zompist bboard

I was going to make a thread but this is probably not important enough of a question for its own thread. Wikipedia says s-mobile is found before voiceless stops and sonorants, but Wiktionary says that "steam" and "fume" are cognates, which means that it must trace back to a PIE form beginning with ...

Not very likely, but could PIE voiced stops actually have been creaky voiced, giving it an unusual system of creaky-breathy-plain stops? Some idle thought I had.

There's a hypothesis how para-proto-Basque languages were spoken in all of Europe west of the Alps, described in a paper here . Tl;dr the main argument is that they served as substratum languages to proto-Germanic, proto-Italic and proto-Celtic and several typological features are explained as that ...

It's an interesting thing, but not quite the same.

Do the Baltoslavic long adjectival endings come from the PIE anaphorical pronouns *h₁éy *íh₂ *íd, or from the PIE relative pronouns *yós *yéh₂ *yód?

/pʰ ᵐ̥p tʰ ⁿ̥t kʰ ᵑ̊k ᶰ̥q/ <p b t d k g q> /m n ŋ/ <m n ŋ> /χ h/ <x h> /p̪͡fʼ t͡sʼ q͡χʼ/ <ff zz xx> /ɭ̆/ <l> /i u ɯ̽ e o̟ ɐ a (ə̹̠̥)/ <i u y e o ạ a (ẹ)> /pʰ ᵐ̥p tʰ ⁿ̥t kʰ ᵑ̊k ᶰ̥q/ <p ⁿp t ⁿt k ⁿk ⁿq> /m n ŋ/ <m n ŋ> /χ h/ <x h> /p̪͡fʼ t͡sʼ q͡χʼ/ <b d g> /ɭ̆/ <l> /i u ɯ̽ e o̟ ɐ a (ə̹̠̥)/ <i u y e o ...

Just as another test case, is "forget-me-not" a noun? My dictionary thinks so (and I agree). Is it "really" an imperative VP? Not really an argument in the discussion, but that example reminded me of the dozen-or-so nouns in Bulgarian formed out of imperative + object, e.g.: въртиопашка rotate-2.SG...

/m n ɲ/
/p b t d k ɡ/
/f v s z ʃ ʒ ʁ/
/l j ɥ w/
/i e ɛ ɛː u o ɔ y ø œ ə a ɑ/
/ɛ̃ œ̃ ɔ̃ ɑ̃/

/ɔ̃alɛselafənɛːtʁuvɛʁt/

Other laryngeal features (aspiration, glottalisation etc.) (…) Not "etc"; those are all there is. Phonetically you can draw finer-tuned distinctions like "tense voice" versus "creaky voice", but phonologically all languages make do with just ±voice, ±spread ("aspiration") and ±tense ("glottalizatio...

[θ] > [k] as an unconditional change? My gut tells me it's possible via, say, [x] or [θˠ] or [tˠ], but I'm not sure. I admit I mainly want this so a specific language family can have really weird sound correspondences. Come to think of it, one sound change I see being brought up a lot here (especia...

Tropylium once suggested, either in a private e-mail or in a post to Nostratic-L, that Pre-Proto-Uralic may have undergone a chain shift of the sort *o > *u > *ü, which would mean that Proto-Indo-Uralic probably did not have front rounded vowels. A quite interesting suggestion. May I ask what's the...

I meant to say any post-root morpheme.

Does the ending *-or exist in PIE, either as ablaut variant of *-er or as independent ending, and if it does, what does it mean? The 3sg middle primary (= present) ending. There is no ending *-er, and the closest is *-ēr, the old 3pl perfect ending, but this is not related in any way to *-or. Wasn'...

Does the ending *-or exist in PIE, either as ablaut variant of *-er or as independent ending, and if it does, what does it mean?

I read that the word used to be a verb meaning 'I am here' that took either the thematic or the athematic ending and from there the difference in the forms *ég'oh₂ vs. *ég'om and reflexes. I've also read that PIE didn't have plural caseforms of cases other than N A D - is that true? If so, has anyon...

Yeah I dunno about that. Why should all PIE words ultimately derive from CVC roots or CVC+CVC compounds? It makes it look like a conlang. Natural languages have all sorts of shapes for 'primary', 'underived' roots. Their exact shape and number depends on the language, but e.g. they may be CV, VC, CV...

Was extending verbs with prefixes from adverbs or preposition the state of affiars in wide or narrow PIE? Seeing how this feature is present in Slavic, Germanic, Romance languages and Greek, but in different forms I've been wondering for a while. Or maybe it was a feature of the substrate.

There are certainly a few rivers in the Leic region, but I'm not sure about how big they could be - the inland areas are fairly dry, and the main river running west from the Ural-like mountain range turns north towards Ronquian territory. Is there a map of the rivers somewhere? The Akana wiki certa...

I'm in the process of finalising the Áżädgä lexicon, but never really got the hang of the setting, so I'm asking for help. Which of these objects and concepts exist or could exist in Western Tuysáfa during 0 YP? chimney girder, plank ball piglet canoe saddle chair boat sail of a boat angle palm bric...

XD man, for one's sole post to be the necroing of a four year old conworld. I'm kinda flattered I've been thinking about doing some more amphitrite, but the same reason the conworld idea is attractive is the reason why it's kind of hard to develop: it's entirely unprecedented, so there's almost no ...

What is a definite/indefinite distinction doing in 1st and 2nd person pronouns? What is the difference between 'a you' and 'the you'? Taking a blind guess here, maybe focus/topic? An interesting concept, to have the same morphological markers mark def/indef in nouns and adjectives, but focus/topic ...

May I ask a question: how is progress in the reconstructions for Proto-T1 and Proto-Leic coming on? Still looking for people willing to reconstruct Proto-T1, tho there's at least one person on CBB who's made an attempt recently. Will maybe give it a shot after several months, depending on how thing...

Richard W wrote:(The argument over PIE *tʰ might never be resolved.)

Is there anyone still positing *tʰ? AFAIK it's only Indic languages that require it and all cases can be traced back to *tH instead.