zompist bboard

I don't know if this counts for this thread, but I didn't want to start an entirely new thread for it. Yesterday, while watching the finale of Breaking Bad, my girlfriend texted me "You done the show?" I responded with a "?" because that sentence means absolutely nothing to me. She says that the sen...

My point is that both languages use a similar verb (iru= to exist (animate)). So I was wondering why this verb was chosen and not some other. Verbs of existence are crosslinguistically the single most popular choice for auxiliary verbs there is. What's to explain? Saying that isn't an explanation. ...

Salmoneus wrote:There's that papuan language in which almost every grammatical feature seems to be marked by suppletion. Can never remember its name, unfortunately.

I feel like that has to be a field consultant playing a joke, or an analyst not knowing what the hell they're doing.

I recommend The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mithun. The major part of that book consists of detailed typological descriptions of various unusual features that are characteristic for Native North American languages, e.g. head-marking, noun incorporation, lexical affixes, direct-inv...

I suppose mostly because they still behave like auxiliary verbs, even though phonologically speaking they're enclitics. In Osage, I think the main justification for doing is so is that the main verb is optionally inflected. (Strictly speaking, Osage has no non-finite form since it has a zero morphe...

Of course the thing is that HEC (highland east cushitic) languages differ quite a bit from the better known chusitic stuff like Somali; the HEC langs do resemble each other very much though. Depending on how many grammars you could get a hold of, you could do some kind of survey of features disting...

CatDoom wrote: I really like the idea of success affixes; are they inspired by any particular real-world model?

Many Salishan languages have affixes that encode both transitivity and some sort of success vs. non-success distinction.

Very northwest Caucasiany in some respects, I like it! How do nominals work?

Corumayas wrote:I don't know what notes he might have about them, but that family was one of Radius' projects.

Hmmm, maybe I'll just send him a message.

Does anyone know if there are any extant notes on the !Ho languages, who has them, and if they're available to work with?

Do you have any info on Proto-Hesperic online? Not yet. I am planning to issue a reconstruction challenge when all eight branches of Hesperic have been rolled out. Looking forward to it! On another note, a Uralic-y consonant inventory: p t k s ś x m n ŋ w r j l

Bump

Do you have any info on Proto-Hesperic online?

Let me say, as someone who doesn't know much about programming but has been in situations away from conlanging where this kind of project is really needed, this is great. I'll get playing with it right away.

Though I will need to figure out how to do the PHP and MySQL stuff first. Hrrm.

Something I just whipped up p t tʸ č k ʔ s sʸ x h m n v r y i u i: u: e a e: a: Syllable structure is CVC. All consonants except /r ʔ h/ can appear geminated after a short vowel before another vowel. The stops/affricate can also appear geminated before another non-stop, non-nasal phoneme ( ippxar 'd...

A little bit of an inventory/idea that I came up with watching while watching the olympics. Phonemes: p t k s x m n l w h i e u a Syllables are CV(V)(C). Vowel sequences are formed by /i u e/ + /a/. There are five possible codas consonants: /t k m n w/. The stop codas only occur before the fricative...

Glad to see this returning!

Sinjana wrote:It's just something you might take into account, depending on how exactly you execute your consonant harmony.

I don't honestly see how consonant harmony could be analyzed as reduplication anyway?

A pretty big inventory, when all is said and done, but it's not totally out of the realm of possibility. Not at all. It's quite similar to the inventories of most Pomoan languages (which I assume were part of the inspiration). And I've always liked the feel of Pomoan, so obviously I am in favor of ...

The front-back apical thing looks interesting; will there be alternations between, say, /s/ and /ł/? Not sure yet, but I think there probably will be some kind of consonant harmony. Something like /t/ alternating with /ṭ/ and /k/ alternating with /q/. I may have the lateral stand outside the harmon...

Generic North American kinda thing with a Californian flare: b d p t ṭ k q ʔ pʰ tʰ ṭʰ kʰ qʰ pˀ tˀ ṭˀ kˀ qˀ c č cʰ čʰ cˀ čˀ s ł š x h m n ŋ w l y i u e o a A pretty big inventory, when all is said and done, but it's not totally out of the realm of possibility. There is a distinction between two apica...

An inventory I came up with today in class. It's supposed to be reminiscent of languages in Northern California. Consonants p t tʃ k kʷ p' t' tʃ' k' k'ʷ ʔ s ɬ (ʃ) h ɹ, ɾ l j ɣ w m n ŋ Vowels i u e o a ə, ɚ iʔ uʔ eʔ oʔ aʔ əʔ ie uo ea eo ia ua i: u: a: Still working on syllable structure but it will p...

Yeah I use LaTeX almost exclusively now but I've only needed it for semantics papers so far so I have had to make syntax trees yet (my syntax class hasn't assigned a paper yet). Qtree a good option for typesetting trees. The syntax is pretty easy to learn, and it's basically just doing a bracketing...

Also I will have to think about the case clitics, I'm not really where to put them yet. One option would be to have them be a higher projection than DP, with some kind of case projection. It really depends on how they work. [/quote]As a side note, how did you make the trees? I've been wanting to ma...

Why are you using that dumb Americanist transcription Because it's pretty convenient for the types of languages that it's used for, and the phonology he just posted is pretty reminiscent of those languages. Couldn't have said it better. But I digress: 1) Having one aspirate stop and having it be /k...