zompist bboard

As the posters above noted, this is probably highly variable in acceptability. These work for me: 1. ?"with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete random." 2. *"with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete random ly ." 3. ?"with cracks splitting open at seemingly complete ly random." 4. *"w...

I’ve been wrangling with TEST’s movement verbs for a bit and have gotten bogged down. I am trying to work TEST as a verb framed language with regard to at least verbs of movement. As a speaker of English, this has taken some thought and I still feel that I am falling back into a satellite framed sys...

It's interesting, but I have a few reservations: * Using Twitter will strongly overreport the urban and wealthy.* Agreed. The authors note: "On average, Twitter users are young, urban and more likely to be technologically savvy thus providing [sic] more modern perspective on the use of language." I...

You've got a couple of issues going on here: My conlang is a loglang and polysemy is strictly forbidden. If that is one of your design criteria, your not going to want to do . . . something like this: big – 1. having large size 2. old 3. important large – 1. synonymous to "high" in "high speed" and ...

Here's the link to the actual research: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.7094v1.pdf

Shit demon speech? As in, large swathes of the conlang.

I don't get the aversion to /ʑˤ/. Having one or two out-of-place sounds if fine. If you can come up with a reasonable source, I see no issue, and sometimes even then. (American) English has a sound that's broadly [ɻˤ ~ ɰˤ] When I originally saw your phonology, I thought you were trying to represent...

Does anyone know of a language that distinguishes deixis (here v. there) in interrogatives? For example, what.here v. what.there or who.here v. who.there.

I am at it again. Recently I have been tackling my conlanging nightmare, verbs. In an attempt not to re-lex English, I have been using Levin's English Verb Classes and Alternations to isolate certain classes and patterns of verbs. With the understanding that her book, of course, covers classes of En...

I saw on FrathWiki that some folks on the ZBB had started a project called Zebia -- a start at an Akana-type project.

Is anyone still here who worked on that? Is any work actively being done?

Some languages distinguish inclusive and exclusive second person pronouns Source or example? I know there are a few claimed to have such a distinction, but most if not all have been refuted in articles such as J. Horst's which is on the Clusivity page of wikipedia. Edgar A. Gregerson says the Moru-...

My favourite is the system found in Skou itself. * * * * * * 3 héngtong "3" * * * 5 nápang "5" 6 nápánghì "5+n" 7 nápang héngtong "5+3" * * * . . . and against the rules of addition 7 is formed as "5+3". The reason behind this seems to be that the Skou numeral 5 is cognate to the numeral 4 in its r...

the real mark of an ill-educated writer is the belief that singular "they" is something that is "starting" to be used... If you and a companion look in the distance and see a single person of indeterminate gender doing some action, do you ask your companion: A) What are they doing? B) What is he/sh...

ERMMGGERRDDdddd!!!!! Thanks for the update.

For Khotanese, have you run across a grammar while finding symbols?

Morphosyntactic Alignment . Case Marking . TEST's case marking is split based upon Aspect. Case marking is Nominative-accusative if the verb is in a non-perfective aspect. Otherwise, generally, case marking operates on ergative-absolutive basis. Nominative and absolutive are unmarked; accusative is...

Ah! Yes. That is good. Thanks Sal.

Edit: the Sundic-type is pretty fascinating I must note.

Hunh! Excellent food for thought. Thanks everyone. [Western austronesian languages are traditionally split functionally between Phillipine and Indonesian types - P-type systems tend to have multiple voices, whereas I-type languages have only the two symmetrical voices, but also use applicatives. App...

Agreed. Your presentation of the phonology is very well thought and set out. I will look forward to seeing the grammar.

As I understand it, anti-passive voice raises A to S and either (1) demotes O/P to an oblique case; (2) omits the erstwhile O/P; or (3) suppresses the existence of an O/P. Regarding situation two and the basic assumption of A -> S, do all languages with an anti-passive demote O/P to an non-core obli...

/p t ts tsʷ tɕ tɕʷ k kʷ/ <p t c cu ch chu k ku> /b d g gʷ ɢ/ b d g gu q /f v ɬ ɬʷ s z ɕ ʑ ɕʷ ʑʷ χʷ h/ f v fh fhu s z sh zh shu zhu xu x /m n ɲ l r w j ɥ/ m n nh l r u y yh /i a u/ i a o /ɬʷamga bil aɕʷfatsin tsatsapɬiɬ ukkatɕʷ kawadir ɢiʑʷangaɬɬab χʷituha ɥandas ɲaɢapɕi iɕʷɕʷusdam vajzutsʷa./ <fhuam...

I know you have different user accounts, but are you the guy who did Shit Demon Speech? Your names have a similar structure and you both have a predilection for interesting non-human languages.

Dyadic Kin and Relationship Terms, Etc. . As discussed above, TEST has both possessive and comitative classifiers, which classify various humans. These are related to an extensive set of dyadic (and triadic) terms. Dyadic Relations Dyadic terms cover not only relatives but also non-kin humans. Exam...

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:There are 55 "normal" questions and nine special ones which give five marks each, so that adds up to hundred. So your phonology is 52% SAE.

KathAveara wrote:Also, iirc 75+ is fairly European, and 90+ is very European. Less than 70 is un-European.

Oh okay, thanks!

Not sure how the percentage system works. m(b)ʙ m:(b)ʙ n(d)r n:(d)r ɳ(ɖ)ɽ ʙ ʙ: r r: ɽ m m: n n: ɲ h h h̃ h̃: ʋ ʋ: l j mb m:b nd n:d ɳɖ p p: t t: ʈ k d i: ĩ: ʉ: ʉ̃: u: ũ: ɪ ə ʊ e: ẽ: o: õ: ɛ: a: ã: ɔ: 1. Absence of any phonemic POA for stops further back than velar [half mark for only one stop-POA be...

You probably know this, and it needn't mean anything for your conlang, but real-world possessive classifiers (certainly in Austronesian, and iirc elsewhere also) don't tend to classify things by their kind, but by the nature of the relation. Cool, thanks for taking notice. I saw you used possessive...