zompist bboard

Chengjiang wrote:(I've always quite liked Kebreni, by the way. Delightfully odd language whose parts fit together well.)

Kebreni is my favorite conlang ever.

I guess I misunderstood the point being made about the Himba. I think color words fall into categories of basic and special. Wheras an Icelander born around 1960 or later will consider appelsínugulur a basic color term, older people won't; for them it's a special color term, used only in cases where...

I mean, I think there's something to it though. Icelandic didn't gain a word for "orange" until the mid-century and my grandparents will typically call things that I would call appelsínugulur either gulur "yellow" or rauður "red". Carrots are called gulrætur "yellow roots" and egg yolks are eggjarau...

Here's me about two months ago:

Basics Username: vec Name: Kári Other nicknames (including good stories, if you have any): vegfarandi Birthplace: Reykjavík, Iceland Place of residence: Brooklyn, New York Occupation: Graphic Designer at Audible Pets (+5 extra credit if you provide photographic evidence): No Identity Gender: Male S...

Most non-language geeks, and even some English professors use the word "inflection" to mean intonation: "There was something about his inflection that troubled me." I absolutely hate when people do this, but I'm willing to be convinced that these people are not stupid, if there is an argument in fav...

That's because the verbal clitics are clitics, whereas the negative "clitics" aren't clitics. I was offering better evidence that the verbal clitics were clitics. Your argument to show that they aren't inflections aren't convincing; why can't inflections be added to phrases? If something attaches t...

Dreris does not have this magnetic field Earth does, thus they do not have north/south/east/west. Instead, they have 'adrá', which is a point in the very centre of the two main continents. Cardinal directions can be defined in other ways than magnetism. Even before magnetism was discovered, ancient...

In highly synthetic languages, I tend to separate out morphology and syntax and put all usage rules in syntax, but in highly analytical ones, I combine the two under morphosyntax. If your language has multiple moods, you may want to roughly divide them by semantics before going into specific moods. ...

Yeah, sorry, not the best example maybe. The subordination would be apparent in other sentences. But that yes, is a type of a serial verb construction either way.

Verbs. +1 Locative verbs, relative verbs, etc. Also just regular verbs, but subordinated, either syntactically or morphologically. Consider the following made up examples: I was fired blame John "I was fired because of John" (subordinated syntactically) I was fired blaming John "I was fired because...

Thanks! The book turns out to be in Iceland so I can't get to it now.

Was it Proto-Norse or Old Icelandic that went through a phase of no /o/?

A serious theory I've seen along these lines (though I do not have a reference offhand, sorry) similarly accepts only three main components of vowel timbre: I, A and U. However, instead of assigning values for each separately, it ends up positing that a vowel can have one or more secondary timbre i...

Verbs.

I don't like the one who sleeps and I don't like the sleeping one are roughly equivalent, relative/participial, respectively.

While it's true most European languages use the Eskimo kinship system I wanna say a few of them don't. Icelandic uses an Eskimo variant that conflates cousins with aunts and uncles, but I feel like there are more "exotic" systems in user elsewhere. Anyone know more about this?

Icelandic has /ʏ/ and /œ/ but no /y/. When /œ/ is long it's kind of like /øœː/. I think Faroese only has /y/ in loanwords. So there's plenty of precedents probably.

a falling tone cannot follow a high tone I think you mean a low tone. Yes indeed. I've completely rewritten the description of the tones in the Google Doc. Question – does anyone have a pdf of a grammar of an inflectional strict-CV language lying around? I'm having a tough time getting to a satisfy...

Before I get into nominal morphology, here are some updates on sounds: I decided to ditch the unvoiced uvular trill for a /ʋ/. There are five tones, tentative diacritics below: Low: ă Mid: a High: ā Rising: á Falling: à The rising and falling tones are relative to the previous tone, but the tonal le...

I've decided to keep working in a Google Doc. Anyone is free to have a look at the in-progress grammar: LINK TO GOOGLE DOC I'll be posting status reports here. ————— One thing I do have to report is that I have decided to go with a five tone system (low, mid, high, rising, falling) and a strict (C)V...

To summarize the typological specs I have set for myself: 34 or more consonants 9 or more vowels Plosives: no voicing, fricatives: voicing No /p/ or /g/ Uvular continuants Glotallized resonants No laterals Front rounded vowels Either CV or something else No bilabials Pharyngeals So, what to do about...

From the creator of the avrelang , the most average language ever. I want to challenge myself to create a language unlike all others I've created. A language featuring as few features that I have up to this point used as I can. Again, I'm going to be using WALS.INFO for reference but this time not g...

Not all SVC languages have ECM type SVC. Many, like Chinese, will interpret the subject as referring to both verbs: I saw girl enter room where I is the subject of saw and enter , That isn't the case. Most verbs, including "see", are ECM in Chinese. May I see where you read that? Finally, an import...

There are infinite numbers of possible schemes for serial verb constructions (SVC). First of all it's important to understand not all SVC are born equal. The most basic type is called nuclear SVC (nSVC) which involves two equally meaningful verbs concatenated. English has this for a few very restric...