Search found 195 matches
- 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...
- 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 ...
- 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...
- 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!
- 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.
- 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 ...
- 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.
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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.
- 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...
- 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...
- 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.
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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 ...
- 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...
- 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-...
- 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...
- 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...
- 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...