Search found 636 matches

by vec
Wed May 23, 2018 1:12 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Polysynthesis for Novices
Replies: 170
Views: 187734

Re: Polysynthesis for Novices

So one way is treating the incorporated noun like an adverbial, one like a classifier. The transitivity is determined by the person marking of the verb. The incorporated object is analogous to an English adverb, not an English (in-)direct object. With a content verb like "hunt" or "fish", one can sa...
by vec
Fri May 18, 2018 10:48 am
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Polysynthesis for Novices
Replies: 170
Views: 187734

Re: Polysynthesis for Novices

Sorry if this has been answered somewhere and I missed it (so many pages!). Let's take a transitive verb such as from dhok's question from almost a decade ago: "My mom gave me milk". If there's a verb milk-give and you can say a thing such as my-mom she-milk-me-gave , is the verb still transitive or...
by vec
Wed May 09, 2018 1:00 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Does Germanic have native terms for "cube" and "sphere"?
Replies: 4
Views: 4759

Re: Does Germanic have native terms for "cube" and "sphere"?

Icelandic has teningur which means die in the toy sense, or cube in the mathematical/scientific sense. It has three words for sphere-like things: kúla which can refer to any kind of ball that's usually hard, like a bowling ball or a billiards ball, or a sphere in the mathmatical sense, hnöttur / knö...
by vec
Mon Feb 12, 2018 4:03 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Affricates
Replies: 10
Views: 3991

Re: Affricates

Coarticulate = heterorganic cluster that behave as single phoneme
Affricate = coarticulate of homorganic plosive and fricative

So, an affricate is a subset of coarticulates. Coarticulates must be 1) homorganic, 2) stop+fricative, in order to be defined as affricates.
by vec
Mon Feb 05, 2018 5:19 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Will singular "they" be as acceptable as "you" in formal Eng
Replies: 44
Views: 18409

Re: Will singular "they" be as acceptable as "you" in formal

My husband (American born and raised) uses they almost exclusively when talking about someone he doesn't know personally. If he's talking about a celebrity or fictional character, for instance, I've noticed he may use he or she in the first sentence, and then revert to they for all following sentenc...
by vec
Tue Dec 19, 2017 3:31 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Getting rid of grammatical features
Replies: 12
Views: 4449

Re: Getting rid of grammatical features

"To school," "to town," "to port"...? I think these are probably relics of the older, pre-article stage of English, rather than recent innovations. What "pre-article stage of English"? English always had a definite article – but the indefinite article is an innovation that occured after there was s...
by vec
Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:27 pm
Forum: Almea
Topic: New Almeopedia
Replies: 29
Views: 19694

Re: New Almeopedia

Overall, great. I admire your holding on to the HTML4 look—the Metaverse remains a bastion of original web aesthetics that otherwise are almost completely gone. That said, I hope you take the opportunity to make some of the pictures on here (especially maps) somewhat larger and perhaps wrap them in ...
by vec
Thu Nov 09, 2017 4:48 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: The username thread
Replies: 16
Views: 7897

Re: The username thread

My old name was vegfarandi which means pedestrian, or more literally, road goer, in my native Icelandic. It was the name of my Icelandic Star Trek fansite I used to run back in the '98-'01. The conceit of the website was that it was the database of an Icelandic speaking 24th century Star Fleet vesse...
by vec
Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:50 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Digital Voice Synthesizer
Replies: 6
Views: 2825

Digital Voice Synthesizer

Check it out, so cool.

Digital mouth for your pleasure.

http://dood.al/pinktrombone/
by vec
Fri Jul 22, 2016 12:49 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: I need some help understanding kinship terminology.
Replies: 7
Views: 2849

Re: I need some help understanding kinship terminology.

Here's one related question that I haven't found satisfyingly answered. Under Iroquois systems, are there special terms for "real father" and "real mother" or is the family arrangement such that that becomes irrelevant? How does ego's paternal uncle being considered your father work in practice? And...
by vec
Wed Jun 29, 2016 2:38 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Loss of tone, resulting in...what?
Replies: 13
Views: 4259

Re: Loss of tone, resulting in...what?

Tones are typically not codas, but supersegmentals, i.e. features of the vowels/syllables them selves, rather than consonantal components.
by vec
Wed Jun 22, 2016 9:36 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Kinship terms: uncles/aunts
Replies: 20
Views: 4980

Re: Kinship terms: uncles/aunts

Icelandic doesn't distinguish aunts from nieces or cousins, or uncles from nephews or cousins, using frænka for the former and frændi for all the latter. You can say frændfólk to cover a group of relatives that fall into these categories. In order to be specific, Icelandic has a productive system li...
by vec
Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:28 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Regional accents are losing the battle to standard English
Replies: 17
Views: 4634

Re: Regional accents are losing the battle to standard Engli

The longer I've lived in the US, the more perceptive I am of dialectal differences here. The minute differences in a-sounds and o-sounds in particular that make such a huge difference here in America. That said, I barely ever hear people with a "New York" accent around me – occasionally with Jews an...
by vec
Tue Jun 21, 2016 3:15 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Past participles ending in /ən/ in dialectal English
Replies: 11
Views: 2801

Re: Past participles ending in /ən/ in dialectal English

So is this mostly a US phenomenon? What's the geographic distribution of this? I can't say I've noticed this but I will for sure now. (I never noticed "youse" until I read an article about it).
by vec
Tue Jun 07, 2016 2:52 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Teach-Learn Polarity [mostly on causatives]
Replies: 19
Views: 14353

Re: Teach-Learn Polarity [mostly on causatives]

Own–give are interesting in this regard to, and similar verbs of possession and possession transfer. I created a whole system around it in my conlang Imutan.
by vec
Wed Jun 01, 2016 2:21 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Spontaneous collaborative conlangs
Replies: 5
Views: 2357

Re: Spontaneous collaborative conlangs

Cedh and I collaborated heavily on Proto-Ronquian/Rompian, along with our team on the relay which included Nort, Dhok, Nerulent, CatDoom, Pogostick Man, Click, Vortex and ObsequiousNewt. It kind of just happened that Cedh and I took charge once the phonology and core features of the grammar had been...
by vec
Fri May 13, 2016 11:02 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")
Replies: 2538
Views: 880950

Re: Akana Conlang Relay 2011 (The Never Ending Relay)

Proto-Leic so far boggles my mind. Although the recent work done by Cedh and some others made it a little easier for me. I'd love to get on it again soon.
by vec
Fri May 13, 2016 8:53 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Language "not confined to specific areas" of the brain
Replies: 1
Views: 1548

Re: Language "not confined to specific areas" of the brain

Interesting. So far, essentially all we knew about this stuff was what could be learnt from Wernicke's aphasia and Broca's aphasia, but I've always figured it was more complex than that.
by vec
Fri May 13, 2016 8:51 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Exotic Conditional Clauses
Replies: 9
Views: 3582

Re: Exotic Conditional Clauses

Algonquian languages have separate inflection paradigms for verbs in independent clauses (the independent order) and those in subordinate clauses (the conjunct order). (This is a bit misleading as there are other orders depending on the language, and not all conjunct verbs are subordinate, but this...
by vec
Thu May 12, 2016 10:09 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlangs and copyright
Replies: 17
Views: 6740

Re: Conlangs and copyright

The thing is, Paramount has always allowed fan-made movies to exist without trouble. Axanar is the first one they've sued and I think the reason is, it's looking to actually be really really good. It has a shitton of Star Trek veterans, actors and crew on board, all working on a voluntary basis. The...
by vec
Tue May 03, 2016 2:21 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Exotic Conditional Clauses
Replies: 9
Views: 3582

Re: Exotic Conditional Clauses

Cool. How does Greenlandic handle counterfactual conditions?

Also, is seqinner "sunshine" in the example given a verb or a noun? Anyone know?
by vec
Tue May 03, 2016 2:16 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: How are conjunctions handled cross-linguistically?
Replies: 13
Views: 3691

Re: How are conjunctions handled cross-linguistically?

There's and and there's and . Not all conjunctions are equal and the nuances can be quite tricky to point down. Icelandic has no independent conjunction akin to English "yet", conflating it with en which primarily means "but". But Icelandic en can be used to form semi-dependent clarification clauses...
by vec
Tue May 03, 2016 1:55 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Exotic Conditional Clauses
Replies: 9
Views: 3582

Exotic Conditional Clauses

Are there more exotic ways of handling conditional clauses than the if-like subordinate clause? Are there languages that exclusively use verb marking with no conjunctions involved, similar to English "Were he to go, I would disown him"? In such cases, is the protasis considered a dependent clause? A...
by vec
Tue May 03, 2016 1:17 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlangs and copyright
Replies: 17
Views: 6740

Re: Conlangs and copyright

A language in and of itself probably is not copyrightable. I could see how word lists, however, were copyrightable. That it would be difficult for a third party to create, say, a dictionary based on that word list, since the original lexicon by the creator is the only source. Unless the author engag...