zompist bboard

Nannalu wrote:(...) delete final /e/ and keep final /a/ as schwa; bare in mind unstressed /o/ /u/. Any help here?

I think this is what happened in Eastern Catalan.

Hi Imralu. Sorry, I'll have to abandon the challenge. I'd like too see your glosses, at least for the words I haven't glossed yet or glossed incorrectly. From what I've seen, Wena not only has agent nouns instead of verbs, but also (like Yagua ) nouns instead of adjectives. What are you doing with ...

Ah, so many loose ends! Are these sentences grammatically correct? (and do they mean what I think they mean?): De di e (ba) zyonda u gi e de da. “The small one is smarter than the big one.” We hu ye nda i ngge (ya) eda. “The strong men hunt cassowaries.” We hu ye ngge (ya) eda i nda. “The men who hu...

Godu zyi dihu i lyu buvwi u zye i yu i zi bwi u lu mwi ye lu vyo (zyi) zwazo. = The boy's feet are dirty from playing in the mud at the side of the river. Just to be clear: are you using lyu for "location" and lu for something else here? godu feet (I still have to discover what go and du mean separ...

I’m afraid I’m going to keep writing short weekly posts here. And now a challenge for you: Ha wa i nyu dyazyo? = Do you have a _______? Computer? Yes, I have a new one (with Windows 10, which I haven't got completely used to yet) and I'm also going to repair the old one. Wa i zyu ma i ngwo? = What ...

A short post dedicated to zo . So zo is a general verb of movement. I’d gloss it as “go.AG” or “move.AG”. The following words contain it: zwazo “river” (water-move.AG) zobye “leave.AG” ( bye alone also means “leave”) mbagyozo “cinema” (house-image?-move.AG, “house of the images in movement”) dyazo “...

So most polysyllabic in the samples words are actually formed by two or more monosyllabic roots, right? I had to laugh when I re-read this. I mean, I know my English isn't perfect, but what this actually shows is how hurriedly I often post. I wrote the whole sentence and then decided to add "in you...

I'm bumping this because I still want to post something before the thread is pruned but haven't had the time.

Regarding word classes: Initially I said that words like mo , ngu , etc were nouns (specifically agent nouns); this was supported by the facts that these words can be used as subjects ( mo nga i de mba ) and that the direct object is marked with the same case as the modifying noun in a genitive cons...

(Still writing on a tablet; sorry for the lack of formatting) This is an incomplete list of things I have identified. I won't indicate word classes for now: yu is a complementiser. zyu looks like a contraction of zyi yu (3.GEN + C) nda = strong zyonda = smart (looks like a compound zyo + nda, conta...

Just wanted to say that I haven't abandoned the challenge, but my computer's hard drive failed, and writing and formatting text on a tablet takes too long.
I think I understand how comparatives work in Wena.

The second-person pronoun (singular, I assume) is wa (NOM) / wo (GEN). The third-person pronoun (singular, right?) is de (NOM) / zyi (GEN). It also functions as the definite article. ngu kill.AG bo want.AG nggo stick (n) mizyo mind (n) dya instrument zi is some past tense and/or perfective aspect m...

More sentences, good! I'll have a closer look at them this evening, for now this is what I can identify: hi "this/that", distance-neutral demonstrative pronoun hina "this", proximal demonstrative pronoun, apparently hi + na (1SG) gwa "fish" e seems to be a form of the particle i after /i/ mu "know" ...

Also, I guess the -k and -s forms can also be expanded out to their full forms for emphasis, no? Yes. Now I'm probably going to use a contraction of kə ʔe → ke instead of (or besides) just -k, it would make the difference more audible. But I think I've talked too much about my own lang already. Any...

My thought was basically that "introducing the predicate" could imply "not being part of the predicate"... and in my interpretation i was not only included in it but the verb itself so... Yeah, again, I think this is more or less just semantics. Does the conjunction "because" introduce a clause ind...

Well, yeah, but when you say NounPhraseA is NounPhraseB, I would regard "is NounPhraseB" as the predicate. Anyway, this is all just the semantics. I was basically just curious to see if I could learn something from your distinction between them as I think it's useful to bring my use of these kind o...

Just curious though - what was your reason for crossing out "particle introducing the predicate" and replace it with "copula"? I would consider it both ... it's a particle because it's a little grammatical word that doesn't inflect, and it's a copula because ... well, it basically means "is/am/are"...

Anyway, well done! Two tried it over on the CBB and seemed a bit more confused by it, although they didn't do too badly either. :-D Two things helped: First, based on what I know of your other conlangs, I was expecting some kind of experiment with word classes. :) Also, while my "main" conlangs are...

I like this kind of challenges, I'd like to see more conlangs presented this way. i is the copula or a particle that precedes the predicate ya = of na = I (1SG.NOM) nga = of me (1SG.GEN) de = the (definite article) zyi = of the mba = house lu = place mo = eater Lu nga i de mba. place of.me COP the h...

@Opipik: Thanks! A suggestion based on natlang precedents and/or aesthetic preference is what I was hoping for. @WeepingElf: It's not for one single conlang, all of them have /q/ and either there's /g/ or I'm using <g> for something else. But I'm curious: assuming you wanted to use <c> and <x> for /...

(I think this thread is also the right place for this kind of questions) If you wanted to represent a non-rhotic voiced uvular phoneme (fricative with a stop allophone or viceversa) and the glottal stop with the letters <c> and <x>, which letter would you use for which phoneme? I know Pirahã uses <x...

What does it mean for a verb to be passive in form but active in meaning? Being passive in form but (unlike a real passive construction) taking a direct (accusative) object (as in veritatem loquitur )? What would an analytic deponant look like? "the meat is eaten the dog?" Rather "The dog is eaten ...

Thanks for your answers! I I could extend /sk/ > /sx/ as in Dutch and apparently Slavic, as Pole mentioned (see R. Matasović's Proto-Indo-European *sk- in Slavic) to /st/ > /sθ/ and then simplify the clusters.

Is the sound change /s/ + voiceless stop > voiceless fricative (e.g., /st/ > /θ/, /sk/ > /x/) attested in some natural language? Caesaraugusta > Zaragoza could be an examßple of /st/ > /θ/ (through Arabic "Saraqusta", I think), but I don't think it was a regular sound change.

Many years ago, a friend of mine asked me to create a conlang for her fictional setting. She had a definite aesthetic in mind and had already written a list of 40+ words with no clear idea of how they should be pronounced, so I had to figure out a phonology and appropriate spelling rules. I'm curiou...