zompist bboard

New theory: Octaviano is really Claude Vorilhon.

Good thread! A few more can be added: Cayuga has 11: /t ʦ k kʷ ʔ s h n r j w/ "Common Cree" has 12: /p t ʧ k s ʃ h m n "r" j w/ -- where in various dialects "r" is realized as any of [r], [l], [j], [n], and [ð], and where some dialects have merged /s/ and /ʃ/ and so may have as few as 10 -- e.g. Nas...

Well he still accepts it is somehow connected to "Caucasian *XHVr[tç´]V 'marten; otter'" so, it's not like he's totally reformed. I guess it's a step though...

sangi39 wrote:A quick follow up question, though. Are the following changes, related to those posed in the original question, plausible:

They seem plausible enough to me.

Really? I find it almost impossible :\ To be more specific, the first couple times I tried were a total disaster that sounded like "sdklsakfjdljgporegjfg." Then I started to get the hang of it and each subsequent attempt was a little closer to correct - but I think that made me start getting cocky, ...

Travis B. wrote:All of those are completely ungrammatical in my dialect, with those sticking out quite jarringly to me.

Same here, and I don't think I've ever heard them before.

No no, like this: Big men eat - ing smelly cheese big man.PL eat -GER smelly cheese House - s are a long project to undertake, much like conlang - s house - PL be.PRS .PL INDF long project INF undertake, much like conlang - PL Tu aime -s la nourriture froid; pas moi. 2SG .NOM like -2SG DEF .SG.FEM f...

I think the reason "toy boat" is so hard to say a number of times quickly (for me, anyway), is that the stress goes on "boat," but I have a definite preference for avoiding having [oːɪ] in an unstressed position (and it's long because it's in an unchecked syllable, whereas "boat" ends in a voiceless...

You don't need to define "over" as a preposition, unless the original language you're glossing somehow marks the word, morphologically, as a prepositions (say, for instance, there's one root that means "to be over" when used as a verb or just "over" when used as a preposition, and the latter is indi...

Aside from debuccalization and assimilation, how many examples of POA shift can you actually name? What do you mean? There's a fair number of examples. This thread lists some, scattered in various posts. t > k is actually kind of common (most common when the language lacks /k/, normally due to earl...

For those of you partial to horrible puns: <Anguipes> ferns done, fuck yeah! <Anguipes> and pthag is not around to taunt me about moss :) <Nae> Anguipes: moss you give me such a hankering to make bad puns? <Nae> coming up with new ones quickly is a pine. <Nae> and i'll be stuck here thinking of them...

It depends. c > t doesn't present any problems, but t > p is a really bizarre change. HOWEVER you could add some intermediaries like t > θ > f > p , and that's perfectly plausible. But if you're just picturing it as a one step chain shift, c > t and meanwhile t > p , that's hard to justify. [Also no...

Better late than never: Other things include Ojibwe with five long but only three short vowels, It's actually four long vowels. The vowel system is long /i: e: o: a:/, short /i o a/. Also shared with some dialects of Cree. (Apparently the Ojibwe spoken in parts of Wisconsin has[/had] short /e/, thou...

(Cev = Xephyr) <Cev> I have a PM to Whimemsz from August that's still in the Outbox <Cev> oh Whimemsz, why must you be so fleeting? <Cev> He'll be back. <Cev> He always comes back. <Cev> THOUGH WIDE HE MAY ROAM, ALWAYS THE HERO COMES HOME.... - Cev pictures Whimemsz at the head of a sturdy old salt...

It's still wrong to call English passives "ambitransitive." English passives are intransitive, and meet any reasonable criteria for prototypical passives. "By"-phrases are not verbal arguments, they are obliques. This can be seen, for instance, by the fact that they take non-nominative pronouns, whi...

That is quite an impressive feat then! Well done.

For instance, if you point to your hand and indicate you want the word, what you'll get back is "your-hand", or if you point to the other guys hand, "my-hand" or "his-hand" etc. You simply can't say "hand" by itself. The nearest you can get is "someone's-hand". And so for most body parts and relati...

Is anything new happening with this?

Ojibwe uses a lot of different constructions which can be translated into English as non-finite clauses (there are no real non-finite clauses in Ojibwe in the sense of verb lacking inflection for person/number/TAM, unless you count "participles" which are basically relativized verbs used as nouns, b...

I have never understood the expression "it begs the question". I allways wonder: "What question?". Is "it begs the question" an expression that means something else than it logically means or is one actually supposed to understand what question the other guy thinks of? And, if the latter, how shall...

see also this LanguageLog post

Tisquantum happened to have been to England following his being kidnapped and an unsuccessful attempt to sell him into slavery, and he learnt English while living in London. Seriously, what do they teach kids in schools nowadays? Ok, but how? Through complete immersion? Did someone else speak Algon...

I certainly think you can get away with that. (Just look at English, which aspirates stops which are the onsets of stressed syllables, but not onsets of unstressed syllables -- you could copy English, then have aspirates become geminates and then have a chain shift of geminate > plain > fricative. O...

I've been close to asking this question too. For instance, the first settlers in New England met natives who spoke Algonquian languages with a grammar, especially the verb, unlike anything they would have experienced before. Animate/inimate, pronoun hierarchies, obviate nouns ... Yet within a few y...

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