Search found 195 matches

by Curlyjimsam
Tue Feb 03, 2015 10:13 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Unnamed isolating(ish) ergative proto-language
Replies: 4
Views: 1690

Re: Unnamed isolating(ish) ergative proto-language

Point of interest: there are, as far as I know, no real-world languages which demonstrate ergativity purely in terms of word order without case or agreement marking. This doesn't necessarily mean you can't do this in your language - I do a similar thing to you in my main conlang - but some conlanger...
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Dec 27, 2014 5:15 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: How do you organize a list of sound changes?
Replies: 4
Views: 2009

Re: How do you organize a list of sound changes?

Typically "one node to the next". I'll also tend to subdivide the list of changes by period: exactly what lengths of time varies, but 200 year intervals is fairly typical.
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Dec 27, 2014 5:13 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: David Salo's Gundabad Neo-Orkish: transcription and analysis
Replies: 18
Views: 6216

Re: David Salo's Gundabad Neo-Orkish: transcription and anal

Nice. One little thing: imperatives are finite, not non-finite. They can head independent clauses, whereas infinitives are deranked and thus non-finite. Drat! I should've known that... To be fair I think you could argue it either way - imperatives often do share some properties of non-finite verbs ...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Nov 18, 2014 6:01 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Extraterrestrial Cultures and Languages
Replies: 9
Views: 2887

Re: Extraterrestrial Cultures and Languages

The term "space opera", to me, doesn't exactly scream "realism and believability", so you might want to ask yourself exactly how far you want to go with these things - but I would agree that the cliche of planets with a single culture is a bit boring and questionably realistic. (That said, there are...
by Curlyjimsam
Thu Oct 02, 2014 11:25 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: How to begin an a priori conlang
Replies: 12
Views: 5115

Re: How to begin an a priori conlang

A question that I think deserves asking is "What are the main advantages of creating an ancestor language?". I can think of a few main ones: (1) Being able to produce historical texts in a language before the "modern" period. If you want to do this, you need to be able to trace your language back at...
by Curlyjimsam
Sun Sep 07, 2014 2:48 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: vowels make preceding consonants more audible?
Replies: 4
Views: 2324

Re: vowels make preceding consonants more audible?

awer wrote:So, ultimately, do you think that consonants are more audible when followed by vowels?
I think so, yes. Final consonants are relatively likely to be lost (or merge with other consonant phonemes), and audibility is likely the most important factor.
by Curlyjimsam
Thu Jul 31, 2014 3:18 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: The Flag of Vrkhazh
Replies: 9
Views: 2263

Re: The Flag of Vrkhazh

These are unusual, but certainly striking. I like them. I shouldn't worry about those "five principles". Like Matrix says, lots of real flags don't follow them - indeed I suspect most flags violate at least one. That's not to say that they're don't constitute sensible advice, but a concountry where ...
by Curlyjimsam
Mon Jul 21, 2014 9:33 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Nicks past & present
Replies: 30
Views: 11623

Re: Nicks past & present

I used to be Curlyjimsam on here, and still am on most of the Internet. I have been calling myself Seven Fifty or a variant on here and one or two other places for just over a year or so, I think.
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Jul 18, 2014 4:38 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conworld without magic, anyone?
Replies: 37
Views: 8258

Re: Conworld without magic, anyone?

My conworld has no magic. It doesn't have a great deal of appeal to me, to be honest. I do have myths and legends and things which have supernatural/magical elements, but even they are only one small part of the whole. What is the technological level of your conworld? It goes up to a "modern" sort ...
by Curlyjimsam
Thu Jul 17, 2014 10:07 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Language Complexity
Replies: 29
Views: 6864

Re: Language Complexity

Concerning complexity of morphology - which is easier to quantify that the overall complexity of a language - it has certainly been the case that many languages have grown less complex over time: the Romance languages are an obvious example (and I presume the main influence in the Verdurian case), b...
by Curlyjimsam
Wed Jul 02, 2014 7:48 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conworld without magic, anyone?
Replies: 37
Views: 8258

Re: Conworld without magic, anyone?

My conworld has no magic. It doesn't have a great deal of appeal to me, to be honest. I do have myths and legends and things which have supernatural/magical elements, but even they are only one small part of the whole.
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Jul 01, 2014 5:06 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Rate of sound change
Replies: 35
Views: 8534

Re: Rate of sound change

To measure this you'd need a solid definition of what constitutes "one sound change". If you have five voiceless sounds /p t k f s/ and they all become voiced between vowels, is that one sound change or five? If /e/ gradually raises to /i/ in a very large number of very small steps, is that one chan...
by Curlyjimsam
Wed Jun 04, 2014 10:29 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Are allophones in big phonological inventories less likely?
Replies: 8
Views: 3192

Re: Are allophones in big phonological inventories less like

You are aware that you'll never perfectly recreate your mouth's setup when uttering the same phoneme twice? That falls under allophony, even though it may be so fine-graded that it's barely measurable. This is the most important thing to state in response to this thread, I think. Though in fairness...
by Curlyjimsam
Thu May 29, 2014 5:13 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: What tools do you use for conlanging?
Replies: 46
Views: 12804

Re: What tools do you use for conlanging?

MS Word, mostly. Notepad quite a bit for stuff I don't want to go into detail for. I used to use the SIL dictionary program (I forget its name ...) for my main languages, until I accidentally deleted the source files when I got a new computer. (They were in a different place from all my other files....
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Mar 04, 2014 8:49 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Naming language for nonhuman civilization in RPG
Replies: 23
Views: 6499

Re: Naming language for nonhuman civilization in RPG

Etching clay was one of the earliest methods humans used for writing, and used a lot - according to Wikipedia "between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times". Clay, unlike other materials, is very durable as well. The same writing syste...
by Curlyjimsam
Thu Jan 30, 2014 4:34 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The plurals of deer-like animals in English
Replies: 25
Views: 8418

Re: The plurals of deer-like animals in English

For me, "I'm going out hunting pheasant" would be OK, but not *"there are five pheasant in that field". And similarly for "elk" etc.
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Jan 21, 2014 5:57 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Non-Tolkienian fantasy
Replies: 61
Views: 18789

Re: Non-Tolkienian fantasy

I've for a long time been fascinated by the fact that in the Gormenghast books, although they seem to fall fairly naturally in the category of "fantasy", there is an absence of magic or the magical. Specifically, it's interesting to me that more authors haven't done similar - the Tolkienian style ha...
by Curlyjimsam
Thu Jan 16, 2014 6:10 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words
Replies: 80
Views: 51405

Re: Conlang words that happen to resemble real words

Viksen has a whole load; here are some from the start of the alphabet: - Somewhat boringly, a "and" - ad , "centre", pronounced similarly to English add - as , "only", pronounced similarly to English ass or arse - bág , "new", pronounced similarly to English bag - bog , "to make" - dad , "perfect" -...
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Jan 03, 2014 5:04 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Baranxe'i Script
Replies: 14
Views: 4458

Re: Baranxe'i Script

Very nice. One of the more distinctive scripts I've seen. I would ask how easy it is to write by hand, though? I can imagine that getting all those vowel and consonant signs lined up neatly like you've done might be quite difficult. I imagine it could be turned into an easier-to-write version quite ...
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Dec 21, 2013 7:51 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Examples of truly unique conlang features?
Replies: 57
Views: 15282

Re: Examples of truly unique conlang features?

My conlang Viksen has an ergative alignment that, due to the absence of case or agreement morphology, is expressed entirely through word order, and furthermore is only apparent in the subjunctive which has an SVO order (i.e. AVP for transitives and VS for intransitives), non-subjunctive sentences be...
by Curlyjimsam
Sat Dec 07, 2013 8:24 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Learning to Gloss
Replies: 26
Views: 6646

Re: Learning to Gloss

I would advise that there is no single "correct" way to do glosses, and you ought to a large extent to be sensitive to the context. Generally, I at least would rather read English words than abbreviations of grammatical categories unless there's some specific reason to use the latter. So sometimes i...
by Curlyjimsam
Fri Oct 18, 2013 1:29 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Syntax Question
Replies: 29
Views: 7211

Re: Syntax Question

The vast majority of languages have subjects before objects as the most basic order anyway - over 90% based on http://wals.info/feature/81A. And as others have said - object/verb order is the most useful for predicting other orders, although the tendencies (though fairly strong in many cases) are by...
by Curlyjimsam
Thu Oct 10, 2013 4:59 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Creating dialects and language families
Replies: 16
Views: 6430

Re: Creating dialects and language families

My History of the Viksen Language contains a lot of information on morphosyntactic change (though I can't guarantee it's all necessary realistic). Obviously this is just one language rather than a whole family, but it might still be instructive.
by Curlyjimsam
Thu Aug 22, 2013 2:37 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Conlanging and the novel - essay
Replies: 4
Views: 2321

Conlanging and the novel - essay

This is an essay I wrote a couple of years ago and have recently dug up (and revised slightly in places). Not totally sure if I still agree with all its points, but some people might still find it interesting. === Conlanging and the novel 1. Introduction The hobby of “conlanging”, or creating “const...
by Curlyjimsam
Tue Aug 20, 2013 1:53 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Isolating CV languages?
Replies: 19
Views: 4694

Re: Isolating CV languages?

http://wals.info/feature/combined/12A/22A doesn't suggest any particular correlation between syllable structure type and morphological type.