zompist bboard

EDIT: There still is the issue that Proto-Italic */f/ gives /b/ in medial position in Latin. So it may have been voiced in that position? It was. Note 1: The series of PIE stops traditionally termed 'voiced aspirate' yields voiceless fricatives in word-initial position in Latin and Sabellic, voiced...

Something I noticed recently is that I think I have a phonemic diphthong /əɪ/. It seems like this phonemic distinction occurs not just in places where the /t d/ contrast is neutralized, but also in the environment of a syllabic r (I believe mine is bunched, not retroflex), e.g.: higher /haɪɹ̩/ vs. ...

I don't know that it's best to look at these things teleologically, but I can think of two factors: (1) morphological leveling and (2) foreign influence. A fair number of Icelandic exhibit vocalic alternations in the present tense, e.g. ég tala "I speak" but við tölum "we speak". Thus, replacing th...

Nortaneous wrote:Are interdentals preserved anywhere? Is there *sr- :> θr-?

Not that I see. However, the introduction only covers sound changes from PIE to PCelt (not PCelt to whatever), so I don't know.

The Latin development *-sr- → /-br-/ seems to demonstrate that it has fortified Proto-Italic fricatives, not retained PIE stop values. It doesn't follow though if this was thru *-θr- → *-fr- or *-zr- → *-ðr- → *-vr-. Don't some Celtic languages have sr > fr? Yes, it seems, at least word initially. ...

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Anyways, was what you were going to show basically what you get if you google images for "chinese world map"?

The left part of the island of New Guinea is part of Indonesia, which is traditionally grouped with Asia rather than Oceania. For some reason I thought *Papua* New Guinea referred to the island, not the country. Sorry. Also, yeah, the political situation is at least some reason to group the eastern...

Boy have I got a treat for you. There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to start. The utterly misshapen Scandinavia labelled "ENGLAND" in fat red letters is the slightest issue. Things I spot: 1) Iceland is part of North America now? (Seriously though, iirc doesn't it actually stra...

Icelandic is fast getting rid of its simple present in favor of the progressive, German is getting rid of it's past tense and God only knows what the Soviets are doing. May I ask, what does the Icelandic progressive look like (compared to the simple present)? Do you have an idea of what's spurring ...

Indeed, it has been discussed before. Terra, are you going to repeat the question every year? I don't think we resident Germans will come up with any better explanations. ;-) 1) Nah, I won't repeat it anymore. 2) I don't remember that I asked it before. 3) I know/understand verbs and what their ten...

That's because telicity is not a property of verbs, it's a property of predicates. Ah, yes, it makes more sense that way. Static/Dynamic and Punctual/Durative seem to be a property of verbs (and not predicates) though. "run" is atelic, but "run a mile" is telic. The difference between the two "run ...

I thought that using "for" or "in" was a test for telicity. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telicity ) I don't understand your reasoning for classification. Going by my test for telicity, I can say the following: "run" can be telic. - I ran a mile in 7 minutes. - *I ran a mile for 7 minutes. - I walk...

So, how similar is the Perkect to the English perfect? (As in "The man has let the dog out."?) Does it have the meaning of being relevant to the present like in English? Als die Berliner Mauer fiel, hatte er bereits Zuflucht in der Prager Botschaft genommen. Would colloquial German replace the Präte...

Can someone please explain the German Präteritum, Perfekt, and Pluperfekt in simple terms?
1) Are the first two the same except that the former is formal and the latter colloquial?
2) What does each actually convey? Is it the past tense? Or is it the perfective aspect? Or is it both?

This seems to be the explanation, as I have here *peug- 'prick, poke'.

Agreed. May I ask, does anybody know how common this present n-infix is in branches of PIE other than Celtic and Italic?

CPUs are pretty damned expensive I bought my processor for $50. ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116889 ) I'm not sure what you're doing that requires something faster. If you really need/want something faster though, just be aware that the processor is very probably not t...

There was another change preceding the GVC which I call "Resonant-Conditioned Lowering" (RCL) in which high vowels were lowered before resonants (nasals, liquids, semivowels) such that they fell victim to the GVC. This explains why there are no high vowels followed by resonants (at least not in roo...

I assume that you're aware and not interested in cases where a dialect does affricate /tr/ and /dr/, but not when it follows /s/, like in <string> == /strIN/ == [StrIN].

I just bought Left 4 Dead a couple days ago and played it for the first time. It was okay, but got repetitive. Maybe it would've been a better experience if I played with humans instead of computers. Other than that, I'm (re)learning to speed-run The Legend of Zelda : The Oracle of Seasons. About 6 ...

The problem with indo european comparative linguistics is that it's an 'academical island', so to speak. It seems to largely ignore developments in other fields within linguistics. With stuff like generative linguistics, I think that's a good thing (because that's another field entirely), but not w...

What I was going to say was that there's something to be said for amateurs who are curious having more incentive (a hunger for knowledge) than professional linguists (money, probably) to do any sort of work. I certainly would work on PIE reconstruction myself if I had the basic knowledge to start w...

There's always morrigan's one.

Aka Goatman, right?

I've read it. To sum up: - PIE originally had just two series of stops: voiceless and voiced - The voiced series had the allophones [B, D, G] and [b, d, g]. - The allophonic voiced stops became phonemic voiced aspirated stops. - /B/ merged with /w/ (He claims that evidence of this is shown by the un...

though, and the whole thing just plain strikes me as really unlikely. Winter's law (which occured in Balto-Slavic) operated in front of voiced stops, but not voiced aspirated stops. This shows that Balto-Slavic made the distinction at one time before it merged them. I'd forgotten that! Doesn't Celt...