zompist bboard

Incidentally, is voicing assimilation at a distance (e.g. two stops separated by a vowel) attested in other languages? Some Berber languages have long-distance voicing assimilation of sibilants , e.g. in Tamajaq the causative prefix s- has the allomorph z- when the verb stem contains /z/: s- + əχrə...

Update: I haven't looked at how well-seeded the torrent file is in months, but in case anyone doesn't want to deal with torrents, Grammar Pile 3.0 is on Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B9QDHej9UGAdcDhWVEllMzJBSEk We haven't really worked much on expanding it much since July, b...

Don't some dialects of English (Australian? can't remember exactly...) have /ai au/ [ɑɪ æʊ] or similar? From there on it's a rather small step to something like [ɔɪ ɛʊ].

UberBen wrote:I wonder- I know about bilabial-velars, but is there any language (natlang or conlang) with bilabial-palatals or bilabial-uvulars you know of?

No, but the Papuan language Yelî Dnye contrasts labial-velar and two distinct labial-alveolar points of articulation.

@Arzena: What Corumayas said. Except that I've always considered Merneha an Ehlaut language too, and assumed it would be spoken on the northeastern side of the peninsula. In any case, it is grammatically closer to Kibülʌin than to any other described Peninsular language, and IIRC Kib even has a coup...

I'm totally with you in terms of aesthetics. And since very little about the Hitatc family is set in stone, you could definitely change things according to your taste, as long as the historical context still makes sense. A smaller phoneme inventory doesn't actually seem unlikely, as (a) none of the ...

Who's working on the Eigə-Isthmus, Hitatc and !Ho languages right now? There doesn't seem to be that much on either family on the wiki: is that intentional? !Ho was introduced by Radius, but he never published much about the family (apart from a few words and a phonology that's buried somewhere in ...

Kanawa kakiyà [kakijɐ] → Ndak Ta kakia [kakija] → Ndok Aisô kêhixeu [kɜˈhiːʔɛw] Kanawa kiyasiyà [kijasijɐ] → Ndak Ta kiasia [kijasija] → Ndok Aisô kixeusixeu [kiʔɛwˈsiːʔɛw] Kanawa nasakà [nasakɐ] → Ndak Ta nasaka [nasaka] → Ndok Aisô neusêheu [nɛwˈsɜːhɛw] Kanawa saitanà [saitanɐ] → Ndak Ta saitana [...

Like Vardelm said, the main reason for the rarity of ergative SVO languages seems to be that the common development paths for ergativity lead away from SVO order: The alleged dispreference for ergative alignment in SVO languages is attributed to the typical positioning of the oblique constituents wh...

Double post with a summary of the Paumarí data for those who haven't followed cromulant's link, or can't see the relevant pages on Google Books, because it's really interesting: Paumarí basically has the following three transitive constructions: subject-ERG verb object subject object-ACC verb object...

Yes, that seems to be a counterexample, and a very interesting variant of split ergativity too. Thanks a lot for the link!

I second Vardelm's reading suggestion. A very good paper that should be required reading for every conlanger who plans to dabble with ergativity. 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...

Ronc Tyu: 5p: - postnominal relative clauses with inflected relative pronouns (e.g. English "who" vs. "whose") ~ (relative pronoun shows suppletion for animacy, but doesn't inflect otherwise) - a periphrastic perfect formed with 'have' plus a passive participle (e.g. English "I have said") ~ (perfec...

I've had Germans tell me that hast and hasst are pronounced differently ... and ist and isst ... always telling me that the doubled consonants are pronounced "a bit longer". Even if there's no actual difference in underlying phonemic structure, there may well be a phonetic difference between these,...

Can I piggyback off this thread to ask you all some advice (I don't want to create a new thread on the forum). I'm about to finish up my MA in French Linguistics. I've decided that I don't think a French Ph.D. is the choice for me for the following reasons: the academic job market for French Ph.Ds ...

Ich würde das wahrscheinlich so sagen (also fast genau so wie du vermutet hast): 1. Wir sprechen (auf) Pirahã . 2. Ich übersetze das ins Pirahã . 3. Ich weiß nicht, ob es im Pirahã Fälle gibt. 4. Ich übersetze das aus dem Pirahã ins Deutsche. 5. das Pirahã-Volk 6. die Pirahã 7. die Pirahã-Sprache

So yeah, peanuts are my supplement. The only thing that sucks is that it's not easy to find unsalted peanuts here. The best would be unsalted peanuts with the reddish skin still on (just called "unsalted beernuts" in Aus ... or everywhere in the Anglosphere?) ... I even think they taste better than...

Everyone else here seems to put a lot of effort into coming up with their own sets of sound changes, but my current project uses sound changes that I found on the internet (mostly Wikipedia) for various stages of Celtic languages. I worry that this is uncreative or even a form of cultural appropria...

S3. Syllables of both CCV and CVC form appear (not necessarily for all C), where all Cs can be non-glides [2.5 marks if this is true but some Cs must be glides] S3 doesn't make sense, mainly because of the half-mark version. As far as I can tell, it's fundamentally impossible for a language to fulf...

There are certainly a few rivers in the Leic region, but I'm not sure about how big they could be - the inland areas are fairly dry, and the main river running west from the Ural-like mountain range turns north towards Ronquian territory. As for the vocabulary, have a look here: chimney girder, plan...

Why Dravian? Did you choose it or was it assigned? (If so, who on earth knew enough about Dravian to assign it?) Our lecturer picked 16 artifical languages and each group could chose its preference - and we chose Dravian :) I thought a Romanic language would be cool because I learnt Latin in school...

You have to upload it to some kind of webserver that can process PHP. I did that a while ago already though: http://akana.conlang.org/tools/awkwords/

Yes, I did. I spent three days in Tokyo, and then I went on a one-week tour through central Honshu by train (Matsumoto, Kyoto, the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route on the Kii peninsula, and finally Osaka). It was a great holiday, with lots of interesting things to see and some fascinating experiences. I...

Kanuri?

What about allowing only one series of asking for regional hints (e.g. once the current quizmaster admits that a language is spoken in the Americas, nobody may ask for any more specific regional information about this language anymore), and also only one series of asking for the language family (e.g...