Search found 122 matches
- Sun Feb 12, 2017 9:53 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: How do languages stay agglutinative?
- Replies: 6
- Views: 2780
Re: How do languages stay agglutinative?
It should be noted that an apparent lack of conditional sound changes is likely a consequence of analogy, due to analogy encouraging originally conditional sound changes to be either generalized or reversed, resulting in a language with only seemingly unconditional sound changes. I think this is wh...
- Fri Feb 10, 2017 10:58 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: How do languages stay agglutinative?
- Replies: 6
- Views: 2780
Re: How do languages stay agglutinative?
Is this due to a low number of conditioned changes (I doubt it), crazy amounts of leveling (seems more plausible), both, or something else entirely? Since Salish consonant clusters have been brought up, I will say that there very few conditioned sound changes in that family in general, and almost n...
- Sun Oct 23, 2016 11:36 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: any language families with kh/S correspondence
- Replies: 23
- Views: 6741
Re: any language families with kh/S correspondence
For *k - ts, there is Halkomelem. Most other Coast Salish languages have the correspondence *k - tʃ: Proto-Salish */kalax/ "hand" > Sliammon /tʃajəʃ/, Halkomelem /tseləx/.
- Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:09 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Hapax Phonoumena
- Replies: 36
- Views: 10979
Re: Hapax Phonoumena
If we're including loanwords, than the affricate /dʒ/ occurs in Halkomelem only in the word kinjaj meaning "Englishman" (I think this is may be from Chinook Jargon, ultimately from English "King George").
Very interesting topic, I'll have to see if I can dig up any more.
Very interesting topic, I'll have to see if I can dig up any more.
- Tue Apr 05, 2016 6:25 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
Altaic is what I call a "language cluster": a group of language families that show similarities that are certainly meaningful and not just coincidence, but it is hard to tell whether it is a language family or a Sprachbund. But we are digressing from the topic. I know virtually nothing about Haida ...
- Mon Apr 04, 2016 11:35 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
First, a population of less than "a few tens of thousands" hunter gatherers could potentially speak several languages, even languages of different families. While isolated in glacier-bound Beringia for 5,000 years? Why not? Languages diversify internally all the time and 5000 years is a hell of a l...
- Mon Apr 04, 2016 12:54 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
EDIT: For the record, there is experimental evidence against the "conlang" idea.I remember reading a study where they showed that very young infants couldn't learn languages with "unnatural" grammatical rules in artificial languages, whereas natural rules were easy for them. Since we all know what ...
- Sun Apr 03, 2016 11:39 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
First, a population of less than "a few tens of thousands" hunter gatherers could potentially speak several languages, even languages of different families. While isolated in glacier-bound Beringia for 5,000 years? Why not? Languages diversify internally all the time and 5000 years is a hell of a l...
- Sun Apr 03, 2016 8:15 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
Interesting. I'm completely ignorant about genetics, but this seems to fit very well with the archaeological data. Although, I am skeptical about the implications of this research for the existence of an "Amerind" family. First, a population of less than "a few tens of thousands" hunter gatherers co...
- Thu Mar 24, 2016 1:40 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
And the antiquity of the pacific coast doesn't explain anything - in fact, it poses more questions. If the pacific coast was, as seems reasonable, such an easy route for travel, why is that where we see the most diversity? Multiple migrations=multiple languages/language families=more diversity? Plu...
- Wed Mar 23, 2016 8:13 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
The linguistic picture of North America as a whole is pretty weird. East of the Rockies, aside from a few smaller families and isolates, you basically have Algonquian, Iroquoian, Siouan, and Muskogean. Macro-Siouan, which Mithun considers "suggestive," would reduce that list further, and if Gulf is...
- Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:50 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
My understanding is that reindeer domestication happened relatively late, so maybe there just hasn't been enough time for reindeer-herding pastoralists to spread their languages.
- Tue Mar 22, 2016 5:35 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Haida and Na-Dene
- Replies: 161
- Views: 69618
Re: Haida and Na-Dene
I'm currently in a field linguistics class and our consultant is a Haida speaker (probably the last native speaker of the Masset dialect). I wish I had more to contribute to this discussion, but I will say that the language does seem quite different from other Northwest Coast languages that I am fam...
- Tue Mar 01, 2016 11:32 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Weird natlang phonologies
- Replies: 121
- Views: 36267
Re: Weird natlang phonologies
I would assume so, but *qʷ *kʷ are perceptually quite similar, and yet they don't shift at all.Vijay wrote:Which then helps keep the uvulars and palatals more auditorily distinct from each other, right?8Deer wrote: Interestingly, none of the languages have a shift *q > k or *kʷ > k to fill in the missing velar series.
- Tue Mar 01, 2016 8:56 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Weird natlang phonologies
- Replies: 121
- Views: 36267
Re: Weird natlang phonologies
Klallam has no k but k w and e but no o The k thing seems to be a general palatalisation trend of the Central Northwest Coast, also being found in the related North-Straits Salish and in Quileute. I did research for a paper on this very topic, never ended up writing it tho. The velar series (*k *k'...
- Sun Feb 28, 2016 3:47 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: European languages before Indo-European
- Replies: 812
- Views: 207682
Re: European languages before Indo-European
Speaking of Etruscan, I've always found the distribution of Etruscan, Rhaetic and Lemnian to be pretty odd. A migration from the east does seem most plausible given Lemnian and the evidence of diffusion between Anatolian and Etruscan, but it seems strange that they would end up in Northern Italy and...
- Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:50 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Ejectives in Zulu
- Replies: 7
- Views: 2214
Re: Ejectives in Zulu
Oh, thank you so very much. I've been wanting to justify a shift of /d t/ to /t t_>/ unconditionally (with similar shifts for the other stops) for a while now and I just couldn't quite convince myself that it would happen. I'm still not entirely comfortable with it, since ejectives would outnumber ...
- Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:36 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 646263
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
If I may break the conversation flow to ask a quick question, I am interested in learning more about sound changes, but my book, "Historical Linguistics: And Introduction" by Lyle Campbell only has about thirty pages about the types of sound changes (which, considering the scope of the book, makes ...
- Fri Jun 05, 2015 10:21 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 646263
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Would you say that the shifts ç > x and ʃ > x are about equally plausible?
- Sat May 30, 2015 11:26 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: !ha-Barikií
- Replies: 2
- Views: 1524
Re: !ha-Barikií
Its just the IPA symbol for a voiced click. Also, seems interesting Shemtov, I always like langs with clicks.Vardelm wrote:What exactly are these sounds? I haven't seen the ᶢ before.Shemtov wrote:/ᶢʘ ᶢǀ ᶢǂ/ <gʘ g! gǂ>
- Mon May 18, 2015 11:22 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 646263
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
uCV iCV > CuV CiV is quite common initially in Paman apparently. In some languages, even /a/ metathesises when followed by /i u/, which then become the corresponding glides, so /ati/ > /tay/.
- Sat Apr 04, 2015 3:32 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 646263
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
All of those seem perfectly plausible. Though, the consonants, taken together - why is it that z ʒ (and no others) are being devoiced, when all the other fricatives are moving back? It seems more likely to have s z > ʃ ʒ. Not that z ʒ > s ʃ isn't possible, even in the context you describe. But it j...
- Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:42 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 646263
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
How plausible is b d g → m n ŋ / _r ? I think the opposite happens in either Proto-Celtic or Gaulish. Which makes sense because it increases the sonority distance between the two elements of the cluster. The reverse change seems implausible to me, but I'm sure someone will now find an example of it...
- Sat Mar 21, 2015 1:13 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 646263
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
I seem to recall recently seeing a suggestion that high vowels have the potential to cause affrication of stops, which would (if true) help explain Japanese /tu/ > [tsu], for example. So, I was wondering, could this change be extended to affect all plosives within a language, e.g. /p t k/ > [pɸ ts ...
- Thu Mar 05, 2015 11:39 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
- Replies: 2827
- Views: 646263
Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread
I think something similar happened in Chilcotin, so you could look into that.