Search found 377 matches

by cromulant
Sun Nov 05, 2017 6:34 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Biology of one of kårroť's moons
Replies: 2
Views: 2078

Re: Biology of one of kårroť's moons

Very interesting. I will take your word for it that the biochemistry works; I can't begin to evaluate that. Interested to hear a "naked eye" view of these critters. Is this moon similar in structure to Europa? If one looked specifically at cognition related to movement, however, one would find that ...
by cromulant
Sat Oct 07, 2017 12:35 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Is "trypophobia" a word?
Replies: 16
Views: 5187

Re: Is "trypophobia" a word?

Yes. The English language has no central governing body, so dictionaries are not the final arbiters of what is and is not a word. It is in wiktionary FWIW, there's a wikipedia article on it, and has 913,000 google hits, including academic articles that use the word. So I'd say its currency has reach...
by cromulant
Thu Sep 28, 2017 11:37 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Seeking rec for beginner's German resource
Replies: 0
Views: 4339

Seeking rec for beginner's German resource

Can anyone recommend a good, readily purchasable resource for learning German at beginner's level for someone with no linguistic background (i.e. my 13 y.o. son)?

Feel free to move this into Ephemera if it belongs there.

Thanks.
by cromulant
Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:06 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Vulgarlang.com
Replies: 13
Views: 5823

Re: Vulgarlang.com

it has more than its fair share of bizarre stuff that you can't imagine a competent human conlanger engaging in more than very occasionally Like what? I've seen it generate some weird phonologies, specifically regarding vowels. At the same time it tends toward pretty SAE consonant inventories. Ther...
by cromulant
Fri Aug 18, 2017 5:21 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: How to constrain the use of attack magic among civilians
Replies: 4
Views: 2470

Re: How to constrain the use of attack magic among civilians

It seems like a needlessly dangerous and time-consuming way to kill people when you could just stab them or shoot them and be done with it.
by cromulant
Sun Jun 25, 2017 9:58 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Compromising My Way Toward A Standard Language
Replies: 7
Views: 3370

Re: Compromising My Way Toward A Standard Language

[VERB] 21B. Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection: Monoexponential TAM 22A. Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb: 4-5 categories per word 23A. Locus of Marking in the Clause: P is head-marked I have a feeling that I'll violate point 22A. The verb will definitely have a lot of affixes attached to ...
by cromulant
Sun Jun 25, 2017 12:57 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Post your conlang's phonology
Replies: 2278
Views: 499808

Re: Post your conlang's phonology

B eqlmw nr

Sounds:

[b t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k g q f s ʃ m n ŋ r j w] b t d c j k g q f s x m n ng r y w
[æ~ɛ i~ɪ ɑ~ʌ~ɔ u~ʊ] e i a u

Syllables:

Code: Select all

be		  ba
ce	ci	ta
je	ji	da
		    qa	 ku
		    ga    ju
	  fi		   fu
se	xi
me	  	ma
ne	  	nga
re		  ra
ye	yi
		    wa    wu
by cromulant
Wed Nov 16, 2016 1:59 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Unusual verbal person-marking systems
Replies: 24
Views: 6798

Re: Unusual verbal person-marking systems

Classical Ainu has the following system: Third person arguments are always zero-marked. Number is only distinguished in the second person. The second person affixes only indicate the presence of the second person in the clause, with no indication as to grammatical role. Intransitive subjects, transi...
by cromulant
Mon Nov 14, 2016 2:29 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The SAE Grammar Test
Replies: 23
Views: 8859

Re: The SAE Grammar Test

By "glom" I mean they are enclitics. This is the only way I can think of the Spanish could be said to mark objects on the verb--though they aren't used with finite verbs. I don't know why WALS considers Spanish to meet the conditions (as defined by WALS) for head marking. It could be a mistake, or t...
by cromulant
Mon Nov 14, 2016 2:04 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The SAE Grammar Test
Replies: 23
Views: 8859

Re: The SAE Grammar Test

The chapter looks solely at direct objects. Dative are not part of the equation: By removing the points most prone to follow universal tendencies, we can distill the morphosyntactic range down to two phrase types: possessive phrase with noun possessor (e.g. neighbor's house, the color of grass) and ...
by cromulant
Mon Nov 14, 2016 1:36 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The SAE Grammar Test
Replies: 23
Views: 8859

Re: The SAE Grammar Test

I'm confused by 54. After careful reading of the WALS link in the document (23A), I thought I finally understood it, but now I'm not sure again. If a verb agrees with the subject in number and person while case on nouns are not marked/marked with prepositions depending on the case (completely unmar...
by cromulant
Mon Nov 14, 2016 10:37 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Typology and numbers question
Replies: 4
Views: 2606

Re: Typology and numbers question

Numeral systems are overwhelmingly big-endian, regardless of head directionality, though some languages are little-endian only with regard to tens and ones. Malagasy is the only pure little-endian language I know of. Just an anecdote: the archetypical head-final language, Japanese, is little-endian(...
by cromulant
Mon Nov 07, 2016 5:49 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Unusual verbal person-marking systems
Replies: 24
Views: 6798

Re: Unusual verbal person-marking systems

It seems like it would be pretty easy for wh- words to become verbal affixes. Especially if the lang is verb-initial and wh-fronting. Another possibility would be a "wh-mood" used with a Phillipine voice system.
by cromulant
Wed Nov 02, 2016 4:44 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: H/æ/lloween versus H/ɑ/lloween
Replies: 17
Views: 4914

Re: H/æ/lloween versus H/ɑ/lloween

I have /æ/. I have never heard /ɑ/. making hallow and hollow homophones for me. It had never occurred to me that they even could be homophones. My hallow , and the hallow of the entire world of my life experience, has /æ/. You people might as well be telling me you have /œ̃˧˦˧/ as your <a> in Hallow...
by cromulant
Thu Oct 06, 2016 9:24 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Venting thread that still excludes eddy (2)
Replies: 2639
Views: 301618

Re: Venting thread that embraces everyone without distinctio

Chagen wrote:I hate a particular thing. What this thing is is irrelevant so I will not discuss it in detail.
What is it though? Even if irrelevant, I'm curious. You can PM me if you'd prefer (or not).
by cromulant
Wed Sep 28, 2016 4:30 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Cellar door
Replies: 95
Views: 25277

Re: Cellar door

You know what's really overhyped? "Cellar door."
by cromulant
Tue Sep 13, 2016 8:51 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Word order in an ergative language
Replies: 18
Views: 5693

Re: Word order in an ergative language

In the survey performed for the paper cited above, Siewierska actually finds that 8 out of 77 verb-medial languages in her sample have ergative marking on nouns (10%), but only 3 out of 77 languages (4%) have ergative marking on pronouns.¹ For 6 out of 77 verb-medial languages (8%), ergative alignm...
by cromulant
Sat Sep 10, 2016 12:55 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Word order in an ergative language
Replies: 18
Views: 5693

Re: Word order in an ergative language

Note also that the vast majority of ergative languages are either verb-initial or verb-final. Verb-medial basic word orders such as SVO are extremely rare in combination with any kind of ergativity, and even thought to be impossible by some linguists. Paumarí may be an exception. https://en.wikiped...
by cromulant
Fri Sep 09, 2016 1:29 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The SAE Grammar Test
Replies: 23
Views: 8859

Re: The SAE Grammar Test

I don't understand how this document works. The data that's already there, is it from various conlangers who have added it themselves? Look at the language names bro, those are obviously conlangs. You can spot em a mile away. Also check out the comments below the data, how "Pach'o is getting partic...
by cromulant
Fri Aug 19, 2016 3:17 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Zero copula outside of present tense
Replies: 11
Views: 4559

Re: Zero copula outside of present tense

A strategy that just came to mind is to express tense with locatives. John in doctor (pres) John by doctor (recent past) John beyond doctor (remote or emphatically no-longer-operative past) These morphemes identical to those used to express physical location. Dunno, maybe that's too much like actual...
by cromulant
Wed Aug 17, 2016 7:23 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The SAE Grammar Test
Replies: 23
Views: 8859

Re: The SAE Grammar Test

HoskhMatriarch wrote:Nothing wrong with a phonology test, but there's way more to a language than that).
mind

blown
by cromulant
Mon Jun 13, 2016 12:01 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Life on a gas giant, the conworld
Replies: 68
Views: 29466

Re: Life on a gas giant, the conworld

Avis Noctis wrote:I want to see more of this! It was really interesting while it was going.
OP has undoubtedly moved on, else the thread wouldn't be four years dead. Necroing it was a dick move.
by cromulant
Thu Jun 09, 2016 7:12 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Esterish - Anixias's First Logical Conlang!
Replies: 10
Views: 4472

Re: Esterish - Anixias's First Logical Conlang!

You wouldn't be thinking of Yazghulami or Yaghnobi, would you? Apparently, Yazghulami has tripartite marking, and Yaghnobi is just straight-up nominative-accusative. The only other Iranian language I can think of whose name begins with a Y is Yidgha, which apparently "has not been given serious stu...
by cromulant
Thu Jun 09, 2016 3:13 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Esterish - Anixias's First Logical Conlang!
Replies: 10
Views: 4472

Re: Esterish - Anixias's First Logical Conlang!

So as a side-note, does anyone know whether a split-ergative system like this one, with nom-acc nouns and erg-abs pronouns, is attested in any natlang? Of course, whether or not it's attested isn't all that important, conlanging-wise. I looked into this question a while ago. There is an Iranian lan...
by cromulant
Fri May 27, 2016 2:13 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Most Logical Word Order
Replies: 19
Views: 6061

Re: Most Logical Word Order

I feel as if the most logical is SVO. For example, in Jim hit Bill, it is ordered chronologically. For Jim to hit Bill, Jim and Bill must (1) be at the location. Jim (2) throws a punch, (3) causing Bill to be hit. I'd love to hear any constructive criticism. - Škjakto But you said first, Jim and Bi...