Search found 195 matches

by Curlyjimsam
Fri Mar 31, 2017 1:52 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Idea for a Data Schema for Conlangs
Replies: 13
Views: 4714

Re: Idea for a Data Schema for Conlangs

A unified way of representing information about a language might have some uses in spite of its drawbacks. Yes, we might end up with somewhat partial descriptions (though all descriptions of natural or pseudo-natural languages are partial descriptions), but that's not to say the idea is entirely wit...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Feb 28, 2017 11:02 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Erghhh... Prescriptivism
Replies: 43
Views: 8828

Re: Erghhh... Prescriptivism

I don't know anything about variation in Polish, but it's possible there's more variation than you realise, because polite people don't talk about that sort of thing and like to pretend there's less variation than there really is out of an unconscious fear of undermining Polish national identity or ...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Feb 28, 2017 10:58 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Naming a Fantasy World
Replies: 24
Views: 7244

Re: Naming a Fantasy World

I'm a little disappointed more fantasy writers don't follow Tolkien's lead and call their world "earth." More proper names always strike me as being in contrast to something else (like Dragon Age's Thedas or The Elder Scrolls' Nirn*, for example), which isn't exactly a concept that would be familia...
by Curlyjimsam
Wed Jan 25, 2017 4:21 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Does it look like Tengwar? You, the reader, may decide!
Replies: 18
Views: 4859

Re: Does it look like Tengwar? You, the reader, may decide!

If anything it looks less like Tengwar than several real-world scripts do!
by Curlyjimsam
Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:18 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Formal conventions in postcards
Replies: 6
Views: 2782

Re: Formal conventions in postcards

Postcards for me are something you would pretty much only ever send to someone you know pretty well, so I really don't know what I'd do if I was postcarding someone I'd never met.
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Dec 13, 2016 4:36 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: origin of Arabic /ɟ/ (plus centum/satem musings)
Replies: 18
Views: 6279

Re: origin of Arabic /ɟ/ (plus centum/satem musings)

More specifically, unconditioned palatalisation of the voiced velar stop while the voiceless equivalent remains velar. This isn't an explanation so much as a more detailed description of what happened. What caused this palatalisation? Why was it unconditional? Why did whatever caused it not affect ...
by Curlyjimsam
Wed Nov 30, 2016 2:28 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Stressed /ə/ in English
Replies: 31
Views: 7459

Re: Stressed /ə/ in English

/ə/ and /ʌ/ sound similar enough for me (native southern-ish British English speaker) that I'd quite happily analyse them as the same phoneme. If you'd asked me before I had any linguistic training, I'd have said London had the same vowel sound in both syllables.
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Sep 24, 2016 2:31 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Cellar door
Replies: 95
Views: 25286

Re: Cellar door

So was it a conscious decision to make a fluttery sounding language have such a brutish looking orthography? Half the words look like Klingon to me. For me, it's the opposite. It looks just like a stereotypical elvish fantasy conlang, one that has an appealing orthography but actually sounds boring...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Sep 20, 2016 12:22 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: "Sound–meaning association biases"
Replies: 25
Views: 7651

Re: "Sound–meaning association biases"

Linguistics articles in non-linguistics journals frequently do make errors which any linguist worth their salt would never make, but I'm not sure there are any of those here. They certainly seem to have tried to avoid the number one candidate error, of not balancing the sample by area or language fa...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Sep 20, 2016 11:59 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Word order in an ergative language
Replies: 18
Views: 5694

Re: Word order in an ergative language

Siewierska's paper seems to have been largely ignored as far as I can tell - loads of people have repeated the "ergative languages are never SVO" claim since it was published, though in some cases admitting one or two counterexamples. It doesn't help that she doesn't actually say, as far as I can se...
by Curlyjimsam
Wed Aug 17, 2016 5:47 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The SAE Grammar Test
Replies: 23
Views: 8861

Re: The SAE Grammar Test

I think question 6 could be worded much better: 6. Anticausitive prominence: the intransitive verb is derived from the transitive. (e.g. The flame melts the ice -> The ice melts) [full marks for over 70% of intransitives derived from transitive; half marks for over 50%] It's spelled "anticaus a tiv...
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Aug 13, 2016 7:07 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Aspiration and VOT: Some questions
Replies: 9
Views: 3385

Re: Aspiration and VOT: Some questions

Yeah, "voiced aspirates" aren't really a thing phonetically. You'll often (normally?) see them transcribed /bʱ/ or whatever. This doesn't, however, mean that it isn't right to describe such consonants as "aspirates" phonologically , if they pattern with the voiceless aspirates as part of the phonolo...
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Aug 06, 2016 12:53 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Cases
Replies: 9
Views: 3173

Re: Cases

It's at least partially, I presume, due to the fact that most languages don't have all that many cases - less than 10% have more than 10, around half have three or fewer. "over" simply isn't that near the top of the list of concepts you want to express all that frequently, so it loses out.
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Jul 12, 2016 2:43 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: What should be done about the word "moist"?
Replies: 69
Views: 17000

Re: What should be done about the word "moist"?

I was not aware that moist was considered derogatory by anyone until reading the above post, and from googling the word supposedly it is used to derogatorily refer to men as homosexual. IDGI. The sort of people who take university classes in Shakespeare, particularly in America, seem to live in a c...
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Jul 01, 2016 1:51 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Native speakers giving misleading information
Replies: 86
Views: 24087

Re: Native speakers giving misleading information

"I" has to either be the sole subject, or come after "and." That's partly a politeness rule - "Don't put yourself first." I'm not sure about that - I and your mother is pretty bad for me, and not at all in an "it's sounds rude" way but in an "that's not grammatical" sort of way. I wonder if the "po...
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Jul 01, 2016 1:30 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Hapax Phonoumena
Replies: 36
Views: 10523

Re: Hapax Phonoumena

/x/ is arguably one for me in English - I think I only have it consistently in loch.
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Jun 24, 2016 4:32 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Cellar door
Replies: 95
Views: 25286

Re: Cellar door

I do like the words "cellar door", but I'm not sure I'd have /selador/ or whatever in any of my conlangs, other than by accident. A general aesthetic appreciation of the words is one thing, but there's also the matter of conforming the word to the general "feel" of the language - and I'm not sure /s...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Jun 21, 2016 12:02 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Reversal of writing direction
Replies: 20
Views: 5011

Re: Reversal of writing direction

You could have a script that is normally written one way, but another way in a small minority of contexts (say 5 or 10% or something). Then, for some reason, the minority option becomes more popular and eventually comes to dominate. This would - very superficially - give the impression of a shift fr...
by Curlyjimsam
Wed May 25, 2016 4:37 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Discrimination (from garden path thread and elsewhere)
Replies: 143
Views: 53997

Re: Discrimination (from garden path thread)

I'm not sure it's fair to stereotype people as "refusing to serve gay people" when, in almost much every case of this happening I can think of, what's actually going on is a refusal to provide services for a same-sex marriage or similar. The same bakers, florists etc. do serve gay people in other si...
by Curlyjimsam
Wed May 18, 2016 1:43 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlangs and copyright
Replies: 17
Views: 6752

Re: Conlangs and copyright

It does seem to me rather unfair that I could (hypothetically) go away and write a novel that makes extensive use of Verdurian, sell millions of copies, sell the film rights, publish a grammar of the Verdurian language, make quite a bit of money off that, etc. etc., and zompist wouldn't be entitled ...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue May 03, 2016 6:46 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlangs and copyright
Replies: 17
Views: 6752

Conlangs and copyright

(I'm not sure quite where this should go - it is in some senses fit for Ephemera or NOTA, being about "current affairs"/the real world, but it is also about conlangs!) There is a court case going on at the moment that partly revolves around the copyright status of Klingon - with potential implicatio...
by Curlyjimsam
Mon May 02, 2016 12:31 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives
Replies: 29
Views: 7135

Re: Deponent verbs in languages with periphrastic passives

On the matter of "be born" - I've never thought of it as deponent before, but it does seem to me that this might be a reasonable label. (Though diachronically, of course, it's just a normal passive.) I suppose part of the reason we don't think of it as deponent might be that it's something of a one-...
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Apr 08, 2016 5:46 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: History of your Conworlds?
Replies: 4
Views: 2291

Re: History of your Conworlds?

I have quite a lot of material on the history of my conworld - not sure how much exactly, maybe in the order of several tens of thousands of words? Certain historical cultures I've focused on rather more than most present-day cultures. But the level of detail varies - sometimes it's not more than th...
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Apr 08, 2016 5:39 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Pantheistic reincarnation via timey wimey ball
Replies: 10
Views: 3602

Re: Pantheistic reincarnation via timey wimey ball

I've thought about this before; it's always seemed pretty reasonable to me. Why should souls, once free of the physical body, be forced to move only forward in time? => why should the next body they end up in be one which temporally follows the last? I'm not sure it need be only an idea for intellec...
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Mar 05, 2016 5:35 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Small vowel inventories in North America
Replies: 27
Views: 5522

Re: Small vowel inventories in North America

I've skimmed bits of Vox Graeca now and then but a condensed account of the evidence by someone well informed would be nice. I'm not that interested on phonetics myself that I'd realistically take time to read a whole pile of books just to answer a single question like this. It's only two books (an...