Search found 129 matches
- Thu Nov 01, 2012 2:11 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: The Lexicon Building Counselling Service
- Replies: 224
- Views: 42013
Re: The Lexicon Building Counselling Service
The native words are hel·leu [ə'ɫ:ɛw], [ə'ɫ:əw] or [e'ɫ:ɛw] and hel·lesà [əɫ:ə'za] or [eɫ:e'za], and they're written and pronounced the same way in Catalan. The English word is Hellesan , and I'd say is pronounced [ˈæɫ:əzæn] or [ˈæɫ:əzən]. Judging from the original pronunciation and the spelling, I...
- Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:11 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Romanization challenge thread
- Replies: 3842
- Views: 853157
Re: Romanization challenge thread
The alternative would be /ɲʷ/, which might imply labio-velarization. If you're looking for something that is very definitely /ɲ/ + /y/, I don't see the problem with using /ɲᶣ/.Qwynegold wrote:/ɲᶣ/ etc, are you sure palatals can be labio-palatalized?
- Tue May 15, 2012 9:36 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: The "null" question word
- Replies: 8
- Views: 1981
Re: The "null" question word
Also, English is not V2 and fronts the verb in questions, which suggests that there is some other mechanism at work in the Germanic languages. WALS classifies this separately, as "Interrogative Word Order" but it is fairly rare and mostly constrained to Germanic. English's approach is hybrid, as it ...
- Mon May 14, 2012 1:13 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Inflecting for number in decimals
- Replies: 29
- Views: 5235
Re: Inflecting for number in decimals
is -'s and -s' audibly distinguishable in your variety of English? By intonation in some cases, because there tends to be a slight rising-falling over each noun phrase, but in no other way I can detect. It's actually a really interesting thing, because I'm sure lots of languages use prosodic cues a...
- Thu May 10, 2012 12:10 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Is this a reasonable sound change?
- Replies: 23
- Views: 4031
Re: Is this a reasonable sound change?
Didn't/doesn't Chinese do something like this?Aiďos wrote:I have /ke kɨ ki ky kjV/ going to /tse tsɨ tʃi tʃy tsV/
- Wed May 02, 2012 11:06 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: promise + INF
- Replies: 11
- Views: 2211
Re: promise + INF
Today I started to write: I promised my better half to pick up some bread... and swiftly changed that to: I promised my better half I'd pick up some bread... The first version shouldn't be ambiguous in context, but sounds quite awkward. I guess there's a rule in English to take the nearest NP as th...
- Fri Apr 20, 2012 10:43 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Sievers' Law-like phenomenon in English
- Replies: 32
- Views: 5707
Re: Sievers' Law-like phenomenon in English
I have to say though that I’m not sure where you get the idea that Japanese /u/ is exolabial, and that Australian and British /u/ are endolabial. It seems like you’ve got it backwards. I can’t speak with complete confidence about Australian and British /u/, but I do not agree with your assessment o...
- Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:36 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Sievers' Law-like phenomenon in English
- Replies: 32
- Views: 5707
Re: Sievers' Law-like phenomenon in English
Japanese /u/ is very similar to the one in most British accents, in that it's fronted compared to cardinal . I don't know of any major English accents with anything like cardinal in them. I don't find the Japanese /u/ to be that hard to "do", but neither would I say that it's similar to the BrE or ...
- Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:57 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Vowels phonemic depending on the part-of-speech
- Replies: 5
- Views: 1601
Re: Vowels phonemic depending on the part-of-speech
Agree, and it doesn't matter where the vowel came from. It has become phonemic. This happens all the time. Some feature is purely allophonic, but ends up following a pattern because some other language feature changes from one word form to another. For example, perhaps one form has a prefix and the ...
- Tue Apr 17, 2012 11:14 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Can WALS do this?
- Replies: 15
- Views: 3279
Re: Can WALS do this?
Regarding word order and suffixing vs. prefixing (specifically in SOV languages): I suspect it's a case of how the language ended up in that word order to begin with. Word order is always changing around. Just in IE, you have a proto-language that was SOV having daughter languages that are everythin...
- Tue Apr 17, 2012 10:57 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Compounding and the structure of the lexicon
- Replies: 21
- Views: 3556
Re: Compounding and the structure of the lexicon
As for 結愛 and so on, there seems to be a trend these days in using kanji creatively, purposely bending the acceptable limits of kanji pronunciation (dropping the i from 愛 ai in Yua , for example). These days there are lots of kids out there with weird names that are almost impossible to read withou...
- Mon Apr 16, 2012 8:03 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Can WALS do this?
- Replies: 15
- Views: 3279
Re: Can WALS do this?
Well, let's see... Out of the 466 languages identified as having prepositions, 351 languages or 75.32% are identified as noun-adjective. There's quite a strong correlation. Not only that, but among languages that have a specific order of noun and adjective and have strictly pre- or post-positions, ...
- Mon Apr 16, 2012 2:04 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Compounding and the structure of the lexicon
- Replies: 21
- Views: 3556
Re: Compounding and the structure of the lexicon
Semi-related: I recall reading that the -ko suffix in modern Japanese girl names (.. well, it's going out of style now) originated as a suffix like <san>; it means "child" or "small thing" (though the latter is less productive now). It's actually been out of style for some time now. The only -ko na...
- Fri Apr 13, 2012 3:59 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Compounding and the structure of the lexicon
- Replies: 21
- Views: 3556
Re: Compounding and the structure of the lexicon
I forgot to mention Basque emakume, "woman". This is almost certainly an old compound, I think, since kume and ume both mean "child", and eme means "female", along with, according to the dictionary, "soft" and "smooth" (for some reason I find that quite funny). So I guess it was one of the followin...
- Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:14 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Too many central vowels?
- Replies: 8
- Views: 2649
Re: Too many central vowels?
Potential vowel inventory: [a e i o u] [ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ] [ɨ ɪ̈ ɘ ɜ] Having never used central vowels much in my conlangs, does this vowel inventory have an unrealistic number of them? I think this is close to fine. It seems Germanic to me. Are there tense/lax or short/long pairs? For example, if you groupe...
- Mon Apr 09, 2012 8:37 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Quick Question on the Plausibility of a Sound Change
- Replies: 3
- Views: 1399
Re: Quick Question on the Plausibility of a Sound Change
I've been playing around with a conlang idea recently, and part of the sound changes is getting rid of all /Cw/ clusters. So far I've got the following: /kw/ -> /t/ (before a front vowel), /p/ (before a back vowel) /gw/ -> /w/ /tw dw/ -> /p b/ All of which are attested in natural languages, so they...
- Mon Apr 02, 2012 3:22 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
- Replies: 25
- Views: 7086
Re: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
I wonder if it is generally true that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɒ/ in the U.S. or if there's some regional variation on this as well. Only if you write the "cot" vowel as /ɒ/, which you shouldn't when analyzing U.S. English. There is the potential for the result of the cot-caught ...
- Mon Apr 02, 2012 12:58 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
- Replies: 25
- Views: 7086
Re: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
Only if you write the "cot" vowel as /ɒ/, which you shouldn't when analyzing U.S. English.Ran wrote:I wonder if it is generally true that most foreign "a" words are pronounced with /ɒ/ in the U.S. or if there's some regional variation on this as well.
- Thu Mar 29, 2012 7:59 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
- Replies: 25
- Views: 7086
Re: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
I have [a] in all of those words, but I'm American. Oh? I'm American but I have [ɑ] for most of them. I think for a lot of Americans, especially those without the cot-caught merger, the "short o" vowel is a sort of indeterminate low vowel. A lot of people transcribe it [a] even though it's probably...
- Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:31 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
- Replies: 25
- Views: 7086
Re: New /a/ phoneme emerging in Canadian English?
There was a thing a while back here in one of those idiolect threads about this happening in... New England or something? New England already has three low vowels: /æ/ in cat, bag, etc. /a/ in father, car, hard, etc. /ɒ/ in cot, caught, saw, etc. The middle vowel is about where the Southern America...
- Tue Oct 25, 2011 7:56 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Definitness vs. specificness of articles
- Replies: 14
- Views: 2724
Re: Definitness vs. specificness of articles
So, in hypothetical creole: Me try fin' car = I'm looking for a car. Any car. (non-specific) Me try fin' one car = I'm looking for one, specific car, which may not have been introduced in conversation. (specific) Me try fin' de car = I'm looking for the car that has already come up in conversation. ...
- Mon Oct 24, 2011 6:47 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: TAM terminology quicky
- Replies: 2
- Views: 1004
Re: TAM terminology quicky
Working on my tense/aspect/mood, I have a querry on what term I might use: a single act taken as a completed whole ("I saw a movie.") = perfective a momentary or punctiliar act taken as a completed whole ("I sneezed.") = semelfactive a single act taken as a completed whole in repetitive series of a...
- Thu Oct 20, 2011 1:25 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Phonological Aha Erlebnis
- Replies: 5
- Views: 1298
Re: Phonological Aha Erlebnis
Yeah, that's [ɘ]. But nobody ever lists their vowel phonology as /i e ɘ a o u/, just like nobody writes /i ɛ ɑ ɔ u/ for a five-vowel sysetm, even if those are closer to the actual realizations than /i e a o u/. Similarly, the sixth vowel in a gapless six-vowel system is almost always written as /ə/,...
- Thu Oct 13, 2011 11:25 pm
- Forum: C&C Archive
- Topic: Combat and Biology in Lower Gravity
- Replies: 11
- Views: 7374
Re: Combat and Biology in Lower Gravity
Regarding speed: The limiting land speed factor for animals is probably metabolic, so your cheetah analogue could be even faster. And your big bruiser predator or bull/ox/rhino might also have a higher top speed. But probably not all that much higher - again, the big problem is stopping since you st...
- Thu Oct 13, 2011 2:14 pm
- Forum: C&C Archive
- Topic: Combat and Biology in Lower Gravity
- Replies: 11
- Views: 7374
Re: Combat and Biology in Lower Gravity
Three other things: 1. Balance is easier in low-g; you literally fall more slowly (75% as fast in half gravity). Interestingly, this actually helps both larger bipeds and smaller ones. Kids fall down so easily because they fall to the ground faster than adults relative to their height. On the other ...