zompist bboard

Check out this one! It has a kind of case construction kit, which is used to build 56 local cases from just 11 suffixes. And it is not the only language of that kind in the Caucasus; many other Northeast Caucasian languages work the same way.

KathTheDragon wrote:Besides, a discussion on *h₃ is better suited for elsewhere, don't you think?

Yep. It belongs to the Great Proto-Indo-European Thread, where we have already discussed it.

Small aside on *h₃ - xʷ isn't very likely, since Anatolian doesn't display any rounding when the laryngeal is preserved, in constrast to the labiovelar stops which do. The actual labiovelar fricative in Anatolian is the reflex of *h₂w. That's your opinion. It may be the case, but it may also be the...

But the entire reason for looking for IE-Uralic lexicon matches is the existence of suggestive morphological similarities between the two! Exactly. The morphological resemblances between IE and Uralic are hard to explain otherwise, and are of a similar degree as those between, say, Semitic and Cush...

The role of ablaut in PIE morphology is pretty overstated, imo. It's certainly nowhere near as prominent as in Semitic. Indeed not. But I once had the idea of an IE lostlang in contact with Semitic in which PIE ablaut developed into something like Semitic triconsonantal morphology, but as for now, ...

It seems that you have hit on the fundamental problem of bogolanging: The sound changes you are trying to apply to your starting language just don't fit because they presuppose a different phonology. And PIE and Proto-Semitic are not even close, they are almost as utterly different as they could be.

When lexicon matches better than morphology, it is likely that one is dealing with a layer of loanwords. This had turned out to be true with Armenian (considered an Iranian language on the base of lexical resemblances before Hübschmann proved that wrong on morphological grounds in 1863), and is IMHO...

I have abandoned the idea I posted yesterday again. There really isn't all that much reason to assume that the LBK language was related to Kartvelian (though it is of course a possibility ); the similarities between Kartvelian and IE aren't that great (Kartvelian ablaut is not as similar to IE ablau...

I have a new, possibly wacky, idea about what could have effected the phonological "Kartvelization" of PIE (the phonological similarities between PIE and Kartvelian) which Gamkrelidze and Ivanov used as an argument for a Transcaucasian homeland of PIE). The idea is a para-Karrvelian language in west...

Thank you for your correction, linguoboy. I wasn't aware that Salmoneus was in error on this point.

Let's just start with Grammy top-level categories. OK, and I shall go through them now. I shall note what genres are named thus; as I wrote yesterday, this has nothing to do with the Grammy categories! Question 1: what is "pop"? . There are three commonly used definitions of "pop": 1. A shorthand f...

Ah, music taxonomy! I have spent more time and thought than probably was good for me in this business. I as a prog fan (who is also working on a book on that matter, which includes a guide to prog subgenres) used to fight an uphill battle against the misuse of the term "prog rock" until I realized t...

If you don't mind me bringing up the Indo-Uralic hypothesis, there is a very interesting paper about a similar -nV suffix in Uralic: http://www.sgr.fi/sust/sust270/30_desmit.pdf Indo-Uralic is of course unproven, which does not exclude the possibility that there is a connection between some element...

As a native speaker of German, I can assure that [ç] is quite different from [ʃ], and also quite different from [ɕ]. Sumelic was not too far off the mark in characterizing it as a voiceless [j], but it has a little more constriction - it is a palatal non-sibilant fricative, while [j] is an approxima...

What Howl does seems to be quite similar to what I called "system comparison" until I realized that it was fallacious. "System comparison" was the comparison of phonological systems without the drudgery of finding lexical cognates. This can easily go wrong badly. Consider Greek and Armenian. These t...

It's not impossible. There are more signs of language contact between IE and Semitic than this. http://paleoglot.blogspot.nl/2008/03/semitic-and-ie-in-neolithic-how.html What happens below in the comment section really lends the writer less credibility unfortunately. I couldn't stop laughing, it be...

If you put in enough disclaimers, you won't be marked as a crackpot. A token characteristic of a crackpot is their conviction they alone are right, everybody else is wrong, and their theory trumps everything. Combined with being blind to all inconsistencies and obvious faults in what they present. ...

It's a hobby to me, too - a minor hobby that emerged from my conlanging interest. I don't think my ideas in this field are particularly good. My homebrew internal reconstruction of pre-ablaut PIE is probably full of problems. While I have been planning to set up a historical linguistics section on m...

As I have said earlier, IE looks somewhat like the "odd man out" in Mitian (though Chukotko-Kamchatkan looks weird too), and it is thus likely that it innovated while Uralic, the three Altaic families (I consider it likely that they form a valid node within Mitian, but that's not certain) and Eskimo...

As Soap says, sound changes do not operate differently in different word classes - in fact, they are not sensitive to morphological issues at all. So if one word class loses final vowels and another doesn't, a morphological explanation is called for.

That's not a phonology, it's a list of letter names.

It was in no way my intention to express sympathy or approval of the AfD! That party is a bunch of intolerable far-right assholes who dream of installing a nationalist dictatorship, and a threat to peace and democracy. Yet, calling them "Nazis" glosses over whatever differences there may be between ...

Zaarin wrote:I maintain that the best evidence points to either a magical/alchemical text or glossolalia.

Yes, it is probably a magical or alchemical text. But whatever it is, it may have inspired a similar work in the 1970s.

mèþru wrote:Didn't Bernd leave because he felt that it had been hijacked by extremists?

Yes, he did, and Mrs. Petry thinks just the same.

Well, the AfD are often accused of being Nazis, and some actually are, but most aren't . They are of course right-wing assholes, but not all right-wing assholes are Nazis, and most AfD members, while dreaming of a xenophobic authoritarian régime, expelling refugees and leaving the EU which is all ba...