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Example sentences w/ parses, pwease!

I tend to put evidentials in all my languages, with sets similar to the above, and used to put in indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and optative moods; but I decided recently that I did not like optative mood and instead turned it into jussive/cohortative (reflecting the use of optative mood to ...

I like what you have here so far, probably because..... Verbal Conjugation Finite verbs may be realis, where if they are main verbs they have witness, deductive, reportative, or assumption evidentials except in questions, or irrealis, where then they may be subjunctive, conditional, imperative, or j...

Dwarves First up, a Tibeto - Rgyalrong type affair with plenty of consonant clusters. This is partly based on the fact that many of these languages are spoken in mountainous areas, as befits a typical fantasy dwarf, but also due to the complex of the clusters involved, which would appear forbidding...

Also, the below thread is a useful read showing one ZBBer going through the process of learning how to build a Semitic conlang.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=42747

Hi! I really like your work so far. This system of prepositions is very interesting as well as the noun class! I'll second this. The language seems natural to me so far, and has a unique feel that doesn't scream "hey, look at how weird I am!". :) I do think that the system of prepositions could wor...

Nice sink, WeepingElf! ;-) EDIT: That person must lead a sad, little life if that's all the coffee they keep on hand! Gufferdk had some good input, to which I would add that it seems like you have simply tossed in a bunch of random features that probably seem cool to you. There is pharyngealization ...

I'll second that this looks neat. The documentation is pretty confusing & arcane, though. I'm familiar w/ some programming, using input files of a certain format, etc. etc., but you mostly lose me once you get to the Grammar Rewrite Rules. I can kind of see what you're doing, but the explanations ar...

I have read a few things that indicate that verbs in Tagalog & Malay might be able to be used without affixes that denote the trigger. On Tagalog: In its default unmarked form, the verb triggers a reading of the direct noun as the patient of the clause. On Malay: The radical expresses the phenomenon...

EDIT: Assuming you even actually have "no verbs" as you claim, pretty sure people have tried it before here and the broad consensus is that anyone who says they don't have verbs are fooling themselves. Indeed. I tried to make my "Tibetan Dwarvish" as a "verbless" language. Really, all that meant wa...

Really? I was not aware that word order counted - in which case, I've been making that same mistake for quite some time. Word order would be the "Syntactic" portion of "Morph-Syntactic Alignment". :-D -------------- Put me in the camp of "nominative-accusative" alignment. The girl ran. Syh-loba. Th...

Has anyone seen the World Phonotactics Database ? I happened to come across it today. It's similar to WALS in that it can be used to search & map languages for a set of features. The difference from WALS is that it's only for phonotactics and doesn't have the chapters explaining each feature in deta...

So far so good!

Shemtov wrote:/ᶢʘ ᶢǀ ᶢǂ/ <gʘ g! gǂ>

What exactly are these sounds? I haven't seen the ᶢ before.

Good info!

vec wrote:Finally, an important concept to understand when designing an SVC language is the iconic order of events.

Is there anywhere to read up on this? I assume different languages have different orders, so it would be helpful to see what some of those look like.

You might be interested to read a little bit about Tongan . Polynesian languages are VSO (or, I think a couple might be VOS) and have no personal agreement on their verbs. Many of them, such as Maori are basically NOM-ACC, but others such as Tongan are basically ERG-ABS. It's a bit of a blurry line...

I’m trying to build an ergative conlang, and I want to make sure I understand the concept before continuing, Take a look at the following linked PDF. I always point people to this when they have questions about ergativity. I've never seen a better breakdown of the different types of ergativity. It ...

A lot of people misunderstand what topic-comment actually means. People have some vague idea of the topic being the "most important" thing, or the thing that you are "emphasizing." Really, the topic is an argument that delineates the scope of the comment's expectation of validity. That is to say, t...

It is fairly easy to find outstanding resources on austronesian voice systems. I highly recommend Robert Blust: The Austronesian Languages (2009) and Adelaar: The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar (2004?) for a fairly thorough and encompassing overview. Thank you! A quick search for the...

Have you looked at David's blog, Midgardsmal? There's a bunch of info there on his work for the movies.

Intriguing. I don't think I've ever seen a conlang before that incorporated both an animacy hierarchy and Bantu-style noun classes. Dammit, Araceli, get outta my brain! I just started tinkering with a conlang concept that does this! :-D Both systems sound well-worked out to me, though I'm not clear...

Thanks. That at least gives me a few more languages to look for. In particular, "Soqotri, a South Arabian language of Yemen" sounds interesting. I'm curious to see how much Semitic vs. Austronesian influences it might have.

I've been looking at Austronesian alignment and voice/trigger systems lately. I'm familiar with the Malay triggers (seen on the Malay Wikipedia page and this Malay grammar ), and also the Tagalog triggers (on the Tagalog Wikipedia page ). So far, I haven't found any other grammars that show similar ...

Here's a snippet of conversation from Skype at work today (named changed to protect the innocent...): [1:54:01 PM] Sam: put your review files in a review folder Alan [1:54:06 PM] Sam: 1 [1:54:07 PM] Sam: 2 [1:54:08 PM] Sam: 3 [1:54:08 PM] Sam: 4 [1:54:09 PM] Sam: 5 [1:54:10 PM] Sam: 6 [1:54:11 PM] S...

IME, the contrast is simply one of register. That is, if speakers alternate between the two forms at all (rather than consistently preferring one or the other), they prefer saw in contexts where the prescriptive standard is appropriate. I have heard people use "seen" instead of "saw" quite a bit. F...