zompist bboard

...After this testing phase is over, the developers simulate the progression of history on 2 levels, first over millions of year in terms of continental movement, and over thousands to to let the world develop. So, a quick step back to the previous conversation, even if I'm wrong and a program to s...

You said you want "simple english magicked into the speakers;" it's your decision on how simple then. If you think the -ment suffix is not simple enough, don't include it. That would give you space to do something more interesting with how you express the concept. But as Sal pointed out, if your cul...

You translate taq-taq (4) as "two two" but taq means one everywhere else. Is this is a typo or is there some delicious twist in the logic justifying this? Nope, just a typo. I'm less than fluent. One thing that seems a bit odd: if they find numbers ending in twelve "full," it is a bit surprising th...

It's not a fixation; you misunderstand a basic feature of languages which is important if you are interested in conlanging. We were trying to help you. As for the word lists, I can't actually find a specific question you have asked about them; what exactly do you want to know?

I'm afraid you haven't really understood the point, no. If you want to do it this way, that's your choice, but it won't be realistic. As has been pointed out, if your program can do it realistically, it would be be a very advanced AI. Realistic changes are often pretty random yes, but once a random ...

No, my original question was about prepositions, not postpositions. That was just a typo; regardless of whether it was pre- or post-, I don't see a problem or a need to justify it by stepwise creeping around the noun and onto the verb. It would be an intuitively obvious development to all native sp...

CatDoom, I get what you're saying, but I don't think that is a problem. What you're explaining is just a nested structure of sound changes that rely on each other, that if x happens then y has some chance of happening as well. And the second issue isn't really an issue, because that rule change cou...

I ask because I might try to create a quick Javascript that could apply sound changes really quickly and easily in a realistic "random" way which would make this far quicker and easier ^.^ What you're describing is not quicker, not easier, and not realistic. Because: I know of that... and it isn't ...

So your original question was "could postpositions become applicative prefixes"? In that case I do t think you have a problem; just directly do the change. They don't need an intermediary circumfix stage to "slide" around the noun or anything.

Could a preposition before a noun end up prefixed to a verb (in SOV word order)? One possibility is applicative voice; where the preposition is used to mark the voice: I with the pen wrote :> I the pen with-wrote I for her kill would :> I her for-killed would Then you could drop the promoted noun; ...

Very interesting. I knew of species where the male dies in the process, but not about cases where the female dies. I assume that sufficient females survive to lay eggs? Or do the eggs / larvae develop in the dead body of the female? It's only sometimes fatal. I don't know if the eggs can be fertili...

Given that a) the whole of evolution will conspire to find ways to make penetrative sex more pleasurable than non-penetrative sex, since if that weren't the case they would have died out long ago; That's quite a bold statement. I'm pretty sure that most sexual reproducing organisms on Earth do not ...

Urquhart - rhymes with 'work it' but without the /w/ (can't type ipa at the moment for the exact pronunciation)

Applicatives on verbs are one solution: instead of labelling the noun with a preposition to indicate its role, you mark the verb for the role: I walk to the park :> I in-walk the park I walk through the park :> I through-walk the park etc If you had a way to mark gender of referent on the applicativ...

alynnidalar wrote:
Really? That's quite interesting! Do you have any further reading on this or links to video/audio where this is happening?

Just this paper. Maybe Google or YouTube would turn up some recordings

That's generally assumed to be their origin, yes. Cross-morpheme /t.k/ clusters in German are occasionally realised as clicks

Although that wouldn't entirely explain the other marked features surfacing at the left edges of words though

Ah yes, I see what you mean. Although I'm not sure that sonority is not a useful idea when it comes to Khoesan; I googled and found this PhD thesis on Khoekhoe; the author describes the restrictions on root initial and and root medial consonants in terms of sonority: root initial, clitic initial and...

I didn't mean analysing the distribution in Khoesan or other click languages in terms of sonority hierarchy; I meant rather that in the (admittedly tiny) sample of languages in which they exist, they don't really behave specially (particularly in regards to being admissible in a coda), so there's no...

So in that case is it fair to say that clicks are not specifically restricted in codas any more than other consonants are?

And that presumably then they would pattern phonologically as obstruents of low(est) sonority?

The few natlangs that have click consonants have them as word onsets (in all such languages) and word medially (in a few of those languages), but never in coda position. Why? I've never come across an actual explanation, but the obvious possible reasons seem to be 1. articulatory - it's too hard to ...

AFAIK, pretty much any system can change into pretty much other, much the same as other sound changes. For example, a language could start with a stress accent, where the intensity and volume are the markers of accent. There are probably also differences in length and pitch of the stressed vowel, bu...

Wow! Very impressive. As others said before, it's very naturalistic looking - I can imagine people actually using it (some conscripts just don't have that plausible usable feel to them). The cursive version reminds me of da Vinci's mirror handwriting more than anything middle eastern (well, only at ...

Then why isn't 2 1+1? :oops: Oops. I edited my post and accidentally lost a bit (the posting window is not so easy on the eyes - especially if I use the gloss code. Ugh). It was meant to say "there are basic root words for one and two, and then there's a new root word only when the number can't be ...

WeepingElf wrote:I'm in a band now - a progressive rock band named Path of Vision. So far, we are preparing for our first rehearsal, and it will take a while until we can present something.

Congratulations!

I'm looking forward to YouTube links in the future

My main conlang now has a mixture of base 20 and base 5, I suppose - numbers up to five have their own root, as do 10 and 20, but from five they're one+five, two+five, etc, and from ten they're one+ten, two+ten, and then sixteen up are one+five+ten etc. In that vein then, Moq numbers up to 12 are "...