zompist bboard

finlay wrote:what about Davy Jones' locker?

I watched too many cartoons as a child so I thought that meant like, "hell" or something in sailor talk. Does it really just mean the sea?

Proto Micronesian to Kiribati f > 0 k > 0 (occasionally if the morpheme contained *t) x > 0 t > 0, k (occasionally if the morpheme contained *k) [for t > k, e.g *kuRita > kiika c > t r > 0 {s j t'} > r {l ñ} > n ɨ > i (ɨ from *u) {ui iu} > ii V[+high] > 0/N_# (except in the sequence *ŋu) t > s/_i P...

Proto Oceanic to Proto Micronesian I've had to do a little interpretation here because the symbology of the papers I've used is mixed up, but for POc I'll be using the Blust transcription and for PMic I'll be using a sort of ad-hoc representation and just explaining what the symbols are supposed to...

Don't be silly. It's still a lie even if no one believes it.

cunningham wrote:It might depend on the pronunciation.

People in my area (Delaware) pronounce it like /mõiçt/, the õ being a nasal /ɔ/. I've also heard /mõiçtj/

Delawarians also pronounce their R's like /œw/ So "moisture" would be pronounced like /mõiçtjœw/.

Talk about disgusting.

lying is immoral

The sealang-published grammar is excellent for information on phonology (including the vowels)

Kire /p pʰ ᵐp b ᵐb t tʰ ⁿt d ⁿd k kʰ ᵑk ɡ ᵑɡ/ - p p' mp b mb t t' nt d nd k k' mk g mg /m n ŋ/ - m n ng /r/ - r /β f fʰ v s sʰ z ⁿz h/ - vh f f' v s s' z nz h /w/ - w /i ɨ e ɑ o u/ - i ü e a o u /ĩ ɨ̃ ẽ ɑ̃ õ ũ/ - iñ etc. /iː ɨː eː ɑː oː uː/ - ii etc. /ĩː ɨ̃ː ẽː ɑ̃ː õː ũː/ - iiñ etc. /zisɑs ne ᵐbɑrɑr...

Well, it's typologically unheard of, but you say it's only used ritualistically so who knows. But you seem to have the wrong impression about how tones work. '1'-'5' don't refer to specific pitches, nor is it a general standard that '5' is high and '1' is low, or vice versa. You say that "Tones are ...

Its very probable that I'm mistaken - I learned linguistics mainly from David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia, Wikipedia and zompist.com, which are not the best places to learn about how accepted a theory is. Altaic is not commonly accepted in the literature because attempts to reconstruct a proto...

The only native word in Levei-Drehet with /b/ is /bo/, meaning 'water'.

In Sani, palatalized labial plosives became alveolar lateral affricates:

*bya2 > dɮa(ma) 'bee'
*byam1 > tɬɪ 'fly'

(from the Handbook of PTB)

IE məkan-təláčʼn qəsúχtʼan.
My IE conlang has "súχtʼ"

Previous research has suggested that words aren't quite segmented in memory as they are in linguistic analyses (that is, words in memory are often, maybe even usually(?) morphologically composite), so I would be very surprised to find out speakers of fusional languages lose their train of thought mi...

The syllable structure, word structure, and ostensible phones present in the language are a dead giveaway that it's Tsouic. But Tsou itself has lots of /o/ so it's a tossup between Saaroa and Kanakanabu (which are extremely similar), but I'd be surprised if anyone managed to find a text of appropria...

Is it an austroasiatic/mon-khmer language?

isn't it great when the "most logical" solution is the one you were using already

no, it would be <kh́siws>.

dnálori /p~b t~d k~ɡ ʔ/ - p t k 7 /mb nd ŋɡ/ - b d g /s~z h~ɦ~ɨ̥~ɨ~ː/ - s h /m n ŋ/~/ə̃/ - m n ṉ /ɹ~ɹ̩ l~l̩ j~i w~u w̃~ũ/ - r l i w w̠ /e o õ/ - e o o̠ /a~ə/ - a /iː uː ũː eː oː õː/ > [əj əw əw̃ je wo wõ] - i· w· w̠· e· o· o̠· /ɹhstéhkheʔ láɹloɹ ráwtwos néjsteŋɡɹs/ [ɹ̩ːstjékheʔ láɹloɹ ráwdwos néjst...

I think languages with (C)V syllables, particularly the Polynesian and Bantu languages, would have very little allophony as there are fewer environments to influence the consonants. There may be few logically possible conditions for allophony but they certainly make use of the ones they have availa...

Voiceless/ejective isn't uncommon, and they are common in the Pacific Northwest - taking a glance, Southern Wakashan, all Salish, Kutenai, Miluk, Gitxan, Chinook, and Alsea, along with elsewhere Nez Perce, Caddo, Itelmen, Kawesqar, Tepehua, Yapese, and with some fidgeting Mayan (single glottalized ...

Without more examples I can't be sure of whether this comment is valuable but spontaneous nasalization of low vowels is a kind of common process.

Straits Salish has a split in the labial consonants, which occurs without any conditioning as far as anyone can tell:

p pʼ m > p~tʃ pʼ~tʃʼ m~ŋ

The most skewed, non-American, non-large (i.e. below 7) vowel systems I know of are Nivkh /ɪ ɪe æ u ɤ o/ and Big Nambas /i e ə a u/. Supposedly that Nivkh vowel inventory is false and it's a little bit of a mystery where it even came from. The 'right' inventory for the language is fairly banal, but...

/e a o/ is a very misleading vowel inventory for Cheyenne, since the vowel spelled <e> is almost never pronounced [e] in any context. It's usually [ɪ]. This is also the issue with languages that have the /i e a o/ inventory. In most cases the 'e' vowel is significantly lower than [e] and the 'o' vow...

Is it part of the "Papuan Tip Linkage"?