zompist bboard

I HAVE RETURNED!!!

... and I have a website.

Summary: While XML and JSON schemas may not be flexible enough for this, in my (admittedly non-expert) opinion it is possible (and will be necessary) to create a computer-readable markup language to represent natural-language grammars. Salmoneus: I don't think snappdragon's goal here is to create a...

We risk losing the main ... The immoderate use of computers begins to have even negative repercussions on the conceptualization in science ... How much more for this ephemeral art which tries to bring us closer to ourselves, and which has no last end in the real external world ... Uhm... the only t...

So, as I am wrapping up the creation of Proto-Haethic's grammar (still have to do Pragmatics and the Lexicon (and maybe Semantics)), I decided to figure out how exactly Proto-Haethic turns into the Haethic Language Family. And so I have went and used an online tool called LaTreeX (a LaTeX-based Tree...

I'm currently deciding on the religion of Pletam (of course each realm, race, and kingdom will have its own spin on it, but this is the basis) and trying to do it in a neutral way. The problem is describing and differentiating two of the deities in a neutral manner. We have Ehaťinol, the creator of...

Chusang yèchaotɨ̀ [je˩tɕautɨ˩] > Proto-Chixic yèćaetî [jeː.t͡ɕae.tɪ] Chusang chèshetɨ̀ [tɕe˩ɕetɨ˩] > Proto-Haethic tsëseti [ˈt͡seː.ˌse.ti] Chusang chechao [tɕetɕau] > Proto-Chixic ćećà [t͡ɕe.t͡ɕaː] Chusang ʔaorùbao [ʔauru˩bau] > Proto-Haethic aulübau [ˈau.ˌluː.bau] I hath mixed it up a bit.

Firstly, that pasta sauce sounds great. To each their own. Secondly, I don't think that is overt complicated or all that unusual. It seems a little odd that an adposition would convey something like "enemy of" since they generally express spacial and temporal relations but I like the idea all the s...

I'm currently deciding on the religion of Pletam (of course each realm, race, and kingdom will have its own spin on it, but this is the basis) and trying to do it in a neutral way. The problem is describing and differentiating two of the deities in a neutral manner. We have Ehaťinol, the creator of ...

So, its been a while. So while I attempt to eat this bowl of spaghetti my dad ruined with sauce that has mushrooms and stuff in it (ugh) I want to talk about adpositions! I've gotten all the way up to "Of", and I just realized I should have asked for feedback on how I'm taking on adpositions. Essent...

mèþru wrote:

smii wrote:New words:

sesquipedalian [ˈsɛskwɪpɪˈdeɪlɪən ]
idiosyncratic [ˌɪdɪəsɪŋˈkrætɪk]
luminescent [ˌluːmɪˈnɛsn̩t]
circumlocution [ˌsɜːkm̩ləˈkjuːʃən]

page 102
The initial word was defenestration /difɛnəstreɪʃən/. Obviously, it has changed way more than once.

gracias amigo

Just curious, what were these words originally? Oh, and here's a sound change! agefaqeg šekotì /ʃeˈkɔ.tɪ/ [ʃeˈkɔ.tɪ] > Proto-??? śekótî [ɕe.kɔ.tɪ] (the acute accent over the O signifies that it is the accent of the word (Proto-??? has a Pitch-Accent system)) agefaqeg keťšetì /ket͡ʃˈʃe.tɪ/ [ket͡ʃˈʃe....

Kumthang xīxātə̀ [xi˥xa˥tə˩] > Proto-Haethic ksikäte [ˈksi.ˌkaːt.e]
Kumthang khéxə̂tə̀ [kʰexɨ˩tə˩] > Proto-Haethic kyeksite [ˈkje.ˌksit.e]
Kumthang khêkhā [kʰe˩kʰa˥] > Proto-Haethic kyekyä [kje.ˈkjaː]
Kumthang fwōyūḅwō [fuo˥ju˥ɓuo˩] > Proto-Haethic ťoyübo [ˈθo.ˌjuːb.o]

I'm now curious as to how much total linguistic discussion will arise from me being stubborn and wanting to prove a fact to a teacher.

My English teacher Mrs. Shirley told me that there are 6 tenses in English: Past, Present, Future, Past Perfect, Present Perfect, and Future Perfect. The problem with that is that Perfect is an ASPECT, not a tense. She seems very adamant about this however. I even showed her the section on Tense and...

But even if you are merely representing things like dictionaries, how do you do so in a universal fashion; e.g. entries may need declension/conjugation tables, but how does one specify a universal fashion of representing them (especially since the manner in which words can inflect is limited only b...

To do this would require representing a Turing-complete language in the format of XML or JSON, which is an utterly horrible idea that should never be attempted. (Yes, I am referring to XSLT here, which shows you why Turing-complete XML is a bad idea.) The computer isn't actually reading/using the l...

I am both a language nerd and a computer nerd. I had an idea that would put them together. I'm contemplating creating an XML (or JSON) schema for storing conlangs in a computer-readable format. This would be useful for applications like PolyGlot, or if someone made a website that acted as a conlang ...

I just realized that one of my demonstratives is a vowel away from being "pepsi". It is the plural concrete/magical "at a distance" demonstrative of the language, "pepsu".

I'm glad to hear that I'm not completely alone (does saying that count as a kind of insult since it means I'm glad some people had failed conlangs?). No, it is not an insult. Just stating a fact of life. I mean, you have to start somewhere right? My first two conlangs (Gelaneze and Checkish) were p...

In the advice of Zaarin, I could just name the world Pletam and it'd be over. Or I could stress my brain and come up with something else. Thoughts? And sanskacharu, it would be a good idea to come up with some naming conventions. If it weren't for the fact that this is a proto language and they prob...

Borrow real naming customs (not all languages have earth > Earth though) and translate it into a conlang. Maybe a word for earth and the name of the planet are separate, but etymologically the second derives from the first. To be fair, every sci-fi series set in our universe has the same problem: j...

I'm a little disappointed more fantasy writers don't follow Tolkien's lead and call their world "earth." More proper names always strike me as being in contrast to something else (like Dragon Age's Thedas or The Elder Scrolls' Nirn*, for example), which isn't exactly a concept that would be familia...

I need to come up with a name for the fantasy world on which the realms of Haethion (the realm that speaks the Haethic language family) and Oquivion (the realm that speaks a lot of language families) are found. While the names for the realms were made up easily, as they are simple modifications of t...

mèþru wrote:There is no fixed word order.
SOV – imperative
OSV – declarative
SVO – interrogative

I like that. It's kinda like how Proto-Haethic has VOS word order for independent clauses and SOV word order for dependent/subordinate clauses.

Suffixation is really just the most common form of affixation you'll find, cross-linguistically. It's not just Indo-European that's fond of it, though it is fair to feel sick of them. Infixes are fun, and not terribly out there, so if the rest of the language rests on prefixes and infixes then you'...