zompist bboard

I think this is really cool! It would be awesome to see you evolve this over time, and derive every single word for abstract concepts and grammatical forms through metaphor and grammaticalization (and a ton of work!) Now I can't comment on the accuracy of this of course, and perhaps someone else wou...

How do noun class/gender systems evolve? What starts them off and how do they spread throughout a lexicon? Thanks! I have really no idea, so I would refer to Vidurnaktis, but do I remember reading something theorizing about how it may have started in German. I'll try to find it! Generally it's thou...

Honestly not sure, I haven't looked into it much. It wouldn't surprise me though if one source is "movement" of cases from more concrete, semantic relations to more abstract, grammatical ones, such as a postposition for "towards" being used to mark the endpoint of a verb of movement (allative case)...

I assume that in general case suffixes predate prepositions rather than being derived from them, either from when prepositions were still postpositional, or before they were grammaticalized in the first place. Aren't there cases of languages switching from being largely prepositioning/prefixing to ...

This seems cool! What motivates a choice between these?

a. mita tsakahue
b. mita tsaka nahe
c. ? mita nahe tsaka

Was either one of ‹-hue› or ‹nahe› used before the other? If you have them, what are their etymologies? Thanks!

Much along the lines of the Sound Change Quickie Thread , I thought I would create a place where we could constellate the many questions and ideas we have about grammatical change over time, including, but not limited to, those about the process of grammaticalization. Let me get the ball rolling by ...

R.Rusanov wrote:Awesome stuff

What would the syllable structure be like?

KathAveara wrote:I think the u-umlaut in the second line of the vowels should be an o.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Can you rephrase or elaborate?

Ok so I've done some work on this, and I'm becoming worried that I'm creating a re-lex of Japanese. How should I avoid this? What are some quirks of Japanese that are not representative of the other "Altaic" languages? Thanks! Edit: I primarily mean morphosyntax, and to a lesser extent semantics. So...

Naturally if this is supposed to be serious comparative linguistics I think this whole thing is dubious, but if it is simply part of some creative conlang endeavour, then I think it is fun and am happy to contribute. Just a creative endeavor! Maybe a little more background would help to show what i...

Well, I guess I am trying to make Standard Average North Asian: My primary goal is to create a language that can be readily learned by a non-linguist speaker of Japanese and English, one which bears morphosyntactic similarities to Japanese and other languages sometimes considered to be in the same s...

What are some ways that relative clauses are formed when they're before the head noun? I know Japanese does something like tenpura-o tabe-ta hito tempura-OBJ eat-PST person "the person who ate the tempura" What do other languages do? Also, how would these languages order TAM and person, number, etc....

What's up y'all? I'm attempting to create a language that would appear to be very typical of those in the Altaic sprachbund, blending the features of languages like Turkish, Mongolian and Japanese. Some trends that I've already identified are: SOV as a primary word order Adjective-noun Almost exclus...

These are really really sexy

How do I pronounce epiglottals?

Which kind of Caucasian, wikipedia gives three whole language families. Well, I believe the Caucasus is a sprachbund, leading to genetically unrelated languages to inherit similar phonological (and other) characteristics. Take Armenian, an Indo-European language with an ejective series. I think thi...

Asahi wrote:French
Aeruyo
Amharic
Arabic
Aramaic
Ayeri
Burushaski
Cherokee...

Which of these that you've read have proven to be of good quality?

EDIT: I don't mean just those few, I just didn't want to copy the whole list. Just wanted to make sure that that was clear.

1. Absence of any phonemic POA for stops further back than velar [half mark for only one stop-POA behind velar, or for prominent allophonic stops behind velar] 2. Phonemic voicing [half mark if voicing is only part of the distinction] 3. Two and only two parallel series of phonemes at each POA at w...

I really enjoyed the Animacy and Agency episode; a lot to think about. Also, I just recorded the intro greeting in Vanga . The link to the MP3 file is here ! I have to commend you; you sound very fluent in your conlang. For my own, I'll forever sound like an American tourest reading from a phraseboo...

We weren't being hostile; we were being skeptical, as is to be expected when such a claim as yours is made. I have to agree, however, that from a cursory glance at WALS, there seems to be slightly more synthesis in languages spoken by traditionally simple-technology societies. I don't believe that t...

cerealbox wrote:[A]s a matter of fact, more technologically primitive cultures have a tendency to have greater morphological complexity than modern, literate, industrialized societies who tend toward the analytic.

Do you believe this tendency to be more than coincidence?

Implosive affricates
Labial whistles
Pharyngeal plosives, nasals
Velar and palatal trills
Ingressive airstream
Bidentals
Various coarlticulations, e.g. faucalized, ventricular etc.

Some of these have been judged impossible for normal human speech, but you could still use them.

Thanks for this! It'll be an interesting read.

And we've again proved the first law of ZBBdynamics - any thread regardless of initial content may spontaneously degrade into an English pronounciation thread. I'd also like to know what the punch-line of this Egyptian jackal cartoon is... I thought the rule was that any thread may degrade into a g...

Each day, we typically hear the voices of dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals. Each of those people speak in their own idiolect; that is, with those lexical, gramatical and phonological choices that distinguish their speech from others. My question is, are ( double copula ?) the acoustic differe...

I'm curious where you heard this, seeing as you need a tongue to whistle. I mostly whistle with my lips, although I may be doing it wrong. Your lips are equally important; however, in order to produce any tone, the tongue must be positioned at a certain minimum height. Try whistling whilst your ton...