zompist bboard

Whatever happened to the idea that there was a split in the stop system caused by syllable tone (low or high)? So far, that's the most parsimonious explanation I've read, because it also explains the peculiar PIE phonotactics. From what we know, Tocharian has one stop series and Anatolian languages ...

Middle Bulgarian and other south Slavic languages had ʒ > r in certain environments, but in Bulgarian this has been largely reversed due to changes by analogy. Infact the only word with the sound change still in place I can think of is the archaic дорде 'until' < до же де. Other south Slavic languag...

You could read Kortlandt for starters:
FROM PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN TO SLAVIC
FROM SERBO-CROATIAN TO INDO-EUROPEAN

Even though I posted the link, I don't understand the presentation either. https://prezi.com/qwokkakcxlcq/introduction-to-surdeclinaison/ I almost threw up trying to figure anything out from that presentation. likewise It's pretty simple really. Most of the presented stuff is just your regular aggl...

The sound system and syllable structure are interesting. It reminds me of Inuktitut. Yeah, bit of inspiration from Inuktitut present here. I'm not aware of any language that has regular second-syllable stress, but it's certainly distinctive. I don't know any either, but since stress can be fixed on...

No, Janko, I haven't got the numbers yet. This is my second more-than-a-sketch conlang, not counting one relay, that is. Here's hoping it'll turn out into something usable, unlike the first one. · Phonology ·· Phoneme inventory /a ɔ u ɛ i/ <a o u e i> /p t t͡ł k/ <p t c k> /f s ł/ <f s l> /v z ɮ/ <v...

(I assume by "/ł/" and "/t͡ł/" you mean /ɬ t͡ɬ/.) I keep mixing them up. In retrospect this wasn't much of a challenge, only three non-latin IPA characters(ɛ ɔ ɾ are straightforwardly mapped), a rather trivial task. I think I'll go with tl l ll for the laterals. On the other hand I'm still tempted ...

nu kʼota ɻai kukapʼā stʼōɻa ā kʼiuka This is a new old language of mine tɕotu kiakʰaikʰa-pʼiau kʼaʂā-kukapʼā skʼiuka It's a daughter language from a previous reconstruction-game (It was a year ago and never really got of the ground, so I guess I'm safe to use it) Panu ono irenixi? Which one was it?

/a ɔ u ɛ i/
/p t t͡ł k/
/f s ł/
/v z ɮ/
/m n ɾ/

Cedh wrote:(Anyone still interested in reconstructing Hkətl’ohnim's parent language Proto-T1? Have a look here...)

i so would, but have more pressing conlang things to do, such as deriving Áżädgä and Pyvyy. Oh, well..

Nice name for a random meanings generator. Is it online or is it a program?

Thanks for porting that. Intriguing, also the quoted proposal by Oettinger that *sH2V- > *dV. It suddenly occured to me - aren't we viewing it the wrong way around? What is the evidence that it was *sH2V- > *dV and not *s- + *dV- > *sh₂V- ? If the latter is the case, we could unify it with the othe...

Why does PIE *deḱsino 'right' give Sanskrit दक्षिण ‎dákṣiṇa. I thought satemisation is unconditional in Indo-Iranian.

IMO, the coincidences, especially with the morphology, pronouns and numerals, and the initial rhotic fact, warrant a deeper look The "initial rhotic fact" applies to a bit too many languages in Eurasia (at minimum also Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Mongolian, Proto-Tungusic Really? Then ...

While you're at it, you might be interested in Furaha.

Honest question: are there any reasons other than historical and phonetical to not analyse [h] and [ŋ] as allophones of the same phoneme? They're in complementary distribution and all. For the sake of the thought experiment, let's say OE [nɡ] developed differently thus: nɡ > ŋɡ > ŋɣ > ɣ, would then ...

Nortaneous wrote:which i'm adding to my gigabyte-large file called why_upsid_is_garbage.txt

For those of us who don't use it (often), why is it?

Hmm, I was pretty sure there was some word for it when it was specifically the entire lexicon, as in this case. Does anyone remember that proposal to analyse PIE in exactly the same way (employing an idiosyncratic reconstruction to allow it)? If you mean that piece of nonsense, it's right there in ...

I think it was called visual onomatopoeia, either that, or some other kind of onomatopoeia. Such thing definitely exists, granted, but it's silly to say the least to think there's one combinations of sounds to be the be all and end all of a given concept/idea/characteristic/whatever. IIRC in great m...

I cannot even. To all ZBBers: please read this. It's hilarious. I did and I regret every last bit of my decision. I think I might need the whole weekend to recover mentally. The very sound of every Dama word gives a feeling corresponding to its meaning ; i know some people may disagree on this, but...

valiums wrote:Has anyone really been far as decided to construct even languages want to do look more like?

Asking the right questions I see.

Thanks for porting that. Intriguing, also the quoted proposal by Oettinger that *sH2V- > *dV. I'm really curious what the justification is for that, but I didn't spot it. It seems to be [sχ] > [d] or [ɗ]. Edit: There also seem to be a number of words in various languages with the initial sequence *...

I've left with the impression that unstressed vowels in Proto-Germanic either dropped or reduced to [ə] and only later some dialects secondarily shifted them to [ɛ] or [e]. Proto-Germanic? The development happened much later, in the transition from Old High German to Midle High German (Old English ...

What is the original pronunciation of unstressed ‹e›'s? I've left with the impression that unstressed vowels in Proto-Germanic either dropped or reduced to [ə] and only later some dialects secondarily shifted them to [ɛ] or [e].

CatDoom wrote:I can't point to a specific example at the moment, but liquids seem to be quite susceptible to elision, usually more so than nasals. Compensatory lengthening is outrageously common,

English?