zompist bboard

This might have been an old topic, but does anyone know of a good source for natlang grammars (other than JSTOR, a college library, wikipedia, etc)?

Wait, wait, wait. No love of Esper ..... Haha, it's too funny to even finish that thought.

I think you missed the point that spanish, arabic and other languages are important not because of a single country's "top 10" economy, but because of their aggregate speakers in various countries . . . all with economies of varying prominence. and in re hindi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi#Off...

Rik wrote:Thank you both! All glory, however, goes to the Gimp - specifically Filters > Animation > Spinning Globe. Works best if your starting map is big, with a width double that of the height.

What did you use to create the original map? Free drawn or a generator?

Voiced aspirates! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeastern_!Xung

*face-palm* Even Ladefoged and Maddieson find it valid.

Rik wrote:For my conworld, Kalieda ...

Sweet globe! How did you generate that? I'm quite impressed.

A few samples: First: showing the variation in speakers: >Arcolect: mato sora-ro năhato ʦʰe; [mother.sing.aug.dir girl.sing.dim.obl-acc predicate.bathe.sing.aug aux.3rd]; mother washes the girl >Similarly, mesolect: mato sora-ro năhato ʦʰe; [mother.sing.aug.dir girl.sing.dim.obl-acc predicate.bathe....

And . . . the paradigms for two nouns in acrolect, mesolect and basilect. Sample nouns.jpg Plural root alteration; singular: sorG --> *sʰorG --> /horG/; in the basilect /h/ is marginal so it often elides, thus <(h)orG>, /ó̤:rG/. Elision and the phonotactic constraints of the mesolect and basilect pr...

Sorry, I have been quite busy since my original posts. I will get my notes on verb morphology out as well as some samples. Phonology4.jpg Allophones: • Nasals assimilate to the POA of following plosives, affricatives • Labiodental approximant: <v>, /ʋ/, [ʋ~w]; <vʱ>, /vʱ/, [ʋʱ~wʱ]. [w], [wʱ] before r...

I think the voiceless dental aspirated trill is fairly easy to produce, though not terribly distinct from a voiceless dental trill. Give it a whirl in front of the mirror. I suppose you could argue it is just a cluster of /r̊h/. With the morphology I'm considering, it, nevertheless, makes sense at l...

But what is an "inclusive 2nd person" pronoun? Standard linguistic terminology defines clusivity only for the 1st person, unless I have missed something. I would agree with Crumbulant. 2+3 clusivity or second person clusivity is a form of clusivity not reported for any natlang. It includes 3rd pers...

On second thought, the phonology doesn't make sense without something to go on.


1st and 2d pronouns.

Nouns: (adjectives decline as direct case w/o initial aspiration in the plurals)

I'd appreciate any thoughts. If anyone is curious for context I can post some of the morphology. Phonology: phonology1.jpg All but v, vh are /phonemes/. The ~ symbols show [allophones]. phonology2.jpg Phonology3.jpg Phonotactics: F: fricative; C: consonant; V: Vowel; S: semi-vowel. o Arcolect  (F)(...

From the call of the question I saw you valued numbers. Most of your lists were euro-centric as pointed out, which I'll try to avoid. You also valued old or religiously important languages--no one speaks them for a reason--we've moved on. Perhaps this is more objective. Take the six official languag...

I also chunk numbers for tele and library call numbers in 2s.

I suppose 0.1 miles and 0.3 miles both sound odd to me. If you think about it, it's really only .1 or .3 of a single mile.

In Sanskrit च was pronounced /c/ and it shifted to /ts/ in Marathi. Can you give an example for this? Okay, I've had some time and looked this up. Apparently /c/ -> /ts/ is a common shift in NIA languages like Marathi. Many keep a /c/ allophone before front vowels and /j/. Marathi apparently separa...

no, simply: /c/ turns into /ts/


Edit: the original * was merely to show I wasn't using j's IPA value.

Hey all, any opinions on this sound change are appreciated.

/c/ ---> /ts**/
/j*/ ---> /dz**/

*palatal voiced stop

**laminal aleovelar



I assume it would not be difficult, but you never know.

Cool, thanks I was thinking it would have been a North American language . . . but hey you learn something new all the time. Also I really like the double dim.

Does anyone know of a natlang that uses augmentative vs. diminutive in a gender/noun class system? And I don't mean languages that just have diminutive forms like Spanish "-ito", port. "-inho", Hindi "-u:", or english "-let", etc.

Xephyr, are you posting your charts via a screenshot of word and then using image hosting? Or something else? If you are using image hosting, which site?

***moved***