Topic markers and adpositions

zompist wrote:Quechua -qa presumably didn't derive from adpositions, because the language has none.
Where do Quechua suffixes originate from?
by Miekko
Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:13 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Where are the African conlangs?
Replies: 62
Views: 21706

Re: Where are the African conlangs?

I have the intention of making an african-inspired lang, but as always, ... my plans for when to complete it keep being adjusted.
by Miekko
Sat Feb 01, 2014 10:13 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The plurals of deer-like animals in English
Replies: 25
Views: 8417

Re: The plurals of deer-like animals in English

Hmm, the phrase "Look at all the X!" seems to fit most animals, the exceptions seem to be harder to find. You could say "Look at all the lobster!" refering to an aquarium or something full of live lobster, or "Look at all the vulture in that field!" but not when talking about pig or shark. I kind o...
by Miekko
Thu Jan 30, 2014 2:32 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Performance arts of my conpeople and yours
Replies: 15
Views: 3617

Re: Performance arts of my conpeople and yours

A notion just struck me - how common has sex as a (somewhat respected) performance art ever been in human cultures? In the modern world, recorded sex performances are a kind of cheap entertainment, but how about, I dunno, acrobatic renditions of stuff from the racier parts of the Kama Sutra, perform...
by Miekko
Wed Jan 29, 2014 4:57 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Case and morphosyntactic alignments
Replies: 4
Views: 1671

Re: Case and morphosyntactic alignments

You're probably both right - you're essentially talking about different things to which we happen to stick the same label.