zompist bboard

responses Neat! 8) Thanks! I'm not sure the translation for cassandro, cassandre is correct, since "father-in-law, mother-in-law" is sandro, sandre . The specific meaning for cassandro, cassandre is "my son's/daughter's parents-in-law". IIANM Turkish has a term with that meaning, that sounds like i...

Risla wrote:That was intentional. I don't think it's attested anywhere, but I figure I can get away with some implausible things as long as I don't go too overboard.

Absolutely so! I just recommend letting us know explicitly that it was intentional.

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/5889/earlymigration.jpg That is nice ! 8) Note: the notation I use for years is thus: xxK BP, where the x's are years, the K means thousand and BP = before present. Thus, 150K BP means one hundred fifty thousand years before present. K is short for kilo[thousand] ...

Thanks, Izambri and WeepingElf. @Izambri, that looks cool. (You might want to spell-check it. "Apternal" looks like a typo for "paternal". Is it?) n cassandro –s cassandre –s "father-in-law, mother-in-law". So, your parent-in-law is almost a Cassandra? (The Cassandra in Homer's Iliad didn't have chi...

... animacy hierarchy: ... > 3P > 3ObvP > 3S > 3ObvS > Inan. .... Pretty sure that should be ... > 3P > 3S > 3ObvP > 3ObvS > Inan. Non-obviatives are usually higher than obviatives in natlangs like this, aren't they? And if both obviation and grammatical number count for the hierarchy, non-obviativ...

I'd go with "subjunctive" and "dubitative" just as you proposed. The first I would call "desiderative" [/size]But it's also used with other auxiliary verbs, like "can" and "should", not just "want". Labels of cases, moods, aspects, etc. are only expected to indicate one use. It's good to strive to n...

... I realized that several important figures in linguistics were inside the exhibit as well, including Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky. I stripped down (since no clothing was allowed inside the exhibit) and climbed over the glass wall to get inside so that I could get my boobs signed by the linguis...

... I realized that several important figures in linguistics were inside the exhibit as well, including Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky. I stripped down (since no clothing was allowed inside the exhibit) and climbed over the glass wall to get inside so that I could get my boobs signed by the linguis...

I read a book that said "it hit her like a piled river". Took me a few seconds to realize they meant "it hit her like a pile-driver".


(Maybe this isn't "innovative usage", but when I decided to post it this was the first thread I thought of.)

Yeah but you're doing that to yourself If you can learn noun systems with gender, or bantu style noun classes, or animacy hierarchies, and all the ways that these things interact with other bits in the language to create concords or syntactic fuckery or whatever, then you can learn the same idea wh...

Would it be appropriate for an Iroquois kinship system to be used by such a culture? I don't really know enough to say, but, I don't see why not. I'd think they'd be a natural fit for each other, and either of them would be a natural fit for dual descent. Part of the reason to conculture is to cond...

(answers to my questions) Thanks for the answers! As far as family dynamics are concerned, the division of labor and power is not so much men vs women, as it is head spouses (or alpha-male and alpha-female) vs younger spouses. However, strangely enough, property is passed down to the youngest sibli...

I think I remember one of Rosenfelder's languages has a feature where you can't have a lower-class nominative acting on a higher-class accusative ... There's a natlang, I think in SouthEast Asia (possibly Continental rather than Insular) (edit: -- maybe Javanese ?) , in which one of the chief uses ...

Does anyone's conlang ever use any sounds where the mobile or "soft" articulator is in the speaker's mouth but the stabile or "hard" articulator is in the addressee's mouth? [/size] Sort of a French kiss?? :P I think maybe so; or, maybe, an "alfalfa" kiss. [/size] "Alfalfa"? What do you mean? Alfal...

The 'featural' description of the script can be most easily explained by referring to our letters p and b , and pretending they follow the rules of the conscript I posted about. They are both bilabial stops; since they have the same place of articulation, they have the same symbol on the line(prett...

Basically you use "wrong" valence particles in order to convey non-standard contextual meanings (relative social status, etc.). OK, then. Letting relative social status control valence seems incomprehensible to me; and having an ideology about it even more incomprehensible. It's not that you didn't...

I can't scan, but: I cross 7. I put a left serif at the top of 1 to distinguish them from uppercase I and lowercase l. I put serifs on both sides of tops and bottoms of uppercase I, so it won't get confused with lowercase l. I cross Z and z to keep them unconfused with 2. I slash zero 0 and write it...

... when I was first learning english letters in school, I got b and d confused, as well as q and p . When my god-daughter was in Kindergarten she looked at M and W and said "They're the same". I pointed out that L and V are also "the same"; and then went on to "little" letters and pointed out b , ...

Cathbad wrote:Part 3 now available! See here:

http://jonafras.conlang.org/?p=435

I (maybe only I) don't understand it. I have no other criticism to make of it; it appears well-written, I just don't get it.

I would have before, but I didn't have time. Now I do, so I will. Thanks, cool stuf! Yes it is! 8) Thanks. :D Until this thread I knew of languages that explicitly marked specific vs nonspecific, but not definite vs indefinite; and I knew of languages that explicitly marked definite vs indefinite, ...

The problem comes in that the wives are sisters and the husbands are brothers, and that the husbands are the women's paternal second cousins- the women's fathers are the maternal cross cousins of the men's mothers. x= male o= female You only need to show the most immediate relationships, those that...

Is there any way to draw a family tree or kinship diagram in three dimensions to show polyamorous unions? That would make it easier for me to see any gaps in my conlang's kinship system. Just put extra = signs around the person? I did that in the female Ego in the first picture. That works great if...

New featural script . http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/1887/featuralscript.jpg I am impressed. Just like Tolkien's elves, my conpeople will be plagued by dyslexia :) Why? Are there lots of mirror-image pairs, or pairs of characters one of which is a rotation of the other? Or, pairs that differ on...

At least they sound unusual to me, though I can recognize them as Canadian. How do they sound to you? The song is The boys in the bright white sports car , originally recorded in 1976 by the band Trooper. For one thing they seem (to me) to vary unpredictably between (usually) non-rhotic and (occasi...

Mostly what cromulant said. "Specific" and "referential" mean that the speaker is referring to a particular one or particular ones s/he has in mind. "Definite" means specific/referential AND the speaker believes the addressee knows which one(s) the speaker is referring to. __________________________...