Search found 30 matches

by GBR
Thu Mar 20, 2014 11:30 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Eastern Lartau. Aspect
Replies: 1
Views: 1228

Re: Eastern Lartau. Intro and Verbs

Been working on Aspect over the past few days. I'm sure there are lots of holes, and I'd be happy for you to point them out for me [:)] Aspect SL distinguishes 4 aspects grammatically, 3 marked, and one unmarked. Unlike modal auxiliaries, aspect particles do not effect word order. The particle occur...
by GBR
Sat Mar 15, 2014 11:28 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Eastern Lartau. Aspect
Replies: 1
Views: 1228

Eastern Lartau. Aspect

[edit]Added an intro! Also some changes to the body of the text, courtesy of Micamo[/edit] Introduction Eastern Lartau (EL) is the native language group of the south eastern region of The Empire of United Sutzian Kingdoms, or sūtzì naókoō huātaù kootsoò põntsoõ . This grammar will focus on the stand...
by GBR
Mon Feb 10, 2014 9:49 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Replies: 2827
Views: 613831

Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

I feel like having uvular non-stops without other uvular consonants is pretty okay. That being said, do you mean there's no velars in your original pool except /x/? (You could also try weirder things like /xʷ/ > /ʍ/ or /w/ or /ɣ/ or /g/ or something.) Full final phoneme inventory would be something...
by GBR
Sat Feb 08, 2014 10:59 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Post your conlang's phonology
Replies: 2278
Views: 499743

Re: Post your conlang's phonology

Introducing Eastern Lartau. Should have it's own thread soon, but wanted to run this by you guys first. No where near done on the phonology, but since (shock horror) phonology is maybe my least favourite part of conlanging, I've come pretty far. Eastern Lartau is a tonal language with a relatively s...
by GBR
Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:51 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Replies: 2827
Views: 613831

Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Working dialects a little at the mo. Standard Lartau distinguishes labialisation in stops and fricatives, but in Black River Lartau, labialisation has become velarisation, e.g. t w :> t ɣ . All's well till we get to <x w >. I'm pretty sure <x ɣ > isn't a thing, so what are the chances of x w :> χ, g...
by GBR
Thu Apr 11, 2013 8:01 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2
Replies: 812
Views: 203558

Re: Linguistic Quackery Thread, take 2

A Girl I was Speaking to Today wrote:My Cultural Studies teacher told me the Chinese didn't have a character for woman till the 18th century
Apparently they just used the character for womb.
by GBR
Wed Apr 10, 2013 9:21 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Proto-Søkkli scratchpad
Replies: 72
Views: 14915

Re: Proto-Søkkli scratchpad

By the looks of things, the voiced fricatives are lenited stops. I don't know if that makes it any more likely. Perhaps they could be on a continuum /b~β/ e.t.c?
by GBR
Wed Apr 10, 2013 9:19 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Antarctican Conscript
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Re: Antarctican Conscript

On a related note, I've been experimenting with clay recently, and although you can get curves, straights a lot easier. Or maybe clay tablets as well as wax tablets. I notice that the cuneiform script developed on clay and is full of straight lines. That probably also had a lot to do with the stylu...
by GBR
Wed Apr 10, 2013 8:16 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Antarctican Conscript
Replies: 18
Views: 6262

Re: Antarctican Conscript

I wonder if the point is not whether the script developed on stone. If that's the case, you might keep the lines straight to save on time? Chisels tend to be straight after all.
On a related note, I've been experimenting with clay recently, and although you can get curves, straights a lot easier.
by GBR
Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:16 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: 2L Monumental Style Conscript: Vines
Replies: 145
Views: 46318

Re: Second Language Monumental Style Conscript Sketchpad

Cool glyphs, bro.

I'm partial to the middle long necked birds. Looking forward to seeing the gradual stylization.
by GBR
Fri Feb 22, 2013 3:27 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.
Replies: 23
Views: 5068

Re: Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.

Great paper. Where did you find it? As a general note, where do you guys find this stuff? My google-fu is terrible.
by GBR
Wed Feb 20, 2013 10:29 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic behavior
Replies: 45
Views: 8869

Re: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic beha

Oh, I applaud your honesty in admitting that you hadn't watched the video. I'm just questioning why, if you didn't have time, that you couldn't just wait, think about it, and post a more reasoned and informed post when you had more time. It's not a race. The first one who says "Whorf" doesn't win a...
by GBR
Wed Feb 20, 2013 8:10 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic behavior
Replies: 45
Views: 8869

Re: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic beha

[note, I didn't check the links yet] Smells dangerously of Sapir-Whorfianism to me... Let alone the questionable aspects of TED in general. Reallly? The video is 12 minutes long. You couldn't wait 12 minutes to listen to what he had to say—you couldn't even spend a few seconds to click on the links...
by GBR
Wed Feb 20, 2013 3:22 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic behavior
Replies: 45
Views: 8869

Re: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic beha

[I really should watch the video before I comment any more, but] Sounds to me like causal lines are being drawn where they don't necessarily exist. The notion that one distinguishes colours better if they're distinguished in ones language is, IIRC, fairly well attested, but it's a huge leap from tha...
by GBR
Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:05 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic behavior
Replies: 45
Views: 8869

Re: TED talk: how a language's grammar affects economic beha

[note, I didn't check the links yet]

Smells dangerously of Sapir-Whorfianism to me... Let alone the questionable aspects of TED in general.
by GBR
Wed Feb 20, 2013 2:03 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.
Replies: 23
Views: 5068

Re: Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.

Super interesting stuff guys. I originally thought ga was explicitly used for genitive historically, and that maybe some sort of chain shift had occurred, whereby an innocuous locative or some such drifted, and that pushed the other particles into new roles. The thought of having two particles that ...
by GBR
Tue Feb 19, 2013 10:39 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.
Replies: 23
Views: 5068

Genitive Marker to Subject Marker.

If I'm not mistaken, Japanese が ga shifted at some point from marking genitive case to marking subjects. How on earth did this happen, and why? It's still used in place names in the old way, occasionally, e.g. 幡ヶ谷 hata ga ya , 'valley of flags' (n.b. the second character is an alternative way of wri...
by GBR
Tue Feb 19, 2013 1:05 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The Qorbenic Programme
Replies: 7
Views: 2416

Re: The Qorbenic Programme

el imiradu wrote:It was pointed out that the transcription above was not, strictly speaking, intuitive...
Lol
by GBR
Tue Feb 12, 2013 12:36 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Common L2 English mistakes
Replies: 56
Views: 10329

Re: Common L2 English mistakes

clawgrip wrote:Japanese speakers frequently mix up 'by' and 'until' despite this exact distinction existing in Japanese.
I'm assuming they're conflating both into まで(made until, to etc)、no?
by GBR
Sun Feb 10, 2013 10:01 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Death rituals in your conworld
Replies: 16
Views: 4802

Re: Death rituals in your conworld

beats conworld for 'weirdness' every time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wari’_people#Cannibalism

EDIT: GAH! apostrophes break url's.
by GBR
Sat Feb 09, 2013 1:15 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Japanese "u" and other peculiar things
Replies: 14
Views: 3486

Re: Japanese "u" and other peculiar things

Okay, on the subject of weird sounds and Japanese, I am wondering about something. There is a type of phonation or something or other that is very common in Japanese speech to add stress to words, but I have no idea if there is any specific name for it or what. This video has several examples: http...
by GBR
Thu Feb 07, 2013 11:23 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conphysics and Calling a Rabbit Smeerp
Replies: 10
Views: 3184

Re: Conphysics and Calling a Rabbit Smeerp

You're mostly right, though I think if electrons were snowflakes they wouldn't be electrons any more, if you see what I mean. It's clearly a spectrum.
by GBR
Thu Feb 07, 2013 4:10 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conphysics and Calling a Rabbit Smeerp
Replies: 10
Views: 3184

Re: Conphysics and Calling a Rabbit Smeerp

I think this completely relies on context. If I were writing a novel, I'd try and retain as many real terms as possible, and only explain differences in behaviour when necessary. Terry Pratchet has a lovely description of light as it interacts with magic in his books, IIRC. He still calls it light t...
by GBR
Sat Feb 02, 2013 3:59 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Replies: 2827
Views: 613831

Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

ui→ɨ/_[x,ɣ]
oɛ→ə/_[x,ɣ]
Make any sense at all? My knowledge of phonetics is hoooorrrrriiiibllllllle.

Edit: hurpdurp.
by GBR
Sun Jan 27, 2013 7:28 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Regional accents for character types in different languages
Replies: 18
Views: 4329

Re: Regional accents for character types in different langua

Other regional [Japanese] dialects are not as marked, but using one will make a character sound old. Err... you ever heard Aomoriben? :> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Q5ZRcl8OQ I'd say the dialect disparity in Japan is very strong, and quite often used in literature for effect. I am well aware o...